Joe nudged her knee with his own. “I do.”
“You’re so calm.”
“You’re the opposite of calm.”
“For good reason. Can’t you see? Because I’m a woman, I have to solve every murder. I have to get it right this time and every time, or they’ll never let me try again. You can bumble all you want. But not me. From me they demand perfection. I’ve got to be smarter and work harder than anyone else. And I’ve got my matron duties to boot. So, don’t complain to me if I don’t bake you cookies or darn your socks.”
“You don’t bake me cookies or darn my socks. Do you hear me complaining?”
“No.”
He leaned close so that their arms touched. Kissing was out of the question, but she could tell he was thinking about it. He said, “Anna, I can darn my own socks.”
“Good. Can you darn silk stockings, too, because I don’t know how.”
Joe Singer puttered up the drive of the Blanc Mansion on an LAPD motorcycle from Central Station. Unexpected. Uninvited. It was the first time he’d been there since the ball celebrating Anna’s engagement to a different man. Christopher Blanc didn’t know that Joe was planning to marry his daughter. That secret still wasn’t out. No doubt he believed Joe had recruited Anna to do dangerous sting operations with the police—though he hadn’t. Anna recruited herself. And that Joe had everything to do with the breakup of Anna’s engagement to Edgar Wright, Christopher Blanc’s business partner—though he hadn’t. Not really. That breakup resulted in a parting of ways, which in turn resulted in the collapse of Blanc National Bank.
Joe hadn’t caused the wreckage of Anna’s old life, or as she saw it, her liberation. He had simply still wanted her after she’d lost everything. And she had wanted him. But Christopher Blanc wouldn’t see it that way.
No, Joe didn’t expect to be welcomed. But maybe Mr. Blanc would still care enough about his daughter that he wouldn’t want her exploited by an imposter. He should know about Georges Devereaux, just in case the dandy was a fraud. Telling Mr. Blanc could be an olive branch. Mr. Blanc might even thank him.
The Blanc estate towered grandly over the neighboring houses on Bunker Hill and its grounds spread out like a park. But the grass needed clipping and there was a pothole in the drive. Joe carefully steered around it. He turned the engine off and swung his leg over the motorcycle to the ground. Stone lions flanked the marble steps. They ignored him. The ten-foot door tried to make him feel small. He wouldn’t have it.
When he knocked, a Mexican woman answered. She stood only four foot something but filled the doorway with an imposing dignity. He guessed this was Mrs. Morales, the housekeeper who had raised Anna, or at least had organized Anna’s childhood.
Joe straightened his shoulders. She didn’t smile. “Good evening.”
“Good evening Ma’am. I’m here to see Christopher Blanc.”
“Whom shall I say is calling?”
“Detective Singer. He knows me. That is, we’ve met. He knows my pop, Chief Singer. He’s the police chief . . .”
Mrs. Morales’s countenance darkened. Her tone turned sharp and staccato. “He’s not home.” Her eyes traveled up to Joe’s hat, down to his boots, back up to his eyes.
“But, I thought you said . . .”
“Good day.” Mrs. Morales shut the door in his face.
Joe stood for a moment absorbing the sting of being dismissed by the housekeeper. Mrs. Morales was formidable, like her reputation. He had to do better with Christopher Blanc, who was reputedly even worse.
Not easily dissuaded, Joe crept along the outside of the house to the back, bushwhacked through a thorny bougainvillea plant, and forced open a casement window. He pushed up onto the ledge and climbed through. It was trespassing, to be sure. But what could Mr. Blanc do? Ask Joe to arrest himself? Call his father?
Joe tiptoed across the marble tiles where Persian carpets had once cushioned Anna’s footsteps. There were darker spots on the wallpaper where paintings had once hung—notably a portrait of Anna he’d admired the night of her engagement ball. Some of the furniture was missing, presumably sold. Luckily, the staff had been reduced, and the Blancs had no dog to sound the alarm. An orange cat ignored him. No one else moved in the corridor. Joe looked for an office. From what Anna had said about her father, he spent all his time there.
Joe smelled cigar smoke and followed it to its source—a door that opened onto oak paneling, red leather, and a tobacco haze. He removed his derby hat and squared his shoulders. He strode in. Anna’s father loomed behind a newspaper, behind a desk that served as a wall. He glanced up glowering. He didn’t seem surprised to see Joe. Mrs. Morales must have warned him.
“You broke my plant.”
Joe looked down and saw a spray of scarlet petals hooked on his pant leg by a thorn. “You could say good afternoon. I’m your future son-in-law, whether you grant your permission or not.”
“You’re not my future son-in-law because I don’t have a daughter.”
“You know what? You don’t deserve Anna. But you and I have still got business.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t have any spare change.”
“I don’t want your money.” Joe wasn’t sure whether this was true for Anna, but the point might be moot. Rumor was, Christopher Blanc no longer had any. Rumor had it, the house was mortgaged to the hilt. Maybe Georges Devereaux was holding money for Blanc, and maybe not.
“Oh, just get out.” Blanc growled. “I didn’t invite you here.”
“I’m not leaving. Not yet. Someone is going around sending Anna gifts and claiming to be her illegitimate brother, and I don’t trust him.”
“So?”
“So, is it true?”
“Georges is no threat to Anna. I’m far more concerned about you.” He raised his voice. “Or, I would be if I had a daughter!”
“Georges Devereaux is your son? That dandy? Really?” It wasn’t what Joe had expected. He had been sure the dude was a fraud.
“Really.”
Joe realized he had insulted the man. “All right.” He stood, waiting. “Is that all you have to say to me?”
“Get out!”
Joe let himself out the grand front door, passing an empty marble pedestal, a hole in the ceiling from a missing chandelier, and Mrs. Morales on the way. He acknowledged her with a nod. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Morales.”
She curled her lip in disgust.
Joe considered the visit a success. He had never had any illusions that he could be a goodwill ambassador on Anna’s behalf when Christopher Blanc likely blamed him for all his current troubles. But at least Joe had his answer. Now, he would go and tell Anna the good news. She would be happy, so he would be happy for her.
And he’d have to apologize to Georges Devereaux.
CHAPTER 13
Anna took the stairs to the ladies’ receiving hospital two at a time, as if the extra few seconds saved would make up for her three-hour absence. She found Matilda sitting serenely by the bedside of the shackled Mrs. Michaelchek. The old woman smelled a whole lot better than she had that morning, not worse as Anna had expected. Rivers of blue veins ran across the lady’s newly shorn head. She appeared to be sleeping. Matilda seemed to be doing better despite her traumatic experience with the Martian, and it relieved Anna greatly.
Anna put on her crisp, authoritative voice. “Good day, Matilda. How is our patient?”
“Better, I think. I found some clothes in the cupboard and changed her gown. It was soiled. I put it in the incinerator out back along with her hair.” Matilda looked tentative, crumpling her forehead. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“No. You’ve done well.” Anna kept her back straight, her manner efficient and smileless, like a matron’s demeanor should be. “You uncuffed her?”
“Briefly. The doctor gave me the key. Other than that, I haven’t left her side. Except I did change her sheets.” Matilda winced as if waiting for a reprimand. “It had to be done, I’m afraid.”
Anna
’s demeanor softened. She couldn’t help it. “Matilda, I think you are a gifted nurse.” Anna meant it. Matilda seemed to give of herself effortlessly, and it suited her. Anna liked to give too, but she didn’t have the stomach for this particular type of giving. For example, she was always happy to give fashion advice to strangers, solicited or no. Also, she freely gave directions.
Anna felt her face getting hot. Anna wasn’t giving at all. She pinched herself beneath her cuff. She pinched herself harder. Then she took Matilda’s hand. “Maybe we could talk a little later about what happened at the Jonquil Apartments. It’s not just your experience. I’m sure there’s something sketchy going on. But to prosecute, we’ll need a witness. Matilda, you’d have to testify.”
“Testify against a Martian? They can control your thoughts.”
“How about against a landlady who sells girls to spacemen?” Anna said, her voice gentle. “But perhaps leave out the spaceman part.”
Matilda bit her lip thoughtfully. “Is a girl ruined if she’s ruined by a Martian? Does it count?”
“No. Of course not. Martians don’t count.”
Anna snuck into the prisoners’ kitchen and brought a cold bowl of illicit mush to Matilda, who didn’t qualify to eat jail food. She brought a licit one for bald Mrs. Michaelchek, too, in case she woke up.
Anna set the mush down by Matilda. “Matilda, please tell me again about the man who hurt you? Could it be he wasn’t from Mars?”
Matilda started to rock and she wrung her pale hands. Her nails were bitten to nubs.
“I’m a detective and I’m going to catch him, but I must know all the details. For example, what did he look like?”
“His eyes were yellow and his skin was sort of green, like an olive. I don’t think Martians bathe. He made the room smell like rotten eggs.” She wrinkled up her face. “Afterward, I smelled of him.”
The girl’s obvious pain and illness shook Anna. She took a deep breath to calm herself. “I see. But you don’t smell of him now. You should know that.” “Good.”
“What else can you tell me about this . . . man?”
Matilda drew her legs up onto the chair and hugged herself. “Please, don’t make me think of him. I don’t remember anything else. I never want to speak of him again.”
Anna took Matilda’s hand and squeezed it. “All right. It’s going to be all right.”
Then she left Matilda alone with the patient, feeling determined to find this odorous Martian man and bring him to justice. She had no idea where to start, or whether, if she did catch him, Matilda would be up to taking the witness stand.
Anna looked in on the ladies in the cow ring and the other prisoners in the women’s department. They sewed or slept or sang jailbird songs. The cells were colorless, poorly lit, and even more poorly ventilated. The walls were marred with the graffiti of incarcerated women scratched into the steel. It smelled sharply of bodies and despair. But the bed sheets had been changed. Clean, wet ones, no doubt, hung in the basement to dry. The jailer would come and take the criminal ladies to supper at six.
Other than filing; hunting for little, bad Eliel Villalobos; capturing a Martian; reforming the delinquent children of Los Angeles; and finding jobs for hundreds of prostitutes, Anna had nothing pressing to do. And so, she did what she liked best.
Detective work.
Anna snuck into the coroner’s office to search for photographs of the Griffith Park Executioner’s victim—the kneeling deado. Happily, the coroner was out. She rifled through the files on his desk and found the one belonging to their John Doe. Joe’s photographs from the investigation had turned out well in that they represented the crime scene clearly and accurately. The victim’s clothes appeared distinctly ugly—this could help when identifying the victim. But the face was blurred with insects. It would be hard for a witness to tell one ant-covered corpse from the next. There were plenty of photographs, so Anna palmed a picture that featured the man’s bad suit.
She left the morgue and knocked at the darkroom. No one answered. Light filtered in from beneath the door, and so she opened it. Pictures hung on a line from clothes pins. They must be done, or the light wouldn’t be on. She tested them for dryness, and they seemed fixed. She could wait and get them from Joe, who would have to get them first from the coroner, who seemed in no hurry, or she could lift one now and make today’s mail.
The choice was clear. Anna pinched a close-up of the victim’s poor, dead face.
Back in her storage room, she wrote a letter to the police department in Oklahoma City and enclosed it with the photograph of John Doe. The coroner had washed the ants out of his hair and cleaned him up so that he looked more like he must have before the bullet and the bugs—too young and too handsome to die. She included a list of interview questions for the Oklahoma detectives to ask any family or known associates of the man, should he be identified.
Anna would give him justice. She swore she would. Not only would it make her giving and perhaps reduce her time in purgatory, her future as a detective depended on it.
As Joe wasn’t at the station where he belonged, and because justice was urgent, Anna signed Joe’s name. She had enough experience with the police to know that if a woman signed a letter, no one would take it seriously. Out of habit, she spritzed it with perfume. Then she sealed the envelope and gave it to Mr. Melvin to send.
“How long will it take?” asked Anna.
“Maybe two weeks.” He spoke into his necktie.
Anna ducked her head to look into his face. “Thank you, Mr. Melvin.”
Anna noticed Joe hanging up his derby hat on a peg on the wall near the door. He seemed slightly out of breath and bougainvillea trailed from his pants. “Assistant Matron Blanc, when you have a moment, I’ve got news.” He held up a copy of the Los Angeles Herald, his eyebrows arched high.
His very presence made her glow from the middle. “I’m available now.”
Joe looked around, probably for Detective Snow, and then nodded his head in the direction of the officers’ kitchen. Anna arrived first. She twinkled when he entered, ecstatic to be in his manly presence. Ecstatic to be solving crimes. “I have news, too. I’ve taken the liberty of writing the police in Oklahoma City to ask about our John Doe. Sooner is so much better than later when it comes to murder investigations.”
“You should have let me do it. They’d pay more attention to a cop.”
“Not to worry. I signed your name.”
“Impersonating an officer is a felony.”
“I mean, I . . .” Anna bit her lip.
Joe kissed her. “Anna, look at this article.” He tilted his head and grinned. “You’re gonna like it.” He tapped his finger on the society pages.
Anna grabbed the paper and read. “‘Miss Anna Blanc, socialite . . .’ Socialite, hah!” Renowned beauty, perhaps, or former socialite, but no one in society invited Anna to parties now. Not since her undercover work in the brothels. Just her best friends Clara and Theo Breedlove, who had just left on a European tour. It was a sore point.
“Keep reading.”
“‘Anna Blanc, socialite and estranged daughter of prominent banker, Christopher Blanc, has been united with her illegitimate half-brother, Georges Devereaux. Mr. Devereaux is the product of an illicit union between Christopher Blanc and a French dancer.”
Anna squealed, realized she might be overheard, and swallowed a second happy noise. “Oh, Joe. That’s very good news. Oh, Joe.” She trembled with the joy of it, pressed her hands together as if in prayer. “My father will be horrified.”
Then her smile collapsed. She put fingers to her lips. “Oh, no. What if it isn’t true? The paper prints all kinds of lies about me.”
Joe took her hands and squeezed. “It’s true. I spoke with your father.”
“He agreed to speak with you?”
“Not exactly. But I asked him point-blank. He more or less confessed to being Georges Devereaux’s father.”
“And then what?”
“He threw me out.”
“Jupiter. I’m dingswizzled he agreed to speak with you.”
“He didn’t. I climbed through the window.”
“Oh, my love,” she said too loudly given the thinness of the door.
“Shhh.” Joe lowered his voice. “He said Georges wasn’t a threat. And Anna, I told him we’re getting married.”
“What did he say? Did he pull a gun? Does he want me to leave you?”
Joe’s smile faltered. “It doesn’t matter what he thinks of me. What matters is that you have a brother and that makes you happy.”
“Yes,” said Anna. “And look here. The article says Georges is—and I quote—‘a successful businessman in his own right, winning respect despite the circumstances of his birth. He is the opposite of his sister who, despite her privileged birth, has managed to disgrace herself.’” She looked up from the paper and smiled a wide, splendid, heartfelt smile. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
“I . . . Um. Nobody reads the Herald, baby.”
“Mr. Tilly wrote the article. I’m sure of it. He must have seen us with Georges at the hotel.”
“Georges probably gave him the story. I’m just glad he didn’t say anything about you and me.”
“But what could he say? There’s nothing scandalous about me being with you in the company of . . .” She lingered on the last two words. “My brother.”
“Let’s call on Georges tonight and I’ll apologize for doubting him.”
Anna’s eyebrow rose like a burning sun. “Yes, you should.”
“Oh, come on, Anna. You’re not mad, are you? I was just looking out for you. I’m happy for you. Really, I am. As long as he treats you well.”
“He does!”
The Body in Griffith Park Page 9
