FOR THE REST of the day, I was tortured by Rosita’s revelation that Marco Guiffre was somehow responsible for Oliver’s death. And by Cormac’s declaration that I’d better hope Marco didn’t find out who I really was. Was there some connection between him and Pony?
I kept to the mansion’s basement, helping Maxine prepare dinner. We carried trays upstairs from which she could serve the salads, Irish stew, and fresh rolls and butter. Then I took a tray up to Rosita’s door, went back downstairs and served the staff, cleaned up the kitchen, and kept an eye on Henry, who’d remained breathless and ashen throughout the day.
He’d insisted, though, on making his vanilla pound cake. Once, I’d commented that it seemed unusual for a man to cook, and he’d laughed and said he’d been the second cook and porter on a Lake Erie freighter. That night, I helped him slice his pound cake and scoop on ice cream, a small quantity leftover from the summer and put aside in the deep freezer, meant for us year-rounders as a special treat come Christmas. We topped it with Henry’s delicious butterscotch sauce. When we finished the task, we stared mournfully at the desserts.
It seems, now, such a silly thing to lament—our ice cream being gobbled up by gangsters unlikely to appreciate the treat.
As Henry and I entered the dining room with trays of the desserts, I felt Claire staring at me. She daintily patted her lips, leaving a lipstick outline on the white napkin that she well knew I’d have to bleach out later, and gave me a sneering glance, the feather topper on her head bobbing ridiculously. I took some satisfaction on seeing that her bare arms were goose bumped. We’d turned up the radiant heat throughout the mansion, but it took hours to fully warm the mammoth home, and she had to be cold in her sleeveless, sparkling drop-waist dress. It served her right, I thought, for dressing as if this were a swanky party on Prohibition’s eve. She’d whined at me earlier to please convince Rosita to meet with her—It’s been over a year, she’d said, nearly sobbing—and I’d ignored her.
But then my satisfaction at Claire’s discomfort faded as the image of my own ridiculous dress, buried at the back of my bedroom’s wardrobe, flashed across my mind: sleeveless, sequined, apricot drop-waist. The only impractical clothing I’d brought with me that last horrible night in Toledo. I’d grabbed it as if I might be included in the parties on Trouble Island, the reality of what I’d done not yet penetrating my agonized, fearful haze.
Eddie’s booming voice jolted me from my brief reverie.
“What the hell is wrong with this stew?” He tossed his spoon, causing it to hit his bowl with an alarming clink before splattering the thick brown broth on the white tablecloth. His behavior plus the slushiness of his voice meant that once again, he’d drunk too much.
Other spoons dutifully clattered into their bowls, as if the spoon-holders had just discovered a bug floating in the stew.
Dr. Aldridge stared woefully into his bowl, still holding a piece of bread in his trembling hand, about to sop up the last of the broth. But he dropped the bread, while Claire’s pretense of superiority gave way to an expression of acute nervousness, something I’d never seen before in her face. Douglas gave a small sigh and took a long sip from his wineglass. Marco held his spoon in his chubby fist even as his fleshy face folded into layers of dismay. His bowl was nearly empty.
“Tastes off to me,” said Dr. Aldridge.
Eddie turned his angry attention to Maxine. “Are you trying to poison us all? At Rosita’s bidding?”
Maxine’s hands trembled and I feared she’d drop the crystal water decanter.
“What the hell?” Marco leapt up. His bodyguard—whose name I’d finally overheard, Joey Ricci—lurched forward, hand automatically going to his holster, as if he could shoot down food poisoning in a standoff. In response, Cormac advanced.
“Eddie,” Henry said quietly as he put a dessert by Eddie, “I made the stew—the same recipe you always like. We didn’t have lamb. We used beef. Otherwise, it’s the same.” He gave Eddie a sharp look.
My heart thudded—what was Henry playing at? No one defied Eddie.
But Henry went on, his voice mellow and soothing. “I’ll throw yours out, though.” He smiled, adding so quietly that the rest of us barely heard, “I also made your favorite pound cake and butterscotch sauce.”
Eddie grabbed his dessert spoon and scooped up a bite of the ice cream and sauce. He closed his eyes as he focused on the taste and moaned. “It’s good, Henry. You always were the best cook.”
I was taken aback. I’d seen Maxine and Henry serve Eddie and Rosita and Oliver during their visits in happier times, but I’d never heard either of the Carmichaels speak so personally to either of the McGees. None of them had hinted at a personal connection.
Though I’d come into the McGees’ orbit three years before arriving on Trouble Island, all I’d learned of Eddie’s background was the vague account everyone stuck to: he’d been an orphan, growing up at the Sisters of the Poor orphanage in Toledo. His mother was named Myra, which people only knew because he’d christened his yacht with that name. From the beginning of Prohibition, he’d made his fortune bootlegging, somehow evading capture and prosecution. The intervening ten or so years were skipped over.
“You gonna let one of them talk to you like that?” Marco said too loudly.
Eddie’s eyes flew open, his hard gaze pressing into Marco. “Henry and Maxine have my respect. And you will treat them with respect, too.”
Cormac stepped forward, glowering at Marco. In response, Joey pulled his revolver. Cormac’s hand went to his own gun, and I had no doubt he’d be able to outshoot Joey. The room stiffened. I couldn’t breathe.
Then, slowly, Marco nodded. The bodyguards receded to their spots. I exhaled, relieved.
But Henry looked calmer than I’d seen him all day, and gave Maxine a comforting look. The couple continued serving desserts while I gave Henry a little nod; he understood and gently took Maxine by the elbow and guided her from the dining room. I served the coffee. My head suddenly pounded—a sick headache, as my father used to call my “spells.” I tried to ignore Dr. Aldridge’s curious gaze. My head was made worse by Marco’s boorish voice, recounting some anecdote, the specifics of which I tuned out. Claire laughed too loudly and too often at whatever Marco said.
Douglas looked both bored and boring. Disappointing, after all those swoony photos in Photoplay and Picture Show. Though it struck me that it had been a few years before I came to Trouble Island when I’d last seen those photos on the covers and the inside spreads. What had he been doing all this time?
The dining room felt suffocatingly small with Cormac lurking just behind Eddie, and Joey now leaning against the sideboard, and I wanted to tell him to get his elbow off of it. The sideboard was carved cherry, inlaid with birch and oak and other woods to create a gentle, intricate scene of a distant countryside. Maxine once told me—in an awed half whisper—that the sideboard had been imported from China at great expense. All of the furnishings in the mansion are like this. Exotic, expensive, imported.
Even more irritating, Joey was ogling every move I made, giving me sideways smiles as if that was particularly charming. Acne dotted his forehead and cheeks, and his shoulders and chest were slight. Marco must have thought Eddie was not much of a threat to bring Joey along as bodyguard. On the other hand, the kid was quick on the draw, as he’d shown just moments before.
Finally, dinner concluded, and I began to clean up.
“Leave that for now,” Eddie ordered. He pulled out a cigar, lit it, and waved a hand in a shooing gesture. “The men and I have business to discuss.”
Claire’s smile was charming enough, but also tight, and her eyes flashed with irritation. But she stood and flounced out of the room, winking at Douglas as she left. He didn’t appear to notice her flirtatious effort.
I remained long enough to move a glass ashtray from a corner table to Eddie’s side, then gladly made my exit. But just outside the dining room, a hand grabbed my waist. I twisted around, fists raising, an instinctive reaction.
Joey had followed me. He grinned. “Oh, darlin’,” he said, “don’t be like that. I know your type.”
I dropped my hands, but they remained fisted. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Sure I do,” he said. “You’re tired, so you’ve dropped your guard. I can hear the twang in your voice. Where you from? West Virginia? Eastern Kentucky?”
I gave him an appraising glance. I knew his type, too. I reckoned him to be eighteen, maybe nineteen, five or six years younger than me. About the age I was when I ran from my childhood home, determined to go to Chicago. Making it all the way to Toledo.
“I’m from none-of-your-damned-business southeast Ohio.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “An Appalachian gal, putting on airs, getting above her raising. What’re you running from?”
I sighed. I’d told myself, when I left the farm where I grew up, that I wasn’t running away. I was running toward something better. Later, I realized how wrong I was. But in any case, I understood how a young punk like Joey could get caught up with the likes of Marco by being eager to believe gilded promises.
“I reckon same as you,” I said, unleashing my childhood dialect. It was oddly relieving. “Mistakes. Despair.”
Fright flashed in his eyes, as if I might actually know what, specifically, he’d hoped to shake himself free of. Joey was how I imagined Pony had been in his younger years—if I’d known him then. Pony had been much older than me. “Maybe someone you hurt.” I paused. “Or killed, even if you din’t mean to.” That made him flinch, but he managed to hold on to his grin. Dispassionately, I studied his face: narrow jaw, high cheekbones, delicate chin, unruly dark hair, acned skin. Maybe not so much like Pony. He might stand a chance of aging into handsomeness, if he lived long enough.
I could have—probably should have—stopped, and yet, I pressed on. “Yeah, same as me, so I know how to deal—”
“Not the same! I’m from Missouri—”
“Ozarks.” I shrugged. “Just another hillbilly. Listen, Hillbilly-from-the-Ozarks, you get handsy with me again, and I’ll shoot you. Or have Cormac do it.”
His cockeyed smile finally ran away from his face. “You wouldn’t.”
“You don’t know what I might do.”
I walked away, hoping he couldn’t see how I trembled.