“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Drat.” She sighed. “I was hoping it would work on you, too.” She cracked open one eye, like a backward wink. The skin around her mouth twitched.
God in heaven. He’d missed her, and no one was more surprised about it than he was.
The radio crackled with renewed life.
“In case you missed it yesterday, folks—”
Benedick cranked the volume dial.
The brisk, efficient voice of the radio announcer: “He made it. Charles A. Lindbergh—Lucky Lindy, as they call him—landed at Le Bourget Airport, Paris, at five twenty-four yesterday afternoon, safe and sound.”
They listened to the rest of the announcement in silence. He turned down the volume as an ad started.
“Isn’t it . . .” She began to speak, barely audible. “Isn’t it just—”
“Yes,” he said. A little guarded, she met his eyes, and he smiled. “You’ll find a way, Miss Clark. You’re that sort of person, you and this Lindy fellow. Nothing’s impossible for you.” He stood to leave. No need to ruin it by staying. They didn’t have a great track record for conversations lasting over a few minutes, and he could give her this small one.
CHAPTER 17
SOME CUPID KILLS WITH ARROWS, SOME WITH TRAPS
Like the good double agent she was turning out to be, Maggie kept tabs on Prince’s comings and goings. Not that there was much to report, except to say it was exhausting watching him do in one day what might take an ordinary person three.
Still, now that she was looking for it, she could see the tripped wire in Prince. As if someone had lit a fuse on a faraway stick of dynamite. That was what was in his eyes now, a burn building up to an explosion. Used to be he’d had what Maggie thought of as good eyes.
Maybe that was why he couldn’t catch a break in this business. Immorality paid better.
With the weather getting warmer, she took to leaving her window open so she could hear every time one of their cars left, and so far Prince hadn’t gone anywhere without Benedick or Leo or their whole unruly gang in tow.
Until the Tuesday after Decoration Day.
Maggie only realized he was gone—both the Lambda and the Ford had stayed silent and parked all night—when the sound of knocking woke her up. On the other end of the hall, Hero’s voice asked: “Prince, are you in there? I’ve got some plans I want to talk to you about.” More knocking, the creak of an opened door, then Hero’s soft curse. “Where the hell is he?” Followed by the soft stomp of her retreat.
Maggie sat up straight in her bed. Could be nothing, she thought, but it didn’t stop her from scrambling into a skirt and blouse as quickly as she could, not even glancing at what her hair might be doing before scouring Hey Nonny Nonny from its secret halls and staircases to the woods close to the house.
Even if someone had picked him up, Maggie would have heard any car, she was sure. That meant he’d walked, and why, why would he walk unless he didn’t want anyone to know that he’d gone?
Benedick didn’t know anything; neither did Leo. Maggie even called Father Francis and had barely set the receiver in place before it rang again under her fingertips. She picked it up. “Hey Nonny Nonny residence.”
“Margaret?”
John’s voice. There was a small echo, but he sounded different, unattached from the rest of him. And tired. Lord, he sounded so tired.
She nearly keeled over where she stood. How? How had he found out so quickly? Even for him, it was supernatural.
“I got a good tip about King Oliver over at the Cotton Club,” he said.
Oh.
Gravity knocked Maggie back into her limbs. She blinked, processing his words in real time. He wasn’t calling about Prince at all. “Cotton Club?” she managed to say; her voice was thin.
“He turned down his regular booking contract, so they offered the gig to Duke Ellington.”
“Duke Ellington?” Her responses weren’t exactly blinding anyone with the glitter of intelligence, but those words were magic: Cotton Club, Duke Ellington. They didn’t sound real. They were the dreams of a little girl singing along to her father’s out-of-tune piano.
“Right, but Ellington only has a six-man group, and to play the Cotton Club, he needs eleven.” John paused, but when Maggie didn’t say anything, he added, “He’s auditioning for some new chorus girls.”
“Chorus girls. Okay.”
“I know it’s not a spotlight role,” John added, never mind that Maggie’s heart was thumping out of her chest, “but it’s a good gig, and you’d meet a lot of the right people. I set up a meeting for you on Saturday.”
At last Maggie found her voice. “This Saturday?”
“Seven, at the Jack Mills studio.”
Studio.
Did John remember, Maggie wondered, that Saturday was Hero’s birthday? Without Maggie, Tommy wouldn’t show. Hero would have less than a week to replace her, if she could find someone at all. If Hero could afford anyone else even if she could find someone.
“Margaret?” John asked.
He had to know, didn’t he? John Morello was no fool. Just as he knew she’d waited what felt like her whole life to sing in the Cotton Club. Her heart would not allow her to say no, and what was worse, Hero would understand. They all would. Might even congratulate her.
And John knew.
He’d be hurting Hey Nonny Nonny, and nobody could blame Maggie.
Well, nice try, but it still felt rotten. Silently she tucked Prince’s absence away like a secret. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there,” she said softly. “Of course I’ll be there.”
“Congratulations,” he said, so quietly she almost missed it, and a few seconds later she was talking to the operator asking if she’d like to reconnect or place another call.
Maggie replaced the receiver.
It was another hour or so before Maggie spied Prince returning. Walking, as she’d suspected. The jacket he’d likely donned in the dark hours of morning was slung over his shoulder in the late-morning sun. His gait was unhurried, the set of his shoulders comfortable, not hunched under the weight of secrets.
Maggie ran out the back door and hopped off the porch to meet him. “Where have you been?”
Prince slowed to a stop, frowning. “Nowhere.”
“Getting more booze? Why didn’t you take the car?”
“Who’s asking?”
“I am, hotshot. Hero’s party is in four days.”
“So let me worry about it. I don’t tell you how to sing, do I?”
Maggie drew back, stung. Prince moved to walk past her, but a window snapped open, and Maggie’s first question got an echo: “Just where have you been all morning?” Prince glanced up and Maggie turned. Hero, all cleavage and furious blue eyes, stuck her upper body out of her window.
“Did something happen?” Prince asked eventually.
“We were worried,” Maggie muttered.
“My whole day is hours behind,” Hero said. “Get up here, and bring Maggie with you.”
Prince brushed off any inquiries on his whereabouts by saying he’d gone on a summer stroll, as if he were the kind of person who had time for that (as if he hadn’t left sometime before four o’clock in the morning). Phonus balonus, Maggie thought, and surely Hero, who knew him better than anybody, would call a jury on such a fib; but in her own flip of character, she accepted his explanation with this little gem: “It is a lovely day to be outside.” As if she were some darling country estate lady.
Maggie stared at them as though they’d both swallowed too much gin, but Hero herded them into her room and shut the door. She paced around, stroking her chin like a film villain, occasionally popping up on her tiptoes in a flex of energy.
“I think it’s time for the first farm skim of the year,” Hero said.
“In June?” Maggie asked. “It’s too early.”
Every year the farms in Nassau County had more produce than anybody knew what to do with (or so Anna had claimed), a
nd sometimes they’d hike along the edges of the vast orchards and strawberry fields to fill a bag or two with extras. They made all sorts of hard cider and fruit-tinged beer with their loot.
“Never mind,” said Hero. “This isn’t about the fruit. This is about Beatrice and Benedick.”
Maggie glanced at Prince to check if she was the only one confused.
Prince leaned against Hero’s wall, his usual spot, arms crossed over his chest. He raised an eyebrow at Maggie. He didn’t know either then.
“More specifically”—Hero continued—“it’s about making sure Beatrice and Benedick fall madly in love.”
“What?” Maggie laughed. “Those two have been sniping at each other since Beatrice got here.”
“Exactly,” Hero said, pointing at her. “They can’t seem to leave each other alone.”
Maggie looked again at Prince, who in turn looked thoughtful.
Objectively, there was a good match for Beatrice. Same work ethic, same unadorned goodness. The ability to take care of each other. Such an obvious match, in fact, it was not so hard to imagine Hero sliding Benedick between the pair as a buffer so they wouldn’t elope and abandon her to some sturdy cottage in the country.
“I like it,” Prince said, to Maggie’s surprise.
“Really?” Maggie asked.
Prince lifted a shoulder. “I think Beatrice impresses Ben, and he challenges her.”
“Like all great romances,” said Maggie dryly.
“Why not?” asked Hero. “Besides, romance is the easy part. The surest way to get people to take a second look at a person they thought they didn’t like is to tell them that person likes them. Loves them even. Dreams of having their super-brained babies.”
Maggie bet Beatrice didn’t dream of having anyone’s babies, but she shrugged. “You got it, boss.”
“Thank you all for coming today.”
Hero said it as if she’d given any of them a choice. She leveled them with a haughty look like a princess of the old regime. The day was almost offensively nice. Warm but not overwhelmingly hot, especially under the shade of apple, pear, and peach trees.
Beatrice muttered, “I don’t see why Claude gets out of this.”
“Mr. Blaine went to the Hamptons for a few days,” Hero said, “and will be culling those fields for fresh blood to attend my birthday party. Meanwhile, we shall cull these fields for our spirits. And I do mean that figuratively and literally.” She was wearing an old pair of grass-stained slacks, too big on her; her hair was held back by a scarf. She stood at the edge of one of Flower Hill’s illustrious farms, under the shade of a wayward peach tree in bloom. A burlap sack hung off her hip. The slope of the ground allowed her to look down on her subjects, even with each of them technically taller than she was.
Beatrice rolled her eyes. She’d put herself as far as humanly possible from Benedick, and Benedick had been only too happy to accommodate her. Maggie tried to see what Prince and Hero saw and had to admit that if nothing else, the pair ignored the other to such a complete degree that each had to in fact be astonishingly aware of the other.
Maggie couldn’t help but think of John and how he went out of his way to ignore her after doing something thoughtful for her. It was a battle, making sure they stayed apart. Maybe Hero was on to something, and Benedick and Beatrice were halfway to falling in love.
“Never mind that this is illegal,” Beatrice added.
“You ought to never mind,” Benedick muttered. “That moonshine didn’t walk itself off Sage’s boat, now did it?”
“That we paid for. I’m following the spirit of the law, not its letter. Theft is still theft.”
“How noble. I expect they can see the sparkle of your halo all the way in New Jersey.”
“A shame there’s no law against inane speech, so you could ignore that, too, and spare us your dull wit.” She smiled.
Then again, Maggie thought. Maybe not.
“A-hem.” Hero interrupted. “If I may continue?”
“One other thing,” Beatrice said.
Hero scowled. “Yes, cousin dear?”
“Nothing is in season yet. Not until the end of June at least.”
“First of all, there are always some early birds. We’re not looking to cull the entire orchard, just enough to fill a bag or two each. Secondly, I’ve tasted brew boiled out of tree bark, so if we have to make do with a little under-ripe fruit, that won’t be the end of the world.” Hero examined her nails. “I can do this all day, Beatrice.”
Beatrice’s lips twitched with a suppressed smile.
Hero glanced up and winked. Then she turned on her heel and shimmied herself expertly through the wire fence. “Onward, comrades.”
The branches were thick with blossoms and the plump bobs of early peaches. The more or less plan was to pick a tree with no low-hanging branches—hard to climb down, in other words—and hoist Beatrice and Benedick up, separately, to get the best fruit someone “saw” at the top. Then Maggie, Hero, and Prince would conveniently forget about their quarries, trapped high and hidden from view, and wander back only to let slip a little gossip.
“Won’t they assume we’re smart enough to know they might hear us?” Maggie had asked. “Isn’t that suspicious?” Beatrice and Benedick were no dummies.
“They won’t be thinking about that,” Hero had replied, “when they’re rewriting every conversation they’ve had into one of suppressed passion.”
Maggie adjusted her sack on her hip and glanced over at Benedick. He squatted roughly fifteen feet away and was picking up a decidedly rotten peach out of the grass, turning it in his fingers. He was, bless him, absolutely the sort of boy who could sit pondering a worm and wondering what on earth it was up to for hours at a stretch.
He didn’t deserve to be a buffer. Maggie hoped Hero was right.
Turning the rotted peach over in his fingers, Benedick sauntered closer to Prince. Then, casual as anything, he lobbed the piece of fruit at Hero. It smacked her in the shoulder, and she whirled around. “What’s the big idea?”
Benedick met her glare with comically wide eyes and pointed at Prince, who straightened from his bag. Prince looked between them. “What? Hey, I didn’t—” A peach caught him in the chest. “Ow! That was hard as a rock!”
“Maggie did it.”
Hero pointed at her. Maggie fisted her hands on her hips. “Say again, now?”
“Miss Hughes.” Prince shook his head solemnly. He bent in search of his own ammunition, but Maggie had already sent a bloated peach at his head that broke apart in clumps of gloop through his hair and knocked his hat to the ground.
Maggie burst out laughing.
“Woo-hoo! Votes for women!” Hero pumped her fist. “Come on, Beatrice! Ha, I forgot we outnumber them now.”
She squealed as Prince pushed up his sleeves and muttered, “That’s it.” To Benedick, Prince said, “Don’t stand there like an idiot; get in formation!”
Honestly they couldn’t have planned it better. Prince hoisted Benedick up a nearby tree so he could strike from “an aerial position,” and then it was too easy to suggest they have Beatrice do the same, to even the playing field. Even easier to get caught up chasing one another, abandoning their tree-stuck warriors to their fate.
“Beatrice first,” Hero whispered breathlessly, once they were out of earshot. “Prince, keep an eye on Ben.” She motioned to Maggie, and they strolled in Beatrice’s direction. Hero jabbed a finger at a tree several yards ahead of them. The leaves rustled, and through the bouquets of leaf and blossom, the outline of Beatrice’s skirt was visible.
“Shoot,” Hero said loudly, “I think we’re turned around, Mags. Do you see the boys?”
“They’re back that way. Didn’t you hear Ben telling Prince not to throw anything too hard at Beatrice in her tree?”
“Oh, right. We should have put Bea on the front line. I forget that he loves her.”
Well, that was as good a segue as any. A branch snapped. A handful of ha
lf-grown peaches tumbled to the grassy floor.
Hero arched both brows at Maggie. They edged a bit closer.
“Poor Ben, though,” Maggie said. “The only time he ever falls in love, and the girl can’t stand him.”
“You can’t blame Beatrice either,” said Hero. “The way that boy acts around her. He’s nervous, of course, but even so, sometimes he needs a good smack in the head.”
“Ah, that’s a lousy excuse. She’d get the message if he just walked up to her and said it: Beatrice, I love you. I think we should marry and breed.”
Hero barely suppressed her snort. “Can you blame him? He thinks she hates him. I don’t know if I’d have the nerve either.”
“At least it’s not another fella stopping her. She just loves her doctoring too much.”
“Well, that’s what we’ll tell him. He’s not to blame. He’s brilliant, good-looking, tenderhearted, and any girl would be lucky to catch his eye. If I were Beatrice, I’d be flattered I was the only one who had. How’s my hair? Did I get the last of the peach out?”
“Sure did,” said Maggie. “Where is Beatrice, anyhow?”
“I’m sure it was that back row of trees there . . .” Hero trailed off, tugging Maggie along. Perfecto, she mouthed. They found Prince and swapped. Maggie kept an eye on Beatrice’s direction to make sure she didn’t march in unannounced, and Prince and Hero went to deliver a similar speech near Benedick’s tree.
Poor Beatrice, in love with a scoundrel who only ever mocked her! If she ever confessed her feelings, he’d only mock her more. Love! What a tragedy. Et cetera, et cetera. Maggie heard bits of their conversation through the trees; Prince was pretty convincing extolling Beatrice’s virtues, lamenting the fact that she hadn’t chosen him instead.
They returned, Hero pink in the cheeks and grinning like an imp. “And they say Cupid only uses arrows.”
CHAPTER 18
THERE’S A DOUBLE MEANING IN THAT
To think, just this morning Beatrice had been annoyed at Benedick for his fickle nature, laying out her flaws in such sharp dissection, and then two days later telling her nothing was impossible for her. Was it so difficult for him to manage to behave in a straightforward manner?
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