The Secret Life of Anna Blanc

by Jennifer Kincheloe

  She blinked. “I beg your pardon? Our bank is bust?”

  “Anna, I didn't court you to get a bank deal. I made a bad bank deal so I could marry you!” He groaned. “And you lie to me and treat me like the fool that I am.”

  Anna dropped like a lead weight onto the velvet pouf. Air hissed out of it. She had known the match was advantageous to her father, but she had always assumed it was mutual. Edgar walked to the paned window and stared out at nothing. They were finally alone, but he couldn't be more distant. He shook his head slowly, his curls swaying. “I broke up your marriage.”

  Anna gave him a bewildered look. “What?”

  “That morning at the Mission Inn. I called your father and told him you were there with Taylor.” He went back to tugging his curls.

  Normally, this kind of revelation would make Anna throw chairs, but she had nothing left in her, not even the strength to raise her voice. She whispered. “Why?”

  “Because he is a rotten gold digger and I wanted you for myself!”

  Edgar's confession flooded her with hope. Perhaps he already loved her with a love like Heathcliff's—a love that transcended marriage to another man, or even death. A love that could forgive a transgression.

  She went to him and laid her hand gently on his arm. His body heat had made his shirt-sleeve limp and his petunia scent stronger. She stroked his arm down to his hand, where a little black curl peeked from under his cuff. “Kiss me.”

  Edgar shook off her hand and kept staring out the window. Anna blinked. Two rejections in one evening exceeded her limit. His confession hadn't made her angry, but this did—not just that he didn't kiss her now, didn't draw her heart away from Joe Singer and seal her to himself, but that he had never kissed her. Not once. Her throat ached. “I forgive your betrayal, and you can't forgive me?”

  “I don't know.”

  Her voice pleaded. “Edgar, if you love me, can't you try to understand? Someone is violating innocent women. The police needed a girl. They approached me because I'm smart.”

  He smiled cynically. “Joe Singer approached you because you're smart?”

  “Yes.”

  He chuckled, but his eyes were flat. Anna's brows drew together. “Can't you see it made me happy? I'd always dreamed of doing detective work, like Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, or the spinster in the Circular Staircase. I'm good at it. If I'd told you the truth, you'd never have allowed it.”

  “That's right. I wouldn't!” He swiped a hand across his eyes and sighed. “It isn't just embarrassing, Anna, it's dangerous. You could have been killed tonight, or worse.” He turned and looked her square in the eye. “Do you want to be my wife?”

  She blinked. “I…I do, but…”

  He spoke with a sudden violence that made her step back. “Then you will stay away from the police station! If I see Joe Singer within a hundred yards of you, I'll kill him!”

  Anna raised a hand and let it fall. “He's just a policeman.”

  Edgar's eyes were bulging now and a vein stood out on his temple. “I will know, Anna, if you've been unfaithful.”

  “How dare you!” Anna moved to slap him, but he caught her wrist and twisted. She shrieked. Edgar quickly dropped her arm. He recoiled, mouth dumb and open, as if horrified at his own internal monster. Anna flew down the hall and up the stairs, her arm turning red where his hand had been. He followed, but she was faster, and propriety stopped him at the stairs. Her bedroom door slammed.

  She heard him call out, “Anna, darling, I'm sorry!”

  The following morning, Detective Wolf ushered the Widow Crisp from her room in the Blanc Mansion, down the cool marble steps to a paddy wagon bound for San Francisco. He had recovered all of Anna's jewelry, as well as her tortoiseshell shoehorn, silver candlesticks, a bottle of Ambre Antique perfume, and several pairs of fancy drawers. He returned the things to Mrs. Morales, except for one silky pair of Anna's drawers, which he surreptitiously tucked into his coat.

  Mrs. Morales waited at the threshold, and when the Widow Crisp shuffled out the door Mrs. Morales kicked her in the bottom.

  Anna stayed in bed all morning, grieving her secret life as a detective. She had tried to solve the murders and failed. She had not turned her back on injustice, but it hadn't been her responsibility to start with. She was just a silly girl.

  Anna would have stayed in bed all day, but she was terribly bored. Plus, her stomach was growling. Heartbreak and desperation were no reasons not to eat, and so she slipped into a negligee appropriate for breakfast. Anna's eyes stung and her nose glowed from blowing as she dragged herself down the hall.

  Coming to the top of the spiral staircase, she caught her breath and sneezed. The room looked like a florist shop. She descended into a sea of blood-red roses, some buds, some blooming. Her heart bounced around her chest like a rubber ball. Every red rose in Los Angeles adorned her conservatory. She plucked a flower and lifted it to her nose, but her nose was swollen and the fragrance faint.

  She headed for the breakfast table where her father was having a slice of pork cake. He smiled. “Apparently, Mr. Wright has lost his mind.”

  After breakfast, Mrs. Morales and Mr. Blanc escorted Anna to confession, and from that point on Anna resolved to obey. Not that she had an opportunity to disobey, as her father dogged her every step. She was surprised he hadn't leashed her. He had installed locks to keep Anna in, and a team of chaperones were on their way. This was unnecessary. Anna had repented of her lies in the confessional that morning, though Father Depaul might say he'd heard it all before. He gave her a thousand Hail Marys as penance and ordered her to volunteer at the Orphans’ Asylum.

  God was quite cruel. For just as Anna was trying to be good, to forget police work and Joe Singer, she opened the morning paper and saw an advertisement for the new Arrow Shirt Suit. Her heart leapt like a suicidal goldfish. There was the Arrow Collar Man, bare-legged and standing in his Arrow shirt suit, a one-piece combination overshirt and underdrawers, brand new this year. It was rather sheer and unbuttoned up to the very curve of his bottom. While she liked this advertisement intensely, she didn't know why she had ever thought Joe Singer looked like the Arrow Collar Man. Joe Singer looked much, much better. But because she didn't have a picture of the real Joe Singer, she clipped the advertisement of the half-naked man as a memento of the man she must never see again.

  Detective Wolf wore linen trousers creased in front and back, a vest, double-breasted jacket, gloves, and a boater's hat. His nose twitched from too much lavender aftershave. He was credibly disguised as a gentleman, though if Anna had been there she would have insisted that he change his tie. But Anna was not there.

  He swaggered into an upscale shop and lost himself in a forest of overly feathered ladies’ hats. He lifted one at random and pretended to admire it. It towered more than a foot, with a basket of fruit pinned to the side, including a life-sized pomegranate, grapefruit, and two lemons. It smelled like glue. Only a man would have a neck thick enough to support it comfortably. If the LAPD ever again had an occasion to dress an officer in ladies’ clothing, he would buy the hat for Joe.

  Across the forest, he could hear the milliner charming a lady at the till. He snuck a glance at them in a mirror. The lady wasn't interesting. She was too thin and looked frigid. But the man had oversized blue eyes, with thick black lashes and unnaturally blonde hair. He was a dandy, a dude, in his fancy suit and ascot, the kind of man Wolf distained and women loved. He flashed his eyes at Wolf, who immediately pegged him for a deviant.

  Three women in the shopping district had recognized this man in Anna's portrait and identified him as their milliner. Wolf signaled through the window to Joe, who loitered outside in denim waist overalls. Joe barely nodded and disappeared from view.

  The lady at the till purchased two hats and left with two round, striped boxes stacked in her arms. Bells tinkled as the shop doors closed behind her. Wolf stepped to the door and locked it with a click. He took off his jacket and hung it over a hat rack. He rem
oved his vest, folded his arms, and leaned up against the door.

  The milliner smiled at Wolf the way the girls did when they fell for his oily charm. “I beg your pardon. Can I help you?”

  Wolf sized him up. The milliner's smile began to fade. “Hey, what are you about?”

  It was Wolf's turn to smile. He flashed his badge. “Arresting you.”

  The milliner's big eyes got bigger, and he skittered like a rabbit through a door to the back of his shop. Wolf leapt the counter in pursuit and hurled into the work space where the hats were made. It smelled like a wet dog. The fop was hiding, but Wolf could hear him moving. He weaved his way among beaver skins soaking in mercury, vats of wet wool, ovens and cutting machines, hats on forms, and a motherly old woman elbow deep in a tub of dye who screamed when she saw him. Wolf shouted, “Where did he go?” but she cowered and said nothing.

  He heard a bang as the man threw open a back door into the alley and it slammed against the wall. Wolf snapped his fingers. “Damn it! I wanted him.”

  He charged to the alley door and saw the milliner lying flat on his back and Joe standing over him shaking out his hand and grinning. “He ran smack into my fist.”

  One of the milliner's large blue eyes was turning red, the flesh above it swelling up with blood. Wolf rolled him over. Joe wiped his bloody knuckles on the fop's fine suit and cuffed his hands behind his back. “So.” He lifted the dazed dandy's face by the collar. “Were you really just trying to humiliate the men?”

  Anna carefully picked her way down the sidewalk, trussed up like a lady, in a fierce new corset that squeezed her organs into an unnatural figure eight. It pinched, and she couldn't fully expand her lungs, but she was doing everything she could to stay in line and be a good fiancée. She would do everything except throw out the advertisement for the Arrow shirt suit, which she planned to keep until Edgar took her in his arms and made her no longer want it.

  Two chaperones flanked Anna. They looked more like men than women, with fuzzy beards on their chins that resembled bread mold. Anna could not remember their names. Tramping ahead of Anna was their leader, Miss Olga Baumgartner, so muscular Anna was sure she was a man. The three persons formed a mobile human jail cell. Mrs. Morales had not hired this trio. It had been the work of Mr. Blanc himself. Anna thought he must have gotten them from the circus, but she was too tired to be amused. Her life was racing forward without her.

  She and Edgar would marry next Saturday in a quiet ceremony that would get the job done. There would be rumors about the rushed affair, speculation that Anna's gown had been cream and not white, and her status would once more be downgraded. But when there was no baby, she would be vindicated. She didn't care. She felt nothing. Not excitement, not love, not sadness. Nothing. And nothing cures nothing like shopping.

  Anna had one week to finish buying her trousseau. None of the extraordinarily expensive things she had ordered from Paris would arrive in time, and Edgar was taking her on a honeymoon next Sunday. He had given Miss Baumgartner a sum of money that would more than cover anything Anna wanted. At least there were four women to carry the bags.

  In the new corset, Anna had to stop every few yards to catch her breath. She paused in front of the Southern California Music Company. It occurred to her that she might buy a talking machine and some records, maybe even a recording of “By the Light of the Silvery Moon.” It would be heavy, but one of the muscular ladies could carry it.

  Anna glided inside to the elevator, a little light-headed from the corset and the heat. Because God was still cruel, it was not working. The talking machines were on the sixth floor and she was going to have to take the stairs. The air in the stairwell was dusty, bug legs and skin flakes spun in the sunbeams. She took a sip of dirty air and mounted the first of several hundred steps.

  Four blocks away, in his little apartment, Joe missed Anna's baby grand. He liked to play when he felt blue, and since Anna got yanked off the force he had felt blue. He had written her a song, which he called “Miss Jekyll and Matron Hyde.” It was in a minor key. On his sorry piano, it sounded terrible. Wolf said Anna was being held prisoner in her castle on the hill and would marry Edgar on Saturday.

  Joe went to the kitchen and shook the last drops out of a bottle of Siglo XX. His ratty old upright was no match for his blue mood when he was dry, so he walked down to the Music Company, where he knew the manager's daughter, a Miss Julia Lory, would be working. She was pretty and maybe a little sweet on him. She let him borrow sheet music and play the pianos. She would have his business someday. He'd saved three hundred dollars and figured he needed two hundred more. If he gave up beer for a year, he'd have it. He could practice. Get better. Maybe even make a recording.

  The pianos were sold on the bottom floor, where it was cooler than outside. He sat down at a blonde Wentworth upright and ran his fingers over the butter-smooth keys. It sounded good, but not as good as Anna's baby grand. He started in on a rag, a frantic, cheerful sequence of notes to elevate his mood. His hands moved in a blur. The piano action stood exposed and the hammers were fluttering like hummingbird wings, mirroring the movement of the keys, making quiet puffing sounds as they cut through air.

  Miss Lory came over and leaned against the instrument, smiling, tapping her fingers on the hard top. Joe's hands wound down and stopped. She smiled. “I heard you from the other room. I knew it was you. No one plays like you, Mr. Singer.”

  He smiled back. “How much is this one?”

  “Four hundred dollars.” She lowered her voice. “That's your special price. Normally, it's four-fifty, but I asked Daddy if he'd give you a discount.”

  “Really? Thank you.” He started in on “By the Light of the Silvery Moon.” “Give me six more months, and you've got a deal.” He moved down an octave and scooted over so she could sit. She put her hands on the keys and jumped in.

  Anna heard their duet as she took the stairs slowly down from the sixth floor, one by one, pausing every fifth step to rest. The corset was taking its toll. She leaned up against the rail to listen to Joe's song about crooning and mooning and spooning. Her organs, already maximally squished, rearranged to make room for her throbbing heart.

  Anna wasn't alone in the stairwell. One bearded lady hoisted a talking machine over her shoulder; sweat beaded on her upper lip. She glared at Anna, who was taking weeks to reach the first floor. Miss Baumgartner lugged four bags of records. The third guard carried nothing, guarding Anna. Anna almost asked her for a piggyback ride. Instead, she sighed and took five more steps, taking quick shallow breaths.

  She reached the bottom landing only to find the elevator working again. God's cruel joke. She hobbled into the showroom and, out of curiosity, looked for the source of the music.

  Her face went slack. She saw Joe Singer sitting at the piano, smiling and playing her song with a different girl—a pretty girl leaning in close to him. A girl whose fiancé hadn't threatened to kill him. He laughed at something the pretty girl said, which Anna couldn't hear over the music.

  Anna's heart turned poison green and sprouted tendrils that spread through her body and wrapped around her lungs. More than ever, she felt she couldn't breathe. She didn't want Joe Singer to have a girl, even after she was married, even after she was dead. Of course, she could say nothing about it. All their spooning had been of a professional nature. He had said some sweet things, but a gentleman would in such situations. He had never pursued her, and she belonged to someone else. She had no right to the jealousy she felt. It would be wrong to upturn the piano bench or club the girl with a clarinet. Besides, that would require the removal of her corset. Anna resolved to act with dignity. She would slink away.

  Joe sang in his rich tenor voice about mooning, crooning, and spooning. The piano girl sang the patter, on key, smiling at him with full pink lips and white teeth. Anna couldn't bear the sight or the sound. She ran. That is, she took the deepest breath possible in her iron maiden, and sped at a crawl toward the door, hoping to God he wouldn't see her.
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br />   But, as God is cruel, he did.

  Just as she made it safely onto the hot sidewalk, passing the window, hemmed in and shielded by her burly entourage, Joe saw her through the glass. He leapt from the bench, excusing himself to Miss Lory even as he hurled himself out the door. He bellowed, “Sherlock!”

  Anna didn't turn around. He caught up, dodged in front of her, and jogged backward. “Hey.” He grinned. “Everyone misses you down at the station. It's boring without you.” He wiped his forehead on his sleeve and flashed his dimples.

  Her green heart thumped. She turned her head so she wouldn't have to see him.

  He bobbed around so he could look her in the face and gave her a knee-weakening half smile. “What's wrong?” He leaned close and whispered. “Aren't you gonna try to seduce me in the line of duty?”

  Anna's weak knees wobbled and she snapped her head away. “No. I've given up police work.”

  Miss Baumgartner hurled her girth between them and threatened Joe with an evil glare. He danced around the formidable chaperone like a boxer. “That's too bad. We captured the Boyle Heights Rape Fiend. Wolf and I got him. He was a milliner, of all things. Big blue eyes, dark lashes, blonde, blonde hair. Dressed like a dandy, looked just like your picture.” He gave her a cocky grin and swaggered. “Only now he has a black eye.”

  Miss Baumgartner took a swat at him, but he was quicker and more agile and dodged it.

  Anna's eyes flashed for a moment, but their light was soon extinguished. “Don't tell me. I don't want to know.”

  “What's wrong with you? We should be celebrating. You cracked the case.” He smiled, warm and open as if all were forgiven, making her heart pitter-pat. She had to get away from him before she succumbed to liking him intensely.

  With effort, she put on a chilly voice. “Nothing's wrong with me. I just don't need to be associating with a low class policeman.”