Wicked is the night

by Catherine Mulvany

  “I can’t go to a ball. I have nothing to wear.”

  “That’s the beauty of the BALL Ball. It’s a costume affair, and I have closets full of costumes.”

  “But I don’t have an invitation.”

  “Don’t be silly, my dear. Of course, you do. I’m one of the organizers. I can invite whomever I want. Patrick’s already promised he’ll go. I thought he’d spÃt h. Ooken to you.”

  He’d probably tried. Nevada had spent a good part of the last two days avoiding him, though not because she was angry. She wasn’t angry. She was confused. Confused and frightened.

  “That’s settled then.” Great-aunt Leticia placed her napkin on the table next to her empty cereal bowl and stood up. “I have some last-minute arrangements to make this morning and a luncheon meeting at Chez Nous with the other committee members, but perhaps this afternoon you’d like to go through the costume room with me. Patrick’s already chosen his, but I haven’t quite made up my mind. I’m thinking either Joan of Arc or Marie Antoinette.”

  Nevada tried to imagine Trick’s great-aunt as either of those young Frenchwomen but failed miserably.

  “This afternoon then. It’s a date,” Great-aunt Leticia said just as Trick walked into the breakfast room.

  “What’s a date?” he asked.

  “I have to go, Patrick dear. I’m late,” Great-aunt Leticia told him. “Nevada will explain.” She ducked out, clip-clopping down the hall in a pair of patent leather pumps.

  “How long have you known about the ball?” Nevada asked, flushing when her words came out sounding more accusatory than she’d intended.

  “Since last night,” Trick said. “Great-aunt Leticia mentioned it during our James Bond marathon, in the lull between Dr. No and Goldfinger, if memory serves. I take it you don’t like the idea.”

  She frowned. “It’s not that I don’t like the idea exactly. I mean, what female hasn’t dreamed of attending a ball? It’s just…I’m not sure it would be wise. If you recall, the last time I went out in public, I was nearly apprehended.”

  “At the Papillon Mall, you mean. But that was Sacramento, which, for reasons I don’t understand, seems to be a hot spot. Here in San Francisco, we haven’t had any close calls, not at the Harrington mansion—”

  “The Smith mansion,” she corrected him.

  He ignored the interruption. “Not at the jewelry store and not at the park, either.”

  “There will be more people at the ball,” she said.

  “Yes,” he agreed, “but we’ll be in costume. Or had you forgotten? Who’s going to recognize you if you’re all dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood?”

  Just before noon, Trick went looking for Nevada to bring her up to date on the latest information Marcello had unearthed. He finally found her sitting crosslegged on the floor in the nursery upstairs, thoroughly immersed in an old copy of Black Beauty.

  “You look about twelve years old sitting there like that,” he said.

  She glanced up with a bemused smile. “I feel about twelve. I remember this book. I’ve read it before.”

  He propped himself against the door frame to take the weight off his bad leg. Two flights of stairs were still enough to make his knee ache. “I just got off the phone with Marcello,” he said, hating the way her expression changed, the sudden wariness in her eyes.

  “Did he learn anything more about the Snowdens?”

  “A little,” Trick said. “Apparently, my guess that Whitney Snowden freaked out after finding her father’s body was correct. According to the newspaper reports, she was hysterical. The police tried to question her but found her answers incoherent. They finally called in a doctor to sedate her.”

  “But the police never suspected that she was responsible for her father’s death?”

  “No,” Trick said. “Though there were rumors, unsubstantiated for the most part. Marcello did find a somewhat ambiguous statement from an unidentified family member, who claimed Whitney had been emotionally unstable for some time. This anonymous source didn’t come right out and say she’d killed her father, but what was said fueled more rumors. Another anonymous source close to the family was quoted as saying that finding her father’s body had shoved Whitney over the edge.”

  “Over the edge of sanity. That’s what you’re saying.”

  “No,” Trick said. “That’s what the unidentified source said.”

  “What happened to Whitney after that?” Nevada asked tensely.

  “She was enrolled at a private girls’ school, but she never went back following the funeral. She dropped out of sight completely.”

  “Because she was institutionalized,” Nevada said bitterly.

  “Marcello also found an interview someone had done with the Snowdens’ housekeeper, Yelena Petrov.”

  “Yelena?” Nevada looked as if he’d punched her in the gut. “My friend Yelena?”

  “The interviewer insinuated that Whitney Snowden had had something to do with her father’s death, and Ms. Petrov objected quite strenuously. She claimed she had known Whitney her whole life, that Whitney adored her father and would never have done anything to hurt him. But when the interviewer asked what Whitney was doing now—this was months after her father’s death, around the time Whitney’s half brother was starting his first campaign for public office—Yelena suddenly became very tight-lipped.”

  “Yelena,” Nevada said again, as if she was having a hard time believing it.

  “Marcello believes that interview may have cost Yelena Petrov her job because shortly afterward, Mrs. Snowden hired a new housekeeper.”

  “After which, Yelena took a job at the Appleton Institute.”

  Trick nodded. “Quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I must be Whitney then.”

  “Looks like it. Does it feel right to you? What does your gut say?”

  &ldquÃidtt="o;It says yes,” she admitted. “I think I must have known the truth the moment I set foot in the study in the Smith mansion. I just didn’t want to admit it. But now, after learning that my friend Yelena was the Snowdens’ former housekeeper, well, that’s too big a coincidence to swallow. I’m Whitney Snowden. I must be.”

  “But you don’t remember.”

  She shook her head. “The memories are there. I’m sure of it. But something’s blocking them.”

  “Something Dr. Appleton did to you, some drug therapy or brainwashing technique.”

  “I think so, yes.” She frowned. “Yelena’s the one who named me Nevada White. She claimed it was a twisted version of Snow White. But maybe she chose it because it was a twisted version of my real name, too. Nevada White. Snow White. Whitney Snowden.”

  “That makes sense,” he said slowly. In a bizarre way.

  “Yelena must have taken the job at the Institute so she could keep an eye on me.”

  “That seems a logical conclusion.” Though whether she had done it out of the goodness of her heart or because Regina Snowden was paying her to monitor Whitney’s progress was another question altogether.

  When Trick’s great-aunt had mentioned her costume room, Nevada had envisioned a sort of oversize closet. In reality, the costume room was more like a small dress shop, complete with a wall of mirrors and small but luxuriously appointed changing rooms. Great-aunt Leticia had tried on twenty or more different outfits before finally settling on a Gypsy costume. The rich colors, fringed scarves, and bangles suited her, in Nevada’s opinion, much better than the boyish Joan of Arc attire or the towering white Marie Antoinette wig.

  Nevada surveyed her own costume in the wall of mirrors and couldn’t resist smiling.

  “You look radiant, my dear. Positively radiant,” Great-aunt Leticia gushed.

  She felt radiant. Young and pretty and desirable. She shot a conspiratorial grin at Trick’s great-aunt. “Now remember, not a hint to Trick, no matter how hard he tries to weasel the information out of you. My costume is top secret.”

  “My lips are sealed,” Great-aunt Leticia
promised, “with superglue.”

  “Nevada?” Trick called from outside in the hall.

  Great-aunt Leticia smirked. “Good thing I remembered to lock the door, huh?”

  “Nevada, I need to show you something.”

  “Just a minute!” She dived into the changing room where she’d left her jeans and T-shirt and slammed the door shut. “You can let him in now,” she told Great-aunt Leticia.

  Nevada, who was changing as quickly as she could without damaging the fragile fabric of her costume, heard the click of the lock, then Trick saying, “Nevada? Damn it, where are you?”

  “Watch your language, Patrick,” Great-aunt Letà Grou?icia scolded. “She’s changing her clothes.”

  “Hurry up,” Trick called. “I found something in the paper I think you should read.”

  Nevada hung her costume on its padded hanger, then draped the garment bag over it and got dressed in her jeans and T-shirt.

  Great-aunt Leticia rushed to meet her as soon as she opened the door. “I’ll take that.” As if she thought Trick might peek if given half a chance.

  “Okay,” Nevada said to him, “what’s so special about this article?”

  “It’s a follow-up piece on Regina Snowden’s disappearance.”

  “Poor woman vanished on Mother’s Day,” Great-aunt Leticia said. “How ironic is that?”

  Trick handed Nevada a newspaper folded open to the section he wanted her to read. “There’s a lot of information. I was hoping something would ring a bell.”

  Nevada’s gaze riveted itself on the photograph of the dead woman.

  “Does she look familiar?” Trick asked.

  “Yes,” Nevada said faintly.

  “You remember then?” Excitement edged his voice.

  “You know Regina Snowden?” Great-aunt Leticia asked, sounding surprised.

  But no more surprised than Nevada felt. “She’s the woman from the mall,” she said. “The one who stared at me as if she’d seen a ghost.”

  Nevada had retreated to her room again. Trick couldn’t decide whether to follow her or not. He wasn’t sure how long he stood hesitating in the costume room, evidently long enough to irritate Great-aunt Leticia, though. She whapped him on the arm with the newspaper Nevada had left behind. “How would Regina Snowden know Nevada?”

  “Let’s go sit down somewhere, and I’ll fill you in.” Something he probably should have done in the first place. With all her Bay Area connections, Great-aunt Leticia was a veritable font of knowledge. He’d held his tongue initially, concerned about Nevada’s privacy, but there was no longer any point in reticence.

  Great-aunt Leticia patted his arm, as if she’d read his thoughts. “That sounds like an excellent idea.”

  They ended up on opposite ends of the pink and yellow flowered sofa in her sitting room. Trick tried to decide where to start, but Great-aunt Leticia beat him to the punch. “Nevada’s James Snowden’s daughter by his second wife, Allison Smith, isn’t she?”

  “We think so, yes, though Nevada still can’t remember. When we visited the Harrington mansion—”

  “Smith mansion,” she corrected him. “All the old-timers call it the Smith mansion.”

  “Smith mansion.” He frowned. “What can you tell me about the Smiths?”

  “Allison, the second MrÃ, t.&rs. James Snowden, was the last of them. The house was hers, part of her inheritance. It passed to James when she died.”

  “Anything funny about her death?”

  “If by funny you mean suspicious, then no. She died in childbirth.”

  “Having Nevada?”

  Great-aunt Leticia frowned. “A girl child. I don’t remember the name.”

  “Whitney,” Trick said.

  Great-aunt Leticia’s face cleared. “Whitney. Of course. How did you make the connection?”

  “The address to the Har—, that is, the Smith mansion was attached to Nevada’s file at the Appleton Institute, where she spent the last five years. It was one of two clues Nevada had linking her to her true identity, the second being an amulet identical to the one that belonged to Blanche Smith, whose ghost haunts the brothel.”

  “Blanche Smith. And you’re thinking there’s a connection to the Smiths who built the mansion on Broadway.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know how likely that is. Smith is a very common name.”

  “I realize that.”

  “Do you know anything about Blanche Smith, aside from the fact she was a prostitute?”

  “Just that she was from San Francisco and was believed to have Gypsy blood.”

  “You’re sure about that?” Great-aunt Leticia asked sharply.

  “About what? The San Francisco roots? Or the Gypsy blood?”

  “Both, but especially the Gypsy connection.”

  “Definitely on the first. Fairly certain on the second. I mean, the whole Gypsy curse thing is part of our family history.”

  “Yes, it is,” she agreed, “but Smith is such a common name that I never made the connection. Not until now. The Smith who built the mansion was also rumored to have Gypsy blood. In fact, Allison, the woman we suspect was Nevada’s mother, was said to be a clairvoyant.”

  His excitement stirred. “Nevada’s psychic,” he said. “She can’t control it, but she’s definitely gifted.”

  “So chances are very good that she is, indeed, Whitney Snowden.” Great-aunt Leticia nodded thoughtfully. “And chances are only slightly less good that she’s related to the Granger ghost as well.”

  “The question is,” Trick said, “who committed her to the Appleton Institute and why?”

  “The who seems obvious. The evil stepmother.”

  “I thought you liked Regina Snowden,” he objected.

  “She always seemed pleasant enough,” Great-aunt Leticia admitted, “but I never really knew her well.”

  “Why did you immediately think she was the one who’d committed her stepdaughter? Why would she?”

  “I can think of several possible reasons,” Great-aunt Leticia said. “One, she thought Whitney was insane. Two, she thought Whitney had murdered her father and might murder her, too. Three, Whitney saw something she shouldn’t have seen, perhaps something she didn’t understand but which might implicate Regina in some wrongdoing.”

  “Such as her husband’s murder,” Trick said. “He was wealthy, right? And Regina inherited all his money.”

  “True,” Great-aunt Leticia said, “though of course, Regina was wealthy in her own right long before she married James Snowden.”

  “So much for that theory then,” Trick said.

  “No, don’t be so quick to reject it,” his aunt said. “With some people, greed is a sickness. As far as they’re concerned, there’s no such thing as enough money.”

  “‘The love of money…’” Trick quoted.

  “‘…is the root of all evil,’” his great-aunt finished.

  Nevada stopped at the corner, squinting up and down the street. Nothing looked familiar in the dark, especially not now that the fog had rolled in. Why had she thought it a good idea to wander around in a city she didn’t know?

  She peered at the street sign, which reassured her somewhat. This was Pierce Street all right, the street Trick’s great-aunt lived on, though how many blocks Nevada was from the house, she didn’t know, since she couldn’t for the life of her remember the street number.

  She shut her eyes, trying to envision the landmarks visible from the Granger house, but all she could see in her mind’s eye was the view downhill toward the bay, a view completely obscured now by the fog. She knew she was looking for a large structure, pale gray with white trim and framed by two enormous old trees. The trouble was, the mist cocooning the streetlights distorted colors. Every house she passed seemed to be painted in various shades of gray.

  She’d go three more blocks, she decided. If she didn’t see anything that looked familiar, she’d backtrack. And if that didn’t work, then she’d just have to knock on someon
e’s door and ask to use the phone. Surely Leticia Granger would be listed in the phone book.

  But Nevada hadn’t gone half a block when she saw a broad, squat pumpkin of a house that triggered her memory. Its big bay windows glowed in the darkness like jack-o’-lantern eyes. Leticia Granger’s graceful three-story Edwardian was only two houses down the street.

  Nevada didn’t bother trying the front door, knowing Rivers would have long since locked up for the night. Instead, she climbed the fence into the back garden, then scrambled up the rose trellis that clung to the rear of the house and onto the balcony beneath the bedroom window she’d left open a crack when she’d slipped out earlier. She shoved the window up and stepped over the sill, ducking her head to squeeze through.

  “Don&rsquÃ&ldhe o;t forget to put the screen back in place,” Trick said from somewhere in the darkened room. “Rivers won’t be happy if you let bugs in.”

  Startled, she raised up too fast, bashing her shoulder blade on the window frame. “Ouch! What are you doing here? You frightened me.”

  “Frightened you? Imagine how I felt when I searched the entire house only to find you gone. Where have you been?” He rapped out the last four words, his anger almost palpable.

  She heaved herself over the window sill, then with suddenly trembling fingers, fumbled for the nearest lamp and switched it on. A mistake. Trick looked even angrier than he’d sounded. “I—”

  He advanced on her, fists clenched. “Damn it, Nevada, I thought…At first, I thought you’d been kidnapped from your bed, that Sarge had somehow figured out where you were and…Damn it, how could you just take off like that? You know it isn’t safe. Where the hell did you go?”

  “To the Smith mansion.”

  “On foot?”

  “It’s not that far.”

  He grabbed her arms. “Are you insane?”

  “A question I often ask myself,” she said quietly and saw a stricken look wipe the anger from his face.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know.” Exhaustion settled on her shoulders like a leaden cloak, but she forced herself to meet Trick’s gaze. He deserved an explanation.

  “I thought it might help me remember. If I went back, I mean.”