She peered into his face. “You’re ugly, too.”
And he was. “But compared to you . . . You know what I mean—”
“You’re also too wide in the hips, like a woman, and your breath is bad.”
The sergeant’s mouth dropped open.
“It’s nothing personal.” Anna bobbed a curtsey. “What a pleasure to finally meet you.”
He cocked his head and stared at Anna. She remembered that men did not bob curtsies, so she stuck out her left hand to shake as her right hand was bandaged. “You know why I’m here?”
“The Grayson case? I’ve told you—”
“Why did Samuel Grayson go to Los Angeles?”
He took Anna’s hand and looked down at it, drawing his brows together. She snatched it back, knowing it was suspiciously soft.
He said, “I didn’t think it was important.”
“What have you found out about Flossie Edmands?”
“Um.”
“What about her father? Does he have an alibi?”
“Her father? I . . . um . . .”
Anna let his answer dangle. She could see that further questioning would take her nowhere and huffed in exasperation. “Can you at least give me their addresses so I can find Mr. Edmands and Mr. Grayson to question them?” She wanted to add “properly” but didn’t as this would be rude.
Anna pushed the door of the police station open into stinging cold. She bought fried pork rinds from a shop and tried to hail a cab. A hansom stopped for her, but when the driver saw her face, he urged his horse on.
She growled under her breath, “Biscuits.”
Eating, walking, and shivering, Anna started the journey in her Louis heels, in the snow, in the dusk. Joe’s coat was made for Los Angeles winters, not biting Oklahoma winds. Mr. Grayson, Sergeant Tribble had informed her, lived five miles down Tenth Street on a farm outside of town. She hailed each passing hansom. They slowed for her, but when they saw her face, they urged their horses on. Soon there were no more hansoms and no more buildings. She walked precariously in the tracks of sleighs where the snow had packed down to ice.
CHAPTER 37
Samuel Grayson’s father lived in a small, sod house surrounded by snowy fields with a sod stable. Light gleamed from a window. The hinged top half of the stable door stood open, and a mule watched the twilight. Anna arrived exhausted, her feet raw. She knocked on Mr. Grayson’s door, bracing herself for the resident’s inevitable revulsion. A lady answered. She had chewing tobacco on her teeth and looked too old to be Samuel’s mother. Her eyes perused Anna, bulging only a little.
“Good afternoon.” Anna spoke in her low, gravelly, man’s voice, and smiled sweetly with her grotesque, swollen lips. “I’m Detective Singer with the Los Angeles Police Department and I’m here to speak with Mr. Grayson.” She bobbed a curtsy and flashed Joe’s stolen badge. “I don’t actually look like this. I was cursed by Petronilla. Thus, I was bitten by a Gila monster.”
The woman nodded. “I’m Mrs. Grayson, his mother. Come in.” The woman stepped backward, opening the door wide so that Anna could pass.
Anna had expected more suspicion, more resistance to her ugly face. After all, she was a stranger, her explanation bizarre, and night was coming. But grief did strange things to people. Perhaps the lady simply didn’t care anymore. It caught Anna off guard and she said in her own voice, “Thank you.” Then, to cover up, she fabricated a violent coughing fit.
Anna passed under the low threshold into a small room with the artifacts of both a kitchen and a parlor. Bundles of dried herbs hung from the ceiling like mistletoe. The table and chairs looked home-hewn. The air smelled faintly of bad meat.
An empty hook poked from the wall waiting for a hat. Anna looked at it and hesitated. She was faced with a quandary. Any gentleman would remove his hat when entering a home. If Anna removed Joe’s hat, her pretty coiffure would give her away. If she retained her hat, it would reflect badly on Joe.
She happily retained her hat.
The lady said, “Sit.”
Anna sat.
The lady said, “Tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“One lump or two?”
“Is Mr. Grayson at home?”
“He’s in the other room.” The woman set the kettle to boil. “You’ll take two.”
“May I please speak to him?”
The lady made a sweeping gesture with her hand toward a curtain-covered doorway. “Be my guest.” Then she called out, “Percy!”
It was an odd sort of introduction. Anna stood uncertainly for a moment, then moved to the curtained doorway, which was only three steps distant in the small room. She pushed the curtain aside. Two beds dominated the space. Mr. Grayson, as Anna assumed him to be, slumped in a chair, as pale as chalk. A plate of fried chicken balanced on his lap. Flies settled on the chicken and on his open, staring eyes. He did not swat them away.
Anna yelped.
The woman rushed in from the parlor. “What is it?”
“He’s dead,” said Anna.
“No, he’s sleeping.”
“I don’t mean to be rude, but he doesn’t smell sleeping.”
The woman tiptoed closer. She looked at the corpse, then she looked at Anna. She put a finger to her lips. “Shh.”
Anna tiptoed quickly into the living room. If she hadn’t needed information to save her brother, she would have tiptoed right outside, into the cold, and away from this house of horrors. Instead, she bravely backed up against the door and plugged her nose. Her low, gravelly voice now also sounded congested. “I’m the detective investigating your grandson’s death. I wanted to ask Mr. Grayson why Samuel went to Los Angeles, but he’s sleeping. You must know.”
The lady emerged from the death room holding the plate of chicken, sniffing at it. “Samuel’s not dead. He’s away.” She walked close, reached out, and touched Anna’s misshapen face. “I’m a medicine woman. I treat everyone in town. I can help you with that swelling.”
It occurred to Anna that if this woman’s son lay dead, her skills as a medicine woman were suspect. Also, she was crazy. “No, thank you.”
The woman appeared offended. “You obviously need my help.”
What Anna needed, besides a new face, was information. She did not want to offend her witness. Maybe the lady wouldn’t charge much. “Wash your hands first?”
The woman made a cynical, hissing sound. “Have some chicken.” She pushed the plate into Anna’s hands and bustled over to a pot belly stove where the kettle steamed. Anna, though in need of sustenance, would not eat this. While the lady’s back was turned, she threw it out the window. She set the plate on a side table.
The lady fussed in the cupboard with jars of herbal things, mixing them up into a tea. “Sam left because Flossie’s father would have killed him if he stayed. Sam was taking Flossie to start a new life. I don’t know where they went. Wasn’t safe to know.”
Anna leaned forward with interest. “So, Flossie’s father is violent and perhaps murderous?”
“He killed his wife, but they never proved it. Never found the body. Just a smear of blood on the cabin floor.”
Anna brightened. This was excellent news.
Mrs. Grayson pushed the tea cup in Anna’s face. “Drink.”
Anna pushed back against the door. The lady raised the cup to Anna’s swollen lips. “Drink,” she growled.
For Georges, Anna drank. The medicine tasted bitter, like the skins of walnuts. She let it run down her throat as her hostess tipped the tea cup.
The lady nodded her approval.
When Anna had swallowed the whole nasty draft, she took a gasping breath. “Why would he kill Sam?”
“No doubt he caught Flossie in a compromising position with Sam.” She looked proud of this.
Anna tried to picture various compromising positions. She thought of being naked on the polar bear rug, and Joe being thrown from the train. Those men hadn’t even known Anna, yet they had defended her honor. S
he thought it very likely that a father might shoot the man who ruined his daughter, backward execution style, face-to-face. That way, he could look him in the eye. “Would you happen to know where Flossie’s father lives?”
“He has a farm about five miles out of town. He makes moonshine. It’s pretty good.”
“I could use some moonshine.” Anna lifted her pant leg and considered her aching feet. Broken blisters lined the edges of her feminine shoes. She’d already walked five miles today. Another five seemed insurmountable in the snow, and the sun had set. She didn’t care to face violent Mr. Edmands alone at night. She would have to go tomorrow. “Is there a hotel nearby?”
“No. You can sleep with us. I’ll just go get the bed ready.” She disappeared into the death room.
Anna’s shoulders slumped. She needed a place to shelter, but there was no way she would bunk with Mr. Grayson. She should have known there would be no hotels five miles from the center of town. This wasn’t Los Angeles. She stared out the window. The mule poked his head over the gate. She could barely see his eyes glowing in the dark.
“May I please sleep with your mule?” Anna called.
The lady in the other room didn’t seem to hear, but neither did she object. This, Anna reasoned, was tantamount to consent. She said in a low, plugged-nose voice. “Thank you. And please tell Mr. Grayson I said goodnight.”
Anna trudged through the snow to the sod stable, her nose too gloriously frozen to smell anything. Joe hadn’t dressed for a winter in Oklahoma. He had packed for the Sonora Desert. Thus, Anna had no scarf, no muff, no long underwear, no wooly hat, and no fur coat. But if she had to hop up and down all night to stay warm, she would do it in the service of saving her brother.
The white plain spread out before her. She passed the chicken lying in the snow.
As she approached the stable, she heard animal sounds. When she opened the door, a baby goat escaped. “Biscuits!” She hurriedly closed the door and chased the goat in circles until, at last, she was able to tackle it in the snow. She wrapped her arms around the struggling beast until it stilled, then carried it back to the stable through fresh snow that now rose past her ankles. This time, she opened the door with one hand, one hip, and greater care. She slipped in with the baby goat and dropped it. It skittered away mewling. The stable air felt less frigid, heated by animal bodies, and had a faint animal smell to her frozen nose, like fur, hay, and manure.
Five goats and the mule inhabited the small stable, making it hard for Anna to find space to lie down. She scooped the poop using a tin cup someone had left there, and piled the poo into the corner. She covered herself with a scratchy horse blanket and shivered herself to sleep.
CHAPTER 38
When Anna awoke, three goats were curled up against her body. A fourth stood over her eating the back of Joe’s coat, and the mule’s backside hovered dangerously close to her head.
She disentangled herself from the herd and peeked her head outside the stable. The sun was rising.
If it was all the same to Mr. Grayson, and Anna felt sure that it was, she would borrow the mule for her trip to visit Flossie’s father and simply return it later. As it was early, and it would be rude to wake Mrs. Grayson to ask for permission, and as Mr. Grayson was dead, Anna would simply leave a note. She had no paper or pen, thus she wrote the note with her foot in the snow. “Borrowed mule. Thanks ever so much.”
Anna found the bridle, but no saddle. Despite being an excellent horsewoman, she had never bridled anything, always having relied on stable boys. Still, she managed it and threw the blanket over the mule’s back. She led the reluctant mule out into winter, bid the goats adieu, and mounted from a watering trough half-buried in the snowy field.
Riding a mule through snow was more difficult than riding in a private railcar. The mule’s feet sank deep into powder now up past its knees, if mules can be said to have knees. The snow was coming down hard, blowing into her face, making it difficult to see. She blinked the snowflakes out of her eyelashes. They were quickly replaced by new ones.
Her fingers, those not bandaged, quickly lost color. Her cheeks stung by cold wind. She hadn’t known the weather could be so fierce while daffodils poked up their heads in Los Angeles.
Beyond the first mile, she encountered no farmhouses and wondered whether all this land, these vast fields, belonged to the Edmands farm. The snow grew deeper on the ground and thicker in the air. The brim of Joe’s hat filled up with snowflakes. Her colorless hands burned. Her toes lacked feeling even as she flexed them to keep her shoes from falling off. Each step the mule took seemed a labor. It walked slower and more slowly still. At last the mule stopped.
Anna knew how to urge on mules from reading adventure magazines. “Yaw!”
The mule didn’t move. Anna kicked it with her heels, three times hard. “Yaw, yaw, yaw!”
The mule himself kicked back violently. Anna slid off his back onto her biscuits in the snow. The horse blanket slipped into a drift, and the mule ran off onto the white plain.
This was Petronilla’s doing.
Anna picked herself up and brushed off her trousers. She was cold, muleless, and alone. There were no trees where she could shelter. Her nose ran, and it froze in a tiny icicle. Her face covered with snow faster than she could wipe it off, blown by the wind beneath her derby hat. She felt miserable, oddly warm, and sleepy. She recovered the blanket and spread it out like a picnic blanket. She lay down on it, vaguely aware of what was happening to her. She’d seen Joe crazy with cold. This was worse. Dying here anonymous and alone would be stupid. No one would claim her body. Georges would hang. She prayed a silent prayer to Saint Medard, patron saint of snowstorms, that he would smite the ghost of Petronilla. He did not.
A man trotted down the road on a horse, his face wrapped in a scarf against the bitter wind. When he saw Anna, a mere smudge on the white landscape, he pulled his horse up. He wore a wool blanket and a broad-brimmed hat—an Indian.
Anna lifted her face to him. She regretted that she looked like an ugly, frozen man, and not like the beautiful young woman she actually was on the inside, because that would be handy. She closed her eyes and lay back down. She expected him to ride away and leave her to die.
Instead, he dismounted. Without saying a word, likely because he did not speak English and Anna did not speak Indian, he scooped her up in his arms. Anna tried to protest this familiarity, but her lips seemed frozen in place. He carried her to his horse and put her in the saddle. He swung up behind her, holding the reins with his arms around her. She sagged into him.
They rode for half an hour before two sod houses came into view. He stopped the horse in front of the first house. She supposed he had things to do and planned to drop her off with white people. Her spirits lifted when she saw a sign that declared, “Whiskey.”
The man dismounted and reached his arms up for Anna. She slid into them. He carried her like a bride. “You’re a woman.”
His English surprised Anna, and her pale cheeks filled with color at his meaning. She stuttered with cold. “Y . . . .y . . . yes. An ugly woman. I’m M . . .M . . . Miss Blanc. How do you do?”
“I’m Mr. Colbert.”
He carried her to the door of the little sod house and called out, “Hello? Mr. Edmands?” There was no answer. He called again to no avail. The stranger leaned on the door with his shoulder, pushing it open, and carried Anna across the threshold.
The house possessed but one small room with the usual furnishings, two beds, and a stack of crates filled with whiskey bottles. It felt little warmer on the inside. Anna missed the body heat of the goats, but at least she was sheltered from the wind. The stranger set Anna down and pulled back a quilt on a bed. He turned his back and faced the wall.
Anna knew what he meant. She needed to get out of her wet clothes. She removed her wet Francois Pinet shoes and Joe’s overcoat, tossing the latter on a chair. She stripped off her wool suit jacket dropped her pants, which were wet to the knee, and peeled off her s
ilk stockings. She laid down and pulled the quilt to her chin, trying not to think of who might have laid there before and how hard it would be to comb nits out of her hair, and how disgusting it would be to need to.
She curled up to save heat. “You can turn around now.”
The man did. He’d taken off his scarf. Black, straight hair cascaded down past his shoulders. Anna could see now that he was both young and handsome. He had great poise, like a gentleman.
Mr. Colbert removed Joe’s crushed derby hat from her head, revealing her smashed, feminine coiffure. He cocked his head, and his eyes lingered on her hair and ugly face. He removed his own damp blanket coat, took off his dry vest, and tucked it around her hair, presumably to keep her head warm or to shield his eyes from her badly mangled bun. He took off his shirt and handed it to Anna. He wore only a thin undershirt, and Anna could see the lean shape of him. His neck was brown and thick with muscles.
She put his shirt on and curled back up under the quilt.
Anna watched him as he went about filling the stove with coal, splashing it with whiskey from a bottle, and lighting it. He went outside with the kettle and came back having filled it with snow, setting it to boil.
Anna trembled under the covers. “W . . . w . . . whiskey?”
He brought her the bottle. She took it with her soggy, bandaged hand. After she had swigged, he sat on the edge of the bed, pushed up her sleeves, and unwrapped the dressing. It pleased her to see that the swelling in her arm had subsided, and the bite seemed to be knitting. It wasn’t so ugly anymore. He took her hands in his hands and blew hot breath onto them, holding them close to his lips. He blew again.
The man gazed at her with intensity; so much so that she wondered whether he especially preferred women who looked like ugly men. And since she did not know Indian customs and did not wish to be rude, Anna gazed back. He had such wonderful cheekbones.
The kettle whistled. He went to retrieve it, pouring the water into a basin, mixing it with snow, testing it with his hands. He brought the basin to the bedside and knelt beside the bed. “Give me your feet.”
The Body in Griffith Park Page 24
