by Miley, Mary
A message flashed between Grandmother and me, and we waited until their footsteps disappeared down the hall before taking up our peculiar shorthand conversation. “It could have been the oysters,” I said lamely.
“A remarkable coincidence that the only bad oyster graced the plate of the wealthiest person at the table.”
“Doc Milner’s a real doctor.”
“Chen is a real doctor to the Chinese. And the one who saved your life.”
“Well, there’s no way to know for certain. Rainy cleaned up everything last night after I threw up. Henry and Ross aren’t fools. If I had died, that glass would have been right here on the table and everything would point straight to them.” The thought made me sad. Henry was an ass, but I rather thought Ross was coming around to my side.
Grandmother continued, “Ross is the smart one around here. You can see his brain working through his eyes. We’ll return to San Francisco tomorrow. You’ll be safe there.”
Would I really be safe, or would it just be easier to stage an “accident” in a big city where the blame would not fall on either of them? A random criminal act would arouse no suspicion in the city. Both Henry and Ross knew San Francisco very well from their years at Stanford. And Ross would be back at school soon, very close by.
I’ll admit I was pretty shaken by the poison idea, but there was another reason I didn’t want to leave Cliff House, one I couldn’t explain to anyone. I needed to solve Jessie’s disappearance. I couldn’t leave her now, without knowing what had become of her. If she had been murdered, I needed to find out who did it. I owed her that much, in return for her name, her family, and her money. But there was more to it than repaying a debt. I cared about Jessie. I understood her. Apart from Buster, I think I was the only one who did. We shared more than a name. She was rich, I was poor, yet our lives had taken many of the same turns and our fates seemed eerily intertwined. I couldn’t investigate Jessie’s death when I was supposed to be Jessie, but I could continue to investigate the deaths of the other girls without any interference from Oliver.
“No, Grandmother, I think I’m as safe here as anywhere. It’s not for much longer. I’m warned now, and you know the old saying: ‘Forewarned is forearmed.’ I’ll make sure I’m never alone with Henry or Ross. I’ll be careful.”
Slowly she nodded and rose to her feet. I heard her going down the hall toward her room, taking each step with care. In a few moments, she was back.
“I meant to give this to you earlier,” she said, handing me a purple velvet pouch drawn tight with a gold cord. I pried the knot open and dumped the contents on my lap. Pearls, diamonds, colored gemstones, and gold, like the contents of the treasure chest in The Pirates of Penzance. Only these were real.
“The remains of your mother’s jewelry. I am sure she had a lot more—I wasn’t that familiar with Blanche’s finery, but I remember once admiring a ruby bracelet she had been given for her birthday, and it isn’t here. Neither is the diamond tiara she liked to wear. No doubt some enterprising maid helped herself before the lawyers got there to take inventory.”
Speechless, I held up a strand of lustrous matched pearls so long it would have reached my knees.
“You know what they say about pearls? You must wear them or they turn dull and lifeless. It’s been ten long years since anyone young and pretty wore these baubles. Enjoy them. Or sell them or give them away. I don’t care. They belong to you.”
Waving off my stammered thanks, she retired.
I lay on my back, staring at the dragonflies frolicking among the yellow and lavender flowers on the wallpaper and feeling like a heel. Blanche’s jewelry! Geez Louise, the poor woman was probably turning over in her grave knowing some vaudeville fake had her mitts on her precious jewelry.
I decided to play my hand with greater care from now on, not showing any cards, letting the food poisoning diagnosis float rather than accuse anyone. My mistake was to have announced I was going to Europe after my birthday. Henry or Ross must have felt compelled to act fast before I got out of range.
Rainy brought in a tray of tea and a soft-boiled egg. David was behind her, his brow furrowed, inquiring about my health. I’d forgotten he was still here.
“Much better, thank you,” I replied.
“I’ve been watching the twins rehearse.”
“Good. They need lots of practice.”
“Not good. They need you.”
“The show must go on. I’ll be back onstage by tomorrow.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“And I need to take the train into Portland sometime this week to buy some costumes.”
“Do you? Well, now, I just stopped by to tell you that Henry left this afternoon, and I need to get back to my mother. I have someone looking in on her, but I need to be there myself.”
“If it’s not prying, may I ask what is wrong with her?”
“It’s not called prying if you’re family; it’s called caring. She’s got cancer. The doctors say she can’t last long, so I’m trying to make what time she has left as comfortable as I can. I owe her that much. I owe her everything. She could have dropped me off at St. Agnes’s Baby Home and had an easier life of it, but she didn’t.”
I understood. I wanted to tell him about my own mother—my real mother. She hadn’t abandoned me in an orphanage either. David and I had more in common than he knew, both of us raised alone by unwed mothers who had been disowned by their families and forced to make their way in an unforgiving world.
“If you are feeling up to that shopping trip to Portland, we could travel together tomorrow,” he said.
“I’d like that.”
David’s smile was so broad it put dimples in the creases.
35
“Start at the beginning,” David said, settling back into the first-class cushions. “I want to know everything about your life, and you’re trapped on this train with me for at least two hours.”
I was so strongly drawn to David that I wanted to blurt out the whole truth. I was certain he’d understand. Of course, I didn’t do it, but I wanted to all the same, and that troubled me more than a little. Treating David in a brotherly manner was becoming increasingly difficult as I came to know him better.
But the least I could give him was the truth about his father, and not a word I said about Lawrence Carr was fabricated. Perhaps I was even more honest than a real daughter could have been, divorced as I was from sentimentality. I told him what others had said about Lawrence in his lengthy obituary, and some things I’d heard that did not glow as warmly. No punches pulled.
“Does that agree with what your mother said of him?” I asked at last.
“I was sixteen before I knew who my father was,” he said. “She wouldn’t have told me then but he died, and the money stopped coming and, well, things got tight, and she had to explain. I quit school to find work. It’s funny, I grew up thinking my father was dead. By the time I knew the truth, he was.”
It reminded me so much of my own circumstances, I wanted to scream, Yes, yes! I understand exactly! My mother had told me nothing of my father either, and I had always felt cheated.
“You don’t seem bitter about that,” I said.
“I was. But I was old enough to support my mother.” I recognized the streak of independence. I too had worked for a living most of my life. Growing up alone had taught me to do for myself and not count on the other fellow to do for me.
“Your turn,” I said. “Same rules.”
With half the journey ahead of us, he had no excuse to cut corners. David and his mother had moved to Portland shortly after his birth, he told me, where she bought a small store with the money she inherited from her “late husband.” “I was raised a city boy, but I loved horses”—“me too,” I said weakly—“and took on any job I could to be around them. A friend knew a man in Texas who needed cowhands, and there I went. Worked ranches in Utah and Wyoming, learned to break horses and shoot up towns on Saturday nights. Shot a few men—just wounded them, but I w
as headed for a noose until John Black got hold of me. He was a cattleman on a buying trip to Laramie looking to stock his ranch. He took my gun away, pulled me out of the saloon, and threw me in his wagon before the sheriff arrived. When I woke up, I was in Montana getting some sense knocked into me.”
He smiled at the recollection. I smiled at his smile. “Everyone called him Black Jack. I came to love that old man. When he got sick, I did my best for him. He left me his ranch.”
“But you sold it.”
“I hated to do that, but it couldn’t be helped. Ma was ill and she couldn’t come out to Montana and live in the middle of nowhere.”
“So you came back to Portland. Was it very much changed?”
“It’s a different city than it was ten years ago, I can vouch for that. Not many people I grew up with are still around. I wanted Ma to move someplace fancier, and I had the money to pay for it, but she wouldn’t budge from her friends and her store. I’m going to sell the store. Ma can’t work anymore, and that’s not my line.”
“What is your line?” It occurred to me that I had asked Henry that question on my first night at Cliff House, and received no reply. It was about to happen again.
“Not sure, yet. For the time being, I’ve got to see to Ma and the store, so I just take odd jobs when I can find them.”
“Like your work for Henry?”
He turned scarlet. “Yep. Politics isn’t my line either, but when Henry asked me to help with his campaign, I couldn’t say no to a cousin. Especially when I’d just found I had one.”
“Lucky you,” I said sarcastically.
“He couldn’t be expected to welcome you home, Jessie. In a way, it’s your own doing. If you’d written, if you’d let them know you were still alive, he’d never have come to believe he’d inherit the Carr money in the first place.”
“You don’t beat around the bush, do you?” I asked archly. He gave me a sheepish grin that made me burst out laughing. No one could stay mad at David when he turned on that wide-eyed innocence.
The train was slowing down for the terminal and I cast about for some way to prolong our time together. “David,” I began, “would your mother mind if I came by and paid my respects?”
“No, of course not. Excuse me, but I am surprised you—that is, most people wouldn’t care to meet their father’s—”
“Where does she live?”
“I’ll come to the Benson Hotel and get you. Four o’clock?”
“I’ll be waiting.”
He was prompt. We rode a streetcar most of the way and walked the last bit into a shabby part of town near the Carroll Market off Yamhill. Some people would prepare a visitor in advance for the surroundings and apologize for their humble home, but David never said a word. I liked that about him.
In truth, the Murray place was much like the rented rooms I had grown up in. I felt quite at home among the faded curtains, threadbare Axminsters, and flag-bottom chairs. There was only one bedroom and I saw no evidence of David’s belongings anywhere. He took my arm as we entered his mother’s room. In a voice so tender it brought tears to my eyes, he said, “Ma? I’ve brought Jessie to see you, just like I said.”
“Hello, Mrs. Murray,” I said, taking her thin hand in mine very gently so the bones wouldn’t snap in two. She brought to mind a dead leaf clinging to the tip of a twig, waiting for the next wind to blow it away into the sky. Her cheeks were hollow, her brown eyes dull, and the wisps of her gray hair had been tucked into a hairnet by a pair of large male hands. She looked twice her age.
“Hello, darling Jessie. Come sit by me so I can see you.” David dragged over a chair and I sat. “You don’t look like him, do you?”
“They say I take after my mother’s side of the family.”
“I’m sorry he died like that. And your mother too. Poor things. Well, well”—she coughed a little laugh—“whatever his flaws, he managed to father two fine children, didn’t he? Perhaps that’s enough for any man.”
“I brought you some treats, Mrs. Murray. David said you hadn’t much appetite, so I thought something special might tempt you to eat.” I had fitted a basket full of small jars of preserves, potted meats, some fresh fruit, and soft rolls from a bakery down the street, but she wasn’t interested in food. Her eyes never left my face.
“You want to see what David looked like as a child?” she asked, fumbling under her nightgown for a chain. Shaky fingers pulled up a gold locket the size of a quarter but could not open the clasp. I reached over, taking the warm locket in my hands and pressing the pinhead clasp with a fingernail.
“Oh, how sweet,” I cooed. “What a beautiful little boy!” It was a double locket, and opposite the photograph of a three-year-old cherub was one of a pretty young woman.
“That’s me on the other side, taken the same day.”
“You look so happy.” I closed the locket and handed it back.
“I’ve always been happy. I’ve had a happy life because of my wonderful son. And I’m so grateful you and David have met. I hate to leave him all alone in the world, and now he has a sister.”
“Now, Ma, no talk of leaving yet, please. Listen here, Jessie’s been in vaudeville for years. Remember how we used to go to the shows? Tell her about those days, Jessie.”
So I spent a bittersweet half hour relating lighthearted stories of the stage until her eyelids became so heavy they would not stay open. Finally, footsteps on the stairs turned our heads. A short young woman with a trim figure and raven hair entered the room with the authority of someone who belonged there.
“Company, David?” she asked. “I saw you come home a bit ago.”
“You’ve been watching out the window, haven’t you?” David teased, and she blushed prettily. “Jessie, this is Gloreen Whittaker. She lives across the way with her father and brothers and takes great care of Ma when I’m not here. Gloreen, this is Jessie Carr, my half sister.”
Her hand flew up to her mouth. “Half sister? I had no idea.” Her puzzled frown told me she also had no idea how David, whose father had supposedly died before he was born, could possibly have a younger half sister. It wasn’t my problem. “Very pleased to meet you, Miss Carr.”
“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. How kind you are to help with Mrs. Murray.”
She gave David an adoring smile. “David insists on paying me, but I’d do it without payment, out of affection. She’s been like a mother to me for the past few years, always helping when I needed it.”
I felt like an intruder. “I’d best be going. I’ve got to get to the theater district and buy some costumes for our little theatrical before those vendors close. No, don’t come with me, David, I can make my way to the corner and catch the next streetcar.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “I’m going with you.”
At that, Mrs. Murray lifted her eyelids. “David, did you say you were leaving?”
“Just down the street to put Jessie on a streetcar. I’ll be right back.”
“You’re not going down to that part of town again, are you?”
Quietly he said, “Not now, Ma, later.” He didn’t glance at me and it wasn’t my place to ask what she meant.
“I don’t like you going down there,” she persisted. “It’s not respectable.”
“I have to go, Ma, to finish a little business. Gloreen will stay with you. I won’t be late.”
David saw me to the streetcar. After a few blocks I transferred to the theater district for some purchases before making my way through the darkening streets to the Benson Hotel.
36
I had been Jessie Carr for so long that it was a bit of a wrench to wrap myself around a different role. But at ten o’clock sharp, Rosie Waters sashayed through the hotel lobby, oblivious to the night manager’s disapproving glare. Rosie sent a saucy smile to the bellman and whistled for her own hack. She wore a purple sequined dress cut low where it could have been high and high where it could have been low, a cheap rabbit stole, and red pointy-toed shoe
s, and she carried a fake ivory cigarette holder between two fingers of her left hand. If the bellman had looked closely, he might have suspected that the dark curly hair was a wig, but he was too busy eyeing the side slit in her dress, hoping for a flash of flesh. Since her stockings were rolled to an inch above her hemline, he got one as she climbed into the backseat of the hack. Rosie Waters was a girl who worked both sides of the street, vaudeville and burlesque. No one would confuse this modern flapper with wholesome Jessie Carr.
The hack deposited me on Union Street near the Egyptian. I paid him and stepped out of the way of the next fare. Gusts of wind swirled through the crowd, lifting crumpled playbills and causing the women to hug themselves inside their wraps. The rabbit stole didn’t offer much comfort, but I wasn’t going to be outside long. I headed across the street and into the burlesque theater where I had seen Henry and David the week before.
“Evening, fella.” I smiled at the young doorman.
“Show’s already started.”
“I’m looking for a man, not a show.”
“I’m a man,” he said with a leer.
I laughed. “Sorry, Jack. I’m looking for a Mr. Henry Carr. Do you know him? They say he’s a regular here.”
The boy shook his head and let me step into the empty lobby. I could hear the audience roar with laughter behind the padded doors. “Hey, Marv!” he called to the bartender. “Lady wants to know do we know Henry Carr?” Marv and another man looked up from behind the bar where they were wiping glasses, preparing for intermission.
“You must know Mr. Carr. A regular. Tall, good-looking, swell dresser, likes Seagram’s VO.” I nodded toward the bottles of Seagram’s behind them. “About twenty-five and a little … uh…” I patted my belly and they chuckled.
“Yeah, I mighta seen him,” the barman said cautiously. The way he said it told me what I wanted to know. I passed him five clams and he remembered. “Not tonight though. A lot of the regulars hang out at Trudell’s, a little gin mill around the corner. You might try there.”