The Jewel and the Key (8 page)

“Who is she?” she asked.

Mrs. Powell's son was rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. “I don't know. I just saw her get hit, and no one was helping her. She might be one of the Wobs' kids. She keeps asking for her father.”

“Wobs? You mean the Wobblies?”

“Who else? Their families were all there, singing their hearts out. Then vigilantes jumped in and trouble started. Whoever was with her must have got swept up in the panic.” He looked at Addie and grinned. “I bet you're wondering what a gentleman like me was doing at such a sordid scene.”

A gentleman?
But she liked it. She liked people to dramatize themselves.

“And speaking of being a gentleman!” He put his hand over his heart and bowed. “Sincere thanks for your help, Miss—I haven't even asked your name.”

“It's Addie. Addie McNeal.”

“I'm Reg Powell.”

“Reg?”

He made a face. “Don't rub it in. Its Reginald on the birth certificate. And I don't know what I ever did to deserve that.”

Addie laughed. It
was
a pretty bad name.

“Some great-uncle of Dad's, I think. No one ever calls me by my full name, thank goodness. Here, I'll take the cloth if you're done.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Addie handed it to him and picked up the painted lunch box. She opened it and began rummaging for the antibiotic cream.

“Is that a first-aid kit? That's lucky. Are you taking one of those Red Cross classes?”

“I ... No. I brought it just in case.” Addie hesitated. “Mrs. Turner asked me to come see if your mom was all right.”

“Oh, Mrs. Turner sent you?” Reg smiled uncertainly. “But—why? Something to do with the theater?”

Addie began lightly applying the antibiotic to the wound. “She was afraid your mother might be injured. You know, like this girl. Knocked down by a piece of furniture or a brick or something.”

“I appreciate your concern—or Meg Turner's,” Reg said pleasantly. “But what has this girl getting hit with a brick got to do with my mother?”

“Well, if a brick could fly off a building downtown, why couldn't one fly off a building in Capitol Hill? Do you have some special kind of masonry or something?”

“What are you talking about? A vigilante threw that brick. Or did you think that those upstanding defenders of law and order wouldn't hit a kid?”

Addie frowned. “I don't understand.”

A cry of pain interrupted them. The girls eyes snapped open. She jerked straight up and clutched her head. “Oww! It huuuurts!”

Addie squeezed in next to her on the sofa and put her arm around her shoulder. “Shhh.”

“I'll call the doctor.” Reg headed for the door. “She probably needs laudanum.”

“Laudanum?” Addie stared at him. “But—but that's morphine, isn't it?”

“I think so. Why?”

Was he serious? She examined him more closely, but he didn't seem to be joking. “What's wrong with a few aspirin? I've got some right here.” There were a few loose ibuprofen rattling around inside the kit. She shook two out and held them in her palm. “If you get her some water, she can take it now.”

“There's sherry on the mantel.” He moved toward a crystal decanter half full of golden liquid.

“Sherry?”
Now she was feeling alarmed.

“It's legal in your own home,” he retorted.

“I
know
it's legal. That's not the point.” For a moment she tried to step back and make sense of all this. Because something was really wrong here. She liked Reg, but—she shook her head and then started as the girl on the couch cried out.

“Owww!” She was lightly touching the wound and looking from one to the other of them in panic. “What happened?” She glanced down at her clothes.
“Blood!”

“You got hit by a brick, and this”—Addie looked at Reg, who was mouthing
I'll get the water
as he left the room—“this very nice person is calling a doctor.”

The girl stared at Addie as if she were the head of a human-trafficking ring. “Where am I?” Her voice had a lilting up-and-down accent, with heavy, round vowels. Scandinavian? Addie wondered. German? “Is this your house?”

“No. Reg lives here. My names Addie. What's yours?”

“Frida Peterson.” Gingerly, she settled back on the pillow. Addie patted her hands, remembering when she was ten and had her tonsils removed. When she'd woken from the surgery, her dad had been sitting like this on the side of her bed, and she'd felt warm and comforted.

In the dazzling sunlight, Frida's face was pale. Grubby, too. Addie noticed that there were grease stains on her dress.

“Too bright.” She squeezed her eyes shut again. “The light's picking holes in my head.”

Addie got up and pulled the drape across the windows just enough to shade the girl from the glare.

“That's better.” She pressed her hand to her forehead, then suddenly jerked herself up. “Papa ... I didn't see my father. I didn't give him the slippers. It's so cold in the jail. All that time waiting, and I didn't even give him the slippers.”

“Your dad's in jail?” Despite herself, Addie felt shocked.

“Not that he oughtta be.” Frida's weak voice mustered a defensive tone, but her eyes teared up. “He said a man got a right to shout about things that aren't right and not get arrested. But he was.”

“People are getting arrested? At the demonstration?”

“Didn't you know?”

Addie swallowed and shook her head. How could Mrs. Turner be so excited about getting people to go to the march when here was this girl with her head cut and bleeding and her dad in jail?

Reg returned, carrying a china pitcher. He'd flung a towel over his arm like a waiter in a fancy restaurant. “What's this? Tears? Ah, no, no, no, mademoiselle! No tears in the Powell Luxury Sanatorium!” He put the pitcher on the table and filled one of the glasses with a flourish. “There you go, Miss...”

“She said her name's Frida.”

“Miss Frida, get that down while the nurse gives you your horse pills.” He turned to Addie, who pressed two tablets into the girls hand. “Dr. Wald's coming. He says she probably has a concussion. If she falls asleep, we should wake her after a bit and ask her name, who's the president, questions like that.”

Somewhere in the house a door slammed.

“Reg!” a musical voice called. “Are you home? More guests for dinner. And the cook's day off! Be a sport and help me rustle up provisions. Where are you?”

Reg opened the door to the hallway. “Back here,” he called softly.

A click-clack of high heels approached.
This must be Becky Powell,
Addie thought.
The Becky Powell Mrs. T. was so concerned about.

“You could run down to Paulson's. Its not too late to roast a few chickens. Though what we'll do for dessert...” Her words trickled to a halt as she approached the doorway. “Reg? It's dark as the witch's glen in here! What's going on?”

A tall, slender woman with dark brown hair drawn back into an elaborate twist appeared in the doorway. Her face was delicate, and she wore a white blouse, a slim gray skirt that fell to midcalf, and a short, tailored black jacket. She glanced from the girl on the couch to Addie and finally to Reg, her light brown eyes curious and benevolent.

Addie stared at those eyes, and a chill feathered down her neck.

As Reg told his mother what had happened, her face filled with concern. She opened a closet, pulled out a folded quilt, and tucked it around Frida, who was dozing off.

Addie watched as Mrs. Powell moved around the room with such grace and certainty. Feeling Addie's gaze, the woman turned and looked at her—I
ooked at her with both eyes clear and focused
—and smiled. She said something about how lucky Reg was to have her help, then shook her hand when Reg introduced her. Addie tried to smile back, but she couldn't.

Something was wrong. There was no way this woman was sick or blind.

“I'm sorry,” she said awkwardly. “I think I've made a mistake. The person I'm supposed to be checking on is blind. Or partially blind, or something. Mrs. Turner wanted me to make sure she was all right.” Addie shook her head in confusion. “She said her name was Mrs. Powell. But
you're
Mrs. Powell, aren't you?”

“Well, yes,” the woman said guardedly. “In fact, I am. But I'm not blind.”

Reg regarded Addie with a puzzled smile. “What an extraordinary thing to say! Meg Turner must be playing a joke on you. The only things my mother is blind to, Miss McNeal, are my faults.”

Mrs. Powell regarded Add ie quizzically for a moment then turned to open the French doors at the end of the room. “Let's go out on the back porch,” she said quietly. “We can keep an eye on the girl until the doctor comes but not wake her up.” She picked up three clean glasses from the coffee table and said to Addie, “Bring out that cake—and the knife, if you can manage. I think we all could do with a little sustenance.”

Shaken, Addie got the cake and followed her out. Mrs. Powell put the glasses down on a wrought-iron table. Gently, she shut the glass doors and sat, gesturing for Addie to do the same.

Addie put down the cake and hesitated. Through the glass, she could see the girl turning restlessly on the couch. She felt torn: she wanted to go back home—surely Dad and Zack would be there by now—but she couldn't leave quite yet. Not without figuring out what was going on.

“I just don't understand it,” she said, pulling out a chair and sitting down.

“It's one of Meg's jokes. That's what I think,” Mrs. Powell said.

Meg?
Reg had called her that, too. But most people called Mrs. T. Margie.

“She plays them on everyone. Don't take it to heart.”

“But she
looked
serious. And why joke about you being blind? Its not funny.”

Reg opened the French doors and stepped out onto the porch carrying the pitcher of water. “Don't be confused. Meg's jokes aren't always meant to be funny. You know these artistic types. Meg Turner's one of the worst. A symbolist! A devotee of that crazy Isadora Duncan, no less.”

“Who is a great artist,” his mother contradicted. “And not crazy! Excuse Reg for being such a Philistine, Miss McNeal.” She got up and closed the doors as Reg poured water into the glasses.

Addie frowned. Mrs. Turner was a photographer, if that's what Reg meant by artistic. But a symbolist? What was that? “Who is Isadora—” Then she recalled a photo she'd seen somewhere. “You mean that dancer?” Now she remembered. A dark-haired woman, twirling barefoot onstage, eyes closed as if in a trance. But there was something about her, Addie thought. Something sad. Oh! “She died when her scarf caught in the wheel of a car or something, didn't she?”

“God forbid!” Mrs. Powell eyes widened. She balled her hand into a fist and reached out to knock against the cherry tree behind them. “You must be thinking of someone else.”

“Maybe,” Addie said doubtfully. Uneasiness whispered through her again.

“What I'm saying, Mother, is that Meg probably meant you were blind as in
blind to the dreadful state of things.”
Reg slipped into an impassioned falsetto. “There's a terrible state of things in the world, Miss McNeal. A conspiracy of the rich. Of big fat men with cigars! That's why we're at war.”

Addie felt disloyal, laughing at Reg's impression of Mrs. T. “Maybe she does sound like that sometimes. But she's right. Not about the conspiracy, I mean. But everyone knows we wouldn't be fighting if it weren't for the oil companies.”

Reg tipped his head, considering. “I guess they'll make a mint out of it, just like the banks and the munitions factories. But you can't really think that's why we're fighting.” Addie frowned. She'd heard enough from Dad and Mrs. T. to disagree with him on this, but it wasn't polite to argue. Reg turned back to his mother. “Did you hear what Meg said about me joining the army?”

“Don't try to discuss the war with her, darling. She's convinced it's all a plot of the big bad capitalists.” Mrs. Powell gave Addie a look of dry amusement. “I'd like to know where Meg thinks she gets her salary from. Perhaps she thinks I give away the box seats for free? And she's one to talk, the way she treats our poor electricians!”

“Wait a second.” Addie turned to Reg. “You're joining the army?” The swaying branches of the cherry tree blocked the sunshine for a moment, and she felt a chill.

“Of course not. He's in college,” Mrs. Powell said firmly. “And he's not serious.”

“Why am I not serious?” Reg objected. Addie couldn't tell if he really meant what he said or was just teasing his mother. “Why wouldn't I go fight for freedom and democracy? Not to mention to stop people from murdering our citizens in cold blood? Someone has to do it, don't they?”

“But that's Mrs. Turner's point,” Addie said. “It's
not
about freedom and democracy. The politicians just say that.”

“So young and yet so cynical.” Reg grinned at Addie. “In case you're confused on this point, it wasn't the oil companies that declared war. It was Congress.”

“Congress didn't
declare
it,” Addie protested. “They hardly ever do. Not since—”

“You think the president would commit troops without congressional approval? All for the benefit of Wall Street and a few bellicose millionaires? That's ridiculous. Didn't you read the speech he made when he introduced the war resolution?”

Mrs. Powell leaned in toward Reg. “Our president gives an impressive speech and you're off to solve the problems of the world with a machine gun? You're the mainstay of your widowed mother, remember? I expect help running the theater once you graduate.”