Chapter Three
Johnny never did come back to the prop closet after his meeting. Kate waited past her scheduled work hours, but eventually gave up and went upstairs to let her mom, assistant manager in Women’s Wear, know that she was going home.
“Did Neil find you?” she asked, studying her mom’s face for her reaction. She was wearing more makeup today than usual. A new shade of red lipstick.
“Yes, he did. I’ll see you at home,” Mom answered, not giving anything away. She was holding several empty hangers and started for the back.
“What did he want?” Kate followed her. And is that a new perfume, too?
Mom waved her hand flippantly and kept walking. “To talk to me, not you. Quit being so nosy. I’ll see you at home.”
Honestly. I only wanted to know for her own good.
Back at home, she called Josie, who immediately came down from her own apartment upstairs.
“Tell me again. Exactly what did Fran say, and how did Johnny look?” Josie tucked her feet under her on the sofa, balancing her plate of sliced peaches and toast on her lap. Her dark eyes focused on Kate.
“She came in and snatched him up like she was his boss. He barely looked at me before toddling after her.”
“And she said ‘our’ trip to Italy? As in, Fran Marshall is going with the movie crew?”
“She must be one of the actresses.”
“I don’t believe it.” Josie jutted her arm in the air. “For one, I’m Italian and I’ve never been to Italy. Two, I should be in the movie. After all, now I’ve got connections, right? With you and Johnny. Could he get me on the movie?”
Kate gave Josie a horrified look. “He teased me about auditioning, but I can’t ask him that. Remember when I found out he worked for his dad? He accused me of trying to use him to get into that movie I auditioned for.”
Josie slumped back into the cushions. “It’s not like my parents would let me anyway. I’m lucky Mom convinced Dad I could switch schools to study fashion design. Interning with Bonnie Cashin this fall is good enough for me. I don’t need to be in a movie—I’m going to help design costumes. Though I’d do a better acting job than that Fran. Aargh. I can’t believe it.”
Kate smiled. Good ol’ Josie. Voicing the exact thoughts Kate was thinking but too proper to say.
“You’re not worried Fran is going to try to break up you and Johnny, are you?”
“No.” Kate answered a little too quickly. Sitting alone in the prop room, that had been exactly what she was thinking. Fran had a way of claiming things that didn’t belong to her.
Josie took her plate into the kitchen. “I’d better go. Mom wants me to help with dinner tonight.”
As Kate stood in the doorway waving good-bye, a telegram boy was looking at the numbers on each door as he walked down the hallway. Goose bumps flecked her skin as she remembered the telegram they got during the war telling them that her father had gone missing while working with the Monuments Men in Italy.
Her father, an art professor, had joined the army so he could help them avoid bombing any historically or artistically important sites. If he hadn’t gone missing, he might be part of the group her brother was with now, finding the proper homes for all the stolen artwork uncovered in salt mines and castles and ordinary people’s homes.
Josie raised her eyebrows as the boy passed her and stopped in front of Kate.
For a brief moment, Kate’s breath caught. Not Floyd. The war was over. He wasn’t involved in any fighting. He’d flown planes at the end of the war, but now he was mostly grounded, as there was a glut of pilots.
“Kate Allen?” the boy said.
“Uh, that’s me.” Kate took the telegram.
Josie followed her back into the apartment. “What is it?” she asked.
Before Kate had closed the door, she had torn into the envelope:
Kate read the telegram twice. The first time in relief. Floyd is okay. The second time in confusion. She shook her head. “I don’t know what he’s talking about.” She showed it to Josie. “Sometimes Floyd can be so irritating.”
“Do you think it’s code?”
“Maybe. But the war’s over; their letters aren’t getting censored like they used to.”
“Well, it’s got to be important. Your brother is too cheap to waste money on a telegram just to bug you.”
“You’d be surprised what a brother would do. But okay. Let’s say it’s for real.” Kate marched into her mother’s room and dug through the hope chest. “Maybe the box my mom’s engagement ring came in? If she still has it, it would be in here, but that’s still not Dad’s box. Look, she did keep it.” Kate showed the small ring box to Josie. Empty.
Josie pored over the telegram. “The initials spell DBD. Read it backward, it would say . . . nothing. If we took every second letter: DDBX, okay, not that. I give up,” Josie said. “I’d have made a terrible spy in the war.”
“And if it’s for real, why send it to me instead of Mom?”
“Maybe it’s a gift for your mom. He might have bought it ahead of time and told your brother to give it to her on their anniversary, not knowing when he’d be back from the war. How romantic,” Josie said, passing back the note. “Check his toolbox.”
“Hmm. Maybe. It would be like Floyd to forget something like that.” Kate sighed. “You know I think Neil at the store asked my mom out?”
“He’s one of the nice ones, isn’t he? Didn’t give you a hard time about helping in Windows like some of the other guys did.” Josie frowned. “I bet that feels weird for her. Did she say yes?”
That wasn’t the reaction Kate was expecting from Josie. Her best friend was supposed to share her hope of Dad returning. Kate shrugged, masking her frustration. “She told me I was nosy.” “Concerned,” “worried,” or “angry” are better words.
A lump formed in Kate’s throat as she dragged the rusted green toolbox out from behind the piles of shoes and forgotten mittens in the closet. Dad was the last person to have touched the box. Many of his other belongings had been packed up and taken down to storage. Mom must have thought they’d need the tools even though the super took care of the minor repairs in the apartment.
She snapped the silver latch open and when she lifted the lid, the sliders on the corners squeaked in protest. Looking at the contents, Kate laughed. Nestled in with the hammer, various screwdrivers, and wrenches were artist’s brushes and tubes of paint. Anything could be in there.
She poked around but didn’t see a jewelry case. At the bottom of the box were screws and bits of wire and various mechanical pieces whose function Kate could only guess at. “No diamonds.” She reread the telegram, as if new words could have formed.
“Let me know what you find,” Josie said, retracing her earlier steps out the door. “My mom’ll be calling soon if I don’t get up there fast-veloce.”
“Bye.” Kate dumped everything out of the toolbox. She took a cloth and wiped the inside clean, even stopping to examine the cloth to see if anything sparkly got swept up. Nothing.
She carefully returned all the contents, organizing as she went. The tube of burnt umber had at one time spilled over the top, and her dad’s fingerprint was forever imprinted on the side. How strange to think he could be dead—going by what the army said—when here was his fingerprint. His identity. She slowly sucked in a breath, and then let it out. It was the little things that caught her heart by surprise.
After removing the paint tube, Kate shoved the toolbox back into the closet. She padded softly to her room and went immediately to her hope chest, the one Aunt Elsie and Uncle Adalbert had given her.
She placed the paint tube onto one of the top trays, wondering again what her brother’s message meant. The mere hint of a new mystery made her want to check on the Kopciuszek dresses. She wished she could shrink them down and carry them with her wherever she went so she would always know where they were and that they were safe.
Perhaps all the Keepers of the Wardrobe had felt this heavy weight. Her grandmother certainly had. In fact, she had at first refused the role before changing her mind. But by then Aunt Elsie had already taken over.
The hidden panels of the chest slid easily, evidence they were made by a master craftsman. Kate removed the blankets and tablecloths and sheets she had started collecting for her future home. Then she pressed firmly on the bottom until it gave way and the wood pressed back against her fingertips. She removed the panel and confirmed the packages were still neatly lined up together like three best friends at a sleepover.
Her hand hovered over the middle package. The ball gown. The most important dress of the three and the one that the Burgosov family would do anything to get. Though the two Burgosov men who tried to steal it were in jail, their mother, Ludmilla, was still out there plotting. Kate could almost feel it, that sense when someone is watching you. Knowing she was alone in the apartment, she resisted the urge to look over her shoulder.
The amber necklace around her neck began to warm. It always did when the ball gown was near. The pine scent floated up, making her room smell like the forest where the amber originated. She wondered what Poland was like, especially now, after the devastation of war. Was anything left from the days of Kopciuszek? How many other treasures of theirs had been lost?
Floyd had been amazed at all the stolen artwork the Monuments Men uncovered. He said it was proving difficult to find the proper owners for so many of the pieces. It was especially hard when an owner had been killed, and they had to track down the next of kin. Too many families were receiving boxes of trinkets instead of seeing their precious loved ones walk through the door.
Like the box the army had sent Mom, which lay untouched on her dresser.
Kate had asked her once, “Why don’t you open it?”
“Lots of reasons,” Mom had said. “If I look at the mementos he took from home, along with the items he collected on his travels, it would be like I know all there is to know about your dad. And that would be the end. No more mystery. At least, not that we could ever learn. I would be holding the last items he had touched, maybe learn the last bit of fun he had. See the last words he had written. I can’t handle that. It would be overwhelmingly sad.”
“It might also be healing,” Kate had countered. Yet the box still sat, sealed and unopened. Dad’s box . . . that’s it! Dad’s box.
Kate dashed into the bedroom. The box was at its usual place on her parents’ dresser between Mom’s jewelry stand and Dad’s catchall tray. It wasn’t very large. About the same size as a shoebox. Mom had told them to give away Dad’s clothing, just save whatever he had in his duffel bag. It had to be the box Floyd meant, and why he’d sent Kate the telegram, not their mother.
Kate wrestled with her conscience. She felt like she needed permission to cut through the tape, but the one person she ought to get permission from would say no.
Without stopping to talk herself out of it, Kate went straight to the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and sliced through the four sides.
With shaking hands, she opened the box. Sorry, Mom.
At first glance, the items inside could have belonged to any soldier. Shaving kit. A postcard of some city in Italy. A few Italian coins. But upon closer inspection, she found items specific to her dad. Three small books of art prints. A leather-bound sketch journal. A small stack of V-mail with Mom’s handwriting.
Kate sat down hard on a kitchen chair. There was no jewelry. No diamond. If this was the box Floyd was talking about in the telegram, he was wrong. And Kate had opened it for nothing.
Curious to see what she had written her dad, she flipped through the V-mail sheets to see if he had kept any of her letters. To save space on transport, letters were first censored, then transferred to microfilm before being sent overseas. There, they were printed out before going to the soldier, but at only 60 percent of the original size.
She found one of her letters:
She couldn’t read any more. The tightness forming in her throat threatened to choke her if she did. To think—the everyday things she’d written to him when in a few short months he would go missing. She should have said more. Told him she loved him and was proud of him for what he was doing for the world.
As she was putting the letters back, her hand nudged the journal and she noticed a piece of paper sticking out. It was the drawing she had sent him of the amber necklace so he could have a copy made for Mom. Names and numbers were scrawled in the corner. She turned the page over and read the words: diamond and Elsie. A shiver traveled up her arms. Whenever Elsie was involved, the trail inevitably led to Kopciuszek. It was possible Dad stumbled upon a connection when he was looking for a matching amber necklace.
She flipped through the journal, sketch after sketch of the Italian countryside, some houses, some people. No drawings or other mention of a diamond. She closed the book and stroked her hand over the leather. It was Dad’s favorite brand of journal, but expensive. He liked to go outside, find a comfortable place to sit, and sketch with the 2B pencil that he always carried tucked into his shirt pocket. Her fingers traced over a bump sticking out of the spine near the binding. A rock must have gotten in. She needed to dig it out so it wouldn’t leave a dent in his sketches.
It was slow going, as she didn’t want to puncture the leather. But there was a small hole in the seam, and she worked and worked the small rock down until she could pick it out.
She gasped as she held it up to the window. It sparked with blue light like ice crystals on snow. That was some rock, all right.
It was the diamond.