The Impersonator (26 page)

The words Rainy and Chen exchanged were drowned out by the blood pounding in my ears. Chen was gone. Chen returned. Chen held a bowl to my lips.

As much of his nasty brew dribbled down my chin as my throat. Chen kept insisting more, a little more, more, until suddenly I pushed his hand away and doubled up. Rainy stood beside the bed, ready with a large basin, and I heaved the contents of my stomach.

Sweating like a horse, I lay back as Rainy bathed my face and neck with a cool compress. I could hear her voice from miles away.

“… oysters tonight … or the fish sauce…”

Chen eyed my almost empty glass of sherry. He picked it up and stuck his finger in it. How rude.

Exhausted, I slept.

When I woke, the clock on the mantel said eleven. Gradually I became aware of Rainy in the room with me, knitting as she sat in the Martha Washington chair by the fireplace. She’d been there all night.

“I didn’t know you could knit,” I said stupidly.

She set her work aside. “How do you feel this morning, miss?”

I touched myself in a few places. My skin felt tender, like that of a person who had the influenza. Holy smoke! Influenza! That deadly disease had killed millions when it swept around the world after the Great War. I hadn’t heard much about it in a couple years, but it had never disappeared entirely.

“I told them you were under the weather, miss, and would stay upstairs today. Chen says would you call for him when you’re fit?”

“I certainly will,” I croaked. “I need to thank him for his medicine.”

“I thought of it!” she said proudly. “I had a bad stomach last week, and Chen gave me that drink of his, and it was cured like a doctor did it. Better than a doctor.”

“I’d vote for that.”

“You ate sumpin’ bad, miss. And threw it up, praise be.”

“I remember that much.”

“You looked bad, miss.”

I shuddered, remembering my red face in the mirror. “I did at that.”

“Now can you drink some tea—no milk, just sugar—and maybe take a bite of toast?”

Aunt Victoria came by to make sure I was improving. “No matter how much better you feel, I’ve called the doctor,” she fussed. “I’m sure Chen’s herb medicine did no real harm, but I’ll not rest easy until a real doctor has looked at you.”

By late afternoon, I felt strong enough to leave my bed, if not my room. Rainy went outside to ask Chen to come upstairs. Grandmother came in too.

“I heard you were sick last night,” she said, settling into the overstuffed chair.

“Horribly sick. Something I ate. I’m fine now. Aunt Victoria insisted on ringing for the doctor, but I don’t really need a house call.”

Chen appeared at the door to my room and bowed low. “I am so glad to see you well.”

“Thank you, Chen, come in. It’s all your doing. I’m very grateful. How did you happen to be here last night?”

He entered and bowed low to Grandmother.

“It is a long walk to town. I have fixed a little space in the shed for myself whenever I want to stay the night. Mrs. Carr knows of this,” he added, a bit defensively. As if I were likely to disapprove!

“What was that you gave me to drink?”

“Boneset. A strong dose usually causes vomiting.”

“Thank heaven it worked. Was no one else sick? Did I get the only bad oyster?”

Black eyes looked directly at me for the first time, then at the floor. “I do not believe it was a bad oyster. I believe it was something in your glass.”

No shock there. Prohibition had brought a profusion of ills, one of which was the proliferation of bathtub gin. It wasn’t always gin, and it wasn’t always made in a bathtub, but it was everywhere. Anyone could fashion a still with a copper boiler, some pipe, and a few gadgets from the hardware store, and people breaking the law tended not to be fussy about recipes. White lightning, rotgut, moonshine, panther sweat—it had a hundred names and as many unpredictable ingredients, like embalming fluid or creosote. Everyone knew of someone who had gone blind, been paralyzed, or died from drinking bathtub gin. Even a smuggled-in foreign bottle with a fancy French label was no guarantee as labels could be counterfeited and the booze adulterated.

“I’ve been sick before on rotgut but never that bad.”

Chen shook his head. “Not rotgut. What was in your glass?”

“Sherry.”

“Something in the sherry. Did you pour your own drink?”

I nodded. Chen glanced nervously at Grandmother, then back at me.

“There was a piece of white in the bottom of your glass. It tasted bitter, like ma huang. I think there was ma huang in your bottle of sherry.”

“What the devil is ma huang?”

Anticipating my question, he pulled from his pocket a cluster of bright green spindly stems. “Ma huang. I don’t know the English name, if there is one. It is a bush I grow in the garden, useful for many things, especially colds or hay fever. But many herbs that are good in small amounts are deadly in large amounts.”

“What are you saying?”

“What was in your glass is not my ma huang. I cannot make white pills. Someone made ma huang into a white pill that would dissolve in liquid. But there was so much, it did not dissolve all the way.”

My mind refused to follow.

“Did others drink the sherry?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Who knew you drink sherry?”

“Everyone, I suppose. I have a glass before bed every night. It’s no secret.”

“Someone wanted you to become sick. Maybe worse. Be very careful.” He looked pointedly at Grandmother, then bowed again to both of us and left the room.

Someone wanted me dead? That was nothing new. The Carrs stood to inherit at my death, so they were the obvious suspects. But that’s what made it so very unlikely that they would try to poison me here.

Before I had time to think this over, Aunt Victoria came bustling down the hall. “Dr. Milner is here, Jessie. He would have been here sooner but he was setting Lem Stoner’s arm. Right this way, Doctor. Here’s our little patient, looking much better this afternoon.”

Doc Milner gave his “little patient” a perfunctory examination, looking down my throat and listening to my chest. “Food poisoning,” he intoned. “Probably a bad oyster from last night’s dinner.” He prescribed bed rest, tea, and toast. Useless man. He bade us good day, and Aunt Victoria showed him out.

A message flashed between Grandmother and me, and we waited until their footsteps disappeared down the hall before taking up our peculiar shorthand conversation. “It could have been the oysters,” I said lamely.

“A remarkable coincidence that the only bad oyster graced the plate of the wealthiest person at the table.”

“Doc Milner’s a real doctor.”

“Chen is a real doctor to the Chinese. And the one who saved your life.”

“Well, there’s no way to know for certain. Rainy cleaned up everything last night after I threw up. Henry and Ross aren’t fools. If I had died, that glass would have been right here on the table and everything would point straight to them.” The thought made me sad. Henry was an ass, but I rather thought Ross was coming around to my side.

Grandmother continued, “Ross is the smart one around here. You can see his brain working through his eyes. We’ll return to San Francisco tomorrow. You’ll be safe there.”

Would I really be safe, or would it just be easier to stage an “accident” in a big city where the blame would not fall on either of them? A random criminal act would arouse no suspicion in the city. Both Henry and Ross knew San Francisco very well from their years at Stanford. And Ross would be back at school soon, very close by.

I’ll admit I was pretty shaken by the poison idea, but there was another reason I didn’t want to leave Cliff House, one I couldn’t explain to anyone. I needed to solve Jessie’s disappearance. I couldn’t leave her now, without knowing what had become of her. If she had been murdered, I needed to find out who did it. I owed her that much, in return for her name, her family, and her money. But there was more to it than repaying a debt. I cared about Jessie. I understood her. Apart from Buster, I think I was the only one who did. We shared more than a name. She was rich, I was poor, yet our lives had taken many of the same turns and our fates seemed eerily intertwined. I couldn’t investigate Jessie’s death when I was supposed to be Jessie, but I could continue to investigate the deaths of the other girls without any interference from Oliver.

“No, Grandmother, I think I’m as safe here as anywhere. It’s not for much longer. I’m warned now, and you know the old saying: ‘Forewarned is forearmed.’ I’ll make sure I’m never alone with Henry or Ross. I’ll be careful.”

Slowly she nodded and rose to her feet. I heard her going down the hall toward her room, taking each step with care. In a few moments, she was back.

“I meant to give this to you earlier,” she said, handing me a purple velvet pouch drawn tight with a gold cord. I pried the knot open and dumped the contents on my lap. Pearls, diamonds, colored gemstones, and gold, like the contents of the treasure chest in
The Pirates of Penzance.
Only these were real.

“The remains of your mother’s jewelry. I am sure she had a lot more—I wasn’t that familiar with Blanche’s finery, but I remember once admiring a ruby bracelet she had been given for her birthday, and it isn’t here. Neither is the diamond tiara she liked to wear. No doubt some enterprising maid helped herself before the lawyers got there to take inventory.”

Speechless, I held up a strand of lustrous matched pearls so long it would have reached my knees.

“You know what they say about pearls? You must wear them or they turn dull and lifeless. It’s been ten long years since anyone young and pretty wore these baubles. Enjoy them. Or sell them or give them away. I don’t care. They belong to you.”

Waving off my stammered thanks, she retired.

I lay on my back, staring at the dragonflies frolicking among the yellow and lavender flowers on the wallpaper and feeling like a heel. Blanche’s jewelry! Geez Louise, the poor woman was probably turning over in her grave knowing some vaudeville fake had her mitts on her precious jewelry.

I decided to play my hand with greater care from now on, not showing any cards, letting the food poisoning diagnosis float rather than accuse anyone. My mistake was to have announced I was going to Europe after my birthday. Henry or Ross must have felt compelled to act fast before I got out of range.

Rainy brought in a tray of tea and a soft-boiled egg. David was behind her, his brow furrowed, inquiring about my health. I’d forgotten he was still here.

“Much better, thank you,” I replied.

“I’ve been watching the twins rehearse.”

“Good. They need lots of practice.”

“Not good. They need you.”

“The show must go on. I’ll be back onstage by tomorrow.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“And I need to take the train into Portland sometime this week to buy some costumes.”

“Do you? Well, now, I just stopped by to tell you that Henry left this afternoon, and I need to get back to my mother. I have someone looking in on her, but I need to be there myself.”

“If it’s not prying, may I ask what is wrong with her?”

“It’s not called prying if you’re family; it’s called caring. She’s got cancer. The doctors say she can’t last long, so I’m trying to make what time she has left as comfortable as I can. I owe her that much. I owe her everything. She could have dropped me off at St. Agnes’s Baby Home and had an easier life of it, but she didn’t.”

I understood. I wanted to tell him about my own mother—my real mother. She hadn’t abandoned me in an orphanage either. David and I had more in common than he knew, both of us raised alone by unwed mothers who had been disowned by their families and forced to make their way in an unforgiving world.

“If you are feeling up to that shopping trip to Portland, we could travel together tomorrow,” he said.

“I’d like that.”

David’s smile was so broad it put dimples in the creases.

35

“Start at the beginning,” David said, settling back into the first-class cushions. “I want to know everything about your life, and you’re trapped on this train with me for at least two hours.”

I was so strongly drawn to David that I wanted to blurt out the whole truth. I was certain he’d understand. Of course, I didn’t do it, but I wanted to all the same, and that troubled me more than a little. Treating David in a brotherly manner was becoming increasingly difficult as I came to know him better.

But the least I could give him was the truth about his father, and not a word I said about Lawrence Carr was fabricated. Perhaps I was even more honest than a real daughter could have been, divorced as I was from sentimentality. I told him what others had said about Lawrence in his lengthy obituary, and some things I’d heard that did not glow as warmly. No punches pulled.

“Does that agree with what your mother said of him?” I asked at last.

“I was sixteen before I knew who my father was,” he said. “She wouldn’t have told me then but he died, and the money stopped coming and, well, things got tight, and she had to explain. I quit school to find work. It’s funny, I grew up thinking my father was dead. By the time I knew the truth, he was.”

It reminded me so much of my own circumstances, I wanted to scream, Yes, yes! I understand exactly! My mother had told me nothing of my father either, and I had always felt cheated.

“You don’t seem bitter about that,” I said.

“I was. But I was old enough to support my mother.” I recognized the streak of independence. I too had worked for a living most of my life. Growing up alone had taught me to do for myself and not count on the other fellow to do for me.

“Your turn,” I said. “Same rules.”

With half the journey ahead of us, he had no excuse to cut corners. David and his mother had moved to Portland shortly after his birth, he told me, where she bought a small store with the money she inherited from her “late husband.” “I was raised a city boy, but I loved horses”—“me too,” I said weakly—“and took on any job I could to be around them. A friend knew a man in Texas who needed cowhands, and there I went. Worked ranches in Utah and Wyoming, learned to break horses and shoot up towns on Saturday nights. Shot a few men—just wounded them, but I was headed for a noose until John Black got hold of me. He was a cattleman on a buying trip to Laramie looking to stock his ranch. He took my gun away, pulled me out of the saloon, and threw me in his wagon before the sheriff arrived. When I woke up, I was in Montana getting some sense knocked into me.”