Siren Queen(18)

The study was a mess of broken glass and upended drawers. Jacko stood in the middle of it like a man whose house had blown away. He turned a furious baleful gaze to me, and in that moment, queen’s consort or not, he might have strangled me.

“You don’t know my name yet,” I said quickly. “But you know Jenny Lynn Steel, don’t you?”

He reared back as if I had thrust a burning brand at him. I had always thought him pale, but now he went pasty, the red blood under his skin drained away.

“What the hell do you know about Jenny Lynn Steel?”

“I know that she should have been the next Josephine Beaufort, and that Oberlin Wolfe doesn’t know why she’s not. I know that she’s still living in Pescadero with her parents. I know that they’re happy when she talks or looks around or gets out of bed, but that those days are getting fewer. I know that you had pictures of her in your desk. Special pictures. Ones that you couldn’t stop yourself from taking, could you?”

“I never took any of you,” he said defensively, and I almost laughed.

“Because I’m not tiny, pretty, and blond. It doesn’t matter, does it? I’m lucky because I don’t get your motor running. You’re lucky because Oberlin Wolfe never has to see those pictures at all.”

His face took on an angry sneer.

“Of course you’ve got a price.”

“Of course I do,” I agreed stonily. “I want to see Oberlin Wolfe after Halloween. Not as your discovery. Not as your ticket, not as your goddamn mare. Tell me, what were you going to say when you realized that I wasn’t going to marry you?”

I saw Jacko’s mouth drop open, and then he closed it again with a snap. He looked like a man carved out of rock, like a mountain ready to fall.

“You would have,” he said, his voice flat. “One way or another, you would have. Christ, who have you been talking to?”

“Doesn’t matter. I won’t have you, and because you planned all of this without letting me in on a word of it, and because I have your life in an envelope, you’re going to get me an appointment with Oberlin Wolfe. Then you are going to stay the hell away from me.”

There was a long moment where I could tell that Jacko was measuring the distance between his hands and my neck.

“November third,” Jacko said finally. “Eight A.M. I’ll send a car for you, and you’ll give those pictures to the chauffeur. Believe me when I say I don’t want to see you again, either.”

“I’m burning those pictures, and I’ll send you the ashes,” I said. “Trust me.”

“I don’t have a choice, and you know it.”

Jacko glowered at me, dangerous even if brought to bay. I would have to spend the rest of my life watching out for him, Mrs. Wiley said, or at least, the rest of his life. That was fine.

My back could feel a dozen needles from his gaze as I walked to the door, and then once I was out of sight, I headed west, back towards Hungarian Hill.





IX


My mother and father had gone to bed hours earlier. As I entered the apartment, the doll ghosts whisked around me balefully, angry as always when I disturbed the peace of the house. I ignored them.

Luli beat me home, waiting for me by the single orange bulb burning in the kitchen. Beside her sat an envelope filled with photographs. The envelope was closed, but I knew as well as I knew the lines in my own palm that Luli had looked at the pictures inside. I pulled them out anyway, fanning the half dozen shots like a poker hand on the table.

Jenny Lynn Steel, the Sweetheart of Anaheim. She gleamed on the black-and-white prints like starlight. There was something in her wide dark eyes that could stop an army, but the sweet curve of her mouth said she was all for you. Jacko’s obsession with her seeped into the shots he had taken, the cruel magic he had worked. How easy it must have been, because he had found her just as he had found me, nursed her on small roles and promised she would be a queen.

The camera took all of that from her, some of the shots perfectly clothed, and some nude. Clothed she was shy; nude, there was a desperate bravery in her eyes, and so he took that too. Those photographs took the shine out of her, and now what was left was a woman in bed in Pescadero, wondering what had carved such a hollow inside her.

I made a strangled noise and swept the pictures back into the envelope, shaking as I did so. I didn’t want to touch them one minute longer than I had to, and I shoved them into the space between the stove hood and the brick wall behind it. Luli watched me, and I could see a hint of relief that I was as disturbed by the photographs as she had been. We weren’t going to speak of it, and I was grateful.

“Well?” she asked instead.

“It worked,” I said, kicking off my heels. My feet ached and felt swollen twice their usual size even from that short walk. Mrs. Wiley had said that her famous feet were ugly from years and years of dance, and that night I thought I could see how it started.

“You still need to give me the fare I spent on the streetcar,” Luli reminded me, and I groaned.

“Get it out of my purse,” I said, and when she made no move at all, I hobbled up and pulled out the money myself. Luli counted the coins up carefully, rude in China and California, before stowing them in her pocket.

Luli had grown as well as I had, but no one could say that we had grown into anything alike. She decided that my father’s shifted eye was more a blessing than neglect, and she helped out at the laundry as little as I did.