Chapter Sixteen
Clementine slipped off her gown and hung it in the wardrobe, exchanging it for a silk nightgown dyed the color of sapphires. Kitty was in the bathroom tying her hair up in rag curls, Rita was inspecting her eyebrows, and Lola was smelling each of Clementine’s perfumes.
“Mmm,” Lola said. “This one reminds me of Howelsen Hill.”
“I didn’t know you went to Colorado,” Kitty said, tightening a knot near her scalp.
“Just a few months back, on New Year’s.” She giggled. “Johnny took me as his ski bunny.”
“I love Colorado,” Rita agreed, arching a brow and plucking a stray one with tweezers. “Clem, you love Colorado, don’t you?”
Clementine came into the bathroom and joined them, slipping a sheer lace robe over her nightgown.
“I’ve never been,” she admitted.
She had always wanted to go. She had grown up barefoot in mud, making crowns and jewelry out of violets.
When she was a child, she’d had buck teeth and they were poor and boys called her Mudspackle because of her freckles.
She’d watched the silent movies once a year with stars in her eyes.
When she was a girl growing up in Florida, she had never seen snow before, and all she wanted to do was learn how to ski.
She had imagined that it might be the closest one might feel to flying.
Now skiing was becoming all the rage and she had researched lodges, selecting the one with the views of the Rockies, hot springs, and five-star cuisine.
She had even purchased snow boots with fur trim back when she and Truman were planning to travel, but they had to keep a lower profile now that he was considering the run for office.
She had tried not to pout when he told her.
“So, Clem, what happens when the wife comes?” Lola lowered her voice deliciously. “Do you have to leave?”
Clementine smiled thinly, pinning her golden hair back from her face.
She did. It was infuriating to be escorted out according to Mabel’s whims and schedule.
Mabel didn’t come often—maybe once every six months to a year—but she made sure to plan it for the most inconvenient times.
She had decided she was coming for Christmas last year, and gave only a week’s notice, so that Clementine ended up spending Christmas at a hotel alone, drinking too much champagne and eating chocolates wrapped in gold foil.
She had listened to festive music on the wireless, wandered through the lobby’s elaborate display of gingerbread houses near midnight, and thought of her mother at home in Florida.
Rita had dropped by her suite for a few hours to dress and gossip, but then she had left for her own date. So Clementine had ordered herself the most expensive filet mignon, put it on Truman’s tab, and then fed half of it to her schnauzer, Snick.
It was the first time since she was a girl that she had ever felt trapped.
She petted Snick now and joined the line of starlets at the mirror, slathering on face masks made from sea kelp.
They peered out the slats of the Astral Bedroom, spying on the men.
“Good to be away from those old fuddy-duddies for a bit,” Clem declared.
She brought out her nail lacquers and, beneath it, a bindle of cocaine. “Let’s have a little fun.”
She let her sheer bathrobe fall open so that the massive diamond and ruby necklace Truman had given her sparkled, without being crass enough to draw attention to it.
Cora reached for the worry stone in her pocket as she approached Daisy in the warm, dusky night.
“You all right?” she whispered. The men had been served and satiated and were playing cards, their low laughter hanging in the heat of the night.
Daisy hastily wiped her nose. “Aces,” she said briskly. “Nothing I haven’t met before, anyway,” she said. She shrugged, but it looked more like a shudder. “Or you either.”
Cora took her arm, and they crouched down behind the eucalyptus. “Macready will come looking for us soon,” Daisy said, searching her pockets for a cigarette.
“So, let her,” Cora muttered, watching the way that Daisy’s hands still trembled.
She took the matchbook from Daisy and lit the final match, touching it to the end of Daisy’s cigarette and her own.
She breathed the tobacco deep into her lungs, almost feeling it crackle, and they crouched there at the edges of the party, breathing in the nicotine and the scent of eucalyptus.
They were silent for a long moment.
“I need the money from this job,” Daisy finally said. She swallowed hard. “No matter what.”
Cora met her eyes and understood all that she was not saying. She nodded, feeling her throat tighten.
“Do you ever wonder if we could do something to change all this?” Daisy asked. “Or not all of it—not even close, really. But do something to make things better? More just?”
Cora looked at her carefully. “What do you mean, Daisy?”
Daisy shook her head. “Never mind.” She blew out a breath and forced a laugh. “Wasn’t expecting your Mr. Conner to be a knight in shining armor.”
“Me neither,” Cora said.
But was that true?
For a moment, she thought of the day the Gasper had spoken to her through the fence. She shivered.
“Maybe he’s changed,” Daisy said. “From when you knew him before.”
Cora was quiet. “Maybe,” she said.
Daisy blew the smoke out thoughtfully. “Hoo, but he is handsome, ain’t he?” She sneaked a smile at Cora, exhaling wisps of smoke from her nose. “He looks good, togged to the bricks like that. Cleans up real nice.”
Cora shrugged and looked away. “Can’t say I noticed, really,” she said.
Daisy shot her a sidelong glance and snorted. “Hope you never have to lie for a living, Ella,” she said with a small push, “’cause you sure ain’t much for it.”
Cora laughed and flipped her the bird.
Daisy flipped her one back.
They were just finishing their cigarettes when Jack ducked between the branches of the oak tree.
Daisy rushed to her feet and stamped out her cigarette.
“Oh, don’t get up for me,” he said. He crouched down next to where Cora was sitting.
“Just wanted to let you know that I spoke to Mr. Byrd, and our resident lecher is being demoted to a bungalow further down the hill,” he said.
He shifted, reaching into his pocket for his own cigarette case, and his knee brushed against Cora’s.
She felt a troubling zing, and quickly moved away.
“If he doesn’t take the hint,” Jack continued, apparently without noticing, “he’ll be moved again until he’s sharing some sod with the lovely zebras. ” He offered Daisy a fresh cigarette.
“Thank you,” Daisy said, and even though she was kneeling, still managed a dip of a curtsy. She took the cigarette he held out between her long, delicate fingers. “That was kind of you.”
“Well, I suggested castration. But I was overruled.”
Daisy smiled a little. “Got a light?” she asked shyly.
“I do,” Jack said.
He reached into his pocket and took out the Dunes matchbook that Cora had stolen from him and then given back.
He carefully turned the cover over. Met her eyes.
When the match flared, she saw words scrawled across the back of it.
1:00 a.m., he’d written.
The Grotto.
“Take care,” he said to Daisy.
Then he stood and sauntered into the night.
Byrd’s bedroom light flickered off at a quarter past twelve, and then Clementine’s a short time later.
When Cora delivered a late-night pot of chamomile tea smelling of amber honey, two other starlets were asleep in the bed with Clem.
Cora softly closed the door behind her. There was not going to be anything meaningful to catch for Mabel tonight.
With a sinking disappointment, she returned to her own room.
At seven minutes to one o’clock, she pulled on her coat and slipped her camera into one pocket and her gun into the other.
She wondered how Jack even knew about the grotto, which was a fountain cleverly tucked beneath the farthest garden terrace in a wall of ivy.
Part of her hoped he wouldn’t show. Her feelings about him—about what she could believe to be true—were thorny and knotted.
She had to pick through them carefully. Perhaps she was walking into a trap all over again, one she was setting for herself.
She made her way down the path through the descending gardens, alert for guards.
The air was thick with wet soil, blooming dahlias, and lavender hydrangea.
Kitty was playing cards with Governor Gilham at a small table on the esplanade, and Cora could hear the distant, tinkling sound of her laugh.
Someone was already there, standing in the shadows, when she reached the overarching willow boughs. She pulled the hanging strands apart and felt a hitch in her stomach at the sight of Jack.
As the willow strands fell back into place, they almost formed a private room. She was careful to let the handle of her gun show.
“Have you come to shoot me, then?” Jack asked. He raised his hands in half-surrender, his fingers long and thin. There was a dark twinkle in his eye.
“I haven’t decided yet,” she said.
For a moment, she saw the flash of her father’s face in her mind. The troubled look as he spoke to her mother in hushed voices in their bedroom. The door had been left open a crack, luring Cora toward it like a moth drawn to flame.
“Influenza’s sweeping through,” he had said. “A third of the guards are down tonight. We’re trying to get backup, but I don’t think they’ll come in time.”
“What are you going to do?” Cora’s mother had asked quietly.
“Go in shifts. But there simply aren’t enough of us. I’m going to have to leave the south side almost blind until—”
He’d looked up and caught Cora standing just outside the door, eavesdropping.
He’d stopped speaking.
Stood up. Walked slowly to the door.
And closed it in her face.
Cora ignored the fresh stab of guilt she felt at the memory.
“I was just standing here, wondering how long it took you to recognize me,” Jack said.