Lies in White Dresses

by Sofia Grant

  “It won’t take any time at all,” Francie said firmly. “Alice is a very sensible girl, and she has a splendid eye for fashion.”

  “Do you have dinner plans, June?”

  “Yes, I’ll be eating here with Patty—I like to spend the evenings with her when we’re apart during the day.”

  “Of course. Well, this is all working out well,” Alice said. “We’ll be back in time to reunite June with Patty, and to change before dinner. I’ll tell Daddy to make reservations and then he and Bill can pick us up on the way.”

  “Alice . . .” Francie said warningly.

  Some unnamed tension stretched between them, and June looked at the floor, embarrassed at being a witness to their disagreement, whatever it was. As she followed Alice to the door, she wondered why love had to be so complicated.

  Chapter 33

  Virgie

  Virgie watched Mrs. Samples leaving in the company of Mrs. Meeker’s daughter. Somehow Mrs. Samples had already wormed her way into Alice’s good graces. How did she do it? One after another, everyone seemed to be falling for her act.

  Except for Virgie. If she had to solve this case all by herself, she would, but it would be a lot easier if Mrs. Samples wasn’t such a good liar. But that was what made a criminal successful, according to George Barton—lying consistently. He said most crooks got caught when they forgot what they had told to whom and started making mistakes. (Mr. Barton’s books on detection had taught Virgie a great deal, even though they were much harder to understand than her Nancy Drew books. The good thing about them was that they were old, and sometimes Flossie and Ruth found them at garage sales and gave them to her as presents. One of these days, Virgie was going to read every single one.)

  Virgie made her way to Willy’s room, dropping off the week’s activities list as she went. Her mother had made them up just this morning, and Virgie had been afraid she’d left the master of her own flyer in the mimeograph machine; her mother wouldn’t approve of the ring business. But her mother had been too distracted to do much of anything besides get the machine set up and tell Virgie to run it. The police visit had upset her; she was convinced people might cancel their reservations if they heard about it.

  When Virgie knocked, Willy called for her to come in. As usual, Willy had the shades drawn and the draperies closed, and it took a moment for Virgie’s eyes to adjust. On the little table in front of the fireplace was a plate covered in crumbs, in defiance of the rules. A pile of clothes lay on the bed, tried on and discarded from the looks of it.

  “My, my, look what the cat dragged in,” Willy said. She was curled up in the armchair with her legs tucked under her, a stack of magazines on the floor, an ashtray overflowing with butts on the little table. Her hair was up in curlers, and her face was scrubbed clean. Despite looking far healthier today, she seemed down in the dumps.

  “I brought you the activity calendar for next week,” Virgie said, digging one from the big pocket in her smock and handing it to Willy, who didn’t bother to look at it before setting it aside.

  “Do you have . . . ?”

  “Right here,” Virgie said, taking the small brown paper bag from her smock. Dr. Peabody’s nurse had stapled the bag shut twice, so there had been no way to see what was inside, but from the heft and rattle it was obviously some kind of pills. Virgie was no closer to understanding what Willy had communicated with her brief note.

  Willy took the bag and opened it right in front of Virgie. “Ah, perfect,” she said. “Be a love and get me some water, won’t you?”

  Virgie filled a drinking glass in the bathroom and brought it to Willy, who shook out a pill from the bottle and swallowed. She dug a small piece of paper from the bag and read it, then groaned. “Seven days,” she muttered. “Unbelievable.”

  “What’s seven days?”

  “Never you mind that. Let’s just say the timing isn’t exactly ideal.” She took a cigarette from her pack and struck a match on a small gold box. “This hasn’t been much of a week, has it, Virgie?”

  “Well, not for Mrs. Carothers, anyway,” Virgie said.

  Willy was lifting her cigarette to her lips to light it, but instead she suddenly started coughing, and had to take several sips of water to clear her throat. “No, I suppose not,” she said. “So what’s your theory, Virgie? Did she do herself in? Or was it an accident?”

  “I don’t know. But Mother says you’d have to be awful drunk or awful clumsy to fall in along here since the path doesn’t go all the way to the edge. So if it was an accident, she would have had to walk quite a ways.”

  “Sounds like a good point. Well, I guess we’ll never know, will we? Since the dead don’t have a lot to say, and they probably don’t care much anyway.”

  “Shakespeare said that death pays all debts.”

  “Is that so? You’re a walking encyclopedia, you know that?”

  Virgie was pleased at the compliment; she wasn’t sure exactly what the quotation meant, but Mr. Barton put it in the front of one of his books.

  This seemed like a good moment for the favor she wanted to ask for. “Remember you were saying you were going to help me with my pitch? The next ring toss is Wednesday, and I wanted to see if I could sell some rings this weekend.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Willy said, perking up. “Then we’d better get to work, hadn’t we?”

  She picked up the activity calendar off the floor. “Did you make this? It’s very nice handwriting.”

  “No, Mother did,” Virgie conceded. “My teacher from last year says I need improvement. Which is dumb because I’m going to be a detective, so who cares how I write?”

  Willy made a tsking sound. “That’s no way to think. If you want to get ahead in this life, you have to be improving yourself all the time, and not just the things you’re already good at.”

  “Ha,” Virgie said. “That’s easy for you to say—you’re good at everything. Except cleaning. You’re not very good at cleaning, but that’s probably because you don’t try.”

  Willy laughed. “You have a point there. But you’re wrong about me being good at everything. Want to know a secret? Something no one else knows about me?”

  Virgie did, very much, but she tried not to let it show. “I guess.”

  “When I was your age, I wasn’t good at much of anything. I talked with a lisp, and kids at school made fun of me, so I just kept quiet all the time. I didn’t have any friends and teachers thought I was stupid.”

  “What’s a lisp?”

  “It’s where you can’t say your s’s,” Willy said. “Like thith. The thell thea thell by the thea thore.”

  “Oh. But how did you stop?”

  “Well . . . now that is a rather long story for another time. But the most important part is that I started singing as a way to practice making the s sound correctly. When I sang, I didn’t feel as embarrassed, so I started singing all the time, and before long I joined the choir and . . . well, some other things happened, but the long and short of it is that I never would have become a singer if I didn’t work hard to change something about myself.

  “So you can let this teacher tell you that you need improvement . . . or you can decide that you’re going to have the very best Virgie handwriting that the world has ever seen. Here, write something for me.” She shoved the calendar back at Virgie.

  “What should I write?”

  “I don’t know . . . you decide.”

  Very carefully, Virgie started writing. It was exciting to think that she could change an important part of herself just by trying. What if, in this very moment, she was becoming someone new? Someone even better?

  When she was finished, she slid the paper back across the table.

  “Well, well,” Willy said. “‘Virginia T. Swanson, Private Detective.’ What’s the T for?”

  “Tabitha,” Virgie said shyly. “Tabby for short. It’s not my real middle name—it’s Katherine, after my grandmother. But I’m actually thinking of changing my name to Tabby whe
n I grow up.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “I hate my name,” Virgie said. “It’s ugly.”

  Willy laughed. “It is not. And I’ll bet you ten bucks you’ll change your mind. Anyway, I think you’re on the right track. Now, what do you want to say about your rings? Why would I want to buy one from you?”

  “They’re cheap, and they come in silver or gold, and you don’t have to throw your real one in the river.”

  “Hmm. Well, that gets the point across. But let’s see if we can come up with a bit more pizzazz, shall we?”

  Chapter 34

  Francie

  Charlie called at three o’clock to say he’d arrived and checked in.

  “You’ll come to dinner tonight, won’t you? Arthur is making reservations.” Since Alice had managed to railroad her into dining with Bill, Francie’s only hope was to invite other people so that she could be seated far enough away that conversation would be impossible.

  “I think I’ll stay in tonight; it was a long drive. But, Auntie Francie . . .”

  “Charlie, you are twenty-seven years old,” Francie said tiredly. “I think it’s time you simply call me Francie.”

  “All right. Francie . . . may I speak to you privately? Just the two of us? I’d prefer to do it in person. Before dinner, if it can be arranged.”

  “Of course, dear.” Francie had been expecting this, girding herself for it. With Vi gone, and Charlie excluded from the tight bond between Frank and Harry, she would need to serve as a surrogate mother. “Gentleman are only allowed in the parlor here, however. But it’s a fine day to sit outside.”

  “Good. I’ll have the car brought around.”

  Francie was waiting on the front porch when he arrived twenty minutes later at the wheel of a pickup truck, looking more like a delivery man than the son of a wealthy business owner. He was dressed in work pants and an old shirt, for which he apologized right away.

  “I’m sorry, Auntie—er, Francie. I had to return some scaffolding this morning.”

  “I’m not worried about that,” Francie said fondly. Because he pitched in with the physical labor on the job sites, Charlie was often mistaken for one of the tradesmen Harry hired, but he didn’t seem to mind. He took after Vi that way, preferring to stay out of the limelight. “So what did you want to talk to me about?”

  Charlie seemed to deliberate a moment before asking, “Did my mother seem different to you, in the last few weeks?”

  “Different . . . ?” Francie suspected she knew what Charlie was asking, but she had nothing to offer him. Vi had been distracted, sure, and maybe a little more melancholy than usual, but if there had been clues that she was planning to take her life, Francie had missed them. “Honestly, no—other than changing her mind about the divorce.”

  “What do you mean? I thought they just decided to divorce, right before she came here.”

  Had he and Frank really not known? “Your father asked for a divorce quite some time ago,” she said gently. “Last fall, right before Thanksgiving. But your mother refused. She . . . felt strongly about divorce, as you may know.”

  Charlie’s jaw tightened. “Yes. I do.”

  “Your father kept asking for a while, but—well, you know your mother—she could be stubborn about things, and he finally gave up.” At least, that’s what Vi had told her. Francie thought back to Christmas, Vi’s usual frenzy of decorating and baking and shopping. She’d occasionally mentioned Harry’s latest mistress, but it was with exasperation, not despair. Unless . . . was it possible Francie had misread her feelings? “And then one day she simply changed her mind—came to me and said she didn’t want to wait, she had called the hotel he’d originally booked her in and told them she was coming. And then, as you know, I decided to join her.”

  “Did she seem—upset? When she told you?”

  “No, actually. She seemed . . . relieved. It cheered her, I think. She immediately started arranging everything, asking other volunteers to cover her shifts at St. Vincent de Paul, finding someone to take care of the dog, that sort of thing.”

  Charlie looked perplexed. “And you just decided to . . . get divorced too? Just like that? I know it’s rude of me to ask, Auntie Francie, but I just don’t understand—”

  “I’m not sure I understand it myself,” Francie admitted. “Oh, things haven’t been right between Arthur and me for years—you’re old enough hear that, aren’t you, Charlie?—but it wasn’t until Vi made her decision that I realized I could do the same. Before that I felt like . . . like the moment I said ‘I do’ to Arthur, it committed me to a certain life, that all the other choices I might have made were lost.”

  “I know how that feels,” Charlie said heavily. “Once I went to work for Dad, all my other plans just kind of faded away.”

  “Charlie . . . maybe you should let your mother’s courage serve as your inspiration,” Francie said gently.

  “Yeah, and kill myself, like she did? Instead of letting any of us say goodbye?” Charlie’s anger died as quickly as it had flashed. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean that. I just can’t believe she left us that way.”

  “I’d give anything to have her back too, you must know that. And we don’t know that she took her own life, Charlie. The police haven’t ruled it a suicide—in fact, they seem more inclined to view it as an accident. You mustn’t ever think she wanted to leave you and your brother.” Or me, the voice inside her clamored. How could you do that to me, Vi? What am I supposed to do without you?

  “‘We don’t know,’” he echoed dully. “I suppose I should try to remember that. It’s pointless, isn’t it, wondering why.”

  “I wouldn’t say—”

  “It’s all right, Auntie Francie. I suppose the best thing to do is just get this over with, put one foot in front of the other. Dad sent me with a list. I might as well get started.”

  “A list?”

  “Yes, a to-do list. I’ve booked rooms for Dad and Frank at the Mapes too. And then Dad wanted me to deal with this situation with Mom’s room. I don’t want to leave this young woman with nowhere to go, obviously, but Dad doesn’t want a stranger involved with Mom’s funeral. He suggested, well, a sum of money to help her get settled elsewhere.” Charlie’s was absently twisting his shirttail just as he’d done when he was a little boy, a sign of his discomfort with his father’s request. “And then there’s the matter of Dad’s, um, girlfriend. There was some sort of mix-up that ended up with her staying in this same hotel, and he wants her moved somewhere else.”

  Francie snorted—she couldn’t help it. She could just hear Harry dictating this unpleasant list to his younger son, rather than deal with any of it himself.

  “Francie . . .” Charlie plowed on, “Dad wanted me to ask you to reconsider—he said it would be so much easier for everyone if you’d let him bring her back to San Francisco and bury her there. He said that he’d pay for everything.”

  “Charlie William Carothers,” Francie exploded, unable to contain herself. “Your father may have sent you to do his dirty work, but I will not allow that to happen! Your mother made it very clear that she wanted to be buried right here where she grew up. It was, as far as I can tell, her only request.”

  Charlie was silent a moment, emotions battling in his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was filled with pain. “She really told you that?”

  “She did,” Francie said, a bit more calmly. “The night we arrived, at dinner. She was very clear about it, said her father had bought her plot years ago, right next to theirs.”

  “Because she never told me. She hardly ever talked about her past at all.” His voice thickened. “Mom told stories about Reno to me and Frank sometimes, when we were little. She made it sound . . . She talked about the snow and playing in the cemetery and riding in the back of the neighbor’s truck to school, but she never brought us here. And when we got older she never talked about it at all.”

  Francie wished she hadn’t come down on him quite so hard. “I think that maybe, as
your father became more successful, and the demands on her to occupy a particular place in society—she couldn’t very well talk about growing up in a tiny house with a father who delivered ice at a black-tie ball at the Palm Court.”

  Charlie hung his head in his hands. “And now she’s gone,” he said raggedly. “Who cares about keeping up appearances now? What good was any of that if she was that unhappy—”

  His voice broke off, becoming ragged sobs, and Francie—who’d once held him after he broke his arm falling from Alice’s bedroom window—pulled him into her arms and held him, letting his tears fall on her blouse and murmuring the kind of things that mothers say. There would be other moments when he’d need her: when he found a girl to marry, when his first child was born, when life’s challenges seemed too much, and when he wanted to share his successes. Harry would retreat into his new marriage; there might even be more children, half-siblings that Frank and Charlie would rarely see. He wouldn’t be there for Charlie and Frank the way a father should.

  But she would be there.

  “Darling,” she said when he pulled away in embarrassment, clearing his throat. “Your mother had a good life, a happy life. All she ever wanted was to see you and Frank grow up and take your place in the world. Yes, she had her problems—like any of us. Her marriage to your father wasn’t perfect. But she loved her charity work, she loved her home.” And me—she loved me, Francie reminded herself, because she’d given herself this same speech last night when she couldn’t sleep, when missing Vi felt as if it would smother the breath from her. “She talked about you and your brother all the time—she was so proud of you two! If she was here she’d be quite impatient with us for moping, she would want you to do whatever makes you happy, to find a nice girl and get married and have a baby. A lot of babies, if I know your mother.”

  Charlie smiled—a very sad, fleeting smile, but it was something.