She studies me and asks, “You do know, don't you?”
I look at Marissa and can tell by her expression that she's figured it out, too, and that she doesn't think it's such a hot idea to fill my mother in on it, either. But I take a deep breath and say, “Maybe you should sit down….”
“Don't be ridiculous, Samantha. Tell me!”
I hesitate, then try, “Max doesn't have everything, you know.”
I hold my breath, but no lightbulb appears over my mother's head. “Samantha! Just tell me, would you?”
I shake my head and whisper, “Does the word heir mean anything to you?”
SEVEN
She should've sat down. Instead, she blinked at me for maybe eight seconds, then fainted. Just crumpled to the floor like she was a marionette and someone had cut her strings.
And maybe I should've been sympathetic, but to tell you the truth, I thought it was stupid. It was so…so… Hollywood. And if you ask me, it was bad manners, too. Way worse than passing gas or bleeding. I mean, if you cut the cheese, you get some air moving or light a few matches. It's no big deal. If you cut yourself, well, you just apply pressure and a bandage and try not to drip on anything. But if you faint? There you are like a big ol' blob of Jell-O, sprawled out on the floor with a stupid look on your face and the flaps of your robe hanging wide open. And then people have got to attend to you. You know, make sure you're breathing, fix your clothes, get you up on a couch, and try to revive you. It's a lot of work and worry, and for what? Give me a bleeder with a belly full of beans any day of the week.
Anyway, we did get my mother up on the couch, and just as I was fixing her robe, who walks in?
Max.
He's traded in his robe and slippers for a sports coat, some slacks, and loafers, and he must have put on a second coat of aftershave, because right away I feel like I'm going to sneeze. He takes one look at my mother and says, “What happened here?”
I fight back the tickle in my nose as I say, “She fainted.”
He sighs and says, “This whole ordeal has been so draining.” Then he sits beside her on the couch and rubs her hand, saying, “Dominique … Dominique!”
It's obvious that he's not seeing the hundred pounds of stubborn Jell-O Marissa and I have just wrestled up onto the couch. What he's seeing is Dominique Windsor, love of his life, and the look on his face is making me sick. He's like a big old bug-eyed fly hovering over my mother, and I'm just itching to swat him away. So I say, “Don't you have some smelling salts or cold water or something around here?”
He gets up and smiles at me like I'm a genius. “Better yet,” he says, pulling up the key from around his neck, “I've got whiskey.”
“Whiskey!” I follow him to an inner office door, saying, “She doesn't need whiskey! She's already passed out!”
He smiles at me again, only it's not a condescending smile or even a mocking one. It's kind. Gentle.
And I hate him for it.
He says, “They use it to revive people all the time.” He slides the key into a heavy-duty Schlage deadbolt, opens his office, then hurries around behind his desk. “I keep it on hand for hospitality reasons—you'd be surprised how many people will accept a drink in the middle of the day.” He sits down in a high-back leather roll-around chair and opens the bottom right drawer of his desk, saying, “It's an unfortunate aspect to this whole industry, I'm afraid. High stakes breed shattered nerves.” He pulls up a dark amber bottle and a shot glass. “Prayer and meditation are much more effective than booze, but I've given up trying to convert the people in this town. The bigger picture is just not within their focal range.”
He's about to close the drawer when suddenly he stops short and starts digging through it. A few seconds later he looks up at me and gasps—like someone's stuck his rear end with a pin. “They're gone!”
Marissa calls from the other room, “She's coming to!”
I look over my shoulder, then back at Max. “What are gone?”
“The Honeymoon Jewels.” He chokes out, “But how can that be?” then dives back into the drawer to paw around some more.
It feels like I really shouldn't be there while he's so upset, but I can't seem to leave either. His office is like some kind of strange chamber. It's a lot smaller than the reception room, and it feels heavy. Dark. Partly that's because there are no windows, but also the furniture is chunky and heavy-looking. And black. Just like the waiting-room door that Hali had let us in through.
But it's the stuff that keeps me from backing out of there. Like, in one corner there's this headless mannequin with skinny white arms, wearing a deep purple cape over a full-length silver dress. Next to the mannequin there's a large chest—like something you'd pull off a pirate ship, only it's painted a brilliant tomato red. Behind the desk there's an ebony harp with a singing angel's head, and alongside it is an antique armoire with a twisting design of inlaid roses.
Then, on the left wall, there's a small black vanity table with a tarnished brass birdcage sitting on it, and beside that is this tapestry, four feet wide, running from the floor almost clear up to the ceiling. It's got six large hieroglyphics woven into it, each surrounded by smaller Egyptian-looking shapes and designs.
Now, maybe this stuff would've looked good if it was split up and put in other rooms with other similarly weird stuff—like that tapestry would've fit just fine out in Little Egypt—but all of it crammed together made me feel like I was in an attic instead of an office.
Then I remembered what my mother had said about Max's office being a shrine to his wife. And as I looked around, I realized that this was probably all her stuff. Max had put his massive desk smack-dab in the middle of his little temple to Claire.
In the few seconds it had taken me to check out the room, Max had torn that drawer completely apart. He sits up and says again, “But how can that be?” Then he leans back in his chair, and his whole face—his forehead, his cheeks, his moustache, his ears—crawls back, like some-one's tightening his scalp from behind. “Opal!” he whispers, and suddenly his face becomes flushed, and a new wave of aftershave fills the air.
Serious storm clouds are forming behind that man's boxy glasses, and I'm not carrying an umbrella, if you know what I mean. So I inch my way toward the door while he pours himself a shot of whiskey and downs it.
Marissa comes up to me carrying a cup from the tray that Hali had brought in, and says, “She's fine. I'm going to get her a glass of water. I'll be right back.”
I sit down next to my mom and say, “There's no way you can marry that guy.”
She says, “Shh!” then whispers, “What's he doing in there?”
“He's doing shots.”
“What?”
“Well, he went to get some whiskey to revive you, but then he noticed that some jewels are missing, so he decided to drink it himself.”
“Some jewels are missing? What jewels?”
“I don't know. He called them the Honeymoon Jewels.”
“Honeymoon jewels?”
“Yeah. I think he thinks Opal stole them.”
“Opal? How could she …?”
“I don't know!” I whisper, checking over my shoulder. “What I do know is that if all that stuff was Claire's, then Lover Boy in there is crazy.”
My mother looks down.
“Well is it?”
Very quietly she says, “That's what I've been told.”
“Doesn't that kind of freak you out?”
She shrugs. “He loved her. Completely. It's actually very romantic.”
“It's weird is what it is!”
Just then Max pokes his head out, and he doesn't even acknowledge that my mother has come to. He just says, “If Inga doesn't come down in a few minutes, you're free to go,” and closes the door.
“Free to go?” my mother says. “I don't like the way that sounded!”
Just then Marissa comes in with a cup of water, saying, “I passed by the dining room. Everyone's in there eating, and it smelled so go
od. God, I'm starved.”
My mother takes a sip of water and says, “I couldn't eat a bite,” then she adds, “Why don't you drink your cocoa, Marissa, that should help.”
So Marissa and I drink cocoa while my mother has her water, and we're all just sitting in silence, wondering how long a “few minutes” should be. And I'm sort of looking over Max's Walls of Fame when I notice a photo near the center of the wall. The photo's framed just like the rest of the pictures, and it's black-and-white like a lot of them, but it's not a portrait or a magazine cover or a candid with Max chumming up to the star. It's just a nice picture of a woman in a dainty beaded cap propping her face up with one lacy-gloved hand.
What made me put my cocoa down and pulled me up and over to the picture was not wanting to get a closer look at her. It was her neck I wanted to see. She was wearing a lacy blouse with a high collar, a long string of dark beads, and a ring. And half hidden behind her hand was a brooch.
My hand shot into the pocket of my sweatshirt, and there it was, warm and hard, the brooch I'd used to open the door.
I didn't need to pull it out of my pocket to know it was the same piece of jewelry that was peeking out from behind that lacy glove. And I didn't need my mother to tell me that this was Claire or that the brooch in my pocket was part of the Honeymoon Jewels. My brain made those connections like a bear trap snapping shut.
My first impulse was to go up and knock on Max's door and hand it over. I mean, I wasn't guilty of anything. He'd have to believe how I'd found it. But then I remembered how many times adults haven't believed me, and I don't know—something told me that knocking would only get me tangled up tighter in this sticky mess called my mother's life.
So I motioned my mother over and pointed to the photo. “This is Claire, right?”
She nods and takes a sip of water.
I point out the brooch in the photo, then give her a sneak peek at what's in my hand. “What do you want me to do with this?”
At first she gapes at me. Then she grabs the brooch and compares it with the picture. And when she's positive that they're the same, she gives it back to me like it's burned her. “Put it back where you found it. Right now. Go! There's no way you want to be caught with this in your possession.”
“But—”
“They'll find it when they pack up her stuff. Go!”
A “few minutes,” it seemed, were up. Marissa and I scooted out of there and snuck back upstairs to LeBrandi's room. And we were so busy looking over our shoulders as we slipped through the door that we practically had a heart attack when we faced forward and saw Hali standing next to the bed we'd slept in.
She scowls at us, then starts tearing apart the bed.
I catch my breath and say, “What are you doing?”
She pulls up hard on the fitted sheet, lifting the whole mattress a few inches before it flops free. “What I've been doing since I can remember—following orders.” She peels off the sheet, covers and all. Then she throws the ball of bedding on the ground, walks right across the mattress, and starts tearing apart the bed my mother had slept in. “Inga seems to think Dominique will be traumatized for life if she has to sleep in LeBrandi's sheets again, so I've been told to launder these and the ones next door.” She strips the bed and drags the bundles out the door, muttering, “They all get to hang around and gossip about LeBrandi, but can this wait? No. It's got to be done now.”
When she's gone, Marissa shakes her head and says, “I wouldn't want her working for me.”
I check down the hall, then close the door and push in the lock button. “What do you mean?”
“That is one major chip she's got on her shoulder.”
“Yeah, but you know what? She wasn't like that last night. I mean, she had attitude and everything, but she wasn't mad.”
Marissa shrugs. “Yeah, but still—she shouldn't take it out on us.”
I took out the brooch and started buffing away finger-prints with the bottom of my sweatshirt, thinking that even though Hali had seemed mad—especially at my mother—I got the feeling that it really wasn't any of us she was mad at. It was something much deeper. Like overnight she'd become angry at the whole world.
Marissa says, “That's good enough, Sammy. Put it away!”
The pair of socks the brooch had come out of was sitting unrolled on top of the other balls of socks in the drawer. I picked one up, then gathered it down to the toe, thinking that I could pick the brooch up with the sock and not have to touch it again.
Then my thumbs felt something that does not belong in the toe of a sock.
Paper.
So I stopped, looked at Marissa, then pushed the toe end inside out. And onto the dresser fluttered a small scrap of folded paper.
Now, I don't know about fingerprints and paper. And maybe I was being paranoid, but something about the whole situation told me to pull the sleeves of my sweatshirt over my hands and then unfold the scrap. So that's what I did.
77CURIO was all that was written on it.
Marissa whispers, “What's that mean?”
“I don't know. It looks like a license plate number.”
I could hear Hali thumping the mattress around next door, and when she banged against the wall, it reminded me of what I'd heard the night before. I had not imagined it! No way. And wondering what that thumping had been about gave me the shivers. Clear up and down my spine.
I scooted the scrap next to the brooch on the dresser top, then gathered the sock again and pinched them both inside the toe. Marissa whispered, “You sure you want to do this?”
“No, but I'm doing it anyway.” I tucked the socks inside each other, popped them into the dresser, and closed the drawer. “You-know-who told me to, and besides, I just want to get rid of the thing. It's giving me the creeps.”
“So what are we supposed to do now? Go back down there?”
“I guess. I sure don't want to stay in here.”
“Can we maybe go find something to eat?”
“Sure. Let's ask Hali.”
Marissa grabs my arm. “Let's not.”
Now, it's probably not very polite to go up to someone who's busy being mad at the world and ask her for food. It doesn't rank as high as fainting, but it's definitely somewhere in the top twenty. Especially when the person who's mad at the world is sweating away, rolling up bedding and throwing around furniture.
So we just stood in the doorway, watching as she flipped the chair upside down on the desk and then popped the wastepaper basket between the legs of the chair.
When she finally sees us, she says hello with a scowl, then picks a pair of my mother's shoes up off the floor and puts them next to the chair.
I take a step in and ask, “What are you doing?”
“Got orders to vacuum, too.” She eyes me with a smirk. “You here to help?”
I hesitate, then step all the way in. “Sure.”
She stops what she's doing, stares at me for a few seconds, then throws her head back and laughs. Not an oh-you're-so-funny laugh, a hysterical laugh. Like she's on the verge of completely losing it.
Very quietly I say, “I'm serious, Hali. We'll help.” I look over my shoulder. “Won't we, Marissa?”
Marissa says, “Uh…sure,” and steps around a bundle of bedding to join us.
Hali stares at me, then at Marissa, then back at me. “It's Sammy, right?”
“That's right.”
She sighs and says, “God, I'm sorry I've been such a witch. I'm just freaked out about something, and I'm finding it hard to deal.”
“Well, it's pretty easy to see you're mad about something.”
She shakes her head. “I'd like to hang 'em both.”
I took a stab. “Inga and Max?”
She snorts and says, “Yeah, her too.”
Marissa whispers, “What's up with those bandages she wears, anyway?”
Hali takes a rag out of her apron and starts wiping down the dresser. “You go in to get beautiful, you come out looking like a m
onster.”
“What?”
“Her plastic surgery was a disaster. They did some sort of skin peel, but she had a weird reaction to it, so now they're planing off the scars and grafting skin and trying to fix her up with some sort of intense skin rejuvenation program. I haven't actually seen it, but Tammy did, and I know it really freaked her out.”
Now, while Hali's explaining about Inga's cosmetic fiasco, she's buffing the dresser with a dust rag. And while she's talking, little snapshots of the morning start flipping through my brain—LeBrandi, dead in bed; the vial of pills on the dresser behind her; people passing the vial around; Tammy slamming it back on the dresser. And these snapshots keep bringing me back to the dresser.
The dresser.
Slowly a chill comes over me and holds on tight. And all of a sudden it feels like I'm trapped in a walk-in freezer— I'm cold, I'm panicky, and I know I can't get out without crying for help.
“Hali,” I say, but it's no cry at all. It's barely a whisper. “Hali!”
“What?” She stops mid-swipe. “Don't you go fainting on me, girl. What's wrong?”
I sit down on the edge of the mattress and ask, “Was there a glass in here?”
“What?”
“When you were cleaning up—did you find a glass?”
“No.”
I turn to Marissa. “Did you see one this morning?”
Marissa shakes her head.
“Is there a cup, a bottle, anything in the trash can?” Hali checks. “Two Kleenex and a pantyhose wrapper. What are you getting at?”
“What happened to the vial?”
“What vial? Oh, her sleeping pills? I don't know. Maybe the paramedics took it.”
I sat there a minute, trying not to shiver, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew that there was too much wrong here for me not to be right.
Hali puts her hands on her hips and says, “What is up with you, girl?”
I look at her and whisper, “She didn't have water.”
“What?”
“Water. How could she have swallowed all those pills without any water?”
EIGHT