Sirens

by Janet Fox

Teddy’s hand on my arm.

  I locked the door to my room and turned on a light. The quiet was deep, even the city noises hushed. We’d arrived home a few minutes earlier; Melody had stumbled off to bed, while I knew what I had to do now.

  I had to find out what Teddy had to say about all of it. Maybe I could intervene for Pops. Save my family from Danny Connor by giving him Teddy’s journal entries, without giving him Teddy.

  I threw my wrap and clutch on the bed and dug into the bottom drawer, and pulled out the journal. I sat cross-legged on my bed with the journal in my lap. I untied it, fumbling with the leather cord. But before I could open it, a frightening new idea took shape in my mind.

  I could save my family another way, couldn’t I? Make myself attractive to Danny Connor, make him like me. He already did; I wasn’t stupid. And then, when he liked me enough—what? Beg? Or not give him Teddy at all, but give him me.

  I shuddered. Goose bumps freckled my skin, and a sour taste rose into my mouth.

  This personal sacrifice would be my last resort. I’d have to uncover as much information as I could, but in the end…

  The more I learned, the more danger I’d be in; but the more I knew, the more I could help. I prayed I’d uncover some bit of information, just enough to send Danny away from my family. And away from me.

  I’d left a ribbon to mark the page where I’d stopped reading the night before, Teddy’s writing so cramped that my eyes watered.

  October 3, 1918

  I keep dreaming about Willie O., how that bullet went into his eye. One minute I’m looking at him and we’re laughing, and then the next thing I know he’s only got one eye and it’s fixed on a place I don’t want to see.

  All I want to see are Lizzy’s fields, brown, green, yellow, purple.

  October 4

  What are we fighting over? It makes no sense. Surrounded. Many dead. This is a bad deal.

  October 4

  If I don’t get out of here, I’ll go mad. I’d sell my soul to get out of here.

  October 5

  I’ve decided. It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing I do makes any difference—except to get someone killed.

  I’ve done it—make any bargain I can make. Come take my soul. I’m dead already.

  We’ve been in the same trench for what seems forever. I know every rock, every root, every hunk of wet dirt. My feet and hands are rotten. So many dead. We’re about done in. Nothing matters. Nothing except getting home. Home to Ma, to Pops, to Josie.

  I stopped reading and sat back against my headboard. I lifted the journal again, my eyes blurring.

  October 5

  I see my opening and I’m taking it tonight.

  October 10

  Going home. Pops will be pleased. Actions deemed heroic. Saved 5 fellows including Rushton, my CO. Really, didn’t mean to. Was trying to get out, run, and I took a wrong turn. German guy never had a chance, I was moving so fast, came up behind him, gut instinct took over. Later shown he had grenade, would’ve killed them all and me, too.

  And I think about that German guy, how I knifed him. Did he have parents, a sister?

  I’m a coward, not a hero. But Rushton thinks I am. Says he owes me. Says he’ll make it up to me.

  So this smart rich guy? Think he means it?

  Heck. I’ve got to take him at his word. What else do I have? I’ve lost everything else. Gave it away. My soul, everything.

  I sat back again and rubbed my eyes. Rushton. Rushton had been telling the truth, as he saw it. Now I understood why Teddy was so lost after he came home. He felt a failure, a fake. That would never do for Teddy. That was not honorable or right. That was not the hero’s way.

  Maybe this is why he didn’t give me his journal right away. He didn’t want me knowing that he wasn’t a true hero.

  I got out of bed and went to my dresser, sat on the floor, and pulled out the medal boxes.

  Purple Heart.

  Silver Star.

  Victory.

  Teddy didn’t feel worthy of these honors. I touched each of the medals, which he’d never worn, never removed from the boxes once they’d been awarded. Pops had been all over town about Teddy, bragging and puffing. But never with Teddy. Now I knew why.

  But I still believed he was a hero. Teddy had pulled me from the fire. He’d rescued me when no one else knew I was even in there, but somehow he knew. He saw the flaming tar paper drift down to land on my back as I huddled there, screaming but not screaming. He knew and ran to me and grabbed my arm and pulled me out, rolling me over and over to put out the fire, saved me just when the flames blew up into a frenzy, just before the whole thing was a conflagration. Chester standing by with that lighter and looking, for once, shocked at something he’d done. Teddy had heard me even when my voice could not be heard by anyone else.

  Teddy was my hero. He was my heart, my victory, my star. Nothing else mattered, except that he was my hero and I would keep my promise to him.

  I could no longer force my stinging eyes to stay open; I’d have to read the rest of his words in the morning. I stuffed the medal boxes and journal and scarf deep under the sweaters in the bottom drawer and crawled back into bed. I turned out my light and lay back against the sheets. As I drifted into exhausted sleep, I thought I heard Teddy’s voice.

  Something else matters, Josie-girl. And because of that, I must still protect you.

  CHAPTER 21

  Lou

  I didn’t say one word in the car. Not one, all the way home. I thought that would make him suffer, but no. Because he didn’t say one word, either, and the silence was killing me.

  When Sam pulled the car up to the door and hopped around to let us out onto the wet paving, Danny turned. “It’s late. I’ll see you in the morning.” And he walked right in that front door, leaving me standing there with Sam and my wide-open mouth.

  “May I get you anything, miss?”

  “No, Sam, thanks.” I hoped that over the soft splashing of the fountain behind us he wouldn’t hear the sob that caught in my throat.

  Later I lay in the dark, wide-awake in my own room, alone, for hours.

  Once upon a time there was this poor young Irish girl who met a handsome prince who swept her off her feet. But when the Irish girl grew older, the prince’s roving eye began to light elsewhere…until a new young girl arrived to steal the prince’s heart.

  I took out my diamond bracelet, the one thing he didn’t make me lock up, and snapped it on my wrist there in the dark room, the light from outside sneaking in and making those diamonds flash like a million suns. Those diamonds would fetch a pretty penny. But what would Danny say when he didn’t see it on my wrist? I left it on, in the dark, in my room, the diamonds biting at my wrist.

  As you can see, Detective, those diamonds were not the issue. I’m getting to that part.

  CHAPTER 22

  MAY 23, 1925

  Almost since girlhood, beautiful Mrs. Philip Lydig has been an unquestioned leader of New York’s ultra-smart society. Now for the first time Mrs. Lydig proceeds to turn the spot-light on that society—telling in great detail why she finds it futile, false and corrupt.

  —“Mrs. Philip Lydig Reveals Secrets of New York Society,” The Deseret News, September 10, 1926

  Jo

  Next morning I rose later than usual. My aunt was home, so I wouldn’t be able to avoid her, nor could I get back to the journal until my eyes could focus.

  She joined me at the breakfast table, as I poured a fourth round of coffee into my cup, trying to snap my system awake. I couldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Well,” she said, her voice weary, “it must have been quite an adventure.”

  “We weren’t out that late. The place was raided.” I saw her alarm and strove to calm her. “Daniel Connor was there. He got us all out.” I didn’t want to tell her about that hand on my arm.

  “Josephine? What about Melody? Were you able to talk to her?”

  I shook my head. “Aunt Mary, I don’t know what I c
an do. Melody’s got a mind of her own.”

  Aunt Mary sighed, her shoulders slumped. “If she’d only meet the right man. Settle down.”

  Pops’s voice echoed in my head. As if marriage would solve everything, even if the guy had money. “I’m not sure she’s ready for that. She’s having fun.”

  My aunt rested her hands before her, folded, on the table. “I think you might be wrong. She might not be having as much fun as it seems.”

  Nor was I. I took a gulp of coffee, not sure what to say. At this moment, all I wanted was the sweet comfort and quiet of my own home. The traffic noises outside were aggravating. The smell of diesel exhaust rose up through the open windows, and dust and debris filled the air; New York City right now was getting on my nerves. I supposed anything would get on my nerves at the moment, frayed with sleep deprivation as they were.

  Everything in this city happened too fast. And some things in this city hinted at a larger darkness. I wanted my old-fashioned simple life back. My flowered-wallpaper bedroom and my ma.

  My aunt reached her hand out, placed it on my arm. “I’m at my wits’ end. I have to ask you for one more favor.”

  I nodded, trying to overcome my irritation.

  “I want you to find out where Melody goes in the afternoon.”

  “What?” Good grief. First Connor puts a tail on me, and now I’m expected to haunt Melody. Either I was really in a bad way this morning, even though I’d hardly had a sip of alcohol the night before, or this whole episode was evolving into a warped Sherlock Holmes scenario. “Follow her? Why?”

  “Melody is mixed up in something. Something that will hurt her. I can’t help her. She won’t speak to me. If I tried to follow her…Well, it’s impossible. Please, Jo?”

  I pushed my half-eaten breakfast away. What could I do? “I’ll try.” At least I knew I’d be a better sleuth than Charlie O’Keefe.

  Aunt Mary left, off to do some of her charity work, while I mused on my awkward situation. There was no reading Teddy’s journal again now; Adela was, once again, busy cleaning my room in a most thorough fashion. I almost thought she was there on purpose, like a spy. She was so nosy whenever I went into my room, gabbing and looking over my shoulder.

  I gave up and I fetched a novel and made myself at home in the library, although my eyes kept drifting from the page and my thoughts wandered all over.

  Around noon the phone rang. Melody hadn’t yet emerged, Malcolm had gone out on an errand, and Adela was singing from my bathroom. I answered. “Cates residence.”

  “Mrs. Cates?” A woman’s voice. “Or could this be Miss Melody Cates herself?”

  “No, this is Mrs. Cates’s niece. May I take a message?”

  “Hey, there.” A pause. “Her niece, huh?”

  I stiffened. “Who’s calling?”

  “Listen, mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do mind.”

  “Don’t hang up. I’ve got just a couple of questions about your cousin Melody. What do you know about the pickle she’s in?”

  Now I recalled my aunt on the phone yesterday and her words of only hours earlier. “I can’t help you.”

  “Look, sweetie. I’m working on the society column for The Times. How’d you like to appear in the pages? Nice photo, the works? You’d be the toast of the town….”

  I lowered the receiver into the cradle.

  So Mel was in some kind of “pickle.” Her mother thought she was mixed up in something that might hurt her. Now there was no question that I needed to find out what was going on.

  Melody stirred right after the call. It never failed to amaze me how fast she could pull herself together. I sat in the library reading, watching as she passed back and forth from her room to the dining room, from her room to the living room, from her room toward the elevator.

  “Bye, Melody,” I called.

  “Oh!” She came to the library door. “I didn’t know you were in here. I’m off to do some shopping.”

  I made a stab at it. “Want some company?”

  “It’ll be boring. Have to find some hose.” She tugged on her cloche, moved at a clip down the hallway, stabbed the elevator button three, four times. “Later,” she called.

  I waited for the door to clang shut before grabbing my own cloche, gloves, and purse, and ringing for the elevator.

  “Afternoon, miss.” Joey, the elevator boy, was a gap-toothed kid who should have been in school. “How are you this day?”

  “Just fine, thanks.” I pretended to check my purse. “You didn’t happen to see which way Miss Melody headed, did you?”

  “She turned left, miss. Uptown.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Want me to try to catch her for you?” His eagerness suggested his desire to get out of the elevator, anything for a mad dash along the sidewalk.

  I felt bad, but there was no help for it. “No, thanks. I know where she’s going. I’ll find her there.”

  “You sure?” Poor kiddo. He looked so disappointed.

  “Maybe next time.” I pressed a dime into his palm, and he grinned.

  Ed saluted as he held the door for me. I greeted him and paused on the sidewalk. There. Melody was about half a block away, walking briskly. I followed her, keeping a mindful distance.

  She didn’t pause or vary her pace, stopping only at the intersections, heading first uptown and then across to Fifth. She was following the same path I’d walked yesterday, over to Central Park.

  “Miss Winter?”

  Oh, honest to pete. I’d been so intent on tracking Melody, I’d been paying no attention to passersby. John Rushton appeared at my side out of nowhere.

  “Mr. Rushton.” I made to move on, but he stayed by my side. I fidgeted. “I’m in something of a hurry.”

  “I’m still hoping to finish our conversation.” His eyes met mine.

  I scowled at him. “Are you following me?”

  He raised his brows.

  Then I remembered. Chester had said he lived nearby, only around the corner. My cheeks burned. What was it about him that bothered me so? I didn’t even try to be polite. “Why are you always hanging around the Cates’s building?”

  Now it was his turn to look flustered. He adjusted his hat, then his jacket. “I have business with your uncle.”

  He was lying. I could feel it. There was more to him and his relationship with Uncle Bert than met my eyes. Or was it some other relationship? I looked down the avenue in the direction Melody had disappeared. Rushton’s sense of desperation pooled around him and threatened to sweep me in its undertow.

  “I really must speak to you about Teddy,” he said.

  “Look, I can’t tell you anything. There’s nothing to tell. Teddy’s gone, and that’s that.”

  He said, “I don’t think that’s that.”

  I shifted, looking off again toward where Melody had disappeared. I almost growled with frustration. “Teddy is gone, Mr. Rushton. Leave him in peace. And me as well.”

  Pedestrians circled us, the rush and pulse of traffic passed behind me, and I couldn’t meet John Rushton’s eyes. He tipped his hat. “Miss Winter.”

  I nodded. “Mr. Rushton.” I pushed off and made my way as fast as I could along the sidewalk.

  Fast, but to no avail. I’d lost Melody. I was no better a sleuth than Charlie after all. I stood at the edge of the park, where the path diverged from the street sidewalk; she was nowhere in sight. She might have followed the path, or she might have stayed on the avenue. I couldn’t be sure.

  What I could be sure of was that she hadn’t gone out to buy hose. We were well away from the shops. Aunt Mary’s suspicions were good: Melody was up to something. So. I was not the only one with a secret. Melody had one, too.

  I sat down on a park bench, defeated. Pigeons fluttered around me, searching for a handout. Traffic passed in waves. Smells of soot and exhaust and garbage overwhelmed the sweeter smell of green grass from the park behind me. The dull, distant rumble of th
e city filled me from the ground up.

  As far as I was concerned, it was a miserable day. I hunched my shoulders and folded my arms, trying to puzzle it out.

  Melody and I were about as different as night and day. One a flapper, and the other…A shadow fell on me, and I started and looked up, squinting and shading my eyes. Well. I relaxed again; maybe the day was looking up a little.

  “You look pretty gloomy for someone out on such a nice day,” Charlie said.

  “Don’t get me started. Are you still following me?”

  “You’re my only job other than waiting tables at the moment.” Maybe Charlie was getting better at his detective work. At least he kept track of me, unlike my wretched sleuthing of Melody.

  “Did they arrest you last night?” I scootched over on the bench to make room for him to sit next to me.

  “Nah. They give the musicians a break, most of the time. Cops figure we don’t get paid enough, just like them.” He grinned at me. He was a sweet guy, and those dark pools of his eyes, I wanted to drown in them. I smiled back, feeling my irritation drift away. He nudged my arm. “Want to take a walk?”

  We ambled deep into the park, the street noises receding behind us. The breeze lifted and fell; I heard the squeals of childish laughter ripple over the grass from the other side of the meadow.

  “So, you are Louie’s brother,” I said. “That’s how you know Daniel Connor. And that’s who employed you to follow me.”

  “Yup.”

  “Louie is pretty sweet on him.”

  “He treats her right. Gives her whatever she wants. He’s got a swell place to live, buys her nice clothes, jewelry….”