Venom and the River (12 page)

“Quick work, Peach.”

“I didn’t want you to change your mind. By the way, I’m putting my offer back on the table. This afternoon will complete your part of it quite satisfactorily.”

“I’m still thinking about that offer.” She held the screen door open. “But let’s get started on this.”

The photographer extraordinaire picked up a camera bag and marched in. Immediately, he groaned. “You said it was dark, Peach, but goddam it.”

Wallace Beadle hurried in after him. “That’s why we hired you, Spence. A genius like you can…” The flattery softened to a murmur as the men moved further into the cottage.

Peach grabbed Petra’s left hand with both of her own. “Ready, dear?” she whispered. Petra closed her eyes, held still for a moment, then nodded.

Side by side, they stepped forward while Leigh continued to hold the door. There was a brief moment of jostling as they adjusted position in the narrow doorway, then, still attached and with Petra leading by a chin length, they entered.

Bracing the door with a foot, Leigh picked up the beer carton and followed.

Petra was already sitting in the brown chair, her eyes flitting about as she took it all in. She smiled at Leigh and—untethered now from Peach—she raised her hands, palms upward. “Heaven!” she said.

Peach sat on the arm of the chair and put an arm around the younger woman. “I told you.”

Petra cuddled closer and sighed. “I want it just like this, Wally. Down to the last detail. We’re doing it right this time.”

“Does that mean no second marriages for the mother?” Leigh asked. “No baby brothers for Ida May?”

Petra snapped to standing, nearly toppling Peach off her perch in her haste to be eye to eye with Leigh. “Maud,” Petra said. “Her name is Maud.”

“My mistake,” said Leigh.

She’d made a mistake all right, she thought as she sat in the window seat adjacent to the brown chair and watched the men examine the furnishings and layout of her living space. They circled the place like vultures over fresh kill.

They stopped in front of The Red Lady.

“Jesus,” the photographer said. “A real Matisse?”

“A recent copy of the real one,” Leigh said. “Which was part of the décor during the girl’s time.”

Wally shook his head. “We can’t have this in any of the shots in the book. And it sure as heck won’t be part of the show.” He turned to Petra. “This is one detail we leave out.”

“The Red Lady,” Petra said, standing next to the men. She glanced down at her own chest.

Leigh said, “Why leave it out? How many kids grow up with a masterpiece in the house? Surely that’s of interest.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Why? That should be obvious, honey.” He glanced at Peach. “She asks a question like that and you want her to write for you?”

“Don’t worry,” Leigh said. “I think I know. I just wanted to hear the reason.”

Wally Beadle turned away from the painting and stared, unsmiling, at Leigh. “You want a reason? Here’s the reason: No tits. Not on my network and not in any book we underwrite.”

She nodded. “It’s a four letter word.”

He liked that and he looked to the others as he laughed. No one joined in. “I guess she’s okay, Peach. She’s smart enough to do it the way we want.”

“Yes, she is,” said Peach.

“As I said, I’m not sure I’m on board,” Leigh said.

“We can’t wait forever for you to make up your mind,” said Peach. “We’ll want the first four books in the stores a week before the show premiers, and pre-production begins next week.”

“New dolls and accessories—will those be ready to roll by the premier?”

“She’s catching on fast,” Wally said. He went to the kitchen.

The photographer had disappeared into one of the bedrooms. “Peach!” he shouted. “I’ll try my best, but there’s no light anywhere. This gets worse and worse!”

It sure as hell does, Leigh thought as she dropped into the big brown chair.

*

Three hours. It took the genius that long to be satisfied. Petra and Wally had left after the first hour to find lunch. Peach stayed, planting herself at the photographer’s side, murmuring suggestions and taking orders when he needed some object of Leigh’s moved out of the way or a room light turned on or off or when he wanted one of the wooden window blinds pulled up or let down as he tried to control the natural light.

He shot the living room last. “Move the damn box.”

Peach headed for the beer carton. “I’ll get it,” Leigh said.

Peach beat her to it and picked it up. “What’s all this?”

“Papers and things of Terry’s.” Leigh pulled it from Peach’s grasp and carried it into the bedroom. She returned just as the flash went off on the camera, which was aimed right at her. The genius swore. Peach laughed, “She won’t like that, Spence. You’d better delete it before we both get attacked.”

He nodded. “So you warned me.” He made a show of tapping a button on his camera and then smiled smugly at Leigh.

Leigh headed to the kitchen and the bottle in the cupboard over the sink. Definitely time for a short one.

8.

“Terry wants to know if they’re all gone and if you want to join us for supper. I’m grilling salmon.”

Leigh wedged the phone between her ear and shoulder as she added fresh ice to her glass and poured a second drink. “All gone, Geneva. Nothing taken, nothing damaged. But I’ll pass on supper because I need to work.”

She waited as Geneva relayed her answer to their boss. “I can’t tell her that,” she heard her say to Terry.

“Tell me what?”

Geneva said, “He said that you can ignore the invitation for supper as long as the work you’re doing is his book and not the—and I quote—goddam woman’s story. He says he gave you that box to shut you up and not to distract you.”

The box. Leigh rattled her glass. “Tell him I’m working. See you both tomorrow.”

*

Jasper Bancroft had lived to be eighty-five, but the brown cardboard box contained only three annual diaries he’d kept from that long life. The entries were sparse, skipping days, even weeks at a time, and they showed more interest in the mundane details of life than in important family events. “Temperature quite warm.” “Two inches of snow in the morning, gone by noon.” “Jasper Junior engaged to McKnight’s daughter.” “Hawkins delivered coal.” “Visit to Chicago plant. Girl hurt on the line. Lady doctor summoned from nearby clinic.”

Lady doctor summoned. Susan Turnbull? “And so it began,” Leigh murmured.

The remaining pages were blank. Some had been ripped out. She closed the diary and set it on the floor beside her as she peered into the box. A picture frame lay at the bottom, the edges of the dark wood exposed under the material stored above it. Leigh slowly lifted the frame out from underneath the papers and envelopes. Broken glass rubbed and scraped as she pulled. Just as the frame came free, a small wedge of glass fell back into the box. Leigh stared at the pen and ink drawing.

A young girl sat reading in a big armchair.

An inscription was scrawled across the bottom:

To Jasper Bancroft—

Thank you for the tour of the cottage. Dara Seville, 1925

Leigh went to the bedroom for one of the Little Girl paperbacks Marti had given her. She opened it to the title page. Illustrated by Dara Seville.

Leigh replaced the wedge of broken glass into its spot, pressing it into place. An original Seville would probably fetch a nice chunk of change, maybe enough for a down payment on a small house in a small town.

Thank you for the tour of the cottage.
Surely that had been arranged with the consent and even help of Ida May. And could she have done that if she and her mother’s lover were estranged?

She set the frame and drawing safely in the center of the coffee table and resumed digging through the contents of the box. Invoices, magazine and newspaper clippings about different companies, annual reports for Bancroft Ltd, business letters. A wooden box lay tipped on its side in a corner of the carton. It was painted in faded colors by a child’s hand: A single limp flower grew from grassy hills under a two-cloud sky.

If it held anything of value, she decided as she pried open the top, she was absconding tonight with the goods. To hell with the memoir and vice-president.

Three keys, two military medals, a broken watchband.

Her index finger connected with an invisible shard of glass as she picked up five blue envelopes banded with a ribbon from the bottom of the beer carton. She pressed a thumb tip against the bubble of blood as she studied the top envelope. No return address, a New York postmark.

They’d been stacked in order of delivery—oldest on top. Someone had carefully saved these. She opened the first envelope and pulled out the single thick note card.
Dear Mr. Bancroft.
Her eyes dropped to the signature.

Cordially, Ida May Turnbull

Five letters from a woman to her dead mother’s lover.

The first was simply a short thank you for allowing the illustrator of her books to visit the cottage. The second letter was postmarked a month later:

Dear Mr. Bancroft,

Thank you for the invitation to dine when you are in New York next month. Once I would have dreaded such a meeting and would surely have declined. But these books I’ve been writing have somehow softened the pain of those years, and I do look forward to seeing you again. I remain

Cordially yours,

Ida May

The next was dated two months later, after the visit. Apparently it was a successful one as he was no longer “Mr. Bancroft:”

Dear Jasper,

As I told you when we walked in the park after our lunch, I dreaded our meeting again after so many years. But what a pleasure it was. I’d be quite embarrassed at how much I talked except the moment we met in your hotel lobby you felt like the oldest and dearest of friends. How foolish of me not to accept your overtures of communication and friendship over the years. It was so deeply satisfying to talk with someone about Mama.

I only wish we’d had another chance to visit during your time in New York. I trust your business meetings went well. Charles appreciated the lunch at your club and the introduction to Lehman. I’m sure he’ll be writing you soon.

Dara and Julia were also delighted to see you again. You were so kind to them when they visited Pepin. What a trouper you were to attend the little soirée at their apartment. Was it terribly amusing? Dara called the next morning to report, and she said that you were quite at ease with the crowd. I’d have loved to have been there, but Wednesdays are the only day I am certain to see Charles as his wife dines with her mother then, and I couldn’t persuade him to go as he is rather uncomfortable around Dara.

Would my mother have disapproved of my bohemian friends? I know Charles does much of the time, which is why I won’t marry him, even if he were free. As I told you during our walk, I’ll never marry again—that’s my promise to myself.

Dara and Julia make an amusing couple. As I’m sure you heard, they are off to Maine this Saturday. Each summer Dara attends some sort of—if you’ll forgive me—Sapphic bacchanal at a friend’s summer home.

Before she left for Maine, Dara asked me to read over the outlines of some novels Julia is planning to write. Six of them! I hate that sort of favor because you can never be honest, but what could I do? I owe Dara so much for her glorious illustrations, and she adores Julia terribly. Of course, Dara has run through at least three or four girls in the years I’ve known her. No doubt Julia won’t last the summer.

Which should leave her time to write, and she’ll need the time. What stories! In only the first all this is slated to occur: During the Great War a Red Cross home service worker from Minneapolis assists with relief work after the horrible 1918 forest fire near Cloquet and falls in love with a forester. Meanwhile, a younger sister, also a social worker, goes about helping and inspiring penniless but intelligent young girls in Minneapolis. There is a cynical older sister who loves turning the tales of social work woe her sisters relay to her into tawdry confession fiction she writes to support herself because her husband is off fighting the Kaiser and she’s too proud to accept help from her parents, who disapproved of the marriage. But it doesn’t stop there, Jasper! There’s a brother. He returns home from the war with syphilis. And that’s going to be just the first book! My god—I bow down before any writer who could make tolerable even a whit of that plot.

Oh, Jasper, in spite of all that happened in the past—Mama’s death, the cruel people in Pepin—I’ve had a good life. I am surrounded by all sorts of imaginative friends and unimagined material comfort. I do so enjoy writing about my Maud, even if her world is a fairy tale. Best of all—your friendship renewed.

Affectionately,

Ida May

The next letter was postmarked five years later. Leigh pushed through the remaining papers in the box. Surely there’d been more. Where had they gone to? Had Jasper Bancroft discretely destroyed them, or was their absence more innocent—a letter used as a bookmark, one accidentally pushed into a stack of newspapers, one tossed into the trash by a harried housekeeper. That was easy enough to imagine. But what about the scenarios the missing letters might have reported? Did Dara Seville dump Julia, the aspiring novelist? Did Ida May dump the disapproving Charles?