The Impersonator (Leah Randall/Jessie Carr Novels)

by Miley, Mary

  Chen held a teacup of a foul-tasting potion to my lips. “This will help you sleep and take the pain away.”

  “What is it?” I croaked, not that it mattered. I’d have slurped mud if Chen gave it to me. Part of my brain heard him answer, but the rest of me was asleep before I could close my eyes.

  54

  The remainder of that night was a jumble of disconnected impressions: Rainy applying a cool compress, then hot water bottles, Chen brewing warm drinks, Doc Milner’s stethoscope pressing on my chest. David telling me that I had to get well, that he couldn’t bear losing me now—words that warmed me more than any wool blanket ever could. And Grandmother sitting in the chair by my bed in a silent vigil the whole night long.

  She was still there when I finally woke up. I knew it before I opened my eyes; I could smell her lavender scent. At first I thought it was just the beginning of another day at Cliff House, then my fingers touched the Venetian beads still at my neck, and everything that had happened blew back into my head like a gust of wind. I could see a bit of gray sky through the window, but the light was low. I could not tell if it was morning or evening. I tried to ask about the time, but no sound came out of my mouth for several minutes. After sipping some water, I managed to whisper the question.

  “Three o’clock,” replied Grandmother. Rainy brought the clock from my desk to the table beside the bed so I could see for myself.

  “The doctor said he’d be by again before dinner,” Rainy told me. “He’ll be so gratified you’re awake at last. You’ve been delirious. You had us real worried there for a while, but the fever broke. It looks like you’re going to pull through now. Do you think you can swallow these?” She handed me two Bayer aspirin tablets.

  A polite rap on the open door turned my head. Chen was there with another cup of his hot drink. “How do you feel today?”

  Groggy. Numb. Alive. Afraid to move lest the slightest shift wake up the pain. “Not too bad,” I said, my spirits rising as I realized it was true. Chen held my head up and put the teacup to my lips. In a few minutes I had finished it. The now familiar taste was no longer as unpleasant as it once was. “What is that?” I asked him.

  “Comfrey for the bones to knit faster; valerian to ease the pain and help you sleep.”

  “Is David here?”

  “Mr. Murray left on Monday,” said Rainy.

  “Monday? What do you mean, Monday? What day is this?”

  “Thursday, miss.”

  “What! I’ve been unconscious for four days?”

  “Not all the time unconscious. Sometimes you were talking.”

  “The fever was talking,” Grandmother corrected her. “You have been very ill, Jessie. You are not out of danger yet. You must lie quietly and try to sleep while your body mends.”

  She called me Jessie.

  “If I brought you some chicken broth, miss, do you think you could drink it?”

  But before it came, I was asleep.

  When I next awoke, Ross was standing over me. He was dressed in a traveling suit that made him look a dozen years older. Or maybe he had aged over the past few days. Nodding at Grandmother, who had all but put down roots beside my bed, he dragged over the desk chair and settled in for the long haul. At last I was aware of the world beyond my bedroom, and there were so many questions I needed answered.

  “I wanted to talk to you before we left,” he began, but I wouldn’t let him take his time.

  “Where’s Henry?”

  “Henry’s dead.” He said it in the matter-of-fact way of a man quoting the stock market, all the while looking at some papers in his hands.

  “What? Oh, no! Oh, my God, no, David—”

  “David didn’t kill him. He killed himself. While we were all in here with you on Sunday night, Henry took off—for his boat, I presume. He couldn’t take his own car—Doc Milner had blocked it when he pulled up in front—so he took your Ford that was sitting off to the side, out of the way. He didn’t know that Clyde hadn’t finished fixing the brakes. He drove straight into a tree rounding a curve. We buried him Wednesday. We buried Jessie that day too.”

  I was not sure how I felt. Sorrow didn’t quite fit, nor did joy seem appropriate. A curious mixture of satisfaction and regret came to the fore. “I’m sorry,” I said untruthfully—I could be nothing but relieved that Henry was no longer running loose trying to kill me—but decency requires some expression of sadness when speaking to a brother of the deceased. And I was glad the real Jessie was buried properly at long last. She deserved a decent burial.

  “I am too. But to be honest, it was the best possible solution. If he’d been captured and arrested, we all would have had to endure a long trial and publicity that would have stretched everyone’s agony across many months. And then a hanging. Mother couldn’t have withstood the strain.”

  His mention of Aunt Victoria made me realize I hadn’t seen her since Sunday.

  “Henry’s death brought in the police on Monday before your letters had reached their destinations. By the time the letters arrived, they were irrelevant. I had your notes, after all, and everything you said was proved true. Mother refused to believe any of it until a police search of Henry’s yacht turned up a collection of hair he had taken from his nine victims which, conveniently for the police, he had labeled. Jessie’s was number one. Yours was still in his pocket. We’re all to blame. We should have known something was wrong. We did know, down deep. But like Mother, we turned a blind eye and refused to face the truth. Henry was always a bully boy who loved nothing better than causing pain. We found excuses. We told ourselves he’d grown out of it, or that we were overreacting. And sometimes, he seemed so, well, normal. At least you stood up to him.”

  “It’s hard to see people clearly when we love them.”

  “Maybe. Anyway, Mother and I are leaving in an hour for California. Severinus Wade took the first train north when I telephoned him Monday. He brought papers to sign, and sat in the library with me for hours until I understood the ramifications. And so I’ve made some decisions. I decided to sell this house at once and move Mother and the twins to Palo Alto with me while I work on my doctoral degree. The agent that Mr. Wade engaged to find us a house produced two that fit the bill. Mother and I are going there now so she can choose. It will be far better for the family to be at Stanford with me than here. Cliff House was never meant to be a permanent residence, and it doesn’t suit us at all.”

  It sounded like a good idea. The twins would have a social life; Aunt Victoria would not be surrounded by memories of the deaths at every step she took. Grandmother was nodding her approval.

  Ross continued. “The girls might want to study at Stanford—the school is very progressive and accepts female students—or, if not, they will at least have the opportunity to meet people. Anyway, Mother and I will not be home for several days. I wondered … that is, I was wondering what your plans were. After your recovery, of course.”

  My plans? My plans were to lie still until the police came to arrest me for fraud. “I’ll plead guilty to all charges, so you needn’t worry about the embarrassing publicity a trial would bring. I hope the police will wait a few days before taking me in—”

  Ross shook his head. “We’re not pressing charges. We’re calling it all an unfortunate mistake. When all is said and done, you’re still family. You are Jessie’s cousin. We can’t hush it up entirely, of course, but the newspapers are far more interested in Henry’s death and the murders than in you. That’s why I need to get Mother and the girls away from here as soon as possible. Movers will be here Monday to start packing up the household.”

  An awkward silence hung in the air between us. “Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, noticing the papers in his hand. “David Murray left this note for you.” It was a single sheet of paper, creased. Anyone could have read it. I assumed everyone had.

  Dear Jessie,

  They assured me you were going to get well or I would never have left your side. Unexpected business reversals mean
I need to travel for a while. I hope we will meet again one day.

  Yours,

  David.

  I burst into tears. That was it? That was all? I may have been muddled and half frozen, but I clearly remember him kissing me and saying, Thank God I wasn’t his sister. Didn’t I remember him holding my hand as I lay in bed, willing me well, telling me he couldn’t bear to lose me? This note didn’t read like a man in love. I didn’t know if I was in love with David—I hadn’t allowed myself to consider it, under the circumstances—but I sure as heck wanted the chance to find out. And now he’d disappeared. On business? What was that about, for crying out loud?

  “Where did he go? I don’t understand,” I said, wiping my eyes on my nightgown sleeve.

  “No, I expect you don’t. None of us did, except Henry, of course. David Murray had to leave the moment the police came into the picture. Turns out he is the bootleg boss of Oregon—or was, until you dragged the governor and the newspapers into the middle of his operation. Even the people he was bribing to look the other way couldn’t ignore it after your letter linked the bootleggers to all those murdered women.”

  I must have looked like a fish with its mouth open for bugs. “But—but—” I sputtered. I looked to Grandmother for a denial, but she only nodded. “But he worked for Henry!”

  “Henry worked for him. For many years. And David said he didn’t know about the murdered girls, although he was aware of Henry’s reputation around town for beating up women. I think I believe him about that. The police, however, might be harder to persuade. Most of those girls were involved in Henry’s smuggling, hired to keep the police happy. David said they weren’t professional prostitutes, just poor working girls who needed money. And since they were mostly Indian or Mexican, there was little interest in their deaths. Henry must have figured they knew too much about the smuggling operation to just let them walk away.”

  Or he simply liked killing, I wanted to add, but didn’t.

  “But David just returned to Portland a few months ago. He was a cowboy…” I trailed off with the sinking realization that I had been had.

  David was as much cowboy as I was heiress. It had been an act, a fairy tale calculated to distract from his criminal activities. The story about selling the Montana ranch gave him an explanation for the money in his pockets; the cowboy image must have played well with women. Had his mother known? I thought not. Damn him—how could he do this to me?

  “The only part of his story that was true is the part about being Lawrence Carr’s illegitimate son. He must have known for years who Henry was and that they were cousins, but for whatever reason, he kept it to himself. Anyway, it came out last spring, and Mother confirmed it when Henry asked.”

  And all the time I was spinning my tales to him, he was spinning to me. It really was a good joke all around. So why wasn’t I laughing?

  So that’s what it felt like being swindled by someone you cared for and trusted. Betrayal hurt. A whole lot. It shamed me that I had caused more hurt than anyone.

  “David couldn’t say much in his note. He was afraid the police would get hold of it and use it against him.”

  Yes, that explained the stiff tone, the lack of any personal message. I felt a little better as I reasoned it out. The wonder was that he didn’t hate me for having destroyed his entire operation by tying it all to Henry’s crimes. He had to flee the state—maybe the country—and lie low while the heat cooled. If he had professed his undying love and written that he would come to me later, the police would know that they had only to watch me and wait for him to reappear. Still …

  “But the police didn’t get hold of it,” I observed.

  “No.”

  “Thanks.”

  Ross stood up. He turned to Grandmother and asked, “Did you tell her about Oliver?” She shook her head. “Your uncle left right after Jessie’s funeral. He had some business in New York to attend to. He said to give you this.”

  He tossed a large sealed envelope on my bed. I recognized it at once and my heart leaped into my throat. It was the envelope I had left in Randolph Stouffer’s desk drawer back in Cleveland, the one with the photos and playbills of Mother and me. My most precious possessions, bar none. I didn’t bother to ask myself how Oliver had found them—he must have been watching me more closely during those days than I realized. It was enough that he had found them, realized their value to me, and taken them to use as collateral, in case I stepped out of line.

  Well, the swindle was over, and we had lost any chance at the Carr fortune. It wasn’t my fault. He couldn’t blame me. I had done my best. I hadn’t counted on Henry turning into Jack the Ripper and trying to add my hair to his gruesome collection. And I had shielded Oliver as best I could with the lie about Miss Lavinia. Surely he was grateful for that!

  All this went through my head in a flash, and my undamaged hand shook as I reached for the envelope. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself otherwise, I knew Oliver blamed me. My impersonation was to have been the feast after his lifelong famine, his one chance to reach the Big Time. My failure doomed him to Small Time scrimping for the rest of his life, genteel panhandling from his wealthy friends. And I had known from the start that Oliver Beckett was not a nice man.

  My one good hand fumbled with the clasp. I pretended for a few more seconds that I didn’t know what I would find.

  I lifted the flap. Inside the envelope was my childhood, torn to shreds. It felt like my mother had died all over again.

  Uncle Oliver had had his revenge.

  I fought back the tears. Grandmother was talking to Ross about my future.

  “As soon as Jessie is able to travel, she’ll come to San Francisco with me,” she was saying. She called me Jessie. I hadn’t imagined it yesterday. “She will have time there to recuperate and decide what direction to take her life. Is that acceptable, Jessie?”

  Why not? Where else did I have to go? I remembered that Jack Benny was still in Frisco playing at Pantages. I owed him thanks and an explanation. And he’d be good for some advice on getting a job. Maybe he’d know of some act that needed a girl who could do a little of everything … maybe other performers there would know of something. After all, San Francisco was a big town with lots of theaters and circuits. But instead of buoying my spirits, the thought of returning to vaudeville’s gypsy life only dragged them down. I had left that life behind when I came to Cliff House. I was no longer eager to return.

  Maybe I’d continue south, to Hollywood, that town at the edge of Los Angeles where all the moviemakers had gathered after the Great War. I’d heard that life was glamorous in Hollywood, and the weather was always lovely. Everyone knew that Mary Pickford and her husband, Douglas Fairbanks, lived in Hollywood in a grand mansion with its own swimming pool—imagine that! Mary Pickford had been my idol forever. She and her husband had started their own film company, United Artists. Maybe I could get some sort of job with them. Any sort of job—I wasn’t too proud to sweep floors. And I had friends, vaudeville performers who had gone over to moving pictures, who might be able to point me toward work.

  “Jessie? Did you hear me?”

  After all that had happened she still called me Jessie. A lifetime of borrowed stage names had left me indifferent to what I was called. No one used my given name. Without a father, I had no real family name, and my first names had always mirrored the parts I played. No longer. I knew who I was now and how I fitted in. I had found a name that belonged to me, the one that kept my cousin Jessie close to me, and I would keep it, if my grandmother had no objection.

  “Oh, I beg your pardon, Grandmother. I was thinking.”

  “I said, you should come home with me until you are restored to health. I hope you will, child. It will give me the chance to show you some pictures of Clarence—your father—and to tell you what he was like as a child and a young man.”

  “Of course, Grandmother. That would mean a lot to me.”

  “I failed both my granddaughters. I should have d
one more for Jessie, but I thought she was better off living with a family than a crotchety old lady. I didn’t take her unhappiness seriously. And I failed you. If I had not allowed excessive pride to keep us from writing to your mother, I would have learned about Clarence’s daughter. I am not a wealthy woman, but I could have provided you and your mother a decent home. Perhaps I still can, for you, at least.”

  When all was said and done, I didn’t get Jessie’s money, but I did get her family. The Beckett half, anyway. Knowing that my father had loved my mother so much he intended to go against his parents’ wishes to marry her erased some of the bitterness toward men that I had carried around all my life. Knowing something about my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins, living and dead, gave me a sense of belonging I had never before experienced, a definite place in the great scheme of things. For the first time in my life, I felt part of something larger than myself. It felt good.

  Just then Rainy came into the room carrying a tray of soup and crackers, and my stomach growled in appreciation. As she helped me sit up against the pillows, I shifted my shoulders and felt something hard and warm fall to one side against my breast. Dumbfounded, I groped for the object and pulled it from beneath my nightgown. A gold locket, just like the one David’s mother wore. I pressed the pinhead spring and it popped open to reveal the photographs of young David and his mother. It was David’s locket. What on earth was it doing—

  Then it came to me like a great wind blowing up the coast. David’s mother had valued her locket more than any other object she’d owned, and it served as his messenger, conveying the words he couldn’t write down or pass along through anyone else. He must have slipped it around my neck while no one was watching. He trusted me to understand what it meant, that in leaving me with his mother’s necklace he was making a promise: I will see you again. I will find you somehow and reclaim my mother’s locket.