by Anne Stuart
"What's an opiate?" she inquired when Angela shut the door behind her, keeping her raincoat held tight around her.
"A drug. Something to knock you senseless. Why?" She edged into the room, wondering whether she could sneak into the bedroom without Constance realizing her state of dishabille.
"I'm reading an article about movies. There was a new Norma Shearer movie down at the Odeum and you know she makes me want to smack her. So I thought I'd catch up with my reading, and this person said that movies are the opiate of the masses. What's that mean?"
"It's paraphrasing Karl Marx.
"The Red?" Constance sat up, evincing more interest. Communism was taking the country by storm, much to the chagrin of the New Dealers, and Constance was just as enchanted.
"Uh-huh," Angela said. "He once said that religion was the opiate of the masses. In other words, that common people use church and God to make them forget their troubles. And it's been said that movies do the same thing."
"I guess that makes me a hophead," Constance said with a lazy giggle. "Give me a movie over church any day."
"I'm sure Father Flanagan will love to hear you say that. By the way, he mentioned you haven't been to confession in awhile."
Constance gave her enchanting, elfin grin. "Sweet sister, I have nothing to confess."
"A likely story," Angela said wryly.
"Nothing that would interest Father Flanagan, at any rate. At least you're going to be able to come up with something a little more lively than bad-mouthing F.D.R."
"I like F.D.R.," Angela protested. "What do you mean, something more interesting?"
"Like, where did you get those whisker burns all over your face?" Constance inquired impishly. "Like, why are all the buttons torn off your blouse, and how did you get a lovebite on the side of your neck?"
To her horror Angela realized she'd let her raincoat flap open. She quickly yanked it back around her, and it took all her willpower not to reach up and touch her abraded cheeks. No wonder she felt flushed.
"Your lips are swollen, too," Constance announced critically. "Whoever it was certainly was a demanding sort. Who was it, anyway? Not Sparks—he's too shy. I bet it was Stan."
"Sparks is a friend," Angela shot back. "And Stan is married."
Constance shrugged. "I've lived around pilots all my life, Angie. You only showed up when you were eighteen. I never developed much of a belief in pilots respecting their marriage vows. I know who it was, though. Clancy."
"I can't stand Jack Clancy!" Angela said hotly.
"Of course you can't. That's why you kissed him so hard you've got bee-stung lips. Take it from me, it's the ones you can't stand that you fall the hardest for."
"And how would you know, baby sister?"
Constance grinned. "I go to a lot of movies. All Barbara Stanwyck has to do is glare at a man and you know they'll fall in love. Happens every time."
"Not this time."
"Are you going to tell me it wasn't Clancy you kissed?"
"Maybe it was Will Parsons," Angela suggested with just a touch of desperation.
An odd expression crossed Constance's face. "I don't think so."
"Why not? You only met him once, that day last week. Maybe beneath all that hair and glasses he'd be an attractive man."
Constance hesitated. "I imagine he was, when he was young. Right now he's old enough to be your father."
"And yours," Angela said.
"And mine. He's probably older than Frank would have been," Constance said cheerfully, directing her attention to her toenails and proceeding to apply a second coat.
As usual a certain tension filled the room at the mention of Frank Hogan's name. For some reason the two of them had never been able to discuss the death of their mutual parent. Angela wasn't sure if it was a reluctance on her part, or Constance's, or both. All she knew was that after such a harrowing afternoon and evening, she wasn't about to push it.
"I don't like that shade of red," Angela said, changing the subject. "It looks like you dipped your fingers in blood."
"Toes, too," Constance said, admiring her feet. "Though why anyone would want to dip their toes in blood is beyond me. Was it Clancy?"
Angela gave up prevaricating. "Yes, damn it."
Constance's smile was smug. "And was he as good as they say he is?"
"He only kissed me, Constance."
She raised a plucked, penciled eyebrow. "Some kiss. Then why's your shirt undone?"
There was nothing Angela could say to that, other than "I'm going to bed."
Constance picked up her magazine again. "Go ahead. I have to wait till my nails dry. Besides, there's another good article this month. 'How to Make a Man Your Love Slave.'"
"I don't want a love slave, thank you very much." Angela dumped her rain coat on the hook and headed into the bedroom.
"Not even Clancy?" Constance's voice trailed after her.
"Especially not Clancy," Angela said firmly, looking down at her torn blouse. Crossing the cluttered room, she peered into the mirror above Constance's cheap deal dresser. The glass was wavery, desilvering, and the light was dim in the room. The woman who stared back at her was a wonder.
Her hair was tousled around her face, curly with the dampness, curly from Clancy's fingers lacing through it. Her lips were swollen, her eyes faintly glazed. The mark on her neck was plain as day, and the torn blouse left nothing to the imagination. She looked at the blouse, at her breast through the plain white bra. And with a little shiver she turned away, willing herself to forget.
And knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the memory, the feel of those moments on the floor of her plane were going to be burned into her brain, into her body, until the day she died.
Chapter Eleven
"So when are you going to fly around the world?" Clancy's voice was lazy, no more than idly curious, but Angela felt her temper rise to the bait, as it always did when Clancy was fishing for a reaction.
She turned away from the engine of the Lockheed, leaving Will alone as he fidgeted with the manifold. "What are you talking about, Clancy?" she demanded wearily. It had been two weeks since Clancy's dangerous flight through the fog and hail, two weeks since those moments on the floor of the Percival. Moments she'd been determined to forget, moments she told herself she had forgotten, until Clancy looked at her with those devilish dark eyes.
He hadn't touched her since. Hadn't said a word about it, only let his glance linger on the love bite on the side of her neck, then slide away as a faint smile curved his mouth. She'd wanted to hit him then, but she'd managed her usual frosty demeanor, and not once since that moment had she had a chance to tell him what she thought of him.
"I'm talking about Amelia Earhart. Haven't you been listening to the radio, Red? She took off this morning for her 'round-the-world flight."
Angela felt a sudden sinking, part envy, part premonition. "She's trying it again? I would have thought she'd give it up after crashing the first time."
"Did you?"
Angela shook her head. "I suppose not. I don't know her that well, but I know she's not the sort to let a minor inconvenience like smashing up her plane stop her when she's set on something."
"AE doesn't let anything stop her when she gets the bit between her teeth," Clancy said mildly. "Rather like another lady flier I know."
It took Angela a moment to realize he meant her. "Clancy, I've done absolutely nothing but push papers around a desk for the last six months and more. Any resemblance between AE and me stops with both of us being members of the 99 Club and owning a Lockheed Vega."
"Not every woman pilot gets invited to join the 99 Club," Clancy observed.
"Don't patronize me, Clancy! I don't need it. I'm very happy AE has gone ahead with her proposed flight, and I wish her the very best of luck."
"I'm sure you do. Apart from the fact that you wish like hell it were you in that plane instead of AE."
"I couldn't care less," she said frostily. "My record-setting days
are over. It's time to get down to business."
"Sure, Red," Clancy said. "Sure."
She waited until he wandered away, back over to Sparks and well out of earshot, before she joined Will as he tinkered with the plane. "How soon will she be ready?" she asked.
"Clancy got to you?" Will questioned, not raising his head.
"No, Clancy didn't get to me," she snapped. "I'm immune to him. But Amelia Earhart's flight affects me. I want to finish my run well before she lands back in the U.S. Her flight's supposed to take just over a month. I want to be ready to go in two weeks."
This time Will did raise his head from the engine, and his thick glasses were speckled with grease. "Why?" he asked mildly enough.
"During the next month the world is going to be so wrapped up in Amelia Earhart and her 'round-the-world flight that my tiny little hop from Newfoundland to Havana will seem like nothing."
"I don't get it. Don't you want the publicity? Shouldn't you wait till she gets back, some of the furor dies down, and then reap some of the benefits?"
Angela shook her head. "I'm not doing it for publicity, Will. I'm doing it... I can't explain. But it's for myself, not for the papers and newsreels. It's just something I have to do before I hang it up all together. And I'd just as soon do it as quietly as possible."
Will glanced at the engine, then back at Angela's determined face. "Two days."
For a moment she thought she hadn't heard right. "What?"
"I said two days. The Wasp engine's in good shape, she just needs a little fine-tuning. I'll have her ready by Wednesday. That soon enough for you?"
"Soon enough," Angela said faintly. "Now all I have to do is come up with the money."
"What about flight plans? Fueling stops, maps, all that stuff."
Angela grinned. "You sound like a father sending his daughter out on a date with a boy from the other side of the tracks. I've got all Hal's stuff."
Will was looking strange, pale beneath the grimy glasses and the beard. "Ramsey crashed."
Angela's smile vanished. "That doesn't mean he didn't know what he was doing. He just flew too high and couldn't get out of a spin. I'm making damned sure I keep low enough to avoid icing. I'll only have to stop once for fuel, and I've already talked to the Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. As long as I can come up with the dough, things should be hunky-dory."
"Hunky-dory," Will echoed faintly. "Where's the money coming from?"
Angela looked at him, startled. "I don't know if that's any of your business, Will."
"No, I suppose it isn't," he grumbled, shuffling back to the engine. "I'll do my part, you do yours."
"Count on it," Angela said, wiping her grease-stained hands on her coveralls. "And I'm about to take care of my part."
She closed the door to her office before she sank down in her springback chair. She'd been putting off calling Cousin Clement, strangely loath to tap into her final source of money, but she no longer had time for second thoughts. Picking up the phone, she waited for the operator to come on the line.
"Lenox three-two-six-six-four," she said, reaching for her cigarettes. "Hello, Clement."
*
Their days had fallen into an easy rhythm, Clancy thought later, nursing a beer at a back table at Tony's. Too easy. He wasn't a man who liked structure in his life; he wasn't a man who planned ahead. Somehow he seemed to have fallen into it this time around, and it was too damned seductive. Almost as seductive as Angela Hogan.
What he should have done, he thought, was make his move on her. He knew enough about women, about their skittishness and sideways glances, to know when one wasn't immune to him. Angela Hogan was as aware of him as he was of her, and it wouldn't take much more than a concerted effort to get her where he wanted her to be. Upstairs, in his rooms over the bar. Upstairs, in the sagging double bed that was too big for one person.
But something had stopped him from making that move, and he couldn't quite figure out what. Maybe it was the fact that Sparks was so obviously, painfully in love with her and she didn't realize it. Not that Clancy's holding back did Sparks any good. Angela Hogan wasn't the woman for Sparks, but he wasn't ready to realize it.
It wasn't a latent attack of scruples, either, or respect for her innocence. Any woman that pretty who'd lasted until her late twenties was wasting both herself and the best years of her life. She needed to be taught a thing or two about that elegant, slender body of hers, and Clancy was the man to teach her.
It wasn't that he wanted someone else. He'd tried to drum up some interest in Mama Rosa's blond waitress, Betsey, she with the spectacular headlights and the brain like a soap dish. But he'd grown bored long before things had had a chance to heat up. And Angela's little sister, she of the similar endowments and the sweet nature that Clancy didn't believe for one moment. She might have been enough of a distraction, combining Jean Harlow and Angela, but for some reason he'd kept his distance. He didn't trust her, and deep inside he knew that nothing would hurt Angela more than if he messed with her saintly baby sister. And he didn't want to hurt Angela.
Maybe that was his reason for keeping his distance. But he doubted it. He'd never put anybody's well-being ahead of his own animal needs, and he wasn't about to start. No, he'd kept away from Angela Hogan for one very clear and present reason. She was trouble. He'd just about attacked her on the floor of the Percival, and it had been years since he'd lost control like that. Sure, the flight had got him hopped up, and then she'd come running at him like a hot, sweet, avenging angel. It was no wonder he'd grabbed her, no wonder he'd kissed her. No wonder he'd shoved her in out of the rain and started to strip away her wet clothes.
The wonder had been his own reaction. The control he'd come so close to losing wasn't just physical, it was mental, emotional, for want of a better word. He didn't think he had emotions, but something was certainly eating him up inside and he didn't think it had much to do with his intellect. He wanted Angela Hogan so badly he could barely think straight. And for that very reason he intended to keep leaving her strictly alone.
"What are you doing, crying in your beer?" Sparks demanded, straddling the chair opposite Clancy.
"Hardly," Clancy said. "I was thinking about Angela."
"Some woman," Sparks said with a heartfelt sigh.
"Some woman," Clancy echoed dryly. "What's she up to, Sparks? I see her huddled with Will all the time, staring into that Wasp engine as if it holds the secrets of the universe. And I know she's got something planned. Something she's not talking about."
"Beats me. You're right, she's got something up her sleeve, but I don't know what it is. I guess she has to confide in Will, seeing as he's her mechanic. But she sure isn't planning to let us in on her little secret." He downed his beer and signaled for another.
"I hope she has enough sense not to do anything dangerous," Clancy grumbled.
"Are you nuts? How long have you been around fliers, Clancy? How long have you been one yourself? Long enough to know that, of course, she's going to do something dangerous. She's going to weigh her options, make an educated guess and do it. And no one's going to stop her."
"Maybe she needs to be stopped."
"I doubt it. Angela's not crazy, you know. She's all too aware of her responsibility to the business, to Constance, to us.
"She has no responsibility to me," Clancy snapped. "I'm just working for her while my plane gets back into action. She doesn't owe me anything."
"All right, so she doesn't owe you anything. What goes on in Angela's mind is anybody's guess. Constance is old enough and smart enough to take care of herself, and yet Angela still feels she has to act like a mother hen. Duty dies hard in people like Angie." Sparks glanced over at the door. Constance had come in, accompanied by three young pilots vying for her attention, and she was laughing and flirting with them just to the point of outrageousness.
Clancy followed his gaze, his expression sour. He didn't know why he didn't trust Angela's sister, but he'd learned long ago to listen to
his instincts. His instincts told him that beneath that demure dress and shy smile lurked a very determined young lady. One who wouldn't hesitate stepping on anyone, her doting older sister included, to get what she wanted.
"Sweet kid," Sparks said with approval.
"Yeah," Clancy muttered.
By that time Constance had seen the two of them in their little corner and, with a graceful smile, she left her three escorts and threaded her way through the crowds to their table. Sparks jumped up, almost knocking over his beer in his haste. Clancy stayed where he was, lounging in his seat.
"Mind if I join you?" she asked with that breathy smile of a voice.
"We'd be honored, wouldn't we, Jack?" Sparks said, pulling out a chair.
"Honored." He tipped his chair forward then. "What can we get you to drink, Miss Hogan?"
"Please, call me Constance," she said sweetly. "And I'll just have a Shirley Temple."
"Come on, honey, you're old enough to drink," Sparks protested in a gruff, father-bear manner that made Clancy want to puke.
"Well, maybe just one little one," Constance said.
Apparently this was an old act, because the waitress showed up with a whiskey sour in a matter of moments. "What's up, honey?" Sparks asked.
"I wanted to talk to you fellows about Angie," Constance said, taking a healthy slug of her drink, then licking her lips with her small pink tongue. Half the men in the room followed the path of that tongue with longing in their eyes. Clancy was bored.
"What about?" Clancy drawled, lighting a cigarette. He didn't bother offering Miss Goody-Two-Shoes one. Even if she was a chain smoker she would have refused, so determined was she to prove what a sweet little darling she was.
"I'm worried about her."
"Where is she tonight?" Sparks asked the question Clancy was longing to. "She left work early and she hasn't been around all evening. She usually stops in, at least for a few minutes, before heading home."
"She went out," Constance said, her high, pretty forehead creased with worry. "I think she went to see her Cousin Clement."
"Anything wrong with that?" Clancy asked.