Secrets (29 page)

“I've decided to tell her no.”

“You aren't saying you're going to stand up to your mother, are you?” Jeff was teasing her.

“I think I am. There's something about seeing a murder victim, and seeing how quickly life can be over, that my fear of my mother has left me. If I open a nursery, it will be the way
I
want it to be, and where
I
want it to be.”

“I was thinking about—” Jeff laughed at her look. “Okay, no advice from me.”

“Unless I ask for it,” Cassie said.

“Agreed.”

“Okay, so where were we on Althea? If I'm to write her, uh, autobiography then I should know if it'll be worth my time.”

“In the 1950s she was involved in Truman's peace treaty with Japan, then she went to Russia to study.”

“Study what?”

“She said it was Russian history, but our records say she mostly drank vodka and listened, then reported everything back to the U.S.”

“Am I going to be given access to your records?”

Jeff gave her a look.

“Okay, but maybe I could be given a bit of information.”

“Maybe a bit,” Jeff said, smiling.

“Did no one in Russia suspect what she was up to?”

“If they did, she talked them out of it. And it was about this time that she gave some money to a man whose hamburgers she liked.”

“What?”

“She invested in what became McDonald's.”

“Oh.”

Jeff smiled. “In the 1960s she was—”

“Let me guess. Friends with the Kennedys.”

“Good friends, and heaven only knows what she did for JFK.”

“And the 1970s?”

“That's still classified. I can't tell you the specifics, but I can assure you that she was busy.”

“With things other than making three movies a year?”

“I think that you'll find that most of those movies are set in foreign countries.” Jeff raised her hand and kissed it. “You think this would be interesting enough for you to write about?”

“Has anyone thought about the fact that I have no idea how to write a book?”

Jeff shrugged. “Dad's done some writing. You assemble what Althea tells you, go through that stuff in her attic, and Dad will help you put it all together. It'll keep him occupied.”

“And me. So you can do whatever it is that you do all day and not have to worry that I'm going to run off with the next-door neighbor's gorgeous gardener.”

“More or less,” Jeff said, grinning, then he pointed toward a pretty little house nearly hidden under three huge willow trees. “There it is.” The house was set far enough from the river to not worry about floods, but close enough to enjoy the sound and the view.

“Come on,” Jeff said. “She's expecting us.”

C
ASSIE'S FIRST THOUGHT
when she saw the old woman was, What a marvelous thing plastic surgery is. The woman was younger than Althea but looked fifty years older. She was heavy, walked with a limp, and her face showed her years spent in the Texas sun. Her gray hair was pulled back into a bun, and her clothes were worn and faded.

The house was small, but very clean and welcoming. Cassie recognized the scent of old-fashioned spice cake in the air. The furniture was old and frayed, but comfortable-looking. Set around the house were what had to be hundreds of photographs in interesting frames. She could imagine that for every holiday “Granny” was given picture frames, and from the looks of them, her relatives competed to see who could come up with the most unusual frames.

Mrs. Turner went to the kitchen and poured out three glasses of heavily sugared iced tea. Jeff held out one of the chairs to the kitchen table, and she sat down.

“Now what is it you two want to know?” she asked, looking from one to the other as Jeff and Cassie seated themselves at the table. Jeff took the marriage certificate out of his pocket and put it on the table in front of her.

She glanced at it, then looked up about the house. Cassie knew what she wanted and soon located her glasses.

Nodding at Cassie in thanks, Mrs. Turner put on her reading glasses and spent some minutes looking at the certificate, then she put it down and took off her glasses. “This takes me back. Where did you find this?”

Jeff told her about the safe-deposit box that had been rented for over eighty years.

“I guess it was that movie star Lester was so mad about, the one that paid his bills,” she said.

“Althea Fairmont,” Cassie said.

Mrs. Turner smiled, her face crinkling into a thousand wrinkles. “Can you believe that the fools named the town after a movie star? They were in a hangin' mood because the town had the same name as a movie star they thought had killed a woman, so what did they do but rename it after another one? Did you ever hear of anything so stupid?”

Cassie and Jeff laughed. “I hear you put it around that it was named after a beautiful mountain,” Jeff said.

“That's an advantage of living so long,” she said. “Most of them died long ago, so I started telling the babies that our town was named after something other than a woman who acted in pictures. In my day, we didn't let women like her into the good parlor.”

“But Lester became an actor.”

“Not a very good one,” Mrs. Turner said. “It was more that women loved him. Today you'd say that they were hot for him. A real heartthrob.”

“It got him in a lot of trouble,” Cassie said.

“That it did,” Mrs. Turner said, laughing and showing that she had three teeth missing on the bottom. “But it was that young Florence that snagged him. Poor kid.”

“Which one?” Jeff asked.

“Why Lester, of course. I was only about eight years old, but he was real nice to me. He used to let me go fishing with him. One time he told me that I was the only female he knew who didn't try to kiss him.”

“But you wanted to,” Cassie said, smiling.

“Oh, heavens, did I!” she said, laughing. “I was so in love with him that all I could think about was him.”

“I know about being young and in love,” Cassie said, glancing at Jeff. “It hurts. Especially when the older person treats you like you're a kid.”

Mrs. Turner chuckled. “But I see you got your ‘older man.'” She nodded toward Cassie's shiny new ring.

“That I did,” Cassie said, smiling. “So all the women in town were in love with Lester Myers but Florence got him. What was she like?”

“She was my husband's cousin and family, but that didn't keep me from seeing her for what she was. I know that paper says she was only fourteen, but she was a lot older than that. She started fooling around with boys when she was twelve. By the time she was fourteen, she was more experienced than a lot of married women.”

“And what about Ruth?” Jeff asked.

Mrs. Turner looked at him in surprise. “It seems to me that you already know all the story.”

“Just the basics, nothing else. How were Ruth and Florence related?”

“Half sisters. Same mother but different fathers. Ruth's father was married to her mother, but he died when she was little. Her mother had to take in washing to support them, but she also did a little other business on the side—if you know what I mean.”

“Yes,” Cassie said.

“Nobody knew who Florence's father was.”

“Did Ruth want Lester too?” Jeff asked.

“We all did,” Mrs. Turner said. “There was something about Les that attracted women. He was beautiful from the time he was born, that's true, but there was more to it than that. When he was around, women put on their best clothes, and looked at him with big, round eyes.”

Jeff drank some of his tea. “So the two women, Ruth and Florence, were both after him?”

“Florence went after him so that the whole town knew about it, but Ruth was quieter. She used to bake pies for his family. But pies don't win a young man's heart.”

“Hear! Hear!” Cassie said with feeling. “That's something I know well. Six months in a gym and silk charmeuse work much better.”

Jeff laughed and Mrs. Turner's eyes twinkled. “I think I should be listening to a story, rather than telling one.”

“No, please,” Jeff said, smiling. “We want to hear all of it.”

“I think that paper of yours tells it all. It was Les's mother who wanted him to go to Hollywood. She read movie magazines and knew all the gossip, and she said her beautiful son was wasted in this two-bit Texas town. She said that as soon as Les graduated from high school, he was going to Hollywood and become a movie star. She had a little beauty shop in the front room of her house and she saved everything she made for about four years and she planned to give it to her son. She was very proud of him. Too proud, maybe, considering what happened.”

“That's just it,” Jeff said, “we don't think Hinton, uh, Lester, killed anyone.”

“Of course he didn't,” she said as she stood up. “Anybody that ever knew him knew he couldn't kill anybody, certainly not a woman. You want some more tea?”

Jeff held out his glass, but Cassie shook her head.

“What do you think happened?” Cassie asked.

“I think Ruth decided that Les being married to Florence was just a little hitch in her plans. She'd decided that she was going to go to Hollywood with Les, so that's what she did.”

“But it was Florence who married him,” Cassie said, backtracking. “Did she seduce him?”

“Who knows?” Mrs. Turner said. “She came up pregnant just before Les graduated from high school, and my husband's father said he was going to kill Les if he didn't marry the girl.”

“But married or not, he left for Hollywood right after that,” Jeff said.

Mrs. Turner gave a one-sided smile. “Florence thought that if Les went to Hollywood she'd go with him as his wife, but Les's mother had other ideas. She had to let the marriage go through because back then girls who were pregnant and single…” She shrugged. “It's different from today. Anyway, Les's mother took everything into her own hands. The night Les and Florence were married, his mother sneaked her son onto a train heading west. She told Les she'd take care of his wife and child and when he was famous he could send for them.”

“But he didn't send for them,” Cassie said. “Instead, Ruth went after him.”

“She did. Soon after the wedding, she raided her mother's cookie jar and bought herself a ticket to Hollywood.”

“And blackmailed Lester, who was Hinton, by then,” Jeff said, “into pretending he was married to her.”

“Exactly,” Mrs. Turner said. “But to be fair to Ruth, she managed Les's career. He was a sweet boy, and if it had been up to him, he would have worked for pennies, but Ruth was a terror. She oversaw all his contracts. She was the reason he was ever made the star of any picture.”

“You'd think that someone from this town would have exposed it all,” Cassie said. “They saw the movie magazines, so they knew what had happened.”

“People can be real dumb,” Mrs. Turner said. “But the truth was that Lester wasn't famous for years after he left home. He only had bit parts, and he was never in any magazines. He only got to be famous when he started making pictures with Althea Fairmont. Have you seen any of those old pictures?”

“Every one of them,” Cassie said. “Those two were electric on the screen.”

“They were,” Mrs. Turner said. “That was back in the days when they showed real passion in the movies. Now they don't smolder and yearn. Now they take off their clothes and read each other's tattoos.”

Both Cassie and Jeff laughed. “Why didn't Florence go to Hollywood right after she had the baby?”

“Because Ruth paid her to stay away. I was a kid but I heard what was said. Lester's mother told Florence that if she went out to Hollywood, Les would divorce her, and she'd have to come back to Hinton and take in washing like her mother did. But if she stayed here in Texas and kept her mouth shut, Ruth would see that she had money.”

“I doubt if Florence liked that idea,” Jeff said.

“Not at all,” Mrs. Turner said, “but she held to it until her mother died. Then Florence got an invitation to a party.”

“At Charles Faulkener's house.”

“Right,” Mrs. Turner said. “He paid for her upkeep in a little house for a few months before she saw Ruth and Lester again. Mr. Faulkener made her lose weight and dye her hair platinum.”

“And when she did see them, she was killed,” Jeff said.

“Who do you think did it?” Cassie asked.

“Ruth. No doubt about it in my mind at all. Ruth loathed Florence. Hated her all her life. Florence was pretty and easy with people, and went after whatever she wanted. Ruth was big and clumsy and she wanted only one thing in life.”

“Lester Myers,” Cassie said.

“That's right.”

“But she let him take the rap for the murder,” Jeff said. “When the chips were down, she let him hang.”

Mrs. Turner shrugged. “Who knows what happened? Ruth came back here right after the murder and she never left again. She bought that big brick house on the corner by the bank and lived there the rest of her life. As far as I know, she never so much as got on a train again.”

“What did she do with her life?” Cassie asked.

“She went to church a lot.” Mrs. Turner's old eyes twinkled. “A lot of people said it was guilt.”

“And poor Hinton-Lester died just three years later,” Cassie said.

“Do you know anything about that?” Jeff asked.

“Nothing. I know that Ruth pulled the curtains to her house and didn't come out for a year. She had her groceries delivered. When she did come out, she was an old woman, but she never spoke of her sister or Les. If she'd said a word, it would have been all over town.”

“When did she die?” Cassie asked.

“A long time ago. She didn't live but about five years after Les passed away, but she aged a lot in those years. It's my guess it was caused by guilt and grief.”

“Do you know what happened to her estate?” Jeff asked.

Mrs. Turner smiled. “You mean all that money she was supposed to have stolen from her rich husband? Oh, yes, we heard about that even out here in Texas. But if someone stole it, it either wasn't very much, or someone other than Ruth got it. Her house was auctioned off, and all the money went to pay off her debts.” She looked at Cassie. “The gossip magazines used to hint that Les and Mrs. Fairmont were in love off-screen. Were they?”

“Oh, yes,” Cassie said. “Madly in love. Althea had a daughter with Hinton.”

“Then she's related to my grandbabies.”

“Oh, yeah, about that,” Jeff said. “What happened to Florence's baby?”

“She dumped it onto her mother, then when her mother died, my mother got the child to raise.” Mrs. Turner smiled. “I'm happy to say that the girl took after her daddy and not her mother. She was as pretty as a flower and as sweet tempered as well. She went to Texas State and married a man who was a preacher. They had three kids and seemed to be as happy as could be.”

“I'm glad,” Cassie said. “It's good to hear that someone involved in this awful story was happy.”

“Just them,” Mrs. Turner said. “One of those three kids took after Florence and came back here to wait out her time.”

“And what happened to that child?”

Mrs. Turner's eyes darkened. “I'd rather not say what that girl did, but she was too much like Florence. I raised one of her kids.”

“Then it was lucky you were here,” Cassie said, smiling.

Mrs. Turner sighed. “Maybe so, maybe not.”

“What's wrong?” Cassie asked softly.

“The times may change, but people don't. I have a granddaughter—or she seems like mine, but she's descended from Les's child—and she's a throwback to him. She's pretty and sweet tempered, and very smart. But…”

Cassie put her hand over the old woman's. “What's happened?”

“She's about to have a baby.” Mrs. Turner shook her head in wonder. “Here it is in the time of free abortion, but the girl is a pro-lifer. She said she couldn't bear to kill her own baby, so she's having it. I wanted her to go to college, but she's planning to raise the baby by herself. The boy that fathered it is long gone.”

“She doesn't have to give up after she has the baby. She could put it up for adoption,” Cassie said.

“We've all told her that, and she agrees, but she wants the baby to be in her family, not given away to strangers.”

Suddenly, Cassie sat up straight in her chair. “How smart is this girl? Honestly?”