Chapter Thirty-Four
Jack unlocked his door, opened it, and came face to face with Cora. A smile filled his mouth, his entire face.
He wouldn’t think about what came after tomorrow.
He felt almost deliciously drunk.
In one motion, he pulled her into the safety of his room and closed the door behind them.
“Found anything yet?” she asked hazily, pulling at the collar of his shirt.
“No,” he said. “You?”
She flashed him a delighted, mischievous smile.
“What is it?” he asked, his pulse taking off in a gallop.
“There’s a safe,” she said. “Big enough to be a vault, even.”
“Where?”
“Behind a tapestry in Truman’s bedroom.”
His heart stopped. “How do you get into it?”
“There’s a code. Four letters.”
“Did you crack it?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t have much time. I tried B-Y-R-D, of course. And B-I-R-D.”
“Damn. I suppose he wouldn’t make it that obvious.”
“We should make a list of every four-lettered type of bird we can think of,” Cora said. “And tonight you’ll have to find a time to slip away, when everyone else is distracted.”
“Truman said there would be fireworks,” Jack said. He winced. “Though I do get the sense that Dallas Winston suspects something is up. It’s going to be hard to shake him.”
Cora inhaled deeply. “I have a feeling that a prime opportunity will present itself to us tonight.”
He looked at her. “The fireworks?”
“Of a sort,” she said. “Mabel Byrd is coming.”
“Here?” Jack felt the blood drain from his face.
“Tonight. She’s on her way right now. Truman has no idea.”
Jack closed his eyes.
“What?” Cora whispered. She touched his face gingerly. “Jack, what is it?”
He shook his head. “Mabel is the one Truman sent to cover the trial,” he said, opening his eyes. “The moment she sees me, I’m done for.”
Mabel Byrd was flying over the swaths of green in Truman’s biplane.
“I’d like to surprise him,” she told the pilot. “I’ll pay you triple to keep this one little flight a secret.”
It was her plane, too, but not for much longer.
She looked out over the hills for what would likely be the last time.
She remembered the first time she had flown to the Enchanted Hill with Truman.
He had purchased the land and wanted to show it to her.
Florence Abrams had met them there and they had hiked the hill together, the three of them standing at the crux of it, between old oak trees, and had looked out at the mountain range.
Truman and Florence could see something she couldn’t as they had dreamed up the house together.
But she had breathed the salt air greedily, sucking it into her lungs after that climb.
“We own land as far as you can see,” Truman had whispered in her ear.
After Florence had gone, they had eaten a picnic lunch under a grove of trees and made love out in the open, because there was no one else for miles.
“Mrs. Byrd,” the pilot said now.
Mabel looked up. Just like the plane, that name wouldn’t be hers for much longer, either. She felt the smallest prick at that. Names were such important, such personal things. She supposed she could keep it, but she would never wear it the same way again.
“We’ll be arriving shortly,” the pilot said, and she nodded brusquely. No use getting sentimental over something like a name—that was exactly the sort of ridiculous thing Truman had always indulged.
But Mabel had thought that any soft, fleshy part of her had hardened over like a shell long ago, and she was surprised to find that anything could get through anymore.
Matias was idling outside the zoo, parked where the road switchbacked and hid itself from the house. The car, a Bentley, had windows tinted like smoke, so that one could only see a faint outline of whoever might be inside.
Cora slid across the supple leather of the back seat.
The chauffeur turned the steering wheel and meandered out onto the road. He glanced at her in the rearview mirror. His brown eyes were unblinking.
“Is Mrs. Byrd paying you double, too, then?” he asked.
Cora stared at the monstrous castle disappearing behind them. The Mexican fan palms rose to heights even above the bell towers, swaying.
“No,” she said simply. She crossed her legs at the ankle and felt the film canister nudge against her breast.
She had no idea what the night would bring.
If Jack would flee before giving Mabel the chance to spot him.
If he would leave her a note with some way for her to reach him—or if not, if they would ever meet again.
She pictured herself waiting with her heart in her throat every time the telephone rang, or the postman came to the door.
Always waiting, hoping, for something that might never come.
But she still had time. She would see this through to the end. It mattered less what the score was between her and Jack; they had helped and wounded each other in a hundred different ways. Now all she wanted to do was set him free.
The airstrip was little more than a mile down the road, a narrow stripe shorn into the emerald grass of a field.
It was set back away from the sea, but Cora could see the foaming waves, the kind that would knit white lace and then pull it back apart, scattering sprays of bubbles like pearls.
Waves in a temper, she used to think when she was a girl. Tantrumming.
Matias parked the car and, without another word, pushed open his door.
He leaned against it and lit a cigarette, watching the speck of a small airplane grow larger as it approached the airfield.
It seemed to wobble in the clear blue sky, but landed and rolled to a sputtering stop on the grass in front of them.
Cora shifted, her heart beating harder. When the engines stopped spinning, the door opened and stairs unfurled.
Mabel appeared in the doorway, looking like an aging starlet, dressed meticulously and draped in a fur.
She had been beautiful once, and still was from a distance.
But as she neared, the illusion fell away.
Her sunglasses barely concealed her hollow cheeks and pale, papery skin.
Cora knew that the woman wasn’t that old—perhaps only in her late forties—and that while money couldn’t buy youth, it usually had the power to make it at least appear more elastic.
But Mabel seemed aged even from their meeting six months ago, brittle and bitter, her perfume masking something that would make one recoil.
When Matias opened the door for her, Cora noticed she was still wearing her wedding ring.
Matias loaded Mabel’s bags into the trunk and slammed it shut. Mabel raised a manicured eyebrow at Cora and slid off her sunglasses. Her eyes were slightly bloodshot, but the diamonds distracted from that, hanging heavily from her drooping earlobes.
“Miss McCavanagh,” she said in greeting.
“Hello, Mrs. Byrd,” Cora said.
“Matias,” Mabel purred as the chauffeur returned to the car and started the engine. “Has anyone made Truman aware that I’m coming?”
“No, Ma’am,” Matias said. “No one knows of your arrival but the people in this automobile.”
“Good,” Mabel said, settling back into her seat. She let the fur drop behind her. “I’m hoping for the element of surprise. And I’m not planning on staying long.”
There was a nervous excitement to her that had been absent at their first meeting. A joyful anticipation, Cora would have said, except that nothing about it was joyful.
“I had my doubts about you,” Mabel said, eyeing Cora.
“I know,” Cora said.
“Well?” Mabel asked, practically trembling. She peeled off her gloves, watching Cora with glittering eyes.
Cora placed a manila envelope into her hand.
Mabel opened the envelope’s clasp and removed the contact prints, unwrapping the sheet like a delicate present. Cora had expected revulsion or hurt at what the images contained, but perhaps that had shriveled and become something else a long time ago.
Now there was just delight.
Mabel examined the contact print with a magnifying glass. “Well done, Miss McCavanagh.”
“Those are merely contact prints,” Cora said. “Evidence to prove that I have what I promised. The quality isn’t good enough to run large-scale in a newspaper. I have the negatives, which I will hold as collateral until we’ve exchanged payment.”
Matias’s eyes flicked to the mirror, then back to the road.
“Here’s half of what we agreed upon,” Mabel said.
She dipped into her handbag for her billfold and counted out a thick wad of bills, which she placed into Cora’s hand.
Cora could have sighed at the weight of them.
“I’ll wire you the rest to an account of your choice upon receipt of the negatives.
” Mabel folded the contact sheet away in her pocketbook.
Cora wrote out a bank number and then handed over the film canister.
Mabel looked inside, sealed it shut, and breathed a sigh of relief. One single set of prints meant a fortune for both of them. The door to Cora’s future swung open. And Jack had been behind it all.
“You’ll be grateful to know that I’ve already secured you another opportunity,” Mabel said.
The car turned left onto the road that led to Enchanted Hill, and the house came into sight for the first time.
Mabel glanced up at it, expressionless. Her breath was faintly stale with cigarettes.
“My good friend Trudy will be in touch. You can expect a payday like no other. You just made your life.”
“Mrs. Byrd,” Matias said, glancing over his shoulder from the front seat, “were you expecting company?”
Cora turned, her stomach flipping a little. A strange car had turned left off the main road and was following them up the hill.
“I’ve arranged for a few members of the press to be my personal guests tonight.” Mabel smiled down at her hands as she rolled her gloves back on.
“Truman’s press?” Cora asked.
“No,” she said. “His rivals.”
Cora hesitated. “Are you certain you want to do this in person?” she asked. “You could run the images in the papers tomorrow. Catch Mr. Byrd off-guard from a … safer distance away.”
The corners of Mabel’s mouth creased downward. She opened up a compact and reapplied her lipstick, a deep wine red. “As I recall, he likes fireworks on the final night of his parties,” she said. “But I’m guessing those will be nothing in comparison.”
The automobiles were coming to a stop in front of the tinted glass of the guardhouse. Matias was rolling down the window, and the security guard leaned his head into the car. Cora tilted her face away, hoping he would merely assume that she was Mabel’s personal maid.
“Mrs. Byrd,” he said, with unmasked surprise. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“No one was,” she said, giving him a coy smile. “I do hope you’ll keep my secret a little longer.” She gestured behind her. “And for the guests coming up in the second car. We have a big surprise planned for Truman.”
The security guard’s smile was like plaster.
He hesitated. “I’m under strict instructions to clear any unexpected arrivals with Mr. Winston,” he said.
She laughed. “Are you suggesting I need permission to enter my own house?” she asked. There was an unmistakable edge of warning to it.
He wavered, and then relented. “Of course not. Come right in, ma’am,” he said.
He gestured the car forward.
“Aren’t you at all concerned about how he will react?” Cora asked.
“His temper, you mean? No.” Mabel snapped her compact shut.
“He can’t afford to get out of control in front of his esteemed guests.
” She spoke faster, her excitement revealing a Brooklyn accent that Cora guessed had taken years of practice to erase.
“I know he’s been on the lookout for an assassin, but I’m better armed with a camera than a gun. That’s why tonight is perfect.”
The butlers began to retrieve the luggage from the car’s trunk, and Mabel glanced back at the men disembarking from the second car. “If you’re going to sell the world a story, better make sure it’s the version you want told.”
Mabel smiled and picked up her handbag with the contact sheets and negatives inside. She replaced her sunglasses. “Be careful tonight,” she said, throwing open the door. “It wouldn’t be wise, Miss McCavanagh, to ever let him know you were part of this.”
Jack stood in front of the mirror and dressed for dinner.
He pulled his white necktie tight.
Then he packed his suitcase, ready to make a quick exit that night. If it came to that.
He hoped it would.
He tugged on his pristine white jacket.
Then he opened the chamber of Cora’s gun and looked at the bullets.