The Secret Life of Anna Blanc

by Jennifer Kincheloe

  Snow grunted and lumbered off. Joe continued kissing Anna, doing things with his tongue that she had not expected but liked very much. When Snow was good and gone, she waited several minutes for the sake of caution, several more for good measure, and an extra few so she could be extra sure. Then Anna summoned all her virtue and pulled herself out from under Joe.

  He raised himself up, all dreamy and dewy-eyed. She was intoxicated, suppressing a desire that would very likely send her into hysterics. But she was Catholic and a professional, and the lives of loose women depended on her. When he reached for her, she evaded him.

  “What's wrong?” he asked.

  Panting, she leaned up against a hay bale, her hair disarrayed, her person speckled with straw. She spoke between heaving breaths. “Snow was here, but he's gone. He followed you. He's involved in the murders. He knows I suspect him. I didn't want him to see us talking, because I suspect he'd suspect that you suspect him, too. It would put him on his guard. I kissed you so he'd think you were only seducing me.”

  It took Joe a moment to comprehend the meaning of this statement. His face went scarlet, his nose wrinkled, and his eyes blinked from dreamy to indignant. He fairly shouted. “He couldn't see us talking? You knew he was standing there? You threw yourself at me. You spooned me like…like a love-crazed nymph because Snow couldn't see us talking?”

  He modestly began to tuck in his shirt, which was significantly less tucked in than when he walked into the stables twenty minutes ago.

  “What was I supposed to do? You weren't discreet!” she said.

  “I wasn't discreet?” Joe tried to stand up.

  Anna pulled him back down and held onto him. “If you'd hold your horses and pay attention, you'd see that I very possibly just saved your life!”

  “Oh yeah? How's that?”

  “If Snow thought you actually listened to me, which you should, and you realized that the suicides were in fact murders…Don't you see? He could frustrate our investigation, or worse yet, kill us both to keep us quiet.”

  Joe threw back his head and laughed. “You think Snow is going to kill us? Over something you wanted to tell me? Well, don't keep me in suspense, Sherlock. What is it?” He stared at her, waiting, his arms crossed in front of his chest. He looked good angry, all fiery and glinting, and she almost kissed him again.

  Instead, she said, “I have evidence that at least two of the dead prostitutes were murdered, and by the same man.”

  “Go on,” he said.

  “For one, they both had a sixpence in their shoe.”

  “Well, maybe it's good luck for brothel girls to keep a sixpence in their shoe.”

  “It is good luck. Not for brothel girls. For brides. They both wore white—one a dress that could have been a wedding gown, the second a peignoir suitable for a wedding night, and she had a gold band. It's like the English rhyme: Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a sixpence in your shoe.”

  “Do you have the coins?”

  “No. I didn't keep them.”

  He stood up and brushed off his clothes. “Well, that was an oversight. Sherlock, you gotta give me something plausible, P-L-A…”

  “I've had enough of your diphthongs!”

  She was tangled in her skirts and trying to stand. She reached out a hand for his help, but he ignored it. She raised herself from the ground with all the dignity she could muster, brushing the straw from her skirt. “If you want hard evidence, come with me to the morgue. I'll prove it isn't suicide.”

  “How?”

  “Facts. Snow found the girl hanging by her neck from a tree. But the girl didn't die from hanging. I saw the body. It had dual lividity, which means…”

  “I know what it means.”

  “You do?” Anna's heart started thumping again, and she beamed at him. He sighed.

  Anna led Joe through the back door of the station and down the hall to the morgue. He followed her for the same reason he had met her in the stables in the first place. She had his heart by the balls.

  Anna prattled on at the speed of light, the way she always did when she talked about clues. “She'd been dead on her back for at least ten hours before he hung her. I'd say strangled, from the bruising. Clearly, he'd killed her somewhere else, because why else would he wait so long? Madam Lulu identified the girl as a prostitute working at the Poodle Dog. Her eyes were dilated. She could have used belladonna, or it could be from a drug. She smelled sweet, which perplexed me at first, but chloroform smells sweet and that fits with her enlarged pupils. He could have used the chloroform to subdue her. And her toes…”

  Joe listened quietly, his brow still creased in a surly frown. When they arrived at the door to the morgue, Anna took a deep breath and took hold of Joe's callused hand. He slipped his fingers out of her grasp. She pursed her lips. This afternoon, she had discovered that she liked Joe Singer intensely, and she didn't want him to be angry at her. She hadn't thought he would mind so much being kissed and kissed and tumbled and kissed if it were for an important cause. She had bravely made the sacrifice.

  Anna opened the door into a cold room divided by a white curtain. It was an important moment, a chance to convince Joe Singer that girls were being murdered and to get his help with her investigation. Perhaps he would even forgive her for misleading him into declaring his affection for her. To show her appreciation, she would never mention his embarrassing words again.

  Anna approached the white curtain and hesitated, bracing herself for the gruesome sight of violent death and savoring her eminent victory. She threw back the curtain. The slab was empty.

  Anna gasped. “They must have taken the body somewhere else because they knew I was suspicious.”

  “You have an inflated sense of self-importance.” He turned toward the door.

  She scooted around him and blocked it with her body. “Please. All I want is for you to ask your father to have someone different investigate.”

  “And accuse my fellow officers of what? Incompetence? Dereliction? Murder? I have no evidence—just your word. And from what I've seen, that isn't worth much. How do I even know you're telling the truth?”

  The accusation hit Anna like a runaway milk wagon. The man she liked intensely didn't believe in her. It was likely that he never had, and that she deserved it. She was angry nonetheless. Her voice quivered. “Officer Singer, I'm sorry for wasting your time. I don't know why I thought a dirty cop like you would care about justice.” She lifted her chin and flounced out the door.

  She heard Joe swear and kick the brick wall.

  When Joe limped back into the station, Anna was already at her desk, studiously sorting through files S through Z, counting dead or missing prostitutes. Four roundsmen and two patrolmen were loitering around her like a pack of hungry dogs. She maintained her dignity and pretended not to notice, as would any girl of breeding under the circumstances. Neither did she look up when Joe passed by, heading straight for his helmet.

  Joe was intent on getting out of the station as soon as possible. Clearly, Snow had told the men what Joe had been doing in the stables with the new assistant matron, and he wanted to avoid the inevitable jibes from the other cops. He was not in the mood to watch them salivate over Anna, either. If she ever so much as winked at one of them, he didn't want to know. He would hate to have to punch a fellow officer.

  His getaway attempt failed. Before he reached the front door, he was intercepted by Wolf, who wore a lascivious smile. “Heard you had something delicious for dinner.”

  “You heard wrong,” Joe said.

  Anna, who was secretly listening, flushed a deep vermilion. She hoped Joe was defending her virtue and not denying her deliciousness.

  “Has Captain Wells heard any rumors about my dinner?” Joe asked. “Or Matron Clemens?”

  “Certainly not. If we told Captain Wells about your dinner, she'd be taken off the menu,” Wolf said. “And why would anybody do a thing like that?”

  “She isn't on the me
nu,” Joe said.

  Wolf raised his eyebrows. “Seems to me you said that before.”

  Joe glared at Wolf. “We didn't have dinner.”

  “Okay. You didn't have dinner,” Wolf said. “If that's your story, you might want to get the straw out of your hair.”

  When Anna and the Widow arrived home, Anna was still light-headed from her detective work in the hay with Officer Singer that afternoon. Although she didn't feel hysterical per se, she did feel a little like a love-crazed nymph. She could fancy herself in love, if she hadn't been a girl of experience, if Louis Taylor hadn't taught her not to trust passion. Otherwise, she'd certainly be doing something silly like throwing off Edgar or climbing the steps to the hayloft.

  She would have to tell Captain Wells that she could no longer be the girl in the stings to catch the Boyle Heights Rape Fiend if Officer Singer was to be her partner. In the moonlight, in a park made for spooning, with his arm around her, knowing that beneath his shirt and undershirt lay his very skin—she doubted she could concentrate enough to apprehend the villain, even with Wolf hiding in the bushes.

  Anna was a woman of reason, and she had reasoned that passion with one man would be the best antidote to passion with another. After kissing Joe Singer, she couldn't give a hoot about Louis Taylor. Spooning her well-made fiancé would surely be the best medicine for her love sickness now. She would lie in wait for Edgar and catch him going in or out of her father's study after the Widow Crisp was already in bed. She would lure him into a lonely corner and encourage him to do things that would leave her breathless and have him begging her pardon. Then she could look into Joe Singer's Arrow-Collar-Man eyes and see the officer and not the lover. She might even helpfully suggest that he find a different lady to spoon with so he would see Anna as an LAPD professional and not a love-crazed nymph.

  She would try not to think about Joe Singer at all.

  That night Edgar never arrived, thus Anna couldn't lure him into kissing her. It was still hot. The window was open, the air heady with the same jasmine scent that had filled Hollenbeck Park. Anna lay across her satin sheets and put Joe Singer out of her mind. She put his callused hands out of her mind, his body under hers, his body over hers, his legs, his peppermint lips, how nice it would have been if Snow had stayed a little bit longer, if he had stayed a lot longer. She kissed her pillow. She adjusted her drawers. She adjusted her drawers again. She adjusted them and adjusted them and adjusted them, until finally, with a little cry of satisfaction, she was finished adjusting them.

  She rolled over and stretched, her skin slipping on the silky fabric. Then she remembered that, unfathomably, Joe Singer was mad at her. Her brows knit together. She had thought that any man would happily kiss any woman under any circumstance, except for Edgar, who was shy if someone was watching. It was in man's feral nature. Weren't they always stealing kisses? Didn't women always have to be on their guard against men?

  She hadn't forced him to kiss her. Anna bit her lip. On reflection, it would have required extraordinary tact for him to refuse her without creating a socially awkward situation. She did leap on top of him. Perhaps a gentleman couldn't really refuse. But while Anna had been pressing herself against him, he had volunteered amorous words—that she was petal soft and honey sweet, that he was falling for her like a stone, and what on earth were they going to do. Tender words could be protocol from some secret gentleman's rulebook, but at the time she had thought that he liked her. She bit her thumb. How mortifying if he were just being polite.

  Anna fell asleep dreaming of arms and hips, and swathed knees rubbing swathed knees, and real sweet nothings on willing lips in the hay with Joe Singer.

  Early the next morning, Anna's eyes flew open. She knew for certain that Snow was not the killer. How unfortunate that this revelation came now. She would have to tell Officer Singer, which might be awkward under the circumstances. But if he was to help her solve the crimes and save Eve, he would have to know everything. And that was the most important thing—solving the crimes.

  Her bedroom curtains glowed orange in the dawn. She pulled them back to let in the cool morning air. Sitting in the driveway, alone in the tangerine sunrise, was her baby grand piano.

  Anna gulped down her kippers. She drove eleven miles per hour to the orchard she used for changing, and dressed so quickly that she didn't notice she had put her skirt on backward. She must go to Officer Singer and apologize, perhaps even grovel, for making him kiss her in the hay and anything else he wanted her to regret. The piano declared his intentions. She knew he adored it, the way he had cradled it like an infant, the way he had played it. He must be rabid to have given it back.

  She shuddered. They were no longer on equal footing. He had no obligation to keep her secrets. If he wanted to, he could squeal, tell Edgar and her father everything, and she would be yanked home and locked in a tower like Rapunzel, only without long hair, so she couldn't climb out and do police work.

  Couldn't Officer Singer see that she was an asset to the department—that by turning her in, the LAPD would lose someone valuable? She was brave. He had said so. The murders were real, and she was the only one who would bring the killer to justice. Convincing him of this fact was, perhaps, her best defense. Her only defense. And she would have to do it now, before it was too late.

  When she arrived at the station, Anna raced to find Ruby's file and extracted the newly typed report. As she'd expected, Mr. Melvin had typed it yesterday, letter for letter—a few illegible sentences, with the coroner's pronouncement of suicide by hanging. Anna plucked a fistful of Snow's reports from the files and looked for Joe. She found him alone in the back room pouring his morning coffee. “May I speak with you, Officer Singer?” She gave him a desperate, candy apple smile.

  He didn't return it. “I'm sorry, Matron Holmes. Wolf's got the hay loft for the morning.”

  Anna's smile turned upside down. “You could have kept the piano.”

  He set his cup on the table and squinted at her. “What do you think I am?”

  “Please. Take the piano back!”

  He made a bitter, scoffing sound. “Are you afraid of me?”

  “Should I be?” She bit her lower lip and searched his face for a clue.

  His expression was cool. “You shot me, remember?”

  He turned to go, but Anna grabbed his arm. “Wait. I have to tell you something.” She gazed up into his large, angry, Arrow-Collar-Man eyes with an expression almost like contrition. “I'm so sorry. For everything. Really I am. You're not a dirty cop. You're…perfect.” She smiled weakly. “And you were right. Snow didn't do it.”

  He peeled her fingers off his arm. “That's big of you to admit you're wrong, Sherlock.”

  “I'm not wrong! He's still derelict, incompetent, or a conspirator, but he didn't write the note. Look.” She held the crumpled suicide note in front of his face. “The killer spelled the word ‘was’ correctly. But in all his reports…” Anna put the wad of typed papers into Joe's hand. “Snow spells ‘was’ W-U-Z, like you would expect from someone sounding it out. You see? Snow genuinely can't spell. The killer can.” Anna struck the paper. “Snow couldn't have written ‘was’ correctly in the letter, much less ‘low.’ And I'm very smart to have figured it out.”

  Joe chuckled coldly and shuffled through the reports. He gave them back to Anna with a bitter smile. “What a shame. All that smooching for nothing.”

  Anna made a noise of objection. “Well, you're being a baby about it!” She gasped and conked herself in the forehead with the heel of her hand. Could she dig her hole any deeper?

  Joe narrowed his eyes. “You're calling me a baby?”

  She brushed away a tear of frustration. “I'm sorry kissing me was so awful for you, Officer Singer, but I'm the one at risk of a mental disease!”

  Joe's head tilted. His eyebrows went up and drew together in confusion.

  Anna stood tall and set her jaw. “No one on the force listens to me—not the men, not the captain, not your father
. Well, I'm going to the coroner's lecture, and I'm going to confront him with the evidence, publically, where there are medical students and other doctors to witness it. They'll understand what I'm talking about, and they'll act. I don't care what the men think of me. I'm not going to stop until I find out who's killing these girls!”

  Joe studied her desperate face. “All right, Sherlock.” He turned and left the room, leaving his coffee cup.

  “All right? That's all you have to say?” Anna stifled a sob. He was done with her. He was going to rat her out. She picked up his coffee cup and followed after him, in a last ditch effort to convince him that he shouldn't destroy her, that she was worth something.

  LAPD officers, victims, and suspects cluttered the station floor. Joe stood near the coat rack. She held his coffee out to him and whispered, “Officer Singer. Please. I'm…I'm a good detective.”

  Joe ignored the cup and took his helmet off the hook. “Sherlock, I know.” He swung out of the station and down the steps, and stayed gone for the rest of the day.

  It was Sunday. Anna had planned a morning walk with Edgar on the empty sea cliffs after mass. She chose the spot because there were no people, and plenty of cypress trees to hide behind, just in case. She had plied the Widow Crisp with a goodly amount of Theo's liquor the night before, and had presented her with a bottle at breakfast. Combined with the communion wine, if Anna were lucky it would be enough to knock the Widow out. Anna would cover her with eucalyptus leaves and lead Edgar off to a soft, private piece of earth where they could spoon.

  But Edgar had called and said he had to work. All that Anna had to look forward to was a portrait sitting later in the day. She didn't mind having her portrait painted, and Clara was coming to help her dress, as Anna's personal assistant was ill, but posing was nowhere near as nice as spooning. It was a chance to immortalize her beauty in a Frederick Worth original gown that she had augmented with a cluster of artificial birds. Even Anna Blanc wouldn't live forever. Her body would slowly change from spring blossom to withered rose to a rotting and worm-eaten corpse. Anna tried to picture the latter state and decided that the best she could do to ameliorate the situation was to be buried in something from Vionnet at the House of Doucet.