Diva (26 page)

“You see the man in blue?” Lorraine whispered. “That’s Senator Jimmy Walker—people are saying he’s going to be our next mayor. He’s also sugar daddy to just about every chorus girl in town.” She pulled Melvin away from that
couple before he could react. “Oh, and there’s Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt! Doesn’t she look beautiful? Gloria, hello!”

Old Reginald Vanderbilt, heir to the family’s railroad fortune, stood beside his new bride and smoked his pipe. His raven-haired wife wore a royal-blue satin gown that dipped scandalously low in the front
and
back. A pin inset with diamonds was fixed to the front of the dress and Gloria Morgan wore a necklace and earrings to match.

“I think
you
look beautiful,” Melvin said, surveying Lorraine’s pale green silk charmeuse gown.

Lorraine smiled. It was the most formal dress she’d ever worn, and it had the longest hemline she’d worn since puberty. It was sleeveless and was embroidered with gold thread. There were deep aqua panels on each side, and a seashell-shaped gold pin gathered the fabric before it draped into a train in the back. Lorraine hadn’t expected to love the long Callot Soeurs number as much as she did when she’d tried it on in the store, but it made her feel like some kind of mermaid princess.

Even Stella Marks, one of the Laurelton girls who’d tortured Lorraine after she’d made a drunken scene at Gloria and Bastian’s engagement party, had gushed about how much she loved the dress when Lorraine and Melvin had arrived in the ballroom. “I wish I had one just like it,” Stella had said.

Lorraine had given Stella her brightest grin. “For your sake, Stella, I wish you did, too. Then you wouldn’t be wearing that puke-colored monstrosity.”

“Thank you,” Lorraine said to Melvin now. “You don’t look too shabby yourself.”

To think Melvin had said no when she’d first asked him to come today! “I told you I don’t want to get caught up in any more of your wild shenanigans, Raine,” he’d said.

“This isn’t anything like that!” she’d replied. “I just … I’d like you to come. With me. I’ll have to deal with all these Chicago bluenoses, and it’ll be nice to have a friendly face around. Plus I bet you’ll look absolutely dapper all dressed up.”

She’d been right. Melvin’s traditional tuxedo with its too-wide lapels wasn’t going to start any fashion trends, but at least it fit. He was even wearing some classy silver cuff links that his grandfather had given him when he graduated from high school. Lorraine had been surprised—Melvin was from Wisconsin; she hadn’t thought anything classy existed there.

“Raine—” Melvin began, the candlelight doing his cheekbones and strong chin all kinds of favors.

But Lorraine saw two more familiar faces over Melvin’s shoulder, and she knew them from more than just the society pages. She pointed toward the entrance to the ballroom. “What do you know? Clara and her editor are here to put their plan into motion.”

There was an unspoken rule that women needed to look their very best when there was a danger of running into an old flame. And boy, was Clara abiding by that rule. She wore a sleeveless floral-print silk voile dress. Beads and sequins
dotted the print and caught the light beautifully. A beaded belt sat low on Clara’s hips, and she wore a long pink beaded necklace. Gold heels peeked out from under the dress’s long, artfully uneven hem.

Parker wore a gray pin-striped suit with a matching waistcoat. In his pocket was a delicately folded green handkerchief, which matched the color of his tie. A gray bowler hat covered his dark, wavy hair.

The two of them stood with two middle-aged men, neither of whom was dressed formally enough for a wedding. One was overweight and dressed in a tweed suit. Half his shirt was untucked under his jacket. The other was a nondescript fellow with wrinkled worry lines crawling across his forehead, wearing an equally nondescript brown suit.

Despite the fact that Clara and Parker were possibly one of the best-dressed couples at the wedding, neither looked happy. They seemed to be in the middle of an argument.

“C’mon,” Lorraine said. “I smell trouble.”

Melvin allowed her to pull him toward Clara and Parker. “That could just be the potpourri. There’s one crystal bowl too many of that stuff here, if you ask me.”

“What’s the rumpus?” Lorraine asked once she reached Clara and Parker.

But they were still in heated conversation. “It’s all up to you,” Parker said to Clara. “There’s no one else. You have to stand up when they ask and accuse her.”

“I can’t do that!” Clara exclaimed. She was getting into a lather. “I can’t cause a scandal and ruin Marcus’s big moment!”

Lorraine cleared her throat loudly—Clara and Parker finally looked at her. “Cause a scandal? That sounds like my cue.”

“You must be Lorraine,” the overweight man standing with them said. “I’m private detective Leonard Solomon”—he gestured toward the man beside him in the brown suit—“and this is Lieutenant Robby Skinner.”

“Well, my, my.” Lorraine reached out to shake their hands, incredibly flattered that they knew who she was. Clara probably bragged about having a friend as intriguing as Lorraine all the time. “Nice to meet you, gentlemen. So what are you two talking about?” Lorraine looked back and forth between Clara and Parker. “And where’s that hard-boiled character you were supposed to sneak in here?”

Clara let out a heavy sigh, looking close to tears.

“Benji missed his train,” Parker explained. “And now Clara’s going to have to accuse Deirdre during the ceremony.”

“Except I
can’t
.”

“Except you
have to
,” Parker fired back. He smoothed his dark hair and turned back to Lorraine. “Without Benji, we’ve got no one to identify her. The police won’t arrest her without a positive ID.”

“So what will you do?” Melvin asked.

Parker shrugged. “Hope that Deirdre will slip up when Clara confronts her in front of all these people.”

“She’s a hardened criminal, Parker,” Clara said. “I don’t think a roomful of senators and socialites is going to scare her.”

Lorraine nodded. “She is a pretty tough cookie.” She glanced at Clara. “You said he was a tall, skinny guy, right?”

Clara nodded.

“Have you got a picture of him on you?”

“I do,” Detective Solomon said. He opened his black leather briefcase, pulled out a thick manila folder, and withdrew a booking photograph. “Here’s Benji.”

Lorraine studied the photo: The skinny man had beady brown eyes and dark hair, a dusting of freckles across the bridge of his long nose. She turned back to Melvin. “Take off your glasses!”

His face scrunched up. “But you’re always telling me not to!”

“Just this once,” Lorraine replied. Melvin reluctantly took his glasses off and put them in the pocket of his jacket, and Lorraine tried not to cringe. Melvin’s poor eyesight really was a blessing—for his face.

She looked at the photo again: In it, Benji was wearing a newsboy cap. Lorraine plucked Parker’s bowler hat off his head, eliciting an angry “Hey!” from him. She ignored it and started banging the hat hard against her knee.

An older woman in a lavender suit walked in on the arm of her son and stared at Lorraine questioningly.

“Love your suit!” Lorraine called, still thwacking the hat against her leg. “What is that, Chanel?”

The woman shook her head and hurried away.

Once the hat was shapeless, she plopped it on Melvin’s head. It mostly hid his flaming-red hair. “Perfect,” she said.

Clara looked at the photo as well, with a small, wondering smile on her face. “He has a mustache and a mole, though,” she said, referring to the picture.

Lorraine fished around in her gold, shell-shaped purse. “I can fix that!” She withdrew her black eyebrow pencil.

Melvin stepped backward when she aimed the pencil at his face. “You’re not even going to ask my permission first?”

Lorraine threw her hands up. “This is a life-or-death situation, Melvin!”

“No, it’s not!” Melvin replied. “Why would you even say that?”

She paused. “Okay, but a friend of ours, the man Clara
loves
, is about to ruin his life. Are you really going to let him do it, knowing you could’ve done something to help?”

Melvin stared at her with his tiny brown eyes for a few seconds, then sighed. “Oh, fine.” He held still so Lorraine could draw a thin mustache above his lips and a mole on his left cheek. It didn’t look too bad, if Lorraine said so herself.

It was clear from Parker’s face that he didn’t agree. “That’ll never fool anyone.”

“Not unless she’s blind,” Solomon agreed.

“But that’s just it,” Lorraine replied. “She basically is! Clara and I saw this girl up close. She squints; she’s nearsighted.”

Clara nodded in confirmation. “She’s right. Vain girls never wear glasses.”

“If we keep Melvin here far enough away, she won’t be able to be sure he’s not this Benji jamoke,” Lorraine said. She looked at the others, ready to receive her praise for coming up with such a brilliant solution.

Solomon took the photo back and glared at Melvin. “Even if she thinks it’s him, the moment he opens his mouth, she’ll know the truth. Benji has a serious Southern accent.”

Lorraine waved him off. “The man’s name is
Benji
. How serious could his accent be?”

“Serious enough,” Parker said. “But Clara’s going to do all the talking.”

“What?” Clara asked, incredulous.

They all looked up when they heard the sound of strings. The white-suited wedding band was seated next to the canopy and was starting to warm up. The guests took this as their cue to take their seats.

Lorraine walked toward the aisle with the others trailing behind her. Her plan was good, she knew it was—even if no one else thought so. Plus, it wasn’t like they had time to come up with anything else.

It was now or never.

GLORIA

Forrest mopped at his forehead with his handkerchief and used his other hand to offer Gloria his gold-plated flask.

“Here, kid. You look like you could use it.”

Gloria took in the stately wedding guests crowded around them in the Plaza’s marble-floored lobby. The debutante on her left fingered the feathered skirt of her peach gown and confirmed to a reporter that, why,
yes
, they
were
real ostrich feathers. On her right was a crowd of Marcus’s old prep school friends from Chicago, enthusiastically discussing Babe Ruth’s latest home run. The stately room—with its high ceilings and countless tall windows bordered by gold curtains—was packed to the gills with a rainbow of wedding guests dressed in the finest clothing that money could buy.

When Marcus asked Gloria to be his “best girl,” Gloria
had expected to wear the same flouncy dress as Anastasia’s bridesmaids. But instead, Marcus had commissioned a black silk halter dress with a white lace bodice. There was a black bow at the center of the bodice and a line of black buttons beneath it.

Gloria took a swig from the flask. She and Forrest could’ve filled a novel with all the tabloid pieces that had been written about them. But they were practically invisible in this sea of New York and Chicago royalty.

“You don’t look so great yourself,” Gloria replied, handing back the flask. Since she’d met him, Forrest had never looked anything but perfectly groomed. But now he was a sweaty mess. His nervous fidgeting had quickly loosened his pomade-tamed dark hair into unruly waves. Sweat dotted his brow, and he constantly tugged at his dark green silk tie.

Gloria tried to let the booze relax her, but it wasn’t working. She could barely focus on the snooty guests crowded around them or the crystal chandeliers hanging above. When a waiter offered her a finger sandwich, she thought she might be sick.

When she recognized a gaggle of Laurelton Prep graduates, she tilted her head downward and hoped they wouldn’t see her. They didn’t, but she did hear her name:

“I wonder where Gloria Carmody is,” Anna Thomas said, twisting her unfashionably long brown hair between her fingers. “Do you think she got a job in another gin joint?”

“I doubt it,” Helen Darling said, and slurped at her lemonade.

“She’s probably off getting arrested again with her colored boyfriend,” Amelia Stone said. “Remember the way we used to look up to her? It’s positively
embarrassing
to think of it now.”

On another day Gloria might’ve been offended by their barbed words. But now all Gloria could think of was Jerome, and how Forrest’s sadistic father had him locked up God knew where. Pembroke had refused to say anything about what he’d done with Jerome—only that he was alive.
Alive
was not necessarily synonymous with
safe
or
unharmed
. She couldn’t stop imagining Jerome’s soft brown eyes widened in terror, or his normally deep voice pitched in a cry for help that no one would hear.

“Where is Pembroke now?” Gloria asked Forrest.

“In the far right corner, by the vase of lilies,” Forrest replied immediately. His eyes hadn’t strayed from his father for a moment since they’d arrived at the Plaza.

Gloria peeked over the many wide-brimmed hats and delicate headdresses. Pembroke stood as he always did, silent and imposing with his hands folded behind his back.