Lies in White Dresses

by Sofia Grant

  For all the traveling Francie had done in her life, she’d never seen a city quite like this, with the frenetic bustle and brilliant lights of Times Square, nestled in the bosom of nature’s stately majesty.

  “Have you ever,” June said and sighed, as Patty craned her neck to look in every direction, her eyes as big as saucers.

  “I believe I see our ride,” Vi said. Leaning against the bumper of a battered Ford pickup truck that had been patched in several shades of paint was a grizzled-looking gent in a black cowboy hat and boots, smoking a cigarette and holding up a sign with their names written in neat block letters. They waved at him, and he flicked the butt to the ground and crushed it with the toe of his boot. After tossing the sign into the back of the truck and wiping his hands on his pants, he ambled over.

  “Hello,” Francie said. “I’m Mrs. Meeker and this is Mrs. Carothers, and we’ve been joined by Mrs. Samples and her daughter, Patty.”

  “They’ll be staying in my suite with me,” Vi added.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” the man said, removing his hat. Underneath, his hair was thick as a teenager’s but shot through with gray. “My name’s Clyde Hardy. Mrs. Swanson sent me to bring you back to the hotel. See here, though, I wasn’t expecting but the two of you. I couldn’t bring the car because Mrs. Swanson had to go to court this morning.”

  “But there’s no way we’ll all fit,” Vi fretted, peering into the truck’s cab. “Mr. Hardy, I am afraid you will have to make two trips. I will wait here while you take the others and then you can return for me.”

  “Nonsense,” Francie said. “You three go first, Vi, so you can get June and Patty settled in your suite. I’m sure I’ll be just fine.”

  She was sure of no such thing—the train station seemed a bit dodgy, with shady-looking men loitering outside—but Vi tended to be easily upset by changes in plans. Besides, an adventurous spirit had come over her when they invited June and Patty to join them.

  “We’ll just ride in the back!” June said brightly, already dragging her suitcase toward the rear of the truck. Patty followed like a little duckling after its mother. “I rode in the back of my daddy’s truck all the time when I was growing up.”

  “It’s only two miles up the river,” Clyde said, obviously relieved not to have to make the second trip. “And I’ll drive nice and slow. I’ve even got a couple of old buckets back there to sit on.”

  Francie stilled Vi’s protest with a squeeze of her hand. She’d ridden in the back of a truck once herself—before meeting Arthur, she’d dated a boy whose father was a cotton farmer in the Imperial Valley, and on a visit home, he drove them through what seemed like endless white fields. She remembered being pleasantly terrified as she clung to the side of the truck bed for dear life, watching the dirt road rushing by, the smell of cut hay in the air—so strange to remember that she had been a bit of a thrill-seeker in her day.

  Clyde pulled down the tailgate to start loading their bags. June had only a single suitcase, a sorry-looking thing held together with twine, and after Clyde had lifted it into the truck bed June scrambled nimbly up, holding the hem of her skirt. When Clyde lifted Patty up into the truck bed, he pretended to stagger under her weight.

  “What are you made of, girl—iron ore?”

  Patty squealed with laughter. Clyde went back for more suitcases, making several trips to carry everything Francie and Vi had brought for their six-week stay. He closed the tailgate and came around to the passenger side to assist the ladies, who squeezed together on the bench seat. The cab smelled of motor oil and tobacco and the dashboard held two packs of Pall Malls, one crumpled and the other half empty, but it was fairly clean. Clyde adjusted the mirror and lit a fresh cigarette before pulling out of the parking lot into the street.

  “I hear you ladies are from San Francisco, so I know you’re used to city ways,” he said. “But Reno’s a heck of a town. We like to say it’s the biggest little city on the map.”

  Francie twisted in her seat to check on June, who was perched on a bucket with Patty in her arms. Her curls had escaped their pins and were being whipped by the wind, but she was smiling.

  “Now, right there, that’s the Virginia Street Bridge,” Clyde was saying. “Nowadays some folks call it the Wedding Ring Bridge, on account of ladies coming out of the courthouse with their divorce papers and celebrating by throwing their rings into the Truckee River. She’s a beauty, ain’t she? But don’t be fooled just because she’s behaving today—she gets wild now and then. Two years ago on Thanksgiving Day, she busted clear through the Boca Reservoir and made a real mess. And with all the rains we had last month, she’s itching to do it again.”

  Francie peered down at the water. Clyde was right—it was running high and brackish, carrying downed branches and submerging much of the vegetation along the banks. People leaned over the bridge rails to watch.

  “Now, over there’s the Mapes Hotel—tallest building in Nevada. You can see the entire Sierra Nevada range on a clear day from those windows up on the top floor.”

  “I’ve seen pictures,” Vi said, “but it’s even more remarkable in person.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Clyde said, obviously enjoying his role as guide. “Prettiest chorus girls anywhere—those New York City Rockettes don’t have anything on the Skylettes.”

  “I can’t believe how many casinos there are!” Francie said, as they passed the Silver Spur, the Senator, the Prospector—and those were just the biggest; tucked between them were smaller joints, card clubs and bingo rooms. “Can there really be enough gamblers for all of them?”

  Clyde chuckled. “Yes, ma’am, there sure are, and ever since the state got smart and started taxing gambling income Reno’s been doing real well. And now, of course, we’ve got you ladies spending money here too. Divorcées pouring in from all over the country create a lot of jobs. If Mrs. Swanson hadn’t hired me, I probably would have spent my golden years sitting on my porch and talking to my dog.”

  The downtown casinos and businesses gave way to homes as they drove west. On the other side of the river, the bank rose up into tall cliffs with mansions perched on the top, but on this side were more modest bungalows with well-tended flowerbeds and porches looking out onto the river, which in turn gave way to rich bottomland. Clyde turned into a circular drive bordered by a split-log fence.

  “Here we are,” he said cheerfully. “The Holiday Ranch, in all its glory.”

  The sprawling three-story hotel was hardly a ranch, but it did remind Francie of a summer camp her mother had sent her to when she was a girl. Francie had been an awkward child, constantly bumping into things and knocking things over and failing the most basic lessons of comportment. The camp was in the Sierra foothills an hour or two to the south and was comprised of a dozen cabins nestled in an evergreen forest. There was a large stone fire ring for roasting marshmallows, three other girls in her cabin who all thought she was clever, name tags sewn into all her clothes, and wholesome exercise from sunup to sundown.

  There, Francie had felt at ease; her stout legs were fine for shinnying up trees and her sunburnt arms propelled her silently through the water during twilight swims. Francie had been happy there.

  Like the camp’s dining hall, the Holiday Ranch hotel was sided with whitewashed shingles and trimmed with green shutters with cutouts in the shape of Christmas trees. Rustic beams hewn from the trunks of enormous trees supported the slate roof, and stripped lodgepole pine logs served as porch posts. There were wooden rocking chairs and hanging baskets of flowers and a hitching post out front, along with a decorative wishing well. The Western theme continued into the parking lot on the side of the building, which was enclosed by a split-rail fence to which several sets of steer horns and a bleached-white cow skull were attached. On the other side of the hotel was a garden divided by stone walkways and arches blooming with climbing roses, all arranged around a fountain, the water arcing up from an old cattle trough before splashing down into a mossy,
rock-lined pool.

  Clyde came around and opened the door of the truck for Francie and Vi, then helped June and Patty down from the truck bed.

  “Any worse for wear, Miss?”

  “Only my hair!” June laughed, attempting to pat it into place.

  “How about you, young lady? Catch any flies with your tongue?”

  “No,” Patty replied seriously. “But I saw some ducks. Do you live here?”

  “No, I just work here. But maybe you can help me with my chores. I’ll pay you a penny, how does that sound?”

  “He’s teasing, sweetie,” June said. “But isn’t this the loveliest place you’ve ever seen?”

  Francie suppressed a smile. Though the setting and the view were spectacular, lovely wasn’t the word that came to mind. The brochure had made much of the fact that the hotel had once been the summer mansion of a turn-of-the-century railroad baron before it was renovated and expanded to meet the needs of divorcées flocking to town in recent years. The rooms were richly appointed, the food was supposed to be excellent, and the prices were certainly extravagant—but the ersatz Western features were . . . well, Francie had promised herself that she’d do her best to get into the spirit of things, so she decided they were fun.

  “It’s quite nice, isn’t it?” Vi agreed.

  “I’ve only stayed in a motel once before,” June confessed. “On my wedding night. It was supposed to have a view of Folsom Lake, but we got stuck in a room over the restaurant and it smelled like bacon and burnt coffee and all we could see was the parking lot.”

  Clyde had obviously been listening as he lifted down their bags. He picked up June’s suitcase first, treating it with exaggerated care as though it were made of fine Italian leather instead of battered pasteboard. Francie decided she liked him fine.

  “That’s your suite right up there,” he said, pointing to where white lace curtains fluttered in an open window on the third floor. “Best view in the whole place. And a bathtub with feet like a giant crow.”

  He pretended to claw at the air with his work-scarred hands, his thick yellowed nails. Patty shrieked with laughter and hid behind her mother.

  “Is my room close to theirs?” Francie asked. “I did request it.”

  “No, ma’am, it’s on the second floor, but it has the same view. Trust me, you’ll be glad you’re in the old part of the building. If you ask me, they cut corners on the newer rooms. Now, follow me, and you can check in while I take your things up to your rooms. By the time you’ve got your keys, you can go on up and relax.”

  “Where are the horses?” Patty asked.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Patty, but this isn’t that kind of a ranch. But we’ve got a library, and a card room, and a very nice lounge, and a fancy dining room. And of course, there’s Miss Virgie, I believe she’s only a year or two older than you. Didn’t you tell me you were ten?”

  Patty stared at him. “I’m four,” she said sternly.

  “Oh, well, so she’s a bit older. But she’s a real firecracker, you’ll see. And out back by the shed, we’ve got the meanest cat in the West. Goes by Petunia. We keep her around for safety—she brought down two mountain lions last week. Got their bones stuck in her teeth. Gotta watch out for her—if she’s hungry she might try to take a bite of your leg.”

  Patty’s eyes widened with alarm.

  “He’s just teasing, dear,” Vi said reassuringly. “I’m quite sure there are no mountain lions to worry about, and Petunia will be too busy to bother you. Isn’t that right, Mr. Hardy?”

  Taking her tone, Clyde chuckled. “I’m sure you’re right. With Petunia on the prowl, this is the safest place to be in all of Nevada.”

  The door flew open and a girl of eleven or twelve came flying out, all knobby knees and skinny freckled limbs in a yellow romper and socks bagging around her ankles. Her long yellow hair was escaping its pigtails and she had a book in her hand. She paid no attention to them as she raced past, down the street toward town.

  “That,” Clyde said with something akin to admiration, “was Miss Virginia Swanson.”

  Chapter 5

  Clyde escorted them up the wide porch steps and through a pair of heavy Dutch doors made to look as if they came from a barn, the top half open to let the breeze in. Directly in front of them was a desk with a bored-looking young man sitting behind it, wearing a white shirt and a string tie and a fake sheriff’s star stamped with the word Security.

  “Howdy, ladies, welcome to the Holiday!” he said.

  “This is Paul,” Clyde said. “He’s here to keep you safe and to make sure you meet the residency requirement. Mrs. Swanson will serve as your resident witness when you go to court, and the sign-in records provide evidence of your uninterrupted residence.”

  “I’ll sign you in and out every time you come through the door, even if you’re just going out for a stroll,” Paul said. “The only exception is the garden off the dining room. It’s completely fenced, and to get from the garden to any other part of the grounds, you’ll have to come back in and out the front door.”

  “There are fire doors at the end of each wing and in the back,” Clyde said, “but only the staff can bypass them. Anyone else goes out, the alarm will sound, and nobody wants that, because then I have to go room to room checking on you girls.”

  “You certainly take the rules seriously,” Vi observed. “Is all this caution really necessary?”

  “Well, ma’am, if Mrs. Swanson speaks for you in court but can’t prove you were on site at least an hour each day, she could go to jail for perjury. She wouldn’t be the first—and the minimum sentence is ten years. Not to mention the fact that your case would be thrown out.”

  “Well, we can’t have that,” Francie said. “I didn’t go to all this trouble just to lose my court case over a silly clerical error.”

  “Don’t worry,” Clyde reassured her. “There’s one of these fellows on duty around the clock. You’ll need to show your key every time you enter until they recognize you by sight. Guests are allowed in the first-floor public areas, but only after the security guard signs them in.”

  He led them past the desk, through a reception hall anchored by a huge fireplace flanked by leather couches and a coffee table made from a wagon wheel, with a glass top. Above the mantel hung an oil painting of a cattle drive, and the day’s papers were stacked in an old copper coal shuttle. The reception desk was built from knotty pine, and the woman who came out to greet them wore cowboy boots and a checked kerchief knotted over her blouse.

  “We’ve got our work cut out with this one, Mrs. Swanson,” Clyde said, nudging Patty. “I expect she’ll be wanting her dinner before long. She mentioned that she has a hankering for a side of roasted river rhinoceros.”

  “That will be all, Mr. Hardy,” Mrs. Swanson responded unsmilingly. “Do tell Mr. Yang that Archie’s been late with the linens again. He was nearly twenty minutes late yesterday, which makes it very difficult for Flossie to finish, as you might imagine.”

  “Sure, sure. I’ll make sure he’s here pronto. Good day, ladies.” He tipped his hat, then hefted June’s suitcase and headed up the stairs, whistling.

  Francie considered Mary Swanson with interest. She’d rarely seen a woman order a grown man around like that, unless he was a servant or a merchant, and even then, most women she knew enlisted their husbands to get them in line. Mary Swanson was plain and short and doughy, but her confidence signaled a force to be reckoned with—exactly the kind of woman she’d want to vouch for her in court.

  “I’m Francis Meeker, and this is Vi Carothers, June Samples, and Miss Patty Samples. I trust you were expecting us?”

  Mrs. Swanson drew two heavy keys from her pocket but didn’t hand them over. “I was only expecting you and Mrs. Carothers. As you’ll remember from my letter, no overnight guests are allowed. I’m afraid there are no exceptions to that policy.”

  “I’m quite sure you’re mistaken,” Vi said firmly. “I made it clear when I spoke to your assistant on th
e phone that I was traveling with my cousin and her child.”

  “I’m not sure who you spoke to, but no one informed me.”

  “Her husband has abandoned her, and she is of limited means,” Vi continued, “and her mother prevailed upon me to bring her with me when she heard about my circumstances. It certainly seemed like a sensible solution. Tell me, why would I request your largest suite if I was traveling alone?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know—I do not make a practice of speculating on my guests’ concerns.”

  “Admirable. All the same, it would be a shame for you to have to find another guest to take the suite at this late date, since I’ll obviously be forced to cancel if you can’t accommodate us.”

  Francie said nothing while the two stared at each other like cats facing off in an alley. She was mystified by Vi’s behavior; ordinarily she didn’t speak up for herself, even when she was in the right. Whatever was responsible for Vi’s new attitude, Francie thought it was an improvement.

  Finally, Mrs. Swanson dropped her gaze. “Very well,” she said. “But the child must not disturb the other guests. Children’s meals are one-half the adult fee, and no special requests will be considered. She must eat the same as everyone else.”

  “She’s a good eater,” June piped up. “And she’s well behaved. You’ll have no trouble from her, I promise.”

  “Now that that’s taken care of, we would like reservations for dinner at the Mapes Hotel tonight,” Francie said. “Seven-thirty would be ideal. I trust you can take care of that for us?”

  “Of course, Mrs. Meeker. Shall I arrange for a taxi?”

  “Yes, please. And can arrangements be made for Patty? She’s had quite a long day, and I’m sure she’ll go to bed early, but perhaps someone could see to her dinner and stay with her until our return.”

  “My daughter, Virginia, will be happy to help,” Mrs. Swanson said. “I’ll send her up at seven-fifteen.”