MINUTES LATER, WHEN Rosita hadn’t answered our knocks and cries, I nudged in front of Eddie, unlocked and opened the door. I stumbled as he shouldered past me, into Rosita’s suite.
Her jasmine perfume lingered in the room. Largo, sensing our presence, squawked under the cloth of her cage. It was well past her morning feeding. I rushed to the cage, pulled aside the cloth. Annoyance rose in me; Largo’s water dish was dry, her seed bowl empty. Couldn’t Rosita tend to her son’s bird for once?
But Rosita wasn’t in the sitting area.
I ran to the bedroom, calling her name. She wasn’t in there, or the bathroom.
A cracking sound made me jump, and I hurried back to the sitting area. Eddie was kicking at the door to the room that had been Oliver’s nursery.
“Eddie, stop—” I lurched forward, but Seamus caught me by my arm.
“Do you have a key?” Seamus asked.
I shook my head. “Only Rosita—”
Eddie gave the door another kick, and another. Each crack to the wood made my heart thud, my eyes sting. God, how far from sane the McGees had fallen since the death of their son.
Finally, the door splintered enough for Eddie to step into the nursery.
I suppose he expected to find Rosita, sitting on the bed, draped in her veil.
Instead, Eddie dropped to his knees, whimpering. In spite of everything, my heart went out to the man.
But in the next instant, he leapt up, came back into the sitting room, charging at me, eyes bulging. “You! You’ve helped her hide away somewhere in this mansion, on the island!”
“I haven’t!” I cried. “Rosita was angry at me last night. The last time I saw her was in here—” I waved my hands, as if trying to conjure her from a shadowy corner of the suite. “That was after midnight.” I looked desperately around the room. “There—there might be a clue as to where she’s gone—”
Eddie smirked, and Seamus looked skeptical.
“She—she had her red diary out yesterday morning.”
Both men just stared at me, Eddie with derision, but Seamus as if he suddenly wondered if the woman he’d slept with the night before had lost her marbles.
“She used to write in it all the time,” I said, “but not since coming here. Maybe if we found it—”
“You’d better hope we find her,” said Eddie, his voice a scratchy growl, “or I will be telling Marco about who you really are.”
My face flamed, and I avoided looking at Seamus, who I was sure must be staring at me with alarm.
I squared my shoulders. “I’m sure we’ll find her,” I said, “and she’ll be glad to confirm I had nothing to do with her disappearing act.” After the previous night’s encounter, I wasn’t sure about that at all. But by God, I thought, when we found her, she’d better tell the truth—I had nothing to do with her sick game of hide-and-seek—or I’d shake her until her teeth rattled. “And I’m going to look for that red diary.”
“Goddamn it, I don’t care about the diary—”
“If we find it, we can compare the handwriting in the diary to the note you think Rosita left you, so we can be sure it was from her—”
“She left me the goddamn note! And I recognize her handwriting!”
“Aurelia makes a good point,” Seamus said. “How long has it been since you’ve seen her handwriting?”
Eddie scowled.
“And she might have left another note,” Seamus added, “directing you to meet her elsewhere.”
“Rosita wouldn’t lead me on such a wild goose chase…” Eddie spluttered to a stop. His face reddened. He knew—we all knew—that yes, she would.
“I’ll search the bedroom and bathroom. I need to get water for Largo anyway—” I started. But Eddie and Seamus weren’t listening. They were already searching tables and bookshelves.
I uncovered Largo’s cage and opened the door. Largo flew out, then landed on my shoulder. I gave her head a scratch, then pulled out her water dish and went to the bedroom.
I filled the dish at the sink, put it on the counter. Largo hopped down, began drinking. I checked the wardrobe and drawers and did not find the red leather diary, but it also did not appear that any of Rosita’s clothes were missing. I looked on the top shelf, where the suitcase she’d come with a year before was stowed. It was still there.
I thought of my own small suitcase, how I’d tucked away my secrets in the cigar box. Maybe Rosita had done the same. I pulled down her suitcase and toted it to the bed.
Out in the parlor, I heard the men talking. “How did you come to be in my employ?” Eddie was asking Seamus.
Interesting question. I’d once assumed that Eddie hired everyone directly, but as I grew closer to Rosita, I’d quickly learned that the lower level of bodyguards or enforcers or collectors—men like Pony—reported up to lieutenants.
The few times men at Pony’s level came over to our bungalow, he bragged about how he hung out with “the big boss,” as if there was a friendship there. Once, one of the men had told him if he knew what was best for him, he’d stop bragging so damned much—Eddie wouldn’t like it if it got back to him. As I brought in snacks for their poker game, Pony punched the man. The man, much bigger than Pony, had clutched his nose, blood oozing between his fingers, and I could see in the man’s eyes that he wanted to kill my husband. Pony had that effect on people.
As the man narrowed his eyes on me, I realized that he wouldn’t kill Pony only because of my friendship with Rosita. The man left. Pony had swaggered around for the rest of the night.
The men never came back to play poker. The other men’s wives or girlfriends or mistresses no longer asked me to spend time with them.
I opened Rosita’s suitcase. It was empty. Only her jasmine scent, transferred from her clothes to the burgundy velvet lining of the suitcase, lingered. Clothes that she’d once brought with her to all sorts of exotic places—Key Largo, New York, Bermuda, New Orleans. Sometimes, when we were friends and confidantes, she’d tell me about them on long, lazy afternoons by the pool at the McGees’ Toledo mansion. She’d speak of them as if traveling was silly, as if leaving one’s home at all was senseless and the places were boring. But her descriptions, disparaging as they were, made my head giddy with desire. Such adventures were why—well, one reason—I’d run from my home in southeast Ohio to begin with.
“Got to be friends with one of your men,” Seamus was saying. “Boris Stefka.”
I recognized the name and stiffened, on alert. Boris was the lieutenant that Pony had reported up to—and wanted to replace.
“Your friend?” Eddie’s voice held suspicion.
“Met him on my beat.”
Sudden tension from the other room crept into the bedroom. I snapped shut Rosita’s empty suitcase and carried it to the wardrobe.
“You were a cop,” Eddie said flatly.
Seamus didn’t hesitate. “Yep. This pays better. I’d wager your man Cormac would agree.”
Eddie laughed, or at least made a sound that for him approximated a laugh.
Then my gaze caught the handle and pull rope that had once been tethered to the bell in my bedroom. I imagined Rosita pulling on the handle. Feeling the slack in the rope. The rope falling to the tabletop. The image of my end of the rope after I’d severed it the night before flashed across my mind. The cut neat. Even. Purposeful.
Had she cried out? Felt hurt? Betrayed? What if someone had come up here, threatened her? And she’d tried to ring for help? She could have been signaling for me, as she had done so many times before, but not so I’d fetch a book or a cup of tea. So I’d help her.
You thought—as usual—of no one but yourself, your own selfish desires …
Mama’s voice again.
A logical, cooler part of myself pointed out that Rosita wouldn’t have taken the time to so neatly wind up the rope if under assault. And neither would an assailant.
“Did you find anything?”
I jumped and turned at the sound of Seamus’s voice.
Well yes, I’d found the neatly coiled bell rope. But he meant the diary I’d referenced, or anything that would give us a clue to Rosita’s whereabouts. So I just shook my head.
“We didn’t either.”
I cleared my throat. “We should talk to the others. See what they know—or if Rosita is elsewhere in the mansion. After last night—”
“Coming to the music room last night might have given her a sense of breaking free. Of wanting to go out into the rest of the house?”
“Maybe,” I said. Though that didn’t seem like Rosita. She was so determined to stay in her room, in her mansion, on her island. But Eddie’s appearance had already forced revelations from Rosita. I had no idea what she might do next.
I clucked my tongue and Largo flew to my shoulder. “Good girl,” I muttered. “Good girl, good girl,” Largo repeated.
If only, I thought, Largo could tell us what had happened. Or repeat something unusual that she’d heard.
But Largo only repeated what she heard in the moment. I wondered what it would be like to be a creature like Largo, unburdened by memory or wondering about the future, without worry over ramifications of whatever was happening around you.
The sound of kicking made us both jump, and Largo cry out. We rushed to the sitting room. Eddie was finishing off the rest of the nursery door, making it easy to duck in and out.
Seamus gave me an apologetic look and followed Eddie through the opening. I couldn’t bear to watch them enter the nursery. I eased Largo back into her cage.
I meant to stay in the sitting room, out of respect for Rosita. After Oliver’s death, she’d had the nursery locked up with an unspoken rule that nobody was ever to enter.
But curiosity finally propelled me to step in after all.
The room was as I remembered it from the one summer that Oliver and I had been here on the island together. I’d witnessed Rosita tuck him in many nights, as I tidied the suite. Largo’s cage had been in the corner. There was a twin-sized bed, a dresser, a mirror. A small child-sized desk and chair, where he liked to draw and color. The desk was just in front of the window overlooking the tennis courts and swimming pool. A wardrobe with his clothes. A tufted chair in front of a bookshelf filled with children’s books—Five Children and It, Anne of Green Gables, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz—books from Rosita’s childhood, all too advanced for Oliver, but she seemed to take comfort in reading them aloud as he sat in her lap, even after he dozed off.
Before I met Rosita, I used to think that anyone with a childhood rich enough to include their own books could have no worries, no sorrow.
I felt wetness on my cheeks, swiped them, but yet the tears fell unbidden. Seamus put a gentle hand on my shoulder. I glanced at him, saw the concern in his face, the question in his expression about whether or not I was okay. That just made me cry harder.
Not so much from the sense of Oliver’s ghost—I would have welcomed that. But at the feeling there was no presence of him at all.
Eddie’s eyes darted wildly from spot to spot. But not from chasing memories, I realized. He was searching for something, something more than Rosita’s diary or another note.
He turned toward us, his face pale but devoid of all sorrow. He looked hard and cruel again, like stone. “We’re going to check the rest of the mansion. We’ll get Cormac to help. I don’t want the others to know yet—”
“Claire knows,” I said.
Eddie shrugged. “She’s probably out cold again. I’ll have Cormac gather everyone in the library. We’ll sort out a search of the mansion and, if need be, of the island.” He gave me a hard look. “Oh—and you will bring me the key to the suite.”
I wanted to ask him why he wanted the key—but the answer came to me. He wanted to be able to search again on his own. He believed that Rosita had hidden something—whatever she had on him—in the suite.
“But I need to come up here to tend to Largo,” I said.
“Just take the damned bird with you back to your room!”
Eddie turned, left his son’s old nursery.
“Hurry up,” Eddie barked from the sitting area.
As I followed Seamus out, I gazed around the nursery, my heart trembling with sorrow at all the loss it represented. Then a spot on the dresser caught my attention, and I froze.
Of course the men hadn’t noticed it. They did not spend their days cleaning, in between cooking and tending to others.
In the thick coat of dust on the dresser top, there was a smear. A fresh swipe of an arm, or a hand, or a sleeve dragging through the dust. In its wake was clean mahogany wood. Not enough time had passed since it had been made to allow even a fine film of dust to resettle in the spot.
Someone—Rosita? Or someone who had forced their way into the suite, made her unlock the nursery?—had been in here very recently. I would come back here and look more closely.
But I had to give the key back to Eddie.
Luckily, I knew how to pick a lock, at least a simple one. Pony had at least given me that.