“Reggie? Who is Reggie?” Gemma said.
Suling pointed at the watercolor. “Regina Reynolds. Reggie. My . . . friend.”
Gemma looked at the painting again, then back at Suling. “The artist,” she said, not using any names. “What does she look like?”
Rumpled coal-black curls, cut to fall just below her ears, Suling thought. Full lips, the top lip slightly wider than the lower so that her mouth curved sweetly when she smiled, a smile that enveloped you in exuberant joy or tender intimacy. A slight crease between her brows that deepened when she concentrated on the canvas in front of her or bent down for a kiss. Pale skin that sunburned easily, Reggie was careless about wearing a hat. And eyes that could shift from light green to a deep and mesmerizing emerald.
“Perhaps six inches taller than me,” Suling said, her eyes still fixed on the painting. “Curly black hair. Pale skin. Green eyes. A strange accent, Bronx, she said.” Flat words, a bland description that conveyed nothing of Reggie’s vivacity, her dash, her wild and passionate soul.
“That sounds like Nellie. Reggie.” Gemma had a very odd look on her face, a mixture of confusion and distress. “Do you know when she’s coming back to San Francisco?”
Suling looked up. “I don’t know. She left without telling me.” She couldn’t keep the forlorn note from her voice, and the blond woman seemed to look at her more closely.
“Well, I’m sure she’ll be in touch when she comes back from Colorado,” Gemma said.
“What is she doing in Colorado?” Suling said, startled.
“Painting mountain scenery, apparently.” There was a bitter edge to the singer’s voice.
“Why is she painting mountains in Colorado?” Suling said. She touched one corner of the watercolor. “This is what she was working on, a San Francisco series. This is one of her Chinatown scenes. She was preparing for a solo exhibit.”
And this, this, was the discrepancy that kept bristling at the back of Suling’s mind. Reggie might’ve abandoned Suling, but she wouldn’t have walked out on the biggest break of her career. Unless Thornton had decided not to back Reggie anymore—yet there had been no indication of that, not as far as Reggie could see. “Then Mr. Thornton canceled the exhibit. No artist, no show.”
“What does Henry have to do with Nellie . . . Reggie?” Now it was Gemma’s turn to look astonished.
“Mr. Thornton rented a gallery for her exhibition,” Suling said. “He was going to surprise San Francisco society with Regina Reynolds, a fresh new talent in American painting. Her launch was going to be the cultural event of the year.”
“He was launching her?” Gemma sat down on the bed. She looked around the room, dazed, a little queasy even. “Was . . . was she living here?”
“Do you think you’re the first to occupy these rooms?” Suling couldn’t hold back her scorn. “You’re not the first of his artistic discoveries and neither was she. The difference was, she knew it.” She didn’t know whether to laugh or feel pity for Gemma.
“Of course I know he’s had others. I’m not a fool.” Gemma sounded defensive. “But Henry never said anything about knowing Nellie. That first night at dinner, I told him about looking for a friend. I said she was an artist, a painter, ran down a list of names she had used. I didn’t know ‘Regina Reynolds,’ but I described her. I described her!”
“If you don’t believe me,” Suling said, “go upstairs to the top floor. There’s a room with skylights that was her studio. How would I know that unless she told me? Unless she’d been here?”
A long pause. Then, “I do believe you.” Gemma sat up straighter. “How did you meet Nellie?”
“Here. At one of those parties,” Suling said. “Last fall. September.” Pause. “She never referred to you as Gemma Garland. The name I knew was Sally, who would be a famous opera singer one day.” Sally, a name between friends, which Reggie had shared with Suling.
“If you were . . . friends,” Gemma said, “didn’t she tell you her real name was Nellie Doyle?”
Suling shook her head. “I asked. She just made a face and said she’d left that life and that name behind.” I was Reggie when I met you, she’d said, so I will always be Reggie. Whoever I used to be doesn’t matter.
“Do you know how she met Henry Thornton?” Gemma looked away when she asked this.
“At an exhibit,” Suling said. “Reggie only managed to get one painting accepted to the show. Mr. Thornton bought it and told her it was the best painting of San Francisco he’d ever seen. A dozen stories lived on that canvas, he said. Then he took her out for lunch and proposed to make her famous.”
“She never told me she had a patron,” Gemma said. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t she write to me about . . . this?” She looked around helplessly at the room, its soothing soft blue colors and luxurious furnishings, the door that opened to a huge bathroom.
“Reggie was going to wait until after she’d sold some paintings and could call the show a success. She said you didn’t approve of certain . . . conditions when it came to patrons.” Suling looked rather pointedly at Gemma, who flushed.
“Were you and Nellie, I mean, Reggie, close?” Gemma said, her words and tone careful.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Suling said. “It seems she’s done with me.” She reached inside her tunic and pulled out the red silk cord, yanked it over her head, and dropped it in the wastebasket by Gemma’s dressing table. Something she should’ve done months ago.
“Wait!” Gemma cried. She ran to the wastebasket, knelt down, and took out the silk cord. She stared at the ring dangling from the red loop.
“I thought it looked familiar the other day when I picked it up,” Gemma said. “It never occurred to me it might be Nellie’s. Did she give you this?”
“She said it was her most precious possession.” Suling shrugged. “Turns out it’s a cheap thing, churned out by the factory load. Not even real silver.”
“But it was Nell’s most precious possession,” Gemma said slowly. “And it’s cheap because they were very poor. This belonged to her mother, who she loved more than anyone in the world. If Nellie gave you this, then you truly meant something to her.” She held it out to Suling, who after a moment’s pause, took it back with trembling hands.
“She told me she loved me,” Suling said, looking down at the ring. “And you’re saying this proves she really did. So why did she go to Colorado without a word?” She held the ring to her lips before slipping the red cord over her head. It just didn’t make sense.
“I don’t know.” Gemma shook her head. “Nellie is many things and sometimes she fibs to get out of trouble, but she doesn’t hurt the people she cares about.” She looked thoughtful. “The only reason I even know she’s in Colorado is because of the note she sent with this painting.”
“She sent you a note, but she didn’t contact me?” Suling closed her fist around the ring a little more tightly. “May I see the note?”
Gemma shuffled through a box of belongings, then gave Suling the letter. The paper was heavy and expensive. Creamy, formal. So different from the colorful stationery Reggie favored, like the sheets of writing paper she’d bought at Fung Tai Dry Goods, pale pink speckled with gold. Suling’s mind tore through the possibilities, growing more worried by the moment.
Gemma paced around the room. “Why didn’t Henry tell me he knew Nellie? There couldn’t be more than one painter in San Francisco of her description. How did he not guess she was Regina Reynolds? And the staff never said anything, not that I knew to ask, and I suppose they wouldn’t be indelicate enough to mention a previous . . . protégée.”
“The entire note is typewritten,” Suling said, looking up. “There’s no actual handwriting.”
“Wait, let me see that again,” Gemma said. Then looked up, her blue eyes agitated. “It’s addressed to Gemma, but when we write to each other, it’s always ‘Nellie’ and ‘Sal.’ No one else uses my real name; it’s between us.”
“If not for the painting that came with it, there’d be nothing to prove that Reggie—Nellie—was the one who sent it, right?” Suling closed her eyes for a moment.
“But then who?” Gemma was almost whispering.
What dangled in Suling’s mind was a hatchet about to fall. She gestured with her hands, taking in the room like a magician’s assistant presenting a trick. She lifted an eyebrow at Gemma. “Who do you think?”
All color left Gemma’s face. Her features shifted from confusion, to anger, then fear.
A gurgling fountain of panic welled up inside Suling. Who else but Henry Thornton could have had access to Reggie’s paintings? But why hadn’t he admitted to knowing Reggie? Suling felt her spine turn to ice.
Gemma reached for the servant bell hanging beside the tufted headboard and pulled.
“Wait, what are you doing?” Suling said.
“I’m going to get Mrs. MacNeil and ask her about Nellie,” Gemma said. “Straight out ask her.”
“No, no, no,” Suling said. “Don’t. Not Mrs. MacNeil. None of the senior staff. Reggie once asked her who used to live in this room and was told the staff wasn’t allowed to discuss such things.”
No discussion of previous mistresses, on pain of employment. Suling remembered it was the first time Reggie felt uneasy about Thornton. Furthermore, the housekeeper said, if Miss Reynolds asked her again, she would be forced to report the conversation to Mr. Thornton.
“Say you rang for lemonade or something,” Suling said. “And ask for the maid Kathleen to bring it up.” Footsteps sounded on the marble floor outside and Suling vanished into the bathroom just as a discreet knock rapped on the door.
Gemma smiled at the maid who entered. “I’d like some lemonade, please. And some of those lovely biscuits the cook has been baking. And please have Kathleen bring it up.”
Suling came out when the maid left. “Why Kathleen?” Gemma whispered.
“She was friendly with Reggie,” Suling said, sitting on the bed. “Reggie refused to have a lady’s maid, but she called Kathleen if she needed help dressing.”
Not fifteen minutes later, another discreet knock and a smiling, auburn-haired young woman came in carrying a tray with a small crystal jug, a crystal tumbler, and lavender biscuits on a footed dish. Suling peeped through the partially open bathroom door, at Gemma’s smiling face, the maid’s careful curtsy.
“You asked for me, Miss Garland?” Kathleen asked.
“Yes, Kathleen,” Gemma said in a friendly, cheerful tone. “I’ve a question about the lady who stayed here before, Miss Regina Reynolds.”
A shadow came over the freckled face, curiosity struggling with apprehension. “I can’t say, Miss Garland. I really couldn’t.”
“The thing is,” Gemma continued, as if she hadn’t noticed Kathleen’s concern, “I really like this little painting and I’d like another by Miss Reynolds. Do you know where she went?”
Still looking troubled, the maid hesitated. “No, miss. Mrs. MacNeil told us to clear her things out of these rooms two months ago. Miss Reynolds had already left and we packed all her belongings in a steamer trunk to be sent on.”
“And did someone take the trunk to her new address?”
“One of the footmen took it away to be sent on, miss, but I don’t know where.”
“Which footman?” Gemma asked. “Please don’t worry, Kathleen, I won’t say a word to anyone.” She gave the girl a friendly wink. “Just as you won’t say a word to anyone that I was asking.”
“It was young Jonathan that took the trunk away,” the maid said, warming to Gemma’s confiding air.
“The thing is, I do like this painting very much and would love another. Miss Reynolds is a fine artist, isn’t she?”
“Oh, that she is, miss,” Kathleen agreed enthusiastically. “She did my portrait, just a pencil sketch, and it was lovely. But as for more of Miss Reynolds’s paintings, there ain’t any here now. The master had them packaged up and young Jonathan took those away, too.”
“Goodness, Jonathan is a busy young man. Is he here today?”
“Oh, he was let go, Miss Garland,” the maid said, “the day after he took away the paintings.” Then in a dramatic whisper, “He’d been drinking on the job. He said he never drinks but Mr. Thornton had the butler fire him.”
“Well, Kathleen, I suppose that’s that. Thank you for your help.”
“You’re so welcome, miss,” then rather anxiously, “Mrs. MacNeil will be wanting to know why you asked for me. What should I say?”
“Tell her I wanted to ask you about a missing chemise,” Gemma said. “But by the time you came up, I’d found it. My mistake.”
The bedroom door shut and Suling slowly emerged from the bathroom.
“You were right,” Gemma said. “I was still hoping there was some other explanation, but there isn’t. Nellie didn’t run away and Henry is deliberately deceiving me. He must know where she is, Susie . . .”
“Miss Garland,” Suling interrupted, “my name is Suling, not Susie. My family name is Feng. Please remember that. Suling Feng.”
Gemma flushed, and Suling continued, “Whatever Thornton did with Reggie, he doesn’t want anyone to know, so it’s something underhanded and I only hope she’s still alive.” Because in San Francisco, with enough money, anyone could be made to disappear.
“No, don’t say that. He can’t be a murderer on top of everything else!” Gemma said, practically wailing.
Suling sighed. Gemma was as Reggie had described. Sometimes she can be unbelievably naive, Reggie once said. It’s as though all that corn-fed goodness insulated her brain from recognizing how awful people can be. Especially the powerful.
“Maybe he just sent her away somewhere against her will,” Suling said. “Let’s search these rooms, see whether anything was left behind that might offer a clue.” She began opening dresser drawers.
They spent the next half hour peering into the backs of closets and drawers, even looking inside the compartments of the revolving shoe rack. Then Gemma straightened up.
“Money,” she said. “My uncle Halvor was a bookkeeper. He always said he could deduce a man’s character and activities by looking through his checkbook. Henry must’ve paid someone to have her . . . disappear. We need to get into his office when it’s empty.”
But Thornton was always working. Suling and Madam Ning’s girls sometimes saw Thornton cross the second-floor mezzanine from his office to his bedroom only minutes before a party. He would emerge dressed to perfection, ready in time to greet his guests.
“Tomorrow night during the performance of Carmen?” Suling said. Their only option.
“Yes, yes, tomorrow night,” Gemma exclaimed. “Henry’s leaving the house at seven. The staff will be busy on the third and fourth floors getting the rooms ready and the second floor will be empty. That’s our best chance to sneak in there.”
“You’ll be singing, so I have to do it.” Suling’s fear of getting caught struggled with her fear for Reggie’s safety. “Does Thornton lock his office?”
Gemma looked downcast, then straightened up. “The potted palm. His clerks share one key between them, but it’s inconvenient so they hide it in the potted palm outside his office door. Henry— Thornton,” she corrected herself, biting off the name, “he doesn’t know.”
“Then let’s hope the key is there,” Suling said. “I’ll come just before seven. I’ll wait on the street until his automobile leaves.”
“I’ll tell Mrs. MacNeil to take you upstairs to wait for me,” Gemma said, “because I want you making sure all’s well with the dragon robe when I put it on.”
It was about as good a plan as they’d get. Then Suling looked directly at Gemma.
“Breaking into Thornton’s office could be dangerous. I need to know what you’re willing to risk. How much does Reggie mean to you?”
“She’s the one person in my world I could always rely on,” Gemma said, without hesitation. “When I thought she’d traipsed off to Colorado even though she knew I needed her—that was the loneliest feeling in the world.” She shook her head. “If I couldn’t depend on Nellie, I couldn’t rely on anyone. Now she’s in trouble and I must be the someone she can depend on.”
“That makes two someones,” Suling said. They smiled at each other, their smiles tentative, a bit shy.
Suling didn’t voice the question she most wanted to ask Gemma. What did Reggie truly mean to her? She wanted an answer that would allay the twinge of jealousy she’d always felt when Reggie spoke so fondly of “my Sally,” but it could wait until they’d found Reggie. And if they never found Reggie—and at this, a dark abyss of despair cleaved her heart—then it didn’t matter. Nothing would ever matter again.
“If I’m not in your room when you get back from the opera,” Suling said, getting up to leave, “I’ll write a note and tell you what I found, if anything at all.”
Suling made her way to Chinatown, so much tumult in her thoughts she barely noticed the streets she crossed, the vehicles she avoided. Reggie didn’t abandon her. This would’ve made her skip all the way home if she weren’t so worried. You make me want to take care of you, Suling, Reggie used to say. You’re like a pineapple, spiny leaves and a rough rind. But inside, you’re all sweetness.
Now it was her turn to take care of Reggie, wherever she might be. And whether or not Gemma was competent to help solve the mystery, Suling wasn’t leaving San Francisco until she’d found the woman she loved.