Sweet Liar

by Jude Deveraux

“I wish I could have met her,” Samantha said, stroking Abby’s hand, her eyes with a faraway look in them. “I heard so much from Granddad Cal about her and from my father.”

  “Cal,” Abby said softly, her frown disappearing and a slight relaxed, peaceful smile taking its place. “Maxie spoke of him. Was he all right after Maxie left or did he die in a place like this?”

  “No,” Samantha said brightly, happily. “He stayed with us, with Dad and me, the last two years of his life. I was going to school so we had to hire a nurse/housekeeper for him.”

  “Was his nurse nice?”

  “No, she was dreadful and Granddad Cal made her life miserable.”

  Abby smiled but didn’t say anything, so Samantha continued.

  “She was a horrible, bossy woman and she treated Granddad Cal as though he were a stupid child. He would have fired her, but he said that getting her back gave him a reason to live. He used to do awful things to her, such as putting salt in her shampoo so it’d sting her eyes. One day while she was outside mowing the lawn he made a big pitcher of iced tea for her, only it wasn’t iced tea. It was Long Island tea, you know, that stuff that’s all liquor. She drank three big glasses of it then passed out on the kitchen floor. While she was passed out, Granddad Cal shaved her mustache.”

  Both Abby and Mike laughed.

  It was at that moment that the nurse reentered the room. First she scolded Samantha for sitting on the bed and not on the chair, then she scolded Abby for making her machine fluctuate.

  “They love patients who are in comas,” Abby said. “They’re the only ones who obey all the rules.”

  “Now, now, Abby, you don’t mean that. Say good-bye to the nice people.”

  Abby looked around the nurse’s bulk toward Samantha. “Think electrolysis,” Samantha said, and Abby grinned so hard her needle bounced. The nurse shooed them out of the room.

  20

  “Where are you taking me for dinner?” Samantha asked happily as they left the nursing home. “I saw an Italian restaurant, Paper Moon, on Fifty-eighth, and it looked very pretty.”

  Grabbing her elbow, he said, “We’re going home for dinner,” then narrowed his eyes at her. “We’re going home and you’re going to show me the box of things your father left you.”

  “But, Mike, I’m hungry.”

  “You can order in, like you always do. Call up Paper Moon and order, whatever you want to do, but tonight, you’re showing me that box.”

  As Mike hailed a cab, Samantha couldn’t resist a little smugness. “It doesn’t feel very good to have people keep secrets from you, does it?”

  His hand on her arm, he squeezed hard. “Do you realize that the secret to why whoever tried to kill you may be in that box?”

  “No…” she said slowly.

  As he opened the taxi door, he asked, “What is in the box?” When she was silent, Mike gritted his teeth. “You haven’t looked inside it, have you?”

  “Going through a dead person’s effects is not my idea of a good time. Maybe you’re ghoulish that way, but I’m not. I opened the box—it’s the old hatbox you carried downstairs for me—saw the photo on top, took it out, and that’s all. The box looked to be full of old clothes, clothes that belonged to someone who might have run away with a gangster.”

  “A box full of things that may tell us a lot. It might tell us something that could keep someone from again attempting to kill you.”

  In spite of herself, Samantha put her hand to her throat. “You don’t think I’m still in danger, do you?”

  “Yes,” he said softly. “I think that with every person we talk to, you’re more in danger than you were before.” His voice lowered. “I think it’s possible that you’re in so deep now that even if you went to Maine you’d still be in danger.”

  Samantha turned away, looked out the window, and took a deep breath.

  Thirty minutes later they were in Mike’s house, and he had the hatbox on the breakfast table. Sam had insisted upon ordering dinner before they opened the box, and Mike had reluctantly agreed. Had she tried, Samantha wouldn’t have been able to explain her reluctance to open the box. She knew it was full of her grandmother’s possessions, and in other circumstances, she would have been curious to see what was in it, but she wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to see the contents of this box. Pandora’s box full of the world’s evils. Somehow, she was sure if they opened this box, they would start something that would have to be played through to the end.

  When Mike reached out to pull the lid off the box. Samantha put her hand on the top.

  Watching her. Mike waited while she took a few deep, calming, breaths. After a while, she nodded and stepped back, holding her breath while Mike lifted the lid.

  Standing over it, he peered down into it, a frown on his face, until Samantha, curious, stepped forward. “What is it?” she whispered.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said, his voice sounding apprehensive.

  “What?” Stepping close to him, she looked down into the box. When Mike grabbed her arms and said, “Gotcha!” she jumped two feet. Her hand to her heart, her face red, she hit him on the shoulder. “You!”

  Laughing, Mike reached into the box. “I don’t know what you’re afraid of, it’s just an old dress.” He pulled out a red silk dress and handed it to her.

  At first Samantha didn’t want to touch the dress, but when Mike moved his hand, she saw something sparkle. Taking the dress from him, she slowly let it unfold, holding it up by the shoulders to look at it. “Lanvin,” she whispered in awe, reading the label at the back of the neck, speaking in reverence of the Paris couturier’s name.

  It was a beautiful dress, red moiré with a fitted bodice, narrow shoulder straps, and a heavenly draped bias-cut skirt that was hemmed to midcalf in front with a bit of a train in back. On the right side of the waist was a sunburst design done in diamanté.

  “Looks like you got over your fear,” Mike said sarcastically, but she ignored him as she looked at the dress, admired the way it flowed when she moved it.

  Mike took a pair of shoes from the box. They had been made to match the dress: red moiré T-straps with diamanté running down the vertical strap and Louis heels. Samantha knew the moment she saw them that they were exactly her size.

  “Look at this.” Mike handed her a small box covered in blue velvet. Resting on the velvet inside were a pair of earrings, but not just any earrings: These were long and pear shaped, diamonds from the earlobe to the base, with three large pearls hanging off the bottom edge.

  Mike gave a low whistle.

  “Doc’s earrings,” Samantha whispered. “The ones he said he gave Maxie the night she disappeared.”

  Mike pulled underwear from the box: a peach silk crepe de Chine bra trimmed with delicate ecru lace and matching panties. A tiny sexy garter belt and flesh-colored silk hose were folded together.

  In the very bottom of the hatbox were tossed a long string of pearls and two diamond bracelets. Holding the bracelets to the light, Mike examined them. “I’m not a jeweler, but it’s my guess that those are real,” he said as he handed them to Sam, then ran the pearls across the back of his fingernail. Rough enough to use for emery boards, a roughness found only in genuine pearls.

  “Real?”

  “Absolutely,” he said, adding the pearls to the pile on the table.

  Samantha put the bracelets down, and the two of them looked at the articles on the table: the red evening gown, the matching shoes, the fabulous earrings, the bracelets, the necklace, and the underwear. It was obviously everything a woman had been wearing from the skin out on a night in 1928.

  “If these things were in your father’s possession,” Mike said, “it removes any doubt that your grandmother was Maxie.”

  “Yes,” was all Samantha could answer, but she didn’t have to make another comment because the doorbell rang and the food arrived. They sat at one end of the table eating, not saying much as they looked at the pile of clothes and jewels draped across the
other end of the table.

  Both their minds were on that night in 1928 when, for whatever reason, a young woman, clad in silk and diamonds, had walked out of a bloodbath and not been seen again. Pregnant, she’d traveled to Louisville, Kentucky, and three days later had married a man who could not have children. She stayed with her husband, bore a child, had seemed to be happy, then in 1964 she had once again disappeared.

  “Mike,” Sam said, “wouldn’t you like to know what happened that night? Wouldn’t you really, truly like to know?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I really would.”

  “Doc said Maxie’s baby was his, but Abby says Maxie loved Michael Ransome.”

  “I’d put money on Uncle Mike. I can’t see Doc sharing even sperm with someone.”

  “Mike!” she said, not liking his crudity. “Maybe he did love her. She could have been Doc’s mistress but in love with Michael Ransome too. Maybe she loved both of them.”

  Mike didn’t answer as he was looking at the dress, at the way it was reflecting the light. “Did you see the stain on the dress?”

  “Yes,” Samantha said quietly, looking down at her plate of food. She’d seen the stain and instinctively knew what the discoloration was.

  Leaving the table, Mike picked the dress up and held it to the light. “It’s blood, isn’t it? It looks like someone tried to wash it out, but you can’t remove blood.”

  “No, at least not that much blood.”

  “Wonder whose it is?”

  “From your accounts of the massacre, it could belong to any of several people.”

  Mike kept looking at the gown under the floor lamp. “Doc said Maxie was in the back of the club when Scalpini’s men opened fire and she didn’t come out again. If that’s true, it couldn’t be Uncle Mike’s blood; he never left the dance floor. He was shot there and stayed there until the medics took him away. And, according to Doc, he was in the john most of the time.” Mike looked up at Samantha. “I’m going to send this to Blair and have her have it analyzed. If we get a type on this blood, maybe we can match it with hospital records of the people who were shot that night.”

  Samantha got up and took the dress from him. “Will they cut the dress up?” she asked sadly.

  Mike wanted to point out that she’d had the box for months and not opened it, had even seen the dress and not cared enough to take it out and look at it. Now she looked like a child whose teddy bear was being donated to charity, but he didn’t point that out to her.

  “Naw, they won’t hurt it, but I don’t think we should let it out of our sight until we’ve made a record of it.”

  “Record? Oh, you mean photograph it. I guess I can hold it up for you, or we could tape it to the wall.”

  “That won’t work,” he said, frowning, as though trying to figure out a solution. “I know. Why don’t you put it on? Would you mind? The whole outfit looks as though it might fit you.”

  A couple of hours ago the idea of looking inside an old box had repulsed Samantha. She wouldn’t have been able to think of anything she’d like to do less than rummage through old clothes. Except maybe put on a blood-stained dress.

  Then again, thinking of musty old clothes stained with blood was one thing and being presented with Paris couture and diamonds and pearls was something else again. She touched the lace on the peach-colored underwear. “Do you think it would help you with your biography if I put the clothes on?”

  Mike had to put his hand over his mouth to hide his smile. “It would be a personal favor to me if you’d wear them. Just for a few minutes. Why don’t you go put them on while I get the camera? I’ll have to set it up on a tripod so take your time.”

  He hadn’t finished speaking before Sam gathered the clothes in her arms, put everything back into the box, and headed for the bedroom.

  Once in the bedroom she hurriedly stripped off her own clothes and put on Maxie’s bra and panties. The silk against her skin seemed to change her. Standing up a little straighter, she pulled her stomach in a little tighter and tilted her chin up, then moved just a bit to feel the silk slither against her skin. When she’d first come to New York, during the time she stayed alone in her room, she had listened to her father’s music, the old blues singers. Now, standing in Maxie’s underwear, she began to hum an old Bessie Smith song.

  The garter belt came next; propping her foot on a chair, she rolled the silk hose ever so slowly up her legs. When one leg was silk clad, she stretched it out, adjusting the seam down the back. After opening the door to Mike’s closet, she moved the chair before the full-length mirror and watched herself slide the second stocking up her leg. Peach silk bra, loose-legged panties, silk hose, bare thigh between silk and silk.

  What was it about a garter belt and hose that was so incredibly sexy? she wondered, straightening, turning this way and that to look at herself and liking what she saw. Panty hose that encased a woman in nylon from waist to toes didn’t feel sexy; they made a woman feel as though she were a sausage encased in a wrapping. But with several inches of bare thigh above the silk, she felt seductive, alluring, as though she were a vampy singer in a Harlem nightclub and handsome young men were coming to hear her sing.

  In the bathroom she looked at herself in the mirror, seeing that her face was too clean, too much the young-lady-I-met-in-church, and her hair was too modern, too fluffy with hair spray.

  Turning on the tap, she wet a comb and ran it through her hair, and once she began, she couldn’t stop. Parting her hair on the left side, she wet it thoroughly and plastered it to her head, forming stylized curls in front of her ears, then, to make sure her hair stayed in place, she coated it with spray. She used her darkest eye pencil to heavily outline her eyes, then drew a sharp line through her brows, strongly emphasizing them. With a lip pencil she managed to make her lips sharply pointed on top, as she’d seen in pictures of Clara Bow.

  Stepping back from the mirror, she studied herself and nodded. She could almost imagine herself as Maxie, getting ready to go on stage—and her lover and the man who bought her diamonds were both waiting for her.

  When she slipped the dress over her head, the silk slid over her skin, and she wriggled to make it fall into place. For a moment she stared at herself in the mirror. “Maxie,” she whispered, seeing not herself, but another woman, a woman who was sure that she was of interest to men. When she buckled on the shoes, she tossed her foot onto the countertop then ran her hand up her leg.

  “Sam!” Mike yelled. “Aren’t you ready yet?”

  “Keep your shirt on, buster, this baby’s worth the wait,” she yelled through the door. She fastened Doc’s earrings on her ears, slipped the diamonds on her wrists, then wrapped the pearls twice about her neck.

  As she was about to leave the bedroom, she glanced at a couple of Balinese puppets Mike had on the top of the dresser, noticing the foot-long carved stick attached to the hand of one puppet. Carefully, she unscrewed the stick, then used the little brush in a bottle of Mike’s white typewriter correction fluid that he’d carelessly left in the bedroom to paint four inches of the end of the stick. When she was finished, she had what was a good facsimile of a cigarette holder complete with fake cigarette. Putting it to her carmined, bee-stung lips, she opened the door enough to tell Mike to turn out all the lights except for the single floor lamp and had to ignore his country-boy cry of “Alll riiiight.”

  When she left the bedroom she was no longer the innocent, respectable Samantha, but Maxie, a singer who had men fighting each other to have her.

  When Mike saw her slinking down the stairs, he gave a low whistle—and completely forgot about taking a photograph. The Samantha he knew, his Samantha, didn’t walk the way this woman was walking with her hips pushed forward and her body undulating in seductive movements as she made her way toward him, the diamonds in her ears and on her wrists sparkling. This woman was as different from the woman he knew as Daphne was from an Indiana housewife. Mike found himself backing away from her, for this woman was a bit intimidati
ng; she made him feel as though he should be wearing a tux and offering her gifts that came in long black velvet boxes. When Samantha put the fake cigarette holder to her newly shaped lips, Mike sat down on one of the chairs by the breakfast table and watched this woman who he felt that he’d never seen before.

  When Sam was a few feet in front of Mike, she began to sing an old blues song she’d heard Bessie Smith sing.

  Bad luck has come to stay

  Trouble never ends

  My man has gone away

  With a girl I thought was my friend

  Many people seem to think that an ability to sing the blues comes from skin color, but it comes from having experienced misery in life—and Samantha had had more than enough heartache and sadness in her short life to be able to sing the blues as well as any other person on earth. Her voice, albeit untrained, was strong from inherited talent, and it was filled with emotion.

  Lordy can’t you hear my prayers

  Lady Luck, Lady Luck, won’t you please smile down on me

  There’s a time, friend of mine

  I need your silver feet

  Mike watched her and she made him feel the words she was singing, made him feel the sorrow of a woman whose man had been stolen by another woman. She was saying the words as only someone who had experienced the emotion could sing them; she sang them the way they were meant to be sung, the way they had been written. It wasn’t as though she were a modern folk singer enraptured with the cute songs the blacks used to sing and trying to imitate them for an audience of WASPs. Samantha was the type of woman for whom the song had been written and she sang it with her heart as much as with her voice.

  I’ve got his picture turned upside down

  I’ve sprinkled slough-foot dust all around

  Since my man is gone I’m all confused

  I’ve got those Lady Luck Blues

  The mournful song was short. When Samantha finished, all Mike could do was stare at her, blinking in confusion, feeling that he was looking at a stranger in a slinky red dress that slithered over her curves.