Diva (19 page)

Jerome had spent his whole life avoiding this kind of
serving-the-white-man work. But Hank had made it clear that if Jerome wanted to escape Lowell and see his beloved fiancée anytime soon, he was going to have to get over his pride and do what needed to be done.

Unable to find anything out of the ordinary on the mahogany desk, Jerome began opening the drawers on each side. In the middle drawer on the left, he found a thick beige envelope. He withdrew two steamship tickets to Paris. The boat was leaving in a week. He also found a folded slip of notebook paper in the envelope. It was a sort of list written in impeccably neat handwriting:

Height: 5′2″

Weight: 105 lb.?

To Bring Along:

7 day dresses

7 evening dresses

4 skirts

4 blouses

Shoes? Ask Marlene at Bloomingdale’s

Dial Madame Barbas/House of Patou as soon as we arrive

The handwriting looked masculine, but what was all this about skirts and blouses … unless … Forrest was planning to whisk a girl away to Paris!

Jerome felt his throat close up. From the way Forrest had been acting outside, it wasn’t too hard to guess who that girl might be.

Gloria had said she’d talked to Forrest about Jerome—it wasn’t like this man had no idea Gloria was no longer available. What, did Forrest think that because Gloria was engaged to a black man, it didn’t count as a real engagement? How dare Forrest try to steal his girl! It would serve the man right if Jerome ripped up these tickets right now.

But that was a big, stupid risk that Jerome knew he couldn’t take. Besides, he knew if Forrest offered Gloria a trip to Paris, she’d refuse him. He returned the tickets and list to the envelope and put them back where he’d found them.

Jerome moved to the dresser. He went through it drawer by drawer and found far less clothing in the last one than there should’ve been. He reached through the stacks of polo shirts to the bottom of the drawer and grinned when the wood lifted easily under his hands. He cleared out the drawer and lifted the false bottom.

His eyes were drawn first to a small black velvet box in the corner. Inside? A ring that made Gloria’s look like a child’s plaything. It had a white-gold band, and several tiny diamonds were grouped into the shape of a flower at the center. Maybe the ring was just a family heirloom—maybe it had nothing to do with Gloria—but the sight of it still made Jerome queasy.

Jerome glanced at the door and listened hard for footsteps or voices, but the coast was still clear. He turned his attention to a large leather-covered book that took up most of the space in the bottom of the drawer. Jerome flipped through
the photo album and recognized a handsome young boy with dark, glinting eyes as a younger version of Forrest. In one picture, the boy looked about five or six. He stood at the edge of a pond, fishing rod in hand. A mustached man in a casual checkered shirt and trousers stood behind Forrest with a hand on his shoulder. Forrest was laughing, but the man’s expression was grave.

Jerome had to look at the picture for a few moments before he realized why the man seemed familiar. He hadn’t been bald back then—he’d had dark, silky hair just like Forrest’s, and it swept over his forehead in the exact same way. Though the man’s pale eyes were more sinister, they had the same appealing glimmer as Forrest’s—and like Forrest, the man was remarkably handsome.

This was before the man had gotten the scar that stretched across his face.

Without the scar, the resemblance between Forrest’s man Pembroke and Forrest was unmistakable. The clefts in their chins, their long, straight noses, their lips that would’ve looked too thin on anyone else.

Pembroke wasn’t Forrest’s manservant, or bodyguard, or goon. Pembroke was Forrest’s
father
.

But Gloria had told Jerome that Forrest said his father was dead. Why had he lied? And why was his father pretending to be a butler?

Jerome heard the grandfather clock in the foyer begin to chime. He’d been up here for half an hour already! Far too
long to merely fetch a jacket. He reassembled the drawer as fast as he could and replaced the clothes.

He turned, ready to bolt out the door. And he met a pair of pale, bloodshot eyes. The same ones in the photograph.

Jerome gulped and dropped the jacket in his hands on the floor. He stumbled backward, bumping up against the cold metal handles of the dresser drawers. A framed photo of Forrest and some dancer fell on the floor, the glass shattering. Jerome looked quickly out the window, searching for some other escape. Then he stared into those eyes and they chilled him to the bone. What could he do now?

Pembroke stood in the doorway and chuckled, low and deep, at Jerome’s distress.

His arms were crossed, but the doorframe still seemed too small to contain his bulk. Pembroke’s lips curved into a garish, crooked smile beneath his bushy gray mustache. Like his son, he was dressed in a blue pin-striped suit. But his pale blue eyes held none of Forrest’s good humor. They were flat and soulless—a killer’s eyes.

Pembroke clucked his tongue disapprovingly. “A floozy singer and a colored boy. They must not think much of my son over at the bureau if this is the cavalry they send after him.”

Pembroke continued to grin, making his jagged scar even more unsettling. He moved a few steps closer and Jerome backed away from the dresser and farther into the room, until he was against the wood-paneled wall. Then Pembroke
pulled a hefty black pistol from his side holster. Jerome didn’t know much about guns, but he knew a gun that size at this range would take his head clean off.

Pembroke pointed the gun at Jerome’s temple. “So. Did you find what you were looking for, Detective?”

GLORIA

Gloria was beginning to understand why none of Forrest’s shows had done well.

“Hey, Gretchen!” Earl slurred, slumped on his piano bench. “You ready to run through ‘A Penny for Your Thoughts’?”

“It’s Gloria,” she replied, “and I’m not sure that’s—”

“Come on, Glo!” Glitz called from her cushioned golden chair at the other end of the salon. She and the others sat by the floor-to-ceiling arched windows in the informal audience area. “Keep going! It’s all been jake so far. Ain’t that right, Glam?”

Beside Glitz, Glamour clapped. “Encore, encore! These songs are just the rage, Forrest. Much better than the ones in your other shows.”

What are the songs from his
other
shows like?
Gloria
wondered.
Maybe the actors just scratch their fingernails across a blackboard for ninety minutes
.

Gloria stood next to a grand piano in a salon on the first floor of Forrest’s villa, looking over the pianist’s shoulder at sheet music from
Moonshine Melody
. The pianist was a middle-aged man named Earl with messy dark hair and a thin mustache, still dressed in the tuxedo he’d worn to Forrest’s party the evening before. He was more than a little tipsy, his fingers drunkenly caressing the black-and-white keys.

After the bright, sugar-sweet intro, she began to sing:

“Oh, how I wish you would hold me tight

And tell me all that keeps you up at night
,

All your greatest dreams and fears

Words that would bring you to tears
.

Only then will I truly know your love

And believe you were sent from above

To give me strength and happy thoughts

So here’s a penny, a penny for your thoughts.”

There were so, so many things wrong with the song—even discounting obvious mistakes like rhyming
thoughts
with
thoughts
. The timing was off and the song was filled with sappy clichés. Who on earth was the lyricist Forrest had hired?

It wasn’t like Forrest was paying attention anyway. When he had proposed that Earl run through a few songs from Forrest’s new show with Gloria, she’d been so excited. Forrest
was really considering her for a lead role—a role he’d previously wanted a star like Ruby Hayworth to fill!

But instead of watching Gloria perform, Forrest spent the whole time staring at Ruby. Finally the glamorous actress met his eyes and smiled at him. Then she turned to her husband. “Marty, could you get me another rum and soda?”

“Tell the waiter,” Marty replied tersely.

“Oh, but no one can make rum and sodas the way you do.”

Marty harrumphed and left with both their glasses. As soon as he was gone, Ruby scooted as close to Forrest as her seat would allow and whispered something in his ear. They both laughed softly and didn’t break eye contact for a second.

“This salon is gorgeous,” Ruby said to him, touching his wrist lightly and looking around at the gold sconces on the wall and crystal chandeliers hanging overhead.

Forrest covered her hand with his. “Is it? I hadn’t noticed.”

“You really are doing well for yourself these days. It’s nice of you to let us enjoy your success with you—thank you for that.”

“No,
thank you
. I didn’t enjoy it at all—not until you showed up.” Ruby positively glowed at this.

The two whispered through Gloria’s song, touching each other with a casual ease that astounded Gloria. You’d think they’d been a couple for years.

Ruby and Forrest backed off when Marty returned, but they still caught each other’s eyes every chance they got. Meanwhile, Marty just gripped the arms of his chair hard
and drank down shots of Scotch faster than the waiter could bring them.

Gloria looked away from them and tried to focus on her performance. But she just couldn’t get into it—the song was terrible.

Jerome had once given Gloria a talk about committing to the material no matter what it was. “Chances are, you’re not gonna love everything they hand you to sing. But if it’s what they want to hear, you’ve just gotta deal with it and thank God, your manager, and Fate itself for giving you the chance to do what you love for a living.”

But Jerome wasn’t here to give her a pep talk. He hadn’t shown up at her room after the party last night, and Gloria had thought maybe he was just being careful after what had happened during the croquet game yesterday afternoon. But when she hadn’t seen him this morning, she’d questioned Forrest about it. He’d said that after the bit with the jacket, his man Pembroke had found Jerome going through Forrest’s things in his bedroom. So Pembroke had fired him on the spot. “You just can’t find good help nowadays,” Forrest had said with a shrug and a smile.

Gloria planned to call Hank as soon as she got a moment alone. She hoped that somehow Jerome had hooked back up with the FBI and they were looking out for him. Maybe Jerome had even found the will before Pembroke had caught him. Gloria prayed that he had. She’d had enough of this place. She wanted to go back to the city, back to Jerome. This
gilded mansion was starting to feel as imprisoning as actual prison had.

Gloria finished singing, and after a moment, Ruby and Forrest remembered to tear their eyes away from each other and clap with the others.

Forrest stood from his chair and patted Gloria’s shoulder. Now that he had Ruby’s undivided attention, Gloria was his buddy once again. “Fantastic work, my friend! And now you’ve put me in the mood for a musical. What do you say we head into the city and see my show
The Cat’s Meow
?”

Glitz pursed her lips. “No offense, Hammy, but I don’t think you could pay me to see that show again. I should get a medal for sitting through it on opening night.”

“Mmm,” Glamour agreed. “The
Cat’s Screech
would’ve been a better title.”

“What if I paid you in food and booze?” Forrest asked. “We’ll stop by Twenty-One beforehand. Drink enough of their martinis and it’ll be the greatest show you ever saw, I guarantee it.”

“Now you’re talkin’!” Glitz said, fanning herself.

“How about you, Glo?” Forrest asked as the others rose from their chairs. “I’m afraid the show’s as awful as they say. The playwright used to be brilliant, and when we met in a gin joint, I thought it was fate. Too late I realized that these days, that man is
always
in some gin joint or other. He’s been hitting the bottle too hard for years, and so the script is basically nonsense. But I’ll make sure we get a chance to go backstage
after the show. You can get more of a sense of the Broadway world, what it’s like behind the scenes. Maybe it’ll help you decide if it’s the kind of place you might want to work.”

“I’d have a lot to learn before I could ever really think about a Broadway career,” Gloria said. But even so, her mind swam with images of packed theaters, beautiful love stories made even lovelier by song, and a dozen red roses waiting in her dressing room by a mirror ringed in lights.