Lies in White Dresses

by Sofia Grant

  “There’s only one problem,” Francie explained after she hung up. “There isn’t time for him to go through the proper channels to make arrangements with a church in Reno. But he’s willing to perform a funeral liturgy as part of the graveside service. He says a Mass isn’t required—I hope Vi won’t mind.”

  “I’m sure she wouldn’t,” June said, “especially since the Lord won’t mind.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Francie said. “Don’t be scandalized, June, but Arthur is an atheist, and I must admit I never particularly enjoyed going to church, so after the children were all baptized I got out of the habit. Vi used to try to convince me to go with her—but I never understood why I’d want to get up before dawn just to listen to some priest drone on and on in Latin with his back to us.”

  “You’re a good friend, Francie.”

  “You think so?” Francie smiled wistfully. “There were plenty of times when we quarreled, you know. Usually over silly stuff. I hate to be proved wrong, I’m afraid, and I let my pride get in the way much too often—but Vi never stayed mad at me for long.”

  “I’ve never had a friend like that. Not since grammar school, anyway. Stan didn’t even like for me to socialize with the neighbors.”

  “Well, maybe that should go on your list. Make some friends—have a little fun. You deserve it, June.”

  “I’d . . . like that,” June said quietly.

  “Well, I think we’ve done enough for today—this list you made me is starting to swim before my eyes. I’ll start calling first thing in the morning; there’s no reason you should have to talk to perfect strangers. I’ve met most of her family and her good friends from college, and it’s best they hear the news from a friend, since Harry refuses to do it.”

  “There’s an awful lot of them,” June ventured. There were over forty names on the list. “Are you going to call them all?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Vi wouldn’t have wanted a fuss—I’ll just call the ones I’ve heard her mention.” She stood and stretched, massaging the tendons in her neck. “We’ve still got a couple of hours of daylight—let’s drive out to the cemetery, shall we? Mrs. Swanson offered me the use of her car until Arthur gets here. I’d like to take a look at her parents’ headstone, since we’ll need to order one for Vi, and also see what kind of shape the plot is in. And we also need to figure out where to set up chairs and . . .”

  Her voice trailed off as she picked up Vi’s address book and flipped through until she found the entry she wanted. “We can drive by her parents’ house while we’re out that way—she loved that place. Other than college, she never lived anywhere else before she married Harry.”

  “Who lives there now?”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure that anyone does . . . she’s had caretakers staying there for years. She let them live there for free in exchange for keeping up the place, but I think the last one moved away a while back.” Francie sighed. “Vi had always hoped one of her boys might like to have the house, but now that they’re working for Harry, I doubt they’ll ever want to leave San Francisco.”

  “I bet it’s beautiful,” June said. Everything about Vi had been so elegant, from the way she moved to her wardrobe and her fine leather luggage; it was easy to imagine her growing up in one of the stately mansions across the river.

  “Oh, honey, that house wasn’t anything fancy. She didn’t come from any money at all, you know. Her father delivered ice for a living, back before people had electric refrigerators. Vi’s mother once told her that they never had any more children because they took one look at her and knew she was perfect, but her father used to say that one child was all that house had room for.”

  “Sounds like how I grew up,” June said. “I shared a room with my grandmother, and my brothers slept on the porch except when it got too cold and then they slept in the barn.”

  “You and Vi had that in common.” Francie smiled. “Both of you had a hard time of it coming up—and it only made you sweeter.”

  June smiled, but Francie’s compliment had made her uneasy. Because if Vi had been able to improve her life, to put the hardships of her past behind her and go to college and have everything money could buy—why had June made such a mess of hers?

  Chapter 21

  Francie

  They drove north in Mrs. Swanson’s gleaming sedan, a deep red Chevrolet Fleetmaster with the Holiday Ranch logo painted on the passenger door. As they left the city behind, the land changed to gentle rolling hills covered in parched-looking grasses and tough little bushes and the occasional tree, crisscrossed here and there with rocky trails—the very same trails Vi had spoken so fondly of hiking as a child. The vegetation here looked as if it had to work hard to survive, Francie thought, pleased with the notion, because it reminded her of Vi. You’d never know it to look at her, but Vi had had a sturdiness to her that had enabled her to endure all those years of disappointment.

  Which made her final act even more devastating. Why, Vi? How Francie wished they could have talked about it, that Vi had shared what had caused her to give up, just as she finally had the chance to start over.

  “Oh, look at that,” June said, pointing off to the left. “I see the cemetery. What a lovely setting!”

  It was set into a hillside, with evergreens and shade trees and a grassy lawn that looked like an emerald pool against the backdrop of the golden hills. Here and there, flowers left by loved ones provided spots of color.

  They drove through the gates and made a slow tour, finding a caretaker loading a lawn mower into his truck.

  “Excuse me,” Francie said, rolling down her window. The gentleman looked too old to be handling the heavy equipment, but his sun-browned face and strong, muscled forearms spoke of a life of hard work.

  “Somethin’ I can help you with?”

  “My friend passed yesterday unexpectedly, and she’ll be buried here with her parents. I was just hoping to take a look at the plot.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss. I been working here since thirty-nine, so I reckon I know every soul in the place. What’s her family name?”

  “Buckley. Her mother was Brigid. I’m sorry, I don’t recall her father’s name.”

  “Thomas! Old Tom and Brigid, I know them well.” The old man smiled, his grin splitting a nest of wrinkles. “Don’t tell anyone, but sometimes I talk to ’em. Glad to show you, just follow me.”

  “You wouldn’t have happened to know them before they passed, would you? They lived very near here, at 8 Ely Road. They had just the one daughter—she used to play here as a child.”

  “Sorry, ma’am, I only moved here when I retired from the railroad. But you can see their house from here—it’s sure to be one of those.” He pointed up to three little houses perched on the hill, one of them nothing but a leaning collection of boards that looked as if it was going to collapse.

  Francie thanked him, and he got into his truck and drove slowly up toward a far corner of the cemetery, pointing toward a pair of tall pines. He gave the horn a tap and waved before driving away.

  Francie parked, and the two of them got out. There were only a handful of graves between the road and the edge of the cemetery here, and it took no time at all to find Vi’s parents’. Their gravestone was modest, laid flat to the ground, with only their names and dates and a simple cross. Weeds grew around it, and pine needles had fallen on its surface.

  “Which side is hers, do you think?” June asked.

  “I’m not sure. But we’ll find out tomorrow. And it will be easy to set up chairs over here. I don’t think we’ll need more than a dozen, for the older folks—everyone else can stand.”

  “And her priest can stand right here,” June said. “That way the hill will be behind him, and the trees—and we have them put the flowers on stands right back here in a little half circle around her folks’ grave.”

  “That’s perfect, June—that’s just the sort of help I need. I knew you’d have clever ideas.”

  June beamed; it wasn
’t surprising to see what a little praise did for her. Poor thing probably hadn’t heard many kind words in recent years.

  And it was good to have her company; without it, Francie knew she would have given in to the despair that pressed in on her. Keep busy, she reminded herself. Don’t think, just do. Otherwise she’d never get through the next few days.

  “Let’s go see the house—we’ll need to get back soon if we don’t want to miss dinner.”

  They got back in the car and drove out of the cemetery, then doubled back after they missed the turnoff to Ely Road. The sign, a hand-painted wooden affair, had been hit by a car at some point and leaned sideways.

  “I bet it’s that one,” June said, pointing. “It’s the prettiest. Oh, look at the garden!”

  Garden was perhaps too grand a word for the weed-choked beds in front of the house, but overgrown geraniums burst with red and pink blooms amid purple allium and pink coneflowers and others that Francie didn’t recognize.

  “This is it,” she confirmed. “See, there’s the number on the porch.”

  “Isn’t it darling! I can’t believe nobody’s been taking care of it.”

  June was right; the white paint looked fresh, the roof solid, the porch boards sturdy. White curtains hung in the windows, blocking the view inside.

  They got out and walked up a stone path to the front of the house, pausing at the flowerbeds.

  “Vi loved to garden,” Francie said. “It was one thing she hated about her house in San Francisco—other than the window boxes and the tiny yard in back, she had nowhere to plant.”

  “These have been here for years,” June said, bending to snap a spent bloom. “Someone must have given them water now and then, even if they didn’t do anything else. But they just need to be deadheaded and trimmed, and the weeds dug out, and they’d be lovely.”

  “I wish we could get in,” Francie said.

  June walked up the porch stairs and looked under the mat, and behind the mailbox, and finally she climbed up on the rail and felt around the top of the porchlight.

  “Good heavens, you’re going to break your neck!”

  June held out a key triumphantly and jumped lightly down. “Same place my aunt kept hers! Where I grew up, everyone kept a spare key out in case a neighbor needed to get in.”

  “You’d never do that in San Francisco,” Francie marveled. “Someone would come along and rob you blind.”

  “Well, there’s probably not a whole lot to steal here,” June said.

  She handed the key to Francie, who fitted it into the lock. Before she opened the door, she had the urge to say something—a prayer, maybe—as though Vi’s parents’ spirits might be waiting inside.

  But it was even better than that. The room was bare save a broom leaning against the wall and an upright piano covered with a sheet—the piano Vi’s mother had scrimped and saved for, the one she’d practiced on all through her childhood. Windows on three sides filled the room with light, and the wooden floors were inlaid with a pretty design. The curtains were dusty, but they were trimmed with a sweet band of lace, and there were built-ins with carved details and cut-glass knobs. The wide doorway to the rest of the house was arched, and the old plaster was carefully patched and painted. For such a modest house, someone—Vi’s father, no doubt—had worked hard to make it as nice as possible.

  “I love it,” June said. “Look at the sweet little hutch! And oh—the pretty glass shades on the light! The sofa would go here, and a chair for reading under the window here and—oh, the floors are so pretty where they peek out from under these rugs.” She walked over to the piano and lifted the lid and ran her finger lightly along the keys. “It’s in tune! Someone must have played it not too long ago.”

  “Do you play, June?”

  “Oh, no, but I used to sing at church every Sunday when I was in high school, and my best friend played the piano.”

  They explored the rest of the house, the two tiny bedrooms—Francie was certain the first had been Vi’s, since she’d always talked about the birds that nested in the tree outside the window—and a small bath with the fixtures in perfect working order.

  The kitchen was laid with black and white tile on the floor, and a screen door opened onto a patio with weeds coming up between the stones, littered with apples that had fallen from a gnarled old tree. The cupboards had glass doors and the backs were papered in a faded pattern of roses.

  June touched a square of marble set into the scrubbed wood counters next to the sink. “For making pie crust!” she exclaimed delightedly. “My mama would have loved that. And you could put an African violet on this little shelf where it gets the sun and—”

  She suddenly stopped and turned to Francie, eyes shining. “What if—oh, maybe this is a crazy idea but—what if we had the luncheon here, after the service?”

  “In this house?”

  “Yes! We’d just have to rent some tables and chairs, but as long as the icebox and the stove work, we could cook everything here, and—”

  “June,” Francie said, laughing, “we’re not going to cook a thing ourselves. We’ll hire caterers.”

  June blushed. “Oh. Of course. But they could set it all up in here, and as long as the weather is nice people could go out on the patio or sit in the front room, so there would be plenty of room. Why, people could practically walk here from the cemetery!”

  “I don’t know, June. It would be hard to get everything ready by Tuesday—it would be so much easier just to hold it at a hall.”

  “But that’s why you hired me! To take care of everything. Francie, I know you want this to be special for Vi. And if she loved this place as much as you say . . .”

  She had—that was the thing that made Francie even consider the outlandish suggestion. It would be taking a gamble to let June, who had plenty of enthusiasm but so little experience, take on a project like this—but if it worked, it would be the best possible send-off for her dear friend.

  “It’s certainly—it’s a wonderful idea,” Francie found herself saying. “Oh, what are we thinking? Do you really think we can pull this off?”

  “I know we can. Mrs. Oglesby told me she’d take Patty every single day if I let her, she misses her own grandchildren so, and Patty loves her. So I have all the time in the world. And I’ll work hard—I’m a hard worker, Francie, you’ll see.”

  Francie took her hand. “I have no doubt of that. It’s just, Arthur and the kids are coming, and Vi’s boys—”

  “Maybe they’ll want to help! I know when my mama passed, getting everything done for her funeral was the only thing that saved me. Otherwise I don’t think I’d have gotten out of bed, I was so sad.”

  The kids, helping? Francie had her doubts. Even though they arranged events for a living, Frank and Charlie wouldn’t know the first thing about planning something like this. And Jimmy wouldn’t come until the very last minute, he was so busy at the bank. Alice would help, of course, but someone would have to look after Arthur, and—

  “Oh, I hope I don’t regret this,” Francie said. “But yes. Yes! Let’s make this the most wonderful day for Vi. I mean, I know it will be sad—everyone will be sad—but at least they’ll remember Vi exactly the way she would have wanted.”

  “Thank you for trusting me, Francie,” June said. “I won’t let you down.”

  Chapter 22

  Back at the hotel, the reporters who’d been hanging around the drive had finally given up and left. June collected Patty from Mrs. Oglesby’s room and then the three of them went down to dinner. As they were eating, Francie took a chance and confided her plan to June.

  “I’m going to go talk to her, somewhere in public where she’ll be less likely to make a scene. I simply won’t have her in this hotel—or anywhere near Vi’s family and friends. If she has any decency at all—” Francie caught herself. What were the odds of that? A girl who’d take up with another woman’s husband when they were still living under the same roof wasn’t likely to care. “Or if she has any
hope of keeping the entire world from knowing just how brazen she is, she’ll go quietly and wait a few months before they even think of announcing an engagement. There’s plenty of places she can stay outside city limits where she can still meet the residency requirement. There’s the Del Monte, the Flying M E, plenty of them—and I’ll make sure Harry pays every cent.”

  June looked worried. “It’s awful, what she’s done,” she agreed, “but what if she doesn’t care? We can’t make her leave.”

  Francie shrugged. She knew this wasn’t true—there was always money, and money always worked—but she wanted the satisfaction of shaming Wilhelmina Carroll. She wanted that strident little harlot to feel as small as Vi must have felt when Harry told her he was really doing it this time, that he was leaving her for good. To Francie, Harry was no great loss; but Vi’d had her reasons to stay and that was good enough for her.

  She didn’t tell June, but she had a larger goal in mind. It was a long shot—but Francie was willing to give it a try. If Willy refused, as Francie suspected she might, then Francie would make sure everybody knew—first thing after the funeral, she’d seed the rumor among everyone who mattered in San Francisco—and once it became a great enough scandal, Harry would come to his senses, because his business relied almost entirely on his reputation. He was a scoundrel—but a scoundrel with an eye firmly, always, on the bottom line. He displayed his Chamber of Commerce citations above his desk and lunched with members of the city council and gave money to their campaigns, all to keep business flowing his way. In fact, the one thing Harry might love more than chasing skirts was money, and he wouldn’t put up with anything that could set him back.

  And then Willy would be the one left to suffer. Harry might not leave her right away, but his wandering eye would soon land on a girl just as pretty, who didn’t have the added complication of attracting the wrong kind of attention. And then he’d toss her aside just as he’d done to Vi.