Beautiful Little Fools(84)

She leaned across the bed and kissed me softly on the cheek. Her lips were warm, and they felt like sunshine and my childhood in Louisville, and I wanted Daisy to stay right here with me, forever.

“I’m going to go fix myself up now and go see Jay,” she said. Jay. His name felt so abrasive, so awful, that the rest of her words rushed through my ears, thick and blurry and nonsensical. “… And then we’re going to get ready to go,” she was still talking. “But I’ll write you as soon as we get settled, all right? You’ll come visit us when you get a break from the tour, won’t you, Jordie?”

Jay? Us. The words spun around in my head, making me dizzy, and I closed my eyes to try and understand what was happening. She wasn’t just leaving Tom. She was leaving Tom for Jay. But Jay had just killed a woman last night. She wouldn’t be safe with Jay. She would never be safe again. No matter what Jay would try to do to ruin me for it, I had to stop her now.

“Daise, wait!” I called after her.

But when I opened my eyes, it was too late. She was already gone.





Catherine August 1922

FLUSHING, NY




“A MORGUE IS NO PLACE for a lady,” the portly mustached coroner insisted as I demanded to be let inside.

“I’m not taking no for an answer,” I spat back, my voice shaking through my tears.

I’d been in a deep and gin-soaked sleep when the telephone had rung at six o’clock this morning. Helen had answered it, shaken me awake. “Cath.” Her brown eyes had loomed above me, wide-eyed with fear. “A detective’s on the line for you.”

I’d sat up in bed all at once, the startling revelation that my deepest fear had come to fruition. Had George finally hurt Myrtle so badly that she was in the hospital?

Two hours later, I was at the morgue in Flushing, and Detective Charles was asking me to sit down before he would tell me what was going on. “I don’t want to sit down,” I’d flared at him. “Just tell me what happened. Where’s Myrtle?”

The words dead, car, didn’t stop reverberated senselessly in my head. Mr. Wilson had been too shaken up to call me, he said, and that’s where the detective had stepped in. His words were unexpected. Certainly untrue. “Let me see her,” I’d demanded. “I have to see her.”

And then Detective Charles had led me down the stairs, to the cool, dark basement morgue. The smell of formaldehyde and death turned my stomach, and I’d turned away from him and suddenly started gasping for air, trying not to wretch.

“Here.” The detective kindly handed me a bucket, and I turned away from him to vomit into it. And that’s when the coroner walked out, insisted that I not be allowed inside.

“I’m fine now,” I said firmly. “I’m not taking no for an answer. I have to see my sister.”

Detective Charles looked at me. He was tall, with brown hair peppered with gray. But his face still looked young, and I suspected the gray hairs were more a consequence of his job than his age.

“I haven’t been in myself yet, but I think they got her cleaned up,” Detective Charles was saying now. His voice was calm, even. Perhaps death no longer shocked him, he’d seen it too many times. “But it still won’t be pretty, Miss McCoy.”

I crossed my arms in front of my chest and stepped in front of the door to the morgue, resolute. I wasn’t going anywhere until they let me see Myrtle.

The coroner finally sighed and stepped aside. The thing of it was, I didn’t quite believe that she’d been hit by a car, that she was here, inside this cold, dark horrible place. Perhaps it was all a giant mistake, a ruse. Tom had come to take Myrtle westward after all and she’d faked her death to get George off their trail. And now the true accident was that they’d told me she was dead, brought me down here.

Even as Detective Charles held on gently to my elbow to lead me inside, pointed to the cold metal table in front of me, and I saw a red-haired woman’s body, all but her head covered by a sheet. Even then, I did not believe it. I shook my head. “No,” I said. “It can’t be her. It’s not her.”

Detective Charles let go of my elbow. “I’ll give you some privacy,” he said gently. “But I’ll be just outside if you need anything.”

I nodded and stepped forward, trying to hold my breath. The smell of death hit me so strongly now, I was worried I’d vomit again. And I’d left my bucket outside.

The woman on the table resembled my sister, only a little. Her similarly colored red hair was matted with blood. When I stepped even closer, I saw a part of her left cheek was missing. I shuddered a little, closed my eyes for a moment. Then opened them and leaned in closer still. The dead woman’s nose was slightly crooked and blue; her eyes were sealed shut.

I put my hand on her right cheek, still pristine, intact. But unbearably cold and rigid. I slightly turned her face with my hand, trying to get a good look at her. She resembled Myrtle in the most terrible, distant way. But she couldn’t be Myrtle. I did not believe she was Myrtle.

Then my eye suddenly caught a sparkle underneath her matted, bloodied hair. A glint against the harsh overhead light. I gently brushed aside her hair, and there, trapped underneath the blood, the raw mottle skin, was a diamond hairpin. I pulled it out, held it in my palm, and let it catch the light.