Grave Phantoms (Roaring Twenties #3)(52)

Astrid wasn’t sure how to answer. Emotions roiled and abated inside her—jealousy and indignation, anger and surprise. Relief and sadness. Bo had ended things with Sylvia in the summer of 1926.

That’s when he’d taken Astrid to the redwood forest.

Part of her wanted to press Sylvia, to make her tell exactly what day this little erotic triumvirate occurred among the three of them. To find out if it happened before or after the redwood forest. But another part of her didn’t want the answer. Didn’t want to know. And did it really matter now?

“So, yes,” Sylvia said. “Bo and I were . . . and then we weren’t. But it is over, so you can stop looking at me like you want to claw my eyes out.”

“I—”

“Don’t worry. I’ve wanted to claw your eyes out, too.” She gave Astrid a tight smile. “The only thing that made me feel better all this time was knowing that you were an unreachable dream that he could never have. That was my small consolation. But now here you are, asking me these questions, so I think maybe I was wrong. And that makes me sad.”

She was sad? She’d had his body. His affection, too, obviously. God only knew what secrets they’d shared. Had he kissed her the same way he’d kissed Astrid? Had he said the same things?

And if Sylvia thought Astrid would feel sorry for her, she could think again. Had Sylvia spent years living off nothing but incidental touches and hope, knowing that none of it could be made public? Did she have to pretend like she was someone else?

Angry tears threatened. “Bo and I can’t just run off into the sunset. You must know that. So if you want to keep feeling smug about your past victories, don’t let me stop you. Because you’ve had more of him than I’ve had—maybe more than I ever will.”

Sylvia frowned at her and looked away. Neither of them said anything else for a long time. Outside the apartment’s windows, rain pinged against the fire escape, and a horn honked as rumbling cars sped over wet streets.

“I’m not smug,” Sylvia finally said. Dark eyes slid toward Astrid’s. Humor stirred behind them. “But I’m proud, and I see that in you, too. We aren’t so different, I don’t think.”

Astrid let out a slow breath. “Perhaps we aren’t.”

“Besides, I’m seeing a wonderful man now, so I don’t sit around pining for Bo. And I’m not the type of gal to try to take what’s not mine.”

“That’s good. Because I like you, but you were right earlier. If you try to take him from me, I will scratch your eyes out. I come from barbaric stock.”

“Mm. I’ll keep that in mind. I doubt Bo thinks of me as anything but a friend anymore, so you’re wasting your time worrying about it.”

“I don’t know about that,” Astrid mumbled. “He named his car after you.”

Sylvia’s eyes widened. “The Buick? You’re kidding.”

Astrid wished she weren’t. But as crazed and numb as she felt after absorbing all this news, something else was bothering her. An insistent guilt niggled and poked at her from a dark space inside her head. It was easy to ignore her own indiscretions when she was busy raging at Bo’s. Easy to forget that she wasn’t innocent, and her own indiscretions had occurred a lot more recently than two and a half years ago.

Sylvia stubbed out her cigarette. “You said earlier that you had a favor to ask.”

“Yes,” Astrid said, shaking off her self-reproach. Focus on right now, she told herself. She would deal with Bo later.

“You’re a telephone operator,” she said to Sylvia.

“I am.”

“So that means you have access to private addresses?”

“Yes.” Sylvia’s brow lowered.

“Bo and I are . . . well, we’re caught up in something. You remember the man who tried to attack me at Gris-Gris?”

Sylvia nodded.

“We’re looking for someone to help us with that.”

And after last night’s chaos—Bo getting stabbed, the trip to Dr. Moon’s . . . and every delicious thing that happened in the front seat of the Buick—Astrid woke up with an idea about a small detail they’d forgotten. On the night the yacht crashed into the pier, when Bo and she went on board, she’d remembered Bo talking to Officer Barlow about a man who’d claimed to have captained the yacht a year ago when it went missing. A man the police had dismissed as mentally unstable—just someone who’d seen mention of the lost luxury yacht in the papers and woven a fantastical story about swimming ashore.

What if his story wasn’t so crazy after all?

“This morning I called the police to ask about someone who’d been involved in a case related to the mess that happened that night at Gris-Gris,” Astrid told Sylvia. “They gave me his name, but they say he doesn’t have an address on file. He spent some time in a psychiatric hospital last year, and since then, he’s changed addresses and occupations. Honestly, I think the cops know where he’s living, but they won’t tell me. They’d probably tell my brother, but I don’t want to get him involved. And Bo says telephone operators know all the city’s secrets, so . . .”

Sylvia stared at her as if she thought Astrid needed to be in a psychiatric hospital herself—as if she couldn’t believe Astrid had the nerve to ask her this after all the wounds they’d both just reopened. But whether she’d realized that their conversation had created a strange bond between them, or whether she, like Astrid, refused to wallow in misery for too long, she relented with an exasperated sigh.