The Impersonator (33 page)

I looked at the clock. Oliver was arriving on the four o’clock train. Avoiding his perceptive eye would be prudent, given my latest intentions.

“I’ll let Clyde meet him, if he doesn’t mind, Aunt.”

“Marie laid a simple luncheon on the sideboard so we can help ourselves whenever we are ready.”

I was ready. The twins and Ross were eating warm cookies as we came in.

“Anyone seen Henry today?” Aunt Victoria asked.

“He had a bit to drink last night, Mother,” said Ross delicately, “but I think we’ll see him soon.”

“You’re seeing him now,” came the gruff voice from the doorway. Henry entered the room, outwardly none the worse for the previous night’s bacchanalian excess. I helped myself to creamed chipped beef on toast and a fresh garden salad and sat down at the end. Our glances met, and it’s a wonder sparks didn’t fly between us.

“Mother, can Sophie and Alice Hartley come early and dress for the party here?” asked Valerie.

“I don’t see why not. They’re such nice girls.”

“Could they spend the night too?” asked Caro, always one to push her luck.

“Well, I suppose so. But they’ll have to sleep in your room. Mr. Beckett is returning this afternoon, remember, and will take the green guest room.”

“That’s okay. Then we can help each other get dressed. Val and I will put up cots so you won’t have to worry about a thing, Mother. Jessie, can I borrow your car to go to Dexter and get them?”

Henry gave his sister a nervous look as he dropped into his chair, carelessly slopping his coffee into the saucer and his spoon onto the floor. Leaving the spoon for the servants to pick up, he swore under his breath and reached for another on the sideboard. Evidently black coffee was all he could handle today.

“Of course you can, Caro. It’s out front and ready to go. Needs to be moved anyway, before the guests arrive. Put it around back when you get home.”

The girls dashed out of the room to get sweaters, nearly running down Grandmother as she entered. I lingered to enjoy her company. I wouldn’t see her again—I wouldn’t see any of these people again after Monday. Jessie’s history had become mine, and I felt I had known them for years. It seemed impossible that I would not know them for the rest of my life, but I would not. We made idle conversation about party preparations, the dinner menu, and how difficult it was to find good cooks these days. Henry stared out the window and groused about the weather. I gathered it seldom rained this time of year. He finished his coffee quickly and left us.

A few moments later the twins clamored down the stairs, chattering like squirrels. I heard them talking to Henry in the hall.

“I’m going to the Grand Ronde reservation with a friend this afternoon,” said Ross under his breath, seizing the moment when Aunt Victoria and Grandmother were discussing flower arrangements to bring up the unpleasant subject of the murdered Indian girl. “I don’t know if anyone will talk to me, but I thought I’d give it a try. The police have closed the case. Do you want to come? We’ll be home in time for the party.”

I shook my head. Ross wasn’t a bad sort after all. I wish I’d known enough to have trusted him earlier. “Normally I’d jump at the chance, but with party preparations … I’ve promised to help Grandmother with flower arrangements.” Weak, but it sufficed. I had a more important investigation of my own in mind.

“Oh, look!” Aunt Victoria said, moving to the window. “Caroline is driving Henry’s Packard! He’s giving her a lesson. How sweet of him! My, my, and him so fussy about that Packard. What a wonderful big brother he is!”

Ross rolled his eyes. I smiled agreeably and excused myself from the table.

Back in my bedroom, I ransacked the boxes in the closet until I found what I was looking for, a ruled school notebook with blank paper. I could have taken paper from the library desk, where lovely rag stationery of various sizes and gold fountain pens waited for a feminine hand, but I preferred to use—no, I
needed
to use—Jessie’s notebook. And I needed to use Jessie’s monogrammed Swiss pen and sit in Jessie’s chair at Jessie’s desk, where she had done her schoolwork … or, rather, where she had avoided doing her schoolwork, if I knew Jessie. And I did know Jessie now, very well.

She looked over my shoulder as I wrote. She was in my head, advising me.
List the dates of the deaths first, then where Henry was at those times. Don’t forget our governess, poor thing. She wasn’t as bad as all that.
But what proof is there? I asked.
Never mind, just write down everything. Let them find the proof. Now put in the part about the bootlegging, and leave Brother David out of it. Put in about the cases of liquor on the boat, and how he couldn’t unload them Saturday because of the storm
. But I need to know how he distributes the booze for the accusation to stick, I protested.
He’s going to unload them as soon as the weather breaks. We’ll find that out later. Now put in the part about killing me. He did, you know.
I know; he admitted it, sort of. “I did and I didn’t,” he said. But how? I asked. What did that mean? Where are you? How can I prove it?
Let them prove it. Let Father’s old trustees earn their money. We’ll give them enough to go on, enough to destroy Henry’s political career, maybe even enough to send him to prison. They’ll do the rest. They don’t like Henry either.

I argued and I thought and I wrote and I rewrote for the better part of the afternoon, so eager was I to present everything to the trustees in the most convincing light, but I knew it wasn’t enough. We didn’t have much evidence.

“Excuse me, miss.” Rainy knocked on the door. “The telephone is for you.”

I ran downstairs, anticipating Uncle Oliver on the other end telling me of some delay.

“Hello, doll.” Jack Benny’s voice came over the wire loud and clear.

“Benny!” I shrieked, not caring who heard. “This is such a surprise!”

“I got your telegram this morning.”

“Oh, good! Can you help me out tomorrow?”

“I helped you today.”

“What!”

“Can you talk?”

“No, but you can.”

“Your telegram arrived early this morning, and I don’t have to go on until six, so I borrowed a car and drove to the police station in question.”

“You’re the best friend a girl ever had, Benny.”

“I know. Anyway, like last time, they went for my shtick, showed me what they had, and bingo. March 3, 1918. One strangled girl by the name of Rita Velasquez. Worked in a bar. Some of her hair cut off. No suspects.”

“I knew it!” Henry had been enrolled during the 1917–1918 academic year. No one had tied him to the girl’s murder, but once again, the victim had dark hair and a foreign appearance.

What happened to these girls? Did they get greedy and demand more money or threaten to expose him? Did they make a nuisance of themselves, pestering for more attention? Did Henry move on to other women and feel he couldn’t afford to leave loose ends? Did he just enjoy beating up women and sometimes lose his ability to stop? Or was he so angry about his obvious fascination with the same exotic, dark-haired, foreign-looking women he so despised that he had to atone for his weakness by killing them? Not questions he was likely to answer.

“I know you can’t talk, but are you in trouble?”

I drew a deep breath. “Honestly, yes. But I’m working my way out of it now.”

“Good girl. Now remember, this Pantages run of mine goes through the middle of October. There’s room for you here if you need a place to hide … Hello? Are you still there?”

The rush of gratitude blurred my vision and clogged my throat, but I managed to choke out a reply. “I owe you, Benny.”

“You sure do, kid. Starting with a full explanation, and I’ll collect when I see you next.”

I said good-bye and returned to my desk. The addition of a Palo Alto murder that matched the pattern of the others added significantly to the circumstantial evidence against Henry. All I could do was list the facts. Someone else would have to find the proof.

With this new piece of information, I laid out my scribbled notes and began to write an organized report, beginning with my own confession, followed by Henry’s statement to me that he had killed Jessie and the governess. I went on to list the times he’d tried to kill me and the murders of the young women in Dexter, Portland, and Palo Alto, showing their similarities and the common hair-cutting trait and how the dates coincided with Henry’s whereabouts. I noted his lying about his years in college, and then his bootlegging activities and the little evidence I had. Yes, I was an eyewitness, but I wasn’t planning to be around for the trial. By the time this letter reached its destination, the liquor would be off the yacht and into the speakeasies of Portland. I hoped that tomorrow—Sunday—clear skies would permit Henry to continue with his delivery and I could somehow find out how he did it and add that crucial bit to the letters I would mail Monday morning. As backup, I penned copies to send to the governor in Salem and the Portland
Oregonian,
just in case one letter should be intercepted somehow and destroyed. Or in case one of them was on Henry’s payroll. I wouldn’t underestimate Henry again.

46

The slam of a car door drew my attention to the front of the house. Uncle Oliver had arrived. Setting down my pen, I hurried to greet him with an affectionate kiss on the cheek. Let him think all was well. Clyde pulled several pieces of new alligator luggage out of the trunk and carried the first up the stairs.

“The green guest room,” I directed him, then asked Oliver, “Did you have a good trip, Uncle?”

“Tolerable, my dear, tolerable.” He was in a jovial mood. No wonder. In his mind, we were just two days away from the jackpot.

His arrival drew Grandmother from the garden, clippers in hand and a basket of flowers on her arm. She greeted her son with her usual reserve.

“Mother, how fresh you look. Raiding the garden again?”

“Grandmother has taken on the party flowers job,” I explained.

She gave a curt nod. “I finished the large arrangements for the entry hall yesterday and the end pieces for the ballroom buffet this morning. These are for the small vases on each table.”

Ross rounded the corner of the house from the direction of the garage. “Oh, there you are, Jessie,” he said sheepishly. “I’m afraid I— Well, the guests will start to arrive in a couple of hours and your flivver was still in the way—the girls took Henry’s Packard into town instead of your car—so I moved it around back and, well, I hit the maple tree next to the garage. I’m sorry. I wasn’t going fast, so it isn’t too awful, but I’m afraid the fender is well crunched. Oh, hello, Clyde! Could I trouble you to take a look at Jessie’s runabout? I’ve dented the fender but maybe you can pound it out?”

I told Ross not to worry about it, and we rounded the house to see the damage. The kitchen door opened and Aunt Victoria joined us, followed by Henry.

Clyde knelt and examined the fender. “Well, I don’t think it’s so bad that I couldn’t take this over to Bob Clancey’s shop and get him to work the metal back in shape. Shouldn’t need a new one. But here, what’s this?”

Clyde reached under the Ford and picked up a mechanical nut lying on the ground. “Funny, there’s no rust. Wonder if it come off your flivver?” He ducked under the car for a few moments and came up scratching his head. “I’ll be darned. The adjustment on the service brake is completely loose. The only brakes you got are the hand brakes. If this nut is all the problem, I can put it back on and adjust the brake band in a jiffy. The brake pedal just didn’t stop her, did it, Mr. Ross?”

“It seemed all right at first,” he said.

“Well, it must’ve been loose and worked its way off. This beats all, you know that? These babies ain’t fancy, but they’re built sturdy. You’d think they’d put on a lock washer or something to keep the nut from backing off. Let’s see if there’s anything else lying on the ground. Where’d you park her?”

I glanced over at Henry, rocking back and forth on his heels, his hands in his pockets, looking like a small boy caught playing hooky. Our eyes met and he raised his eyebrow in the classic “Who me?” gesture. All at once his generosity with the Packard took on new meaning: he had lent his sisters his car so they wouldn’t drive my Ford to town. The next person taking the Ford was meant to have a serious accident on the steep road to Dexter when the brakes failed. A fatal one if the car had gone over the edge. That was to have been my fate. Ross’s mishap had been minor because the vehicle had been on level ground.

So much for my conclusion that Henry would refrain from further attempts on my life until I’d left Cliff House. Seems I was fair game, awake or asleep. The realization made me more angry than afraid.

“Can you fix it?” asked Ross.

“Sure, nothing to it. I can get the brake fixed right now, but the fender I’ll have to take with me to Clancey’s. He don’t work Sundays, but Monday he’ll do it and you can stop in his shop when you’re in town and get him to mount it back on.” He straightened up and motioned toward the toolshed. “Gotta find my knuckle buster though, or maybe there’s a wrench to fit this size nut in there. When I’m done, I’ll move her out of the way, how ’bout over there?” He pointed to a flat place out front at the edge of the driveway where the car would not block the incoming guests.

“That would be wonderful, Clyde,” said Aunt Victoria. “What would we do without you?” She turned to go back into the house with Henry and Uncle Oliver, and I heard her telling him that the food set out in the dining room was meant to help us last until the ten o’clock buffet.

With Ross still beside us, Grandmother and I could not talk freely, but the sharp look she sent me spoke louder than words. As we watched, Clyde unscrewed the crumpled fender and carried it to his own car to take to Clancey’s. Then he disappeared into the toolshed, emerging moments later with a couple of wrenches.

“I don’t think I’m much help here,” I said as the wind picked up fresh strength and thunder rumbled in the distance, “and I’ve got some work to finish. Let me know when you’re done, Clyde, and what I owe you.”