Rosemary for Remembrance

by Christine Arness

  She floated down the hall, her feet barely touching the floorboards. When she reached the doorway of Miss Julia’s room, however, she returned to earth with a thud. She couldn’t walk in with a foolish grin like a coon dog with a treed possum—Miss Julia would slap her face. With reluctance, she slid the coin, still warm from the contact with Austin’s hand, into her skirt pocket.

  Miss Julia was seated at her dressing table and gazing at her reflection, a powder puff in her hand. The patches of pink powder against the chalkiness of her complexion reminded Belle of the painted circles on a clown’s face at the circus that summer.

  Her mistress didn’t seem to notice that a dark image had appeared beside hers until Belle cleared her throat. “Miss Julia?”

  Julia started and dropped the powder puff on the table. “Oh—Belle. Please do the top buttons and help me with my hair.”

  Belle was good with ladies’ hair—that talent was one of the reasons she’d been assigned to help Miss Julia dress. Picking up a silver-backed brush, the little girl used deft fingers to coax Julia’s glossy black hair into an upswept coiffure with a long ringlet falling in front of each ear.

  The red satin whispered as Belle fastened the top buttons of the gown. In her opinion, the dress was cut too high in the neck for such a warm night. Miss Julia had a lovely throat but her daddy was against a Kyle showing any skin to the common folk.

  During her maid’s ministrations, Julia sat motionless, her eyes gazing through the reflection of the two women and beyond at a vision so compelling she scarcely blinked. At intervals, her lips moved, as if in silent prayer. Belle slipped the pot of lip rouge and pearl compact lying on the dressing table into the red satin evening bag and touched Julia on the arm.

  “All set, Miss Julia.”

  Julia turned her head and transferred the unwinking stare to her maid. Belle gazed back with wide eyes, wondering if Miss Julia was having some kind of fit—not surprising in this heat!

  A knock broke the spell and Julia turned back to the mirror, her lips bloodless under their bright coating. “Come in.”

  Austin popped his head around the door, the smile on his face fading as he locked glances with his sister in the mirror. He shook his head, as though denying an unspoken request, and addressed Belle. “My jacket got a bit mussed. Do you suppose you could take it down and press it for me?”

  Belle waited for Julia’s dismissing nod before accepting the wadded-up garment and squeezing past Austin. Her arm brushed his bare one; his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow and Belle tingled from the brief contact, proud that although folks called her “child,” her feelings inside were those of a woman grown. As the door closed behind her, she heard Julia say, “I’m not going tonight, Austin. If Nathan thinks—”

  But her brother must have persuaded her to change her mind because at eight o’clock, the pair descended the staircase, arm in arm. Austin betrayed the restless excitement of a high-strung colt but Julia’s features were set and cold. The chauffeur brought the car around for Austin; the sound of the engine rumbled through the close night air and the arid tang of exhaust fumes drifted in through the open door, making Belle sneeze.

  “The Kyles will be fashionably late,” Austin remarked to the household staff assembled to see them off. “We still have to pick up Nathan and Celeste.”

  Belle realized that Lawrence Kyle hadn’t made an appearance and wondered if everyone else felt the same relief she did. Austin pivoted to display the lines of his coat for Cook and the housekeeper, Mrs. Johnson. Julia smiled mechanically in response to their words of praise for her gown and walked outside, clutching her evening bag with both hands as if, as Jeffrey put it later, she had a frog inside that was trying to jump out.

  “My gal better look more lively than Miss Julia at our dance next week or I’ll be looking for a new walkout,” Jeffrey muttered, closing the front door.

  “Poor little lady ain’t been herself the past few weeks—white folk feel the heat somethin’ dreadful,” Cook contributed, picking a biscuit crumb from her apron and popping it into her mouth.

  Mrs. Johnson fingered the cameo pinned at her throat and sniffed. “We musn’t stand here gossiping all night. I’m sure everyone has chores to attend to.”

  Behind the housekeeper’s back, Jeffrey twisted his mobile features into an imitation of Mrs. Johnson’s sour expression and mouthed the words, “Pickle puss.” Belle giggled.

  Mrs. Johnson glared as Cook turned to hide a smile. “There’s no time for unseemly hilarity in this house. Get to work.”

  A weary Belle finished her remaining duties by nine o’clock and was promptly sent up to bed by Cook. “You’ve got to get up with the chickens tomorrow, chile, or old pickle puss will be raking you over with the coals in the stove.”

  The exhausted girl fell asleep in her hot little room to dream of Mr. Austin in his fine coat and a rebellious lock of hair that whispered like silk under her fingertips.

  When the shouting began downstairs in the early morning hours, Belle awoke and frowned, listening. Mr. Austin must have dented the car and his daddy was having another tantrum. Poor Mr. Austin. Belle put the pillow over her head to muffle the sound and went back to sleep.

  A timer went off on the stove and Belle rose to attend to the stew. Abigail waited a moment, but the woman remained silent.

  “What was the shouting about?”

  Belle shrugged, as immovable as a boulder blocking a path.

  Abigail shuffled the photographs into a stack and slipped them back into her shoulder bag. She tried to provoke a response. “Rosemary seduced both father and son, quite an accomplishment for a girl barely eighteen years old.”

  Belle removed the stew from the heat and gave it a final stir with a wooden spoon before removing the celery stalks and placing them on a paper towel. Without turning, she said, “Mr. Lawrence was a man of the flesh—he needed women and he hated them for making him need them. But he was more than a match for Rosemary—she didn’t get what she came looking for.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was putting sheets into the linen cupboard outside the bedroom and I heard her crying and Mr. Lawrence talking. ‘Your coming here today proves that you’re just trash. You’ll get no money from me. Stay away from my son or I’ll break you.’”

  Belle turned and dried her hands on her apron. “When he said ‘break you,’ I heard something shatter. After Rosemary ran down the stairs, Mr. Lawrence came out and ordered me to clean up some broken china in his room. He’d smashed a little vase that had belonged to his wife—hurled it against the wall to make a point.”

  Abigail reached out a hand to stroke the smooth outlines of the bottle of vinegar in a protective gesture as the other woman continued. “Mr. Lawrence should have been a butcher—he could have cut the throat of a lamb without flinching. To him Rosemary wasn’t worth more than an animal and he’d have done anything to keep Mr. Austin from marrying the girl. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Ms. James…”

  The housekeeper listened to Abigail’s retreating footsteps and pressed her right hand against her chest as if to ease a spasm. Tugging on a slender chain, she pulled out the coin that dangled between her breasts and had burned like a brand during her conversation with the attorney. Her eyes closed, Belle held the coin in a possessive grasp and pretended its warmth came from contact with Austin’s fingers. The fantasy brought no rush of joy, only a deep sadness. Placing the coin against the hollow of her throat, she let the gold slide back under her blouse.

  Aware that a soothing tisane always aided Flora’s digestion, Belle measured out four teaspoons of lemon balm into the kettle, first bruising the leaves with her fingers. Placing the teakettle on a burner to warm, she turned up the heat under a saucepan filled with water and waited for it to boil.

  The gentle hiss of the water receded into the distance as Belle remembered a summer two years after that fateful dance. Another humid day when Belle, almost seventeen and considered a woman grown, was cleaning Aust
in’s room…

  She was dusting the world globe on the desk, an elaborate model featuring the land mass of the continents raised from the surrounding waters and mountain peaks forming tiny pyramids. As always, the task made her visualize the beauty and breadth of those far-off mountains and hardened her determination to escape the bonds of servitude. Education would be her key to freedom. No one seemed to notice when books disappeared from the shelves of the library for a week or two, to be smuggled up to her attic room and their contents devoured by lamplight.

  The chance to pursue his education didn’t seem to make Mr. Austin happy, however. He seemed like a stranger on his brief visits home and she missed the times they had joked together and the laughing way he said his pet name for her, Honeybelle. She mourned the loss of her first and only love, even if the taste of his lips and the burning pressure of his hands were only fantasy.

  Her mental picture of the man was so vivid that Belle almost dropped the feather duster when the flesh-and-blood Austin stormed into the room without warning. He’d been out running; his cotton short-sleeved jersey was soaked with sweat. He flung himself across the bed and the mattress creaked.

  Belle laid the feather duster crosswise on the desk blotter, her right hand caressing the globe’s cool surface and finding the raised tips of the mountains. A lock of hair had slipped across the man’s right eye and she studied his beloved features, a smile teasing her lips as she remembered the dreams that had sustained a homesick girl through long winter nights.

  Oblivious to the maid’s presence, Austin groaned. The despairing sound wrenched at her heart. Without being aware of her action, she spun the globe and sent the world whirling on its axis. Still in contact with her subconscious yearnings, she swayed forward—drawn toward the man she’d created and loved in her mind. Without a thought for the consequences, Belle sank down on the edge of the bed and stroked back the wayward hair, luxuriating in its silky smoothness as it curled around her fingers, felt the heat radiating from his body, and smelled the musk of the human male.

  “What’s wrong, Mr. Austin? You sound so sad.”

  He turned his head and looked at her. Looked at her for the first time since he’d come home that summer, his gaze acknowledging the womanly fullness of the breasts pushing against the fabric of her uniform, the ripeness of soft lips, and the sympathy welling in sloe-black eyes.

  “Honeybelle?” His voice rose on a questioning note, his own eyes darkening with awakening passion.

  Running a tender finger down her chin, he traced a path down the high collar of her uniform and touched her breast in worshipful silence, as if asking permission. She captured his hand in hers, raised it to her lips, and kissed each finger, one by one. Return payment five times over for a treasured kiss two years earlier.

  “You’re beautiful, Honeybelle.” He breathed the words as if fearful that a normal tone might scatter this illusion like dandelion seeds in the winds of summer.

  She held her hands, palms up, in a gesture of surrender and turned to allow him to unbutton her dress, shivered from a cool draft as his hands unpeeled the fabric from heated brown skin, and she heard his awed whisper, “Not Honeybelle—Honeybutter. Melt all over me, Honeybutter.”

  The dream continued, the fulfillment of her wildest fantasy as he pulled her down on the bed, the demands of his lips and body lifting her higher and higher, until she cried out for joy at having at last attained the mountain’s peak…

  A burnt odor penetrated her reverie and Belle looked down to discover a charred saucepan. The water had boiled away.

  Chapter 26

  Shady Acres was a sprawling ranch-style brick building with double doors propped open to let in the August sunshine and a calico patchwork cat dozing underneath the overgrown shrubbery that outlined the nursing home.

  Abigail parked in the visitor’s lot, her mind whirling with new possibilities after her interview with Belle. Had Austin known about Rosemary’s liaison with his father? Was he devious enough to have held his lover in his arms and whispered endearments while plotting to kill her? The theft of a leather bag filled with gold coins from his father’s room pointed to an Austin far different from the meek puppet over whom Julia had displayed such mastery.

  The coins might have been taken to fund the elopement—or, conversely, the gold was destined to be blood money. Furious that the woman he loved had betrayed him with his own father, Austin might have used the leather bag’s contents as a payment to Spider for killing Rosemary. Perhaps Spider had left some evidence pointing to Austin, and Lawrence, rich enough to buy off a dozen coroners, had stepped in to protect his son’s bungling efforts at murder for hire. Belle, however, seemed to think that Lawrence Kyle possessed the necessary ruthlessness to have murdered Rosemary if she had posed any sort of threat to him.

  After following directions obtained from the office, Abigail hesitated outside Oliver Payton’s open door. The man in the wheelchair by the window was almost skeletal in appearance, with a head that seemed disproportionately large for his frail body. The outline of only one knee was visible under the plaid blanket covering his lap, and alert brown eyes studied the visitor over a folded newspaper.

  “Well, good afternoon. New on staff? No—you must be a visiting psychoanalyst come to tell me my manhood is intact—or is it personhood now?” The voice was deep and commanding.

  She entered in response to his beckoning hand and introduced herself. “My name is Abigail James. I’m an attorney conducting an investigation into the death of Rosemary Dickison.”

  His only visible reaction was to let the pen slide out of his fingers and onto the lap robe. Oliver Payton remained motionless for so long, his eyes blank and shuttered, that Abigail began to wonder whether he’d suffered a stroke. She took a step closer to ascertain if he was still breathing.

  The deep voice rumbled to life again and he blinked and turned his head. “Rosemary! A fair blossom crushed before her soft petals unfurled—filled with sweet nectar craved by so many, but shared with so few.”

  The flowery speech might have been intended as a tribute, but Abigail’s sensitive ear caught the mocking undertone that sounded a false note. He fell silent and she remained inside the door, waiting for permission to sit down.

  Oliver’s room contained the usual institutional Spartan furnishings: a narrow bed, a nightstand, a plastic chair, and a half-opened door revealing a closet the size of a phone booth. He had added a few personal touches, however—a model clipper ship sailed across the top of a narrow bookcase bursting with worn paperbacks and a Chicago Cubs poster was tacked to the wall.

  He seemed to read her thoughts. “Yes, I’ve been here a long time. Too much of a coward to live alone after my wife died.”

  Abigail’s guide at the office had mentioned that Oliver had lost his leg in World War II. “Do they give Purple Hearts to cowards?”

  Another glance identified most of the books on the shelves as action-adventure novels and she turned to find her host watching her, his eyes glinting with malice and the generously shaped mouth a line of bitterness.

  Oliver’s sudden gust of laughter startled her and broke the uncomfortable silence. “Don’t start imagining I read those books because they remind me of my war-hero days. Do you suppose I tore my leg off and hurled it at the charging enemy troops to save my squadron? I lost a limb, but courage had nothing to do with it.

  “I was on the Big E—the Enterprise aircraft carrier—when a kamikaze pilot snuck under the radar screen, loaded to the engines with explosives, and tore through two decks.” His hands joined together to form a plane and swooped down on his lap. “No one was killed, but clumsy Oliver couldn’t get out of the way of a falling support wall. When we got back to Hawaii, the doctors amputated my crushed leg and my dancing days were over.” He pointed to the flat space beside his right knee. “Not only the heroes get hurt.”

  She matched his bluntness. “Speaking of dancing, shall we discuss the dance held the night Rosemary Dickison died?”
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  “You’re quite the little bloodhound, aren’t you?” The grin was almost a grimace of pain. “I’ve told you my sad story—given you your cue to tell me that I’ve lived a full life with only one leg.”

  “You lost a leg—Rosemary lost her life.”

  “A man doesn’t like to recall past humiliations. What can you do to me that the Japanese didn’t do in the war?”

  She hardened her heart at the wistful tone, remembering Flora’s suffering over the loss of her sister. “I can subpoena your deposition. No statute of limitation on murder exists—and you escorted Rosemary away from the dance.”

  Oliver pivoted the chair back around to face her, powerful hands in strong contrast to the narrow tires beneath his fingers. “My only encounter with her was such a fiasco that I’ve done my best to forget it. You’re a hard woman, Miss—Mrs.—James. A lady of my generation would balk at threatening an invalid war veteran.”

  Abigail closed her notebook. She had no real lever to force him into compliance and the intelligence behind those brown eyes knew it, but Oliver’s reactions continued to surprise her.

  He refolded the newspaper resting on his lap. “Today’s crossword puzzle was composed by a simpleton and I’ve given up expecting my grandchildren to drop by on a sunny day. If you insist on stripping away a man’s dignity and exposing him to scorn—Yes, I escorted Rosemary off the dance floor. That girl-woman had a touch of Marilyn Monroe about her. Tragic, doomed, vulnerable, yet she had that punch to the gut of sensuality—just watching her eat an apple created an atmosphere of intimacy. Rosemary had an air of unattainability that made you willing to sell your soul just for the chance to possess her, even though you knew such an event could never happen on this earth…”

  Chapter 27