MAXINE’S WORDS PLAYED over in my mind after I went upstairs.
I was impatient to finally slide back upstairs and search Rosita’s suite, but not while Eddie, Cormac, and Marco were in the casino. What if they came up while I was going up the stairs?
I decided I’d have time to luxuriate in a hot bath. I locked the bathroom door. I was generous with the castile soap, making plenty of bubbly foam. It felt good to scrape the stink and grime of the day off my skin. As I soaked, I reviewed what I’d learned from Claire and Douglas about their childhoods with Rosita—how gratefully and fondly Douglas saw her, how Claire had admired her and been in awe of her. But yet, they’d wanted to use her for her connections and Eddie’s money and influence: in Claire’s case, to gain a foothold in Hollywood; in Douglas’s, to regain one.
I could understand Claire needing all the help she could get. She was talented, but not in a breakout way. She’d worked in studio secretarial pools and had had a few minor film roles.
But Douglas had been a major star. Why had he lost his foothold?
In either case, it seemed they’d had every reason to want her alive and well—and yet, she’d turned them down flat, in front of everyone. Could they have gone to her that first night, after the scene in the music room, begged her to take Eddie’s offer, to help them? Then, when she turned them down again—and she would have done so cruelly—killed her out of anger?
Then there was Maxine and Henry. Eddie had come, wanting to wrest the island away from Rosita. And then what would have happened to the Carmichaels? Maybe they thought Eddie might release them from the island, set it up so they could go be with Maxine’s sister and Ada in Alabama? Maybe they’d gone to Rosita to plead with her to take the deal. Maybe she’d spurned them, and then in frustration and anger, they had killed her.
On the other hand, Rosita had indicated that first night that she had information that could ruin Eddie. If she succeeded, wouldn’t that be good for Maxine and Henry and Ada? For Claire and Douglas? Free of Eddie, she could keep her island and still help them all. Except no, even in prison, Eddie would find a way to pull strings to control all those lives.
I still hadn’t worked out motivations for Liam, Dr. Aldridge, or Seamus. Yet, I knew that Liam was moving those lockboxes for Eddie. How had the one I’d found gotten so far from where the lot was probably stored, near the north dock? Had Liam been holding some back for himself, lost track of the one I’d found? Did Rosita somehow know?
And Dr. Aldridge, who the Carmichaels didn’t like or trust for good reason, had been coming here regularly to check on Rosita at Eddie’s behest. Had Rosita given him some reason to want her gone?
As for Seamus … if he was a Fed, he’d have no reason to want Rosita gone. But if he was a Fed who’d flipped to serving either Eddie or Marco, he might. Either man might demand he prove his loyalty by taking out Rosita.
I shook my head, not wanting to believe that Seamus was capable of murder. I didn’t want to believe that about any of them, either, except Eddie or Marco. It made more sense that one of them, or their henchmen, were behind Rosita’s killing, and that something had gone awry and led to Joey’s killing.
All I knew for sure was that whoever had killed Rosita needed the world to know that Rosita was dead. Otherwise, why not let her body sink to the bottom of the lake? And they wanted me to find her, making it likely I’d be accused of the murder. Whoever it was knew I’d had a lockbox below the dock, that I’d try to retrieve it when I panicked and decided to leave the island.
And I knew one other thing: how fragile our existences all were, dependent on Eddie and Rosita and their fraught relationship.
BACK IN MY room, I donned my nightgown and tended to Largo.
Then I listened for telltale sounds of the men. Could I risk creeping up to the suite, to see if there was something hidden in Oliver’s nursery?
I was starting to doubt my own memory. Maybe in the chaos of the morning, I’d imagined the swipe in the dust on the dresser?
I needed to know. And now that I was alone, away from others, with no activities to distract me, my head spun, and the image of Rosita floated before me. Not the beautiful, charming Rosita I had known. Or even the figure in black from head to toe. But the bloated, pale corpse, seemingly reaching for me with her turgid arms …
I pinned my damp hair back with hairpins. Pony had shown me how to use such a pin to pick a lock. He’d wanted me to get into Eddie’s office at the Toledo mansion.
You’re there all the time with Rosita. I need you to look for something.
I can’t do that to them. They’ve been good to us.
But I had done it. I’d been too afraid of Pony not to.
Rosita caught me in the attempt, and I’d begged her not to tell Eddie.
Now I wondered what I’d say to Eddie if he caught me trying to get into the suite.
I could say that I wanted to pick out a dress for Rosita. She’d brought a few that weren’t black mourning clothes, almost as if she anticipated someday being able to bring herself to circulate among the living enrobed in something other than the garb of the bereaved.
I’d say that I knew we couldn’t dress her for burial, but at least a lovely dress would be with her. I could say that yes, I should have thought of asking him, but I was so brokenhearted and frazzled that it hadn’t crossed my mind.
You always are so clever, Susan, wriggling your way out of trouble …
Rosita’s voice, from the night I’d killed Pony?
Or my mother’s, from before?
I told the voices to hush, and quietly left my room.
I MOVED QUIETLY in my soft-soled slippers, climbing the stairs to the suite. My heart panged for all the times I’d ascended those steps, eager to see Rosita, yet chafing to be free of Trouble Island, of my past. At the same time cherishing my time with Rosita, cool and remote though she was. Thinking Rosita was the one true friend I’d ever had.
I knelt, pulled a bobby pin from my hair, and slowly inserted it into the lock, trying to remember what Pony had told me to do next.
But then I heard a crash from inside the suite, followed quickly by Seamus exclaiming “Damn it!”
I started to run back down to my bedroom, but anger filled my chest. I had slept with him, trusted him. And yet I didn’t know who he really was. What he might know of my past. I needed answers to those questions.
I knew the suite’s contents and layout in intimate detail. On the small table next to the settee, there was a tall slender pewter vase. If I got in and moved fast enough, I could grab that vase before Seamus even spotted me.
I fell to my knees in front of the door as if in supplication to Rosita’s former lodging and pressed up on each pin in the lock. As I pressed up the final one, I held my breath and turned the doorknob. Exhaled as it gave and the door cracked open a sliver.
I poked my hairpin back into my bun and slipped inside. The ruined door to Oliver’s nursery was open. I saw Seamus just inside the nursery, his back to me.
I quietly moved to the side table, grabbed the pewter vase.
Suddenly, Seamus pivoted, stepped out of the nursery, holding a small pistol. Relief and amusement broke over his face, which made me want to throw the vase at him. I was weary of being taken for granted, seen as either at fault for events beyond my control or as ineffectual.
“Put the vase down, Aurelia. No matter how good your arm is, a bullet is faster—”
“You’d shoot me?” I asked, putting on my best petulant-Claire voice. Coming from me, though, it sounded snide.
“Well, no, but I’m just saying if you’re ever in a confrontation, have a weapon that can help you—”
I threw the vase, hard, aiming for his head. The vase instead hit the arm of the hand holding his pistol. He dropped the gun, which landed without going off.
I eyed the pistol, started toward it, but he picked it up before I could get to it. He tucked it under his belt, behind his left hip.
I cocked an eyebrow. “I thought you all had to hand over your guns to Cormac. That he searched your rooms to double-check?”
“Cormac is not as clever as he makes people believe. And besides—this is a small pistol. A stocking pistol, because women prefer it.”
“Oh yes. God forbid we use real guns. Our delicate hands would probably snap off.”
At that, Seamus merely raised his eyebrows.
“I used to hunt and target shoot with my father and my—” I shook my head. This was not the time for reminiscences. “What are you doing in here?” I snapped. “Are you a Fed?”
Amusement turned to alarm on Seamus’s face as he rushed past me to the door, pulling it and turning the inside lock.
So, yes. His action confirmed what I suspected. I wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or alarmed.
If he’d flipped, or was working both sides, he was dangerous. And if he hadn’t, if he truly still adhered to the rule of law, and he found out I’d killed Pony, no matter how understandable my motivation, he’d want to haul me in, too.
Seamus’s past kindnesses toward the Carmichaels, his gentle way with me a few nights before, rushed back through my mind. I gambled that he was still on the side of the law.
“You were working with Rosita,” I said in a near whisper. “To take down Eddie.”
Seamus nodded. He came close to me. The heat of his body brushed my skin. My pulse quickened and my face bloomed. I wanted to fall forward into his chest. But I forced myself to keep my stance rigid, my gaze steady. “I was trying to convince her to, yes.”
“Bureau of Prohibition?” I asked.
He hesitated. Then nodded again.
“You couldn’t have been working alone.”
“No. There’s … a mole in the organization.”
“Claire?”
Seamus gave a short, barking laugh at that notion.
So, I thought, an unhappy wife of one of Eddie’s well-heeled associates—narrowing the identity of the mole down to at least a dozen or so women.
“I can’t say, and it doesn’t matter who. What matters is that our mole saw how unhappy, miserable, and angry Rosita was—rumors of Eddie’s affair with their nanny—and how Rosita wanted out of her marriage, but safely.”
I understood that. Divorcing was difficult, and if you were married to a man who believed he owned you, who thought that violence was the easier way to settle conflict … I shuddered. I didn’t have to know who the mole was to understand her situation.
“At our direction, our mole tentatively approached Rosita. This was several months before Oliver died,” Seamus said. “At the same time, I went undercover and worked my way into Eddie’s organization.”
This would have been after I’d come to Trouble Island, after Pony.
“Rosita picked up on what our mole was offering—at first without directly saying it—and then agreed yes—she would turn over information she had on Eddie, but she needed time, she said.”
I sorted through the women I’d known, women I’d seen here on the island, who I’d served. They made a mosaic of brunettes and blondes, long arms and slender legs, chic hairstyles and elegant clothing, sophisticated laughs designed to show they were above actually being amused by anything, lilting voices gossiping about nothing and everything all at once.
I couldn’t imagine any of them as agents for the bureau.
But then, they probably couldn’t imagine me as a killer—and yet, when pushed, I’d become one.
And if I’d been offered the opportunity to get away from Pony, serving as an agent for the bureau, to double-cross the McGees, would I have?
Yes. Yes, I would have—if I knew Rosita wanted out, too.
If she hadn’t wanted out? I wasn’t sure.
“But then, tragically, Oliver died. And Rosita came here, locked herself away. We didn’t count on that. And we didn’t count on you. An effective guardian of Rosita’s privacy, if ever there was one.”
I flashed back on several women who’d asked—even insisted—they must see Rosita. Offer sympathy. Condolences. I’d rebuffed them all, been proud to do so, to protect Rosita.
I shuffled backward from Seamus. “So when that didn’t work—they sent you as the season for visitors was ending. To woo me? The pathetic widow who had hidden herself away on the island to serve Rosita McGee. To see if I could convince her to turn her information over to you? Or, if not, to see if I could get it from her and turn it over?”
A pained look crossed Seamus’s face. “To convince you to let me talk directly to Rosita, yes. But not to woo you. That was … unexpected.”
“And if you’d convinced me, what would I have gotten in exchange?”
“What you’ve wanted all along,” Seamus said. “Freedom. From any charges against you in your husband’s death. From the McGees. A fresh start.”
My heart, my breath stilled. The room went cold around me. He knew who I was all along, what I had done. Rosita must have told him about me, before Oliver’s death. But why?
Or had she revealed my truth to someone else, who’d informed Seamus?
My head spun, considering the possibilities, but I made myself focus on what mattered most in that moment: that the truth about my past had gotten back to Seamus.
That he was a Fed.
That he was willing to use my past as leverage to get me to do what the Feds wanted: testify against Eddie, share what I’d learned through Pony and Rosita about how his organization worked, in exchange for amnesty.
I forced myself to inhale. Drawing in breath made me shudder, like I was hearing footfalls in the dark too close behind me.
“Then I got word through our mole that Eddie would be coming. There was chatter of an alliance brewing between Eddie and, of all people, Marco. We got the date, and the information that Eddie and Cormac were coming to take Rosita away. If Eddie succeeded, then all our efforts would have been in vain.”
I stared at him as I put together the pieces. “So that morning, you were on the path because you were following me. You—everyone—knew I went swimming down by the southwest dock. You—you wanted to make sure I’d see the Myra, knew I’d run to Rosita—”
Seamus made an apologetic expression. “Yes. If you weren’t by the dock or in a place to see it, I was going to call for you, get your attention, so you’d see the yacht. I hoped knowing that Eddie was coming would make Rosita frightened enough to finally agree she’d work with me.”
“But that’s not how she reacted.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
Instead, she’d kept following her own mysterious scheme, until she was murdered.
I swallowed hard, though the inside of my mouth was dry. If Seamus feared that Rosita would reveal his identity to Eddie, would he have killed her?
No, I thought, surely not. Not if he was still on the side of the law.
Seamus sighed. “If Rosita wanted to flip on him, that was her chance. To have you send for me even as he came ashore. To give me whatever she had on him.” He gestured behind him toward Oliver’s nursery. “I was hoping I’d find it hidden away in there. Something I saw when you and I and Eddie were up here made me think someone had been in the room recently.”
He’d seen the smudge on the dresser in Oliver’s nursery, too.
There was no point in trying to keep him from looking. “Well, come on,” I said. “Help me move the dresser.”
As we walked to Oliver’s nursery, I wondered if we’d find nothing at all. Or the evidence Rosita supposedly had against Eddie.
I thought I should tell him about the lockbox I’d found, about Liam moving dozens more lockboxes like it to the Myra.
And yet, I held back the truth. I still wasn’t entirely convinced I should trust him.
FIRST WE OPENED drawers. All we found was Oliver’s clothing, still neatly folded. My throat caught at the sight, at the faint scent of castile soap. I was heartbroken by knowing that my self-protective action against Pony had eventually led to other actions that resulted in Oliver’s death.
We tugged the smudged dresser away from the wall. The thick plaster wall was intact. But then I glanced down at the wooden floor and spotted two cuts thicker than the lines between the rest of the planks, which had been mitered and fitted so carefully.
“We need a screwdriver, or the claw end of a hammer—” Seamus started.
I shook my head. “We don’t want to risk being seen going to the basement to fetch a tool.”
I knelt and went to work with my thumbnail as an impromptu screwdriver to loosen a drawer handle, and then used the drawer handle to pry at the floor panel.
“Clever,” Seamus said, admiration in his voice.
I smiled to myself, even as I focused on the panel. Finally, it popped up. I stared in shock at a metal lockbox. Just like all the others.
Seamus knelt, pulled out the box. It was unlocked. I held my breath as he opened it.
Nothing was in there—except, caught in the corner, a small shred of paper, as if the box had been overstuffed with documents, and in someone’s haste to remove them, a piece caught and tore off.
Seamus gave the shred of paper an irritated flick. “Whatever was in here has been moved.”
We both stood. The question was—had the scrap been from papers Rosita had to condemn Eddie? Had she moved them? Or had someone else found them? Then destroyed them, or kept them to use against Eddie? Or, if Eddie had found them, why had he gone on such a rampage to look for them? As a way to cover the truth, to play some game I didn’t yet understand?
I sank down on the edge of the bed, suddenly weary from all the questions spinning in my head. I asked Seamus, “You hoped that I’d alert Rosita to Eddie’s arrival. That that would be enough to scare her into finally giving you whatever she has—had—on Eddie. Then what? You’d take him on? And everyone he brought with him?”
“I didn’t expect a whole entourage. Or Marco and Joey.”
“Just Eddie and Cormac.”
Seamus nodded.
“And you thought you could manage them?”
Seamus gave a rueful smile. “The information I had was that just Eddie and Cormac would be coming. I figured that you, the Carmichaels, and Liam wouldn’t stand in my way. I was confident I could take out Cormac, and then handle Eddie. But I wasn’t counting on a full entourage—including Marco and his goon.” His smile dropped. “Or thinking that Rosita would be murdered.”
“But that’s not how it played out,” I said. “Rosita didn’t send me to fetch you.”
“Yes. And I knew that our whole scheme had unraveled. I would not be able to get to Rosita through you. She would not come to me directly.”
“So then what did you plan to do?”
“Wait them out,” Seamus said. “Observe. Hope that she wouldn’t reveal who I am. Eventually, leave when it was safe. Report back in.”
“And if Eddie had succeeded in convincing Rosita to turn the island over to Marco, or if he’d forced her to leave with him, then what? Same thing? Leave? Report back in?”
Seamus nodded.
“Trouble Island is in Canada, so how does that work?”
Seamus chuckled. “Lots of bureaucracy. But our governments work together. Alcohol may be legal in Canada, but it is still prohibited in the U.S., and the Canadian government doesn’t want American gangsters causing trouble in their towns and cities.”
I turned over all he’d revealed to me. If he really was a Fed who hadn’t flipped, surely he would have feared Rosita might reveal to Eddie and the other gangsters who he really was. That would have given Seamus a powerful motivation to kill her.
And he would want her body to be found, so his bosses would know that Rosita was no longer a possible witness to flip.
Then I thought, what if he feared I might reveal his identity? Wouldn’t he want me dead, too? But he could have killed me already, if that was the case. Made up some story to justify shooting me.
He could have killed me the night we made love.
I didn’t dismiss the possibility that he’d come to my room to distract me while an accomplice snared Rosita from her suite. Killed her. Left her for me to find.
Then it occurred to me that just as he might fear I’d reveal his identity, I should fear that he could reveal mine to Marco. And if Marco knew I was the catalyst, as Rosita had put it, for his nephew taking the fall for Pony’s death, then I’d be in danger with Marco and Joey.
But so far, Seamus hadn’t exposed me. He hadn’t even threatened to. And moments before, his sorrowful expression seemed sincere. I hoped—I had to believe—that it was.
I wanted to believe he was who he said he was. But my ability to trust my instincts, already damaged when I arrived on Trouble Island, had been obliterated over the last few days.
Softly, I said, “If you really are a Fed, here for the purposes you’ve described, and I am no longer useful in getting Rosita to turn on Eddie, then that means eventually—”
“You can still be a useful witness. And your circumstances with Pony, from what’s been said, were brutal enough that any sentence would be minimal, or dismissed. Then eventually, you could be free.”
Free. Such a simple word, yet a nearly impossible attainment. I could cooperate with Seamus, with the bureau. They could make all kinds of pretty promises. And, oh, I was tempted to tell him yes, yes, I’d love his help.
After all, I’d never sought Eddie’s world. I’d gotten caught up in it because of Pony, and then more deeply ensnared because of my relationship with Rosita. Because of how that relationship ensured Pony’s rise in Eddie’s gang. I’d heard of people like me—wives, lovers of his goons, the goons themselves—simply “disappearing.”
If I trusted Seamus, would I really be free? Or would he, too, betray me?
Even if he didn’t, I’d never truly be free. Incarcerated, Eddie would remain a dangerous, powerful man. Sooner or later—either personally or through someone like Cormac—he would come after me. If Eddie died, whoever took over his gang might blame me, come after me. And then there was Marco. His nephew-in-law had taken the fall for killing Pony and ended up dying in prison. If Marco knew, he’d seek vengeance. Or someone in his gang would.
From so many angles, I was doomed to live my life—however much was left of it—always nervously looking over my shoulder.
“Aurelia? Are you all right?”
Seamus’s voice gently pulled me back to the moment. He took my hands, pulled me to my feet, brought my fingertips to his lips. Even in our impossible situation, with all its fraught uncertainty, desire unknotted itself from deep in my core and released itself into my limbs, my groin, my veins.
The thought curled through my mind and escaped my lips as a moan: Maybe I couldn’t be free forever. But I could be deliciously free in the moment.
As I had a few nights before, I pulled him to me, pressed my lips, my body, to his.
He pulled back.
“I’m not sure I trust you,” he said, his voice husky.
Frankly, that he had doubts thrilled me. I’d always been the girl everyone thought of as awkward, credulous, naïve. Easy to dismiss.
To be, just for a moment, a woman of intrigue—well. I kissed him again, my tongue exploring his tender and delicious lips and mouth.
QUIETLY, WE HURRIED down to my bedroom.
We undressed one another, Largo squawking at our frantic movements. Her sounds made us giggle, then clap our hands over each other’s mouths. We didn’t want anyone to come to my door to investigate.
Seamus carefully took my glasses from my face and put them on the bureau. Then he began kissing the palm of my hand, working his way up my arm to my shoulder. The need to muffle my moans only heightened the sensations. Seamus moved to my breasts and then my mouth and I returned his kisses until he worked his way down my stomach, and then I couldn’t help but gasp out loud, realizing where his lips would go next. Hoping for them to.
He lifted me onto my bed and began kissing me in ways I’d never been kissed before, sending my mind and soul out of the reality of the room, of the mansion, of the island, into a realm of only sensation and bliss. Then, I gave to him the gift he’d given me.
At last, we lay side by side, staring into each other’s faces, awed at the bliss we’d just created for one another.
I traced my fingertips over his chest and found a divot near his left shoulder blade that I hadn’t noticed the first time we made love.
“From the war?” I ventured.
Seamus looked away. “It was a long time ago—”
“I want to know—need to know—about you—” Tears sprang to my eyes. A feeling came over me that this was the only chance I’d have to learn about his past.
“Hey!” he said, putting his hand to my face. “There’s plenty of time—after all of this is over—after—” He paused, and in his hesitation I could see that he was making the same calculations about our future that I’d already made.
His eyes suddenly glistened. But he cleared his throat and gave me the life story I’d asked for. “My life was pretty simple,” he whispered, twirling a strand of my hair. “Grew up a farm boy in Nebraska. Met a girl from the farm next door.” He smiled, a distant look drawing him from my bedroom, and my chest panged with jealousy. “We married in October 1916—I was eighteen and she was sixteen.” He shook his head at the impossible hope of youth. “But I wanted to do the right thing, so I went off with the army.” He kissed my fingertips and pressed them to his battle scar. “I became a medic, worked in a field hospital. Buried too many men. Near the end, I was shot by a sniper, but fortunately not a great one. My shoulder healed. I went home, knew I could inherit my father’s farm someday, but I—” This time, as his voice trailed off, his faraway look turned from sentiment to sorrow. “I just couldn’t dig in dirt day after day. We moved to Kansas City, and I took a job as a cop, but what I really wanted to do was become a doctor. To help people live. She had our son. And then one day…”
My heart fell, and I immediately regretted the pang of jealousy.
He took a deep breath and went on. “One day, she was out with our son. He was in a stroller. An automobile came flying up onto the sidewalk. Ran over them both.”
I gasped, horrified.
“The man driving the automobile lost control because he was dying. He was a mobster and had been shot by a mobster in a rival gang.” Seamus’s gaze hardened. “There was—is—no enforcement of Prohibition in Kansas City. Or in many other places. Powerful men find the loopholes or just ignore the law altogether. I wanted to be part of something that brought back control—” His voice waned. “I should have stayed on that farm where Julie wanted to stay, and then they would have been safe…”
Julie. What a pretty name. He still loved and missed her. I did not envy that or Julie’s horrid fate. But I did envy being cherished—and cherishing—as they clearly had.
I wanted to ask why he would engage in a fight he saw as futile. Bringing down Eddie would not bring back his wife or son. Nor would it fill the hole in Seamus’s heart and soul. Only moving forward, one step at a time, would do that.
But I had run away to fill a hole in my own heart and soul. Then, for a time with Pony, I’d thrown myself into lawlessness and wild living, and that hadn’t worked either. Over the past year, I’d come to realize that all I could do to set myself free of past haunts was, again, move forward. Believing Rosita would help me take those steps, then pity for her loss, kept me on Trouble Island. Now I knew she would never have helped me. That I had to, somehow, free myself. Or die trying.
“You shouldn’t blame yourself,” I said. “Heartache can find us anywhere, without us doing anything wrong—”
Seamus stopped my philosophizing by running a finger down my nose. Just that light touch stirred me. “Where did you come from, Aurelia Escalante,” he said, “that gave you heartache?”
“A small farm in Ohio,” I said.
He laughed softly.
“No, it’s true. I was a farmgirl in Ohio and I—I—” I stuttered to a stop.
I’d never told anyone my full story. Not Pony. Or Rosita. Or Maxine. I could barely admit it to myself. The wound of it still festered deep within me, scarring my very soul.
And maybe that wound was what really had kept me stuck with Pony. Then stuck on Trouble Island. Maybe, I thought, confessing it was what I really needed to set myself free.
I forced out a laugh. “I was just bored. Wanted to see what life could offer in the big city. Got all the way to Toledo—and ended up in over my head.”
Seamus’s eyes shuttered with disappointment. He knew I was not exactly lying, but neither was I telling him the truth. And yet, he pulled me to him.
I melted into his arms, eager to make love again, to escape for a while the realities of my past and of the island, and go into timeless, pleasurable bliss.