Joe flinched like he'd been struck in the face. Then, his mouth and eyes hardened. “Forgive me, Miss Blanc. I'll make sure to stay out of your way.”
He stopped dancing and turned his back on her, striding off toward the Music Company and the piano girl. Anna squeezed her face as she stopped to watch him go. He didn't look back. She wanted him to look back.
Miss Baumgartner loomed over her. “Leave him, Miss Blanc, or I'll report it.”
Anna stared a moment longer at his backside. For once his shirttails were tucked in. It made her wonder if he was wearing one of the new Arrow shirt suits. She would never know, and the thought crushed her. Anna took her eyes away from Joe's denim trousers and submitted to her captors. She wondered if it would sting so much to see him after she belonged to Edgar and was initiated into the mysteries of marriage.
Anna moved down the street away from Joe like an injured bird, encaged by her entourage. She felt dizzy and realized that the corset would need to be loosened or she would faint. She paused to catch her breath. “Take me to Hamburger's. Ninth and Broadway.” She laid a hand on the wall for support. “I want to rest in the dressing room.”
Miss Baumgartner's gaze drifted to the department store. The Music Company stood between them and Hamburger's. She raised her eyebrows.
Anna tugged at her corset. “Please. We'll cross the street so he doesn't see us.” She made a little sound of despair. “He's already inside with that piano girl.”
The street was busy with carts and horses, whirring electric cars, swift hansom cabs, and Fords spewing exhaust. She waited for a gap and hobbled her way across, forging a path to avoid road apples herself and make sure her chaperones would have to step in them. Miss Baumgartner squished a big brown one and it smelled.
She walked past the Music Company on the opposite side of Broadway, never once looking, and crossed over again on Eighth Street. As she reached the middle of the road, a trolley rattled by, clanging its bells. Hanging off the back was Detective Snow. If he noticed her, he didn't show it. She watched his stupid slack face disappear down the road and narrowed her eyes. A moment later, the coroner's wagon rumbled past, kicking up dust and heading in the same direction—toward New High Street, toward the parlor houses.
Anna's stomach would have flipped if it hadn't been crushed up against her liver by whalebone. She was sure there was another death. Maybe a murder. If it were a brothel girl, there was nothing she could do to prevent Snow and the coroner from disguising it as a suicide. She had promised Edgar to stay away from police work. An army of gorilla women had been hired to help her keep that promise. And there was the added difficulty that she couldn't walk five steps in a row without resting and was very possibly going to faint.
She wished she could plead her case to Joe and ask him to follow Snow as one last favor to her. Hadn't she solved the case of the Boyle Heights Rape Fiend? Sure, she had insulted him, but he had had the nerve to play piano with a pretty girl. They were even. Anna glanced back toward the Music Company. Miss Baumgartner reached out and with two fingers pulled Anna's chin away from the store. “Look straight ahead! You will have no more dealings with that young man.”
Joe hadn't actually gone back to the Music Company. He had leaned against a wall and watched Anna negotiate the street, still smarting from her words and wondering why she was walking so funny. She looked like an ironing board with legs. Was she injured? Had Edgar hurt her? He was half inclined to fight off her guards, throw her over his shoulder, and run. But she could free herself if she wanted to, and she obviously didn't want to. She was all fired up to marry Edgar Wright and she had made it very clear that she didn't want to associate with lowly Joe Singer. He spat. He should count his blessings. She'd make a terrible wife.
Joe needed to think of something else. He tried to think about Miss Lory, who would make a good wife, but his heart wasn't in it. But maybe he should buy her a present—a thank-you gift for letting him play the pianos. He couldn't stay in love with Anna forever. It was a futile endeavor. Hamburger's Department Store was a stone's throw away. He could surely find something for Julia. Maybe a fancy feather clip like Anna sometimes wore, or a hat like Anna's.
Hamburger's reigned as the largest department store west of Chicago and had more floors even than the Music Company. If women's furnishings had not been on the first level, Anna would have suffocated before reaching it. A security guard lifted his cap as she hobbled inside leaning on the hairy arm of one of her lumbering entourage. Anna's skin shone faintly blue.
Anna watched Miss Baumgartner assess the terrain. A maze of curving countertops snaked through the store—glass cases stacked with shawls, handkerchiefs, and lace collars. There were rows of racks with bathing suits—plenty of places where she might hide. And there were lots of ladies. Anna had slipped away from chaperones before. If she escaped in this crowded maze, there would be no way to recover her. No doubt Miss Baumgartner knew that. Anna watched her scan the perimeter.
There were two entrances into ladies’ furnishings. Miss Baumgartner took the main door, which was the busiest. She sent one bearded chaperone to the back door and ordered the other to stay with Anna. Even if she got away in the store, as long as they kept her from slipping outside, they were poised to flush her out like a quail, and would trap her at closing time.
The chaperones could plot all they wanted. Anna didn't care what they did. She suffered from a lack of oxygen, and she had no intention of being anything but good. She feebly made her way toward the dressing rooms but stopped when she noticed a man standing at the counters with his back to her. She knew that backside.
It was Joe Singer and he was browsing in ladies’ accessories, picking up feather clips in midnight, emerald, and melon, turning them around in his hands. At first, she thought he was a vision brought on by her slow suffocation, but when he started to sing to himself, and when an old lady fluttered her lashes at him, she knew he was real. He crooned, “You have vowed your affection to each one in turn, and have sworn to them all you'd be true…”
Anna's heart sang in harmony. His interest in ladies’ accessories made her tingle, as did the opportunity it presented. If she could convince him to follow Snow to the body, and if it was a brothel girl, he would find the ill-fitting shoe, the sixpence, and any evidence of foul play. He would tell his father to investigate and they would capture the killer. Eve would be safe and Anna would truly be exculpated.
Joe faced the sparkling glass case, standing with his back to a row of heavy toile curtains that marked the individual dressing rooms. Clearly, the bearded lady hadn't seen him. Otherwise, she would be running him off like he was a stray dog. But, of course, the chaperone's eyes would be fixed on her prisoner, not on the other customers. Anna took several sips of air. She smiled sweetly at Miss Baumgartner and hobbled toward the row of curtains, dragging her feet across the smooth wooden floor.
She chose the changing room closest to Joe, gave a little wave to her keeper, and let the curtain swing shut. In the tiny, dimly lit room, Anna raced in slow motion, gasping for breath like a guppy on shore. She yanked and yanked at her cotton gown until the pearl buttons popped off, leaving nicks in the fabric and spilling across the carpet. She stripped it off, her head swimming from the effort, but she had to reach Joe before he left ladies’ furnishings.
She stood on tiptoe, her nose wrinkled with exertion, and slung her dress over the curtain top. When her keeper saw the gown she would be less vigilant. Even Anna wouldn't run through a department store in her undermuslins, and the chaperone knew that Anna needed assistance to get her gown back on. If the dress was visible, Anna remained as contained as a canary in cage.
She ached to remove her corset cover and loosen the ties, but there wasn't time. She counted to five and peeked out into the show room. Miss Baumgartner had indeed turned her back and had even wandered off to peruse the Princess Pat display nearly fifteen feet away.
The stars were in alignment. Anna bent to work off her smooth leather boot
. Bone stays jabbed into her belly, but she gritted her teeth and hurried at a sloth's pace. When she had unfastened the boot, she thrust her arm through the curtain and hurled the shoe at Joe. She missed the man but upset the display of feather hair clips, sending them skittering across the glass like sand pipers. The boot bounced on the counter with a crack and tumbled under a rack of slippery negligees. Joe spun around, his brow scrunched up in irritation, looking for the culprit. But the chaperone had glanced back toward her charge, and Anna retracted her head like a turtle. Joe saw no one, just the rippling of the curtain where Anna's face had been. He ran his finger along the rough crack in the glass and set about righting the display of feather clips.
Anna waited a moment, her lungs burning. She peeked outside. A salesgirl was applying Princess Pat above the whiskers of the chaperone. Anna thought it helped. She seized the moment to sling boot number two, her last piece of ammunition, her last hope.
Joe turned to leave just as the shoe descended from its arc and kicked him in the face, stinging his cheek. This time, he caught the projectile and looked at it—a boot as smooth and shiny as still water. The label was in French. He cursed under his breath and looked for Anna.
He saw one heavily lashed gray eye and half her bowed lips peeking from a gap between the wall and the curtain. She beckoned to him with a crooked finger. Joe shook his head slowly, his mouth set in an angry straight line. Either they were friendly or they weren't, but she couldn't have it both ways.
Anna pleaded with her one eye, her lashes blinking tears of desperation, and disappeared back inside. Joe dragged a hand across his face and glanced over to where Anna's jailer primped in front of a mirror. He sauntered over for the same reason he did anything for Anna. “What?” He stood with his back to the curtain of her dressing room. Anna pushed the curtain out, took his arm, and yanked him inside. The curtain swung shut.
They were alone in the dim, closet-like space. She was bluish pale, leaning against the wall in her lingerie—petticoats to her shins, breasts and shoulders bursting from a corset that looked painful. She raised her arms and peeled off her corset cover. Joe swallowed. “Sherlock, I thought you gave up police work.”
Anna fainted.
Joe caught her limp body around the middle and wondered what to do. He had assisted fainting ladies from time to time when he was on patrol and they had swooned in a public place. He laid them down and watched over them until someone claimed them or they came to. On duty, he even carried smelling salts. But he didn't have smelling salts now, and there wasn't space enough to lay Anna on the tile without her feet sticking out. That would bring her chaperones running. The last thing he wanted was to be caught alone with Anna in a dressing room when she was in her underwear, and he didn't want to leave her because, well, he was alone with Anna in a dressing room and she was in her underwear.
He braced her up against the wall with his body and with one hand loosened the satin laces on her corset. Grasping her under the arms, he slid down onto the cool tile and gathered her into his lap so her legs wouldn't stick out through the curtain. He folded her knees over his forearm, cradling her neck in the crook of one elbow, her head thrown back in one lovely vanilla arc. It was hard to stay mad when her shins were bare but for green stockings, and she was as soft as a baby. She smelled like flowers. His lips were close to her hair. He took a long deep inhale and thought of all the ways that Anna could be useful in the home.
Anna began to stir. Her eyes fluttered open and she stared into the large dark centers of Joe's eyes. She took note of her posture and was pleased with the pose. She lay undressed in the arms of a man she liked intensely. While she was unconscious, he had been free to look at her shins, which he had never seen before. Some might argue that it was a shocking breach of decorum to allow herself to be seen thus. She would argue that she wasn't much more exposed than a girl in a bathing suit. She sighed. How she wished he wore a bathing suit.
Joe spoke in a low whisper. “Let me guess. There's a reason that you're showing me your underwear and it's life or death.”
She was improving now that she had oxygen, but she didn't want to get up. “Snow and the coroner just went by. They were headed in the direction of the parlor houses. There's been another murder.”
He wet his lips. “And you can't go spy on Snow, so you want me to do it.”
“Yes.” Her gray eyes melted into his shining blue ones. “And you should do it. I was right about the Boyle Heights Rape Fiend.”
He held her gaze. “Yes, you were.”
Their faces were very close, his arms holding her, her satiny bottom on his hard legs. He smelled warm and delicious. She could feel his heart beating in his chest. She thought he might be contemplating kissing her. This left her facing a dilemma. She would marry on Saturday. He was not her husband-to-be. But, it was a known fact that men were more cooperative if you let them kiss you. How much more so if you were sitting on their lap in lingerie? If she kissed him and he helped her, dozens of lives might be saved. If she didn't, and he didn't help her, many more women would die. Eve might die. She concluded that spooning Joe Singer was the moral thing to do, and she wouldn't feel guilty for liking it.
Because time was of the essence, she couldn't wait for Joe to decide. She kissed him. She kissed him again with her whole, open mouth, the way he had taught her to do. Her kiss burned with all the intensity of their situation and all the passion required to overcome it—her imminent marriage, his duet with the piano girl, the fact that she would never see him again, his certain death if Edgar were to find out, and a bearded lady just outside the dressing room.
Joe pulled back. The old, familiar hostility clouded his eyes. “Are you sure you want to associate with a lowly policeman?”
Anna would have blushed, but she was pink already. “Yes,” she said. “I do. I really do.” And she did. She slipped her soft, bare arms around his neck and kissed him again. He reached down and ran his hand along her silky, stockinged calf. It set off fireworks in her nether parts like it was Independence Day.
It occurred to her, as she slipped her petticoats higher, that her tactic might have backfired. Joe showed no interest in the crime scene whatsoever. Instead, he unhitched her garter, stripped off her stocking, and began kissing his way from her bare toes up her softly downed leg. She had lost interest in the crime scene herself and was making little whimpering sounds.
But this was her last chance to help solve a murder before disappearing into a world of too-tight corsets and knitting circles. He left a cool trail on her skin and she shivered. “You'll go to the crime scene?”
“Um hum.” He kissed a little bit higher.
Her breath caught and she wrapped her fingers in his silky hair. “You promise?”
“Um hum.”
By his own testimony, Joe always did what he said he would do. If this were true, regrettably, her mission was accomplished. She allowed him one final kiss, and one more to be sure she had secured his cooperation, and one for good measure…
She lost count.
She was drowning in him, being swept away in his manly deliciousness. “Stop.” She whispered without conviction.
Joe stopped.
She felt a sinking disappointment. He was holding her leg in midair, his lips pressed to the inside of her knee, just below the embroidered ruffle of her French drawers. He calmly set her leg down and smoothed her three petticoats over it. He smiled his crooked, dimpled “Anna's lover” smile and it turned her insides to liquid.
Anna squeaked. “Oh, don't stop.”
In a flash, he was kissing her mouth and her neck with his warm, talented lips, kissing every inch of her skin not swathed in whalebone or lace, down to the very edge of her corset. He made her skin cool and electric and her nether parts sizzle. He made the mirror steam up.
Even as she felt for his Arrow shirt suit, Anna tried a silent prayer to Mary Magdalene, patron saint of tempted women. “Holy smoke” was the best prayer she could muster as she felt his hand
caress her bottom through three petticoats and a pair of two-piece drawers.
Unlike God, who was currently not on her side, the Magdalene could relate to Anna's situation and heard her feeble prayer. Anna felt a temporary surge of virtue, as if born up on the wings of angels. She murmured into his sweet, open mouth, “Stop.”
He stopped.
Joe slowly extricated himself from her lips and the tangle of her rosy limbs. He was flushed, his hair mussed, his eyes heavy. Her breath was ragged, her lips bee-stung, and her loosened corset had started to rotate sideways.
He sat against the far wall of the dressing room, breathing. “I love you.”
Anna's heart fell, spooking the angels. They flew off and her virtue evaporated. She lunged for him.
He gathered her against him and kissed her like he meant it, like he loved her, like there was no piano girl. She arched up against him like a love-crazed nymph. “Stop…don't stop,” she said, and he didn't.
He made her more breathless than the corset. Her head was spinning. The clock was ticking. Soon the body would be gone, the evidence with it, and the murders would never be solved. But she could not stick to her resolution for more than a second. Not with his body sliding on her body, and his voltaic skin only three and a half blessed layers of fabric away from her own. Not when he was chewing through her corset, and her heart was falling, falling, falling.
She needed more than a moment of self-control. She needed reinforcements. She needed them now. And so, Anna did what any girl would do if they found themselves in a similar situation, needing to tear herself from the arms of a delicious policeman so that he could solve a crime.
She screamed. “Miss Baumgartner!”
Joe winced as her banshee cry tore through his eardrum. He stared at her for a second, incredulous and betrayed, then narrowed his eyes and dashed out of the dressing room. Anna peeked after him. He streaked past the bearded lady, using clothing racks for cover, his shirt entirely untucked, the front of his trousers popped out like an army tent. He dodged round the other mannish chaperone and left ladies’ furnishings being chased by a security guard. It was to be, so she thought with a pang in her heart, her last glimpse of him—Officer Joe Singer, the man she liked even more intensely than before, and whom, if she were a more foolish girl, one tossed about by passion, she might think she loved.
The Secret Life of Anna Blanc Page 25