The Impersonator (Leah Randall/Jessie Carr Novels)

by Miley, Mary

  “Clyde, is it?” Sir Oliver rode to my rescue. “Have we met? I have visited a number of times but am sorry I don’t remember you, my good man. I’m Oliver Beckett, Miss Carr’s uncle.”

  “No, sir, Mr. Beckett. We’ve not met. I’ve been driving for Mrs. Carr for a few years now, but I didn’t live in Dexter when Young Miss was here. The flivver’s over there,” he said with a jerk of his head toward a spanking clean Ford sedan. “It’ll hold you folks fine but I’ll have to come back for the luggage.”

  I had little chance to take stock of Dexter other than to notice that the main street was planked and the others were dirt. Soon we had left the city limits, and were heading south on a narrow macadam road that led through a woodland of tall firs and spruce trees. The air was cool and clean. I filled my lungs with the citrus-and-spice fragrance of the forest that grew almost to the edge of the pavement, like dark green walls lining a long passageway. For a moment the trees cleared on my side and I was startled to see how high we had climbed. I glimpsed Dexter far below, looking like a child’s toy village smothered with spun glass. Then the evergreen curtain closed and it was gone.

  We turned a bend in the road and nearly ran down two children.

  I yelled “Stop!” at the same moment that Clyde smashed his foot on the brake, yanked the brake lever, and skidded to the right, missing the boys by inches. With a mild oath, he threw open his door as they descended upon us, eyes wide with fear, gesturing frantically and yelling.

  Both youngsters shouted at the same time, their words tangling together so that nothing could be understood. They pointed toward the woods with their fishing poles … something about a woman. A dead woman.

  “There! Over there! In there!” The boy, no older than ten, with a runny nose and grimy face, gestured but would not leave the road to show us.

  We couldn’t see anything from the road. Clyde and I climbed out of the car. He hesitated a moment at the edge of the pavement before stepping into the tall grass. “Stay here,” he ordered.

  I followed.

  It took all of five steps to find her.

  “Maybe she’s not…” I offered hopefully.

  But she was.

  If she had been wearing red or yellow, someone would have seen her from the road before now, but her faded clothing was brown and the grass was knee high. Her body was crumpled like one of Marchetti’s Marionettes, carelessly cast into the wings after the show was over. Dark braids did not obscure her face, which was so black with dried blood that her own mother would not have recognized her. Stage blood, I noted, was a lot redder than the real thing. The woman’s neck bent at an impossible angle and flies swarmed on the blood. My first thought was that she had been walking with the boys, been hit by a car, and thrown into the woods by the force of the impact.

  “Holy Mary Mother of God,” said Clyde.

  I felt sick and turned away, nearly colliding with Grandmother. Oliver was not far behind. “Don’t look,” I said, but it was too late.

  “Two days. Maybe three,” she said in her matter-of-fact way.

  I knew what she meant. “How do you know?”

  “There were corpses everywhere after the quake in aught six, and we knew exactly how long they’d been there.”

  My eyes returned reluctantly to the gruesome sight. This time I noticed the strings of small shell beads around her broken neck. White, yellow, and blue. And something else. “Look, Grandmother. Her hair.” One of her plaits was neatly finished with beads tied to the ends. The other, shorter plait had none. The beaded tip had been cut off.

  “Get in the car, boys,” I ordered. “Clyde, where is the nearest police station?”

  Oliver got into the front while Grandmother and I squeezed together to make room for the boys in the back. Within seconds, Clyde had turned the car around on that narrow road and was heading downhill, back to the planked main street of Dexter. I took a few deep breaths and Grandmother surprised me by squeezing my hand.

  “You’re not going to be sick, are you?” she asked me quietly.

  “No. But I admit I’m shocked. I haven’t seen a lot of dead people in my life. Certainly not murdered ones.”

  “It’s a terrible thing,” she agreed. But she remained composed, and I thought, what a tough old bird! How could Oliver think that her mind was wandering?

  At the police station, Officer Wainwright worried his moustache as the boys delivered their garbled accounts. I added that she looked Indian. He noted all our names, then sent the boys home before picking up the telephone. “Millie, honey,” he said to the operator, “get me Doc Milner, there’s a good girl.” After a short exchange, the two men arranged to meet at once on the south road about two miles out of town.

  Wainwright followed us in the police car, back to the place where the girl’s body lay.

  “Yep, she’s Indian all right. Looks like some redskin on the warpath drank a little too much firewater and beat up his squaw,” he said with a rueful twitch of his lips after he had seen the corpse. “Sorry you ladies had to see that. But we’ll handle everything now.” A sedan approached and a gray-haired gentleman in a dark suit and fedora climbed out. His black bag left no doubt as to his identity. “Here’s Doc Milner now. You all go on home. We’ll be in touch if we need to ask any questions, but I don’t think that will be necessary.” He turned his back on us as he led the doctor into the grass.

  Over his shoulder, he said, “Not a very nice welcome home, is it, Miss Carr?”

  13

  When rich people say “summer cottage,” they don’t mean a shack in the woods that brings you closer to nature. The Carr summer cottage stood three stories tall, with wings forming three sides of a square, and every board of it made of Oregon timber as befitted the home of an Oregon lumber baron. Except for the stone chimneys on each end, the entire mansion was painted banana yellow and white—a celestial invitation perhaps, for the sun to burn through the clouds that so often overstayed their welcome along this coast. Located near the edge of a cliff, the place even had a name—Cliff House, what else?

  Clyde transported us in silence to Cliff House and deposited us at the foot of a flight of limestone steps where I saw how generously Uncle Oliver could tip with other people’s money. As Clyde turned the Ford around and headed back to the station for our luggage, I quietly pulled off my gloves, reached into my pocketbook for the dog biscuit I’d brought, and rubbed it on my fingers and under my nails. Something I’d learned from Al Gordon and his Comedy Canines.

  At that moment the front door flew open and Aunt Victoria Carr bustled down the steps.

  “Jessie! Oh, Jessie, Jessie, Jessie!” was all she could say as she pressed me to her gardenia-scented bosom and wept genuine tears. She tore herself away long enough to greet Oliver and Grandmother, then ushered us into the house, her arm tight around my shoulder as if she would never let me go again. I pushed aside the twinge of conscience I felt at deceiving her. I couldn’t afford scruples in this gig.

  As Oliver had instructed, we refrained from mentioning the dead Indian girl, although she was certainly foremost in all our minds. There would be time for that later, he’d said in the car. It was a delicate subject. He would break the news to Aunt Victoria when they were alone and let her decide whether or not to tell the twins. She was very protective of the twins, now sixteen years old.

  A lively fire in the parlor fireplace chased the chill from the air. Someone had filled a fat cinnabar vase with bloodred roses.

  “Luncheon will be served momentarily, but you must be thirsty after that long journey,” said Aunt Victoria, fluttering her fingers at a maid who correctly interpreted the gesture and ran off. Her voice was cultured and her dark eyes steady as they examined me. “Jessie, Jessie, Jessie. Let me look at you! My, you have grown. Or … actually, you haven’t grown very much, have you? But you do look older, and so very pretty! Oh, my, I can only think of my dear sister-in-law Blanche at this moment, with that beautiful auburn hair!” She lifted a strand of my long hai
r and admired it. “You look so very much like her. How she hated those freckles! Oh, but of course they look utterly charming on you, dear.”

  Aunt Victoria was a pleasant woman, neither plain nor beautiful, neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin. Her light brown hair had been braided German-style into two side plaits that she had wrapped over the top of her head like a halo. It made me think of the German peasant act, Holstein and Schmidt, the one that had prudently gone Dutch during the Great War.

  I made the right responses. It was good to be home, I had come to miss the family, I was glad to—

  The girls tumbled into the room, saw me, and froze.

  Valerie and Caroline were identical twins bent on denying the obvious. What they couldn’t disguise—their impossibly long legs, their light brown hair, and their hazel eyes—they did their best to camouflage by accentuating their differences. Caroline had cut her hair into a boyish bob that cupped at the chin; Valerie, the more traditional one, let hers ripple down her back in soft, feminine waves. They had not dressed alike today, and I was soon proven correct in my supposition that they never did: Caroline preferred bright primary colors and straight waist cuts while Valerie tended toward flouncy florals, lace, and pastel hues. Perhaps once upon a time they had been provoked to the edge of insult by the inability of others to tell them apart.

  From the way they stared, I might have been a sideshow freak. Aunt Victoria gave them a parental nudge.

  “Manners, please, girls. This is Jessie’s grandmother, Mrs. Beckett. And you remember Mr. Oliver Beckett—he used to visit with us quite often in the old days, when Jessie was young.” They bobbed curtsies to Grandmother, acknowledged Uncle Oliver with a hello as flat as old soda water, and turned back toward me.

  “I suspect we’ve all changed in the past seven years,” I began. “But I’d recognize you two anywhere. You’re taller, and almost grown-up, I see.”

  “Were you really an actress all these years?” Valerie blurted, making the word sound like a synonym for “prostitute.”

  “Not exactly. I was a vaudeville performer. Sometimes I acted in short plays, but more often I danced or sang. Once I was a magician’s assistant.”

  Valerie whispered something into her sister’s ear, and they giggled. Maybe it was my makeup. No one here wore any at all.

  “Do come in and sit down, girls,” Aunt Victoria said as the maid appeared with a tray of lemonade.

  We perched on friendly chintz furniture in a room that could have come straight off the set of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan. A large Coromandel screen in one corner balanced the grand piano on the opposite side of the room. A stack of magazines lay on the coffee table, and a dainty French writing desk by the largest window took advantage of the light. Several potted ferns and a great many china ornaments provided decoration. A canary chirped from his cage in the corner. I had never seen a lovelier room.

  As Grandmother was settling herself into a Martha Washington chair by the fire where she could doze unobserved, a cocker spaniel ambled into the room.

  “Oh, look, it’s King! Hello, King, darling, do you remember me?” I dropped to my knees on the rug and prayed he wouldn’t bite my outstretched hand.

  King sniffed and licked my fingers, his tail wagging enthusiastically until he figured out I was all scent and no food and moved on to the hearth rug. His performance lacked a certain enthusiasm, but it passed muster.

  The planter by the window caught my eye. Amidst a tangle of philodendron leaves were several glass balls of varying sizes, hollow, green, and handblown. “Did I find all these?” I wondered aloud. “Or have you added to the collection in the last few years?” Without waiting for a reply, I picked one up and found the rough glassblower’s mark. “Look! My thumb still fits!”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Uncle Oliver’s shocked expression and slack jaw. Before I had time to wonder what horrible mistake I had just made, my attention was directed behind me to the doorway where the two young men of the family were standing.

  The photographs I had seen of the Carr brothers were several years old but there was no mistaking these two. Henry was not only the firstborn of Aunt Victoria’s four children, he was the tallest, the strongest, the handsomest, and probably his mother’s favorite. Athletic as a youth, he now had a thickening middle that revealed a bad case of rich man’s belly in the making, and I imagined him growing in girth over the next few years until he matched His Rotund Highness, Uncle Oliver Beckett.

  Now he stood at the threshold, pale as paste, with one foot planted in the hall and the other in the parlor like some gangster ready to make a quick getaway the second the shooting started. I had the distinct impression that he was afraid of me. Why? What had I said to frighten him like that? I pushed the absurd thought aside as I replaced the green globe. “Hello, Henry,” I said carefully, waiting to see what he was waiting for.

  The silent standoff was broken by Ross, who pushed past his older brother and entered the room, hands clenched in the pockets of his baggy oxfords and lips curled like a man confronted with a bad smell. With his saddle shoes, baggy cuffed oxfords, crisp shirt, and bow tie, he looked like an actor playing the part of a college student.

  “Well, well,” he said at last. “It’s Jessie, is it?” Like a casting director at an audition, he scrutinized my every feature without bothering to conceal his disparaging expression.

  “Yes, it is,” I answered firmly. “It’s good to see you again, Ross.”

  A head shorter than his brother, Ross was, at twenty-one, the runt of the litter. He must have taken after his father for I saw nothing of Aunt Victoria in his dark curly hair, green eyes, and thin face. He was the only member of the family to wear spectacles. Thick and round they were, set in dark frames too large for his nose, and I sensed he was hiding behind them, keeping his thoughts safely obscured. If so, he was mistaken—the lenses worked both ways, magnifying whatever emotions he would rather conceal—and I was shaken for a moment at the rage I saw simmering deep inside those emerald pools. He looked like he wanted to strangle me.

  “I’ll bet it is. Hello, Mrs. Beckett, Mr. Beckett.” He held out his hand. The action jolted Henry out of his trance and into a weak semblance of verbal etiquette but he still didn’t speak to me. No one did.

  I lifted my chin a fraction and took a deep breath. “Since we are all together at last, there is something I’d like to say.” Ross glowered. Henry’s hand shook as he rubbed his glistening forehead and leaned weakly against the doorjamb as if his legs would give way. Oliver met my eyes but made no outward sign of encouragement.

  “I know my return has been a shock to you all,” I began, offering my heartfelt regret for the pain I had caused by running away. Apologizing is easy when it comes on behalf of someone else, but I had the advantage of sincerity. I meant every word. I was sorry these people had suffered through the disappearance of a child. Anyone would be. “Some of you may have lingering doubts about my identity, which I do not resent in the least. I hope those will be overcome when the trustees’ investigation proves everything I have said is true beyond the shadow of a doubt. I understand how awkward my return is, but it need not cause you any material worry. Life will go on just as it has since my parents died. All my family, the Carr side and the Becketts”—here I looked pointedly at Uncle Oliver—“are welcome to live at Cliff House for as long as they like, and I hope you, Aunt Victoria, will continue to manage the household as you have done so capably over the years.”

  Of course I knew this pretty speech would not mollify the brothers who had just seen several million dollars run through their fingers like water, but I expected it would reassure Aunt Victoria and the girls that they would not lose their home or income. Only my aunt seemed pleased. She smiled with quivering lips, pulled out a lace handkerchief and dabbed her eyes.

  “Thank you, Jessie dear.” Oliver spoke first, deliberately using my name to set a precedent. “You are your mother’s daughter.”

  The Swiss m
antel clock pinged once. Aunt Victoria stood. “You’ll want to freshen up before we eat,” she said. “Henry, why don’t you and Ross help Mrs. Beckett to her room? And you’ll have your usual room, Oliver. Yours is the same too, Jessie. We never gave up hope that you would return.”

  “Thank you, Aunt. I’ll go now and wash up.”

  Up the stairs, turn right at the split landing, then right again at the top. Go to the end of the hall and take the last room on the left. Simple enough. Grandmother was protesting that she wasn’t an invalid and didn’t need two boys to help her up the stairs, but they and the twins followed along, no doubt to see if I could pass the first test—finding my bedroom.

  I could. Opening the door, I stepped confidently into the room where Jessie had slept for three years of her life.

  It was exactly as Oliver had described, a corner room with three large windows, but no stage set I had ever seen prepared me for such luxury. Everything matched, as if it had been bought all at once. Lavender and yellow draperies were tied back at the windows to let in the light. Coordinating fabrics dressed the canopy bed and soft chairs. Floral wallpaper covered three walls and a plush yellow carpet covered the floor. Even the roses were yellow, dozens of them, and they filled the air with a fragrance that made me hungry.

  The late summer sun streamed in through the window, illuminating a large patch of dust on the floorboards between the rug and the wall, something I thought odd because there was not a speck of dust on any other surface in the entire room. An audience of four watched from the hall with breathless anticipation as I dropped my hat on the settee and examined the room.

  The silence was deafening. I felt like I had forgotten my lines and the whole theater full of patrons were at the edge of their seats, waiting to see if I could recover. To stall for time, I walked to the window and looked out, thinking hard.

  “Beautiful view,” I remarked, but my eyes were blind to the gardens below and the distant sea. Something was up and I needed to figure it out fast. My heart raced. Think!