The Ladies of Garrison Gardens (27 page)

Chapter Fifty-seven

A
FTER SHE COVERED HER FACE
with the calamine, she washed it off her hands with Myrtis's soap and cleaned her teeth with Myrtis's tooth powder—but not her toothbrush; she couldn't make herself do that. She found a nightgown in Myrtis's closet and put it on.

Now she didn't have to worry about some unexpected meeting Myrtis was supposed to have. An attack of poison ivy that was so bad your face swelled up would certainly explain a lady's inability to keep a social engagement. No one would wonder why she was staying in the house. She'd bought herself the time and the privacy to figure out what she was going to do next.

The china clock said five-thirty. She'd had a long night, and she had an even longer day in front of her—a day when she had to be at her absolute best. She cleared the clothes off Myrtis's bed and made herself lie down. Making her racing mind slow down was harder. Images belonging to some nightmare newsreel flashed through it: Mama's grave in the pauper's field in Indiana, a little dog dancing with a gold collar, Mama's hand going limp as she died, Myrtis opening the door, Myrtis falling back onto the fireplace hearth. There was blood seeping into the hearth bricks and somewhere Tassie was banging on the door. Only it wasn't Tassie, it was someone who wanted to get into the house. Which was strange because Iva Claire didn't own a house. But then she remembered that she did, and she sat up fast in the bed that was now hers. Downstairs someone was calling out, “Miss Myrtis!” She looked over at the china clock; it said six-thirty. She'd been asleep for an hour.

She hurried downstairs to open the door to a Negro woman who was tall, slender, and probably in her late twenties. This had to be the maid, Sally. Thank heaven she was young. The last thing Iva Claire needed was a servant who had been with the family for years. Sally wouldn't be reminiscing about things her mistress should have known but didn't. Even so, it would be a good idea to keep her distance from the maid which was probably what Myrtis would have done anyway.

“Miss Myrtis, I'm sorry to wake you up, but you locked my kitchen door,” Sally said.

Of course, the kitchen door was left unlocked in this small town! Her first mistake. Meanwhile Sally was staring at her face.

“I seem to have gotten myself a bad case of poison ivy,” she said. It was her first attempt at Myrtis's Mayfair-tinged southern accent. Her voice sounded light and uncertain to her critical ear, but Sally was still mesmerized by the pink mask.

“Don't stand out there gaping at me,” she said, biting off the words. The result was much better. “Come in.”

“In the front door, miss?”

Second mistake: Maids used the back door.

“You don't expect me to go racing around to let you in the back when I'm standing right here, do you?” She remembered to arch her eyebrow at the end of the sentence. It seemed to work. Sally said, “No, Miss Myrtis,” and came inside.

“I'm sorry about the door being locked,” she said to the maid. “I'm all turned around because of this poison ivy. I have a terrible headache.” Did you get a headache from poison ivy? “I'm going back to bed.”

“Do you want your hot tea, miss?”

She would rather have had coffee.

“I'll get it in a minute.”

“You don't want me to bring it to your room the way I always do?”

She'd been right, there were routines in this house—and every one of them was a potential for disaster. “Yes, I'll get the tea when you bring it to my room,” she said. “That's what I meant.” And then, before she trapped herself further, she ran up the stairs.

Inside Myrtis's bedroom she leaned against the door and tried to assess her performance. Clearly, it needed work, but for the first time in front of an audience it hadn't been half bad. If her luck would just hold. But hoping for good luck was like asking for a reward, and after what she'd done, how could she? What if, instead of a reward, she were to get what she deserved?

But suddenly, inexplicably, she was furious.

Exactly what
do
I deserve?
She looked around the pretty bedroom in the house Myrtis had said could rot, for all she cared.
I never had my own room. I never even had my own bed. She went to a fancy school in England. He threw me out of his hotel room. She got everything. And I didn't mean to kill her. She was the one who hit me. It wasn't my fault, and I'll be damned if I'm going to go to jail or feel guilty. I'm the one who had a hard life, and
— She stopped herself.

“No!” she said out loud.

That was the way Mama thought. It was never her fault. She never did anything wrong.

She sat on the bed and took a deep breath. “I killed Myrtis Benedict,” she said to the empty room. “I don't want to be caught and I'm going to do whatever I can not to pay for it. But I killed her. And I have to live with it for the rest of my life.”

And someday I'll find a way to make up for it.

She climbed into bed and pulled up the sheets. That was when she saw it. And she knew her luck had held after all. Sitting on the bedside table was a little leather-covered book with
M B
embossed on the front. Myrtis Benedict had kept a diary. Iva Claire grabbed it and began to read.

Myrtis was scheduled to sail from New York to England the following week on a ship called the
Rex
. Her ticket and passport were tucked into the back of the journal. As for people who should be contacted about the change in plans, Myrtis didn't appear to have had many close friends. She seemed to have a pattern of meeting people, finding them delightful, and then discovering some terrible flaw and dropping them. There was one girl she seemed to like; her name was Allison Stanton-Jones. She and Myrtis had gone to school together, at a place called Gracewood, and Allison's family had a house in London where Myrtis seemed to spend a lot of her time. Myrtis had a small apartment of her own—a flat, she called it—but she was not happy with that arrangement. She wanted control of her money so she could afford to buy her own house in the city.

The only other person who appeared with regularity in the diary was someone Myrtis called
the hateful Mr. Jenkins.
How or why he was hateful was never made clear. However, there were references to
frightful rows
she'd had with him.

Iva Claire let herself relax against the pillows. She'd cancel the booking on
Rex
immediately, and as soon as she'd taught herself how to imitate Myrtis's elegant handwriting, she'd send a note to Miss Stanton-Jones saying Myrtis would be staying in America after all. She still had to go through the contents of Myrtis's desk drawer, and she wanted to practice Myrtis's strange accent some more. But for the first time in hours she felt safe. Until she saw the note Myrtis had made on margin of the last page of her final entry:
Luncheon with Mr. J,
it read. The note was underlined several times, circled heavily, and there was a string of exclamation points after it. Clearly, luncheon was going to be a momentous occasion. Added as an afterthought was a date. Iva Claire read it and sat upright in horror. She had three days in which to get ready for this meeting with the enemy, Mr. Jenkins. Whoever the hell he was.

Chapter Fifty-eight

S
HE COULDN'T ASK SALLY
outright about Mr. Jenkins. She racked her brain, but she couldn't come up with an indirect way to get the information out of the maid. She spent two days and nights reading every scrap of paper in Myrtis's room, looking for something that would shed some light on the man's identity, but she came up empty. She wanted to scream in frustration. She couldn't even figure out where she was supposed to meet him for the damn luncheon!

Finally, in desperation, she accepted the fact that she'd have to bluff her way through. And it had better be the bluff of a lifetime. On the morning of the luncheon, she put on one of Myrtis's oldest dresses, and applied her calamine thickly. She was now a white blonde—she'd sent Sally to the pharmacy for the peroxide and more calamine lotion—and the bleach had made her hair dry. If she didn't curl it, it looked awful. Which was what she wanted. Because she was going to miss her appointment with Mr. Jenkins—there was no way to avoid that—and she needed to look believable when she claimed that her physical discomfort had pushed the whole thing out of her head.

She'd gone through all this for Sally's benefit. Servants noticed everything, she was learning, and they could be a scary source of gossip. She was very careful to cover her tracks with Sally. She wasn't expecting to see Mr. Jenkins that day, although it never hurt to play it safe. He might come over to the house when she didn't show up at their meeting place. She was living in the sticks and it might be considered the neighborly thing to do. She was hoping he'd just telephone the house, and she could simper some apologies and try to get some idea of who he was.

She looked at herself in the mirror. She certainly looked like a girl with no social obligations for the day. What she needed now was a cup of coffee to steady her nerves. The only beverage Sally ever served was tea, hot and cold. She'd never drunk it before she came south; the stuff tasted like dishwater as far as she was concerned. But southerners liked iced tea and Myrtis had lived in England, where hot tea was the national drink. Iva Claire figured she'd be stuck drinking the swill for life. But not now. Now what she needed was a good strong cup of joe. There had to be some coffee somewhere in the kitchen.

Before this, Iva Claire had avoided the kitchen. It was Sally's domain, and she wasn't sure about the proper etiquette for invading your servant's turf. Or for dealing with a servant. But now she was desperate. To her dismay she found Sally sitting at a table, mixing up something in a large bowl. The maid was on her feet in a shot.

“Something I can get you, miss?” she asked.

Mr. Jenkins's life story and the name of the restaurant where I'm meeting him.

“Nothing, thank you.” Sally was looking at her quizzically. She had to think of something to say. “Please go on with what you were doing. What are you cooking?”

“That's the chicken salad you wanted me to fix for your lunch with Mr. Jenkins.”

She couldn't believe it. He was coming to the house! Her luncheon was happening at home!

“Right. Well, do get on with it.”

She raced upstairs. She grabbed one of Myrtis's black mourning dresses out of the closet and yanked it on with shaking hands.

I've got stay calm. I can do this.

She put a ribbon in her hair. She was about to smear some more calamine on her face when she stopped. The bruise was gone, and the swelling had gone down. If you really looked at her, you could see there was no rash.
He won't look that closely.

He might.

She ran back downstairs again.

I can do this. I can do this.

She went into the sitting room, got her scissors out of the sewing kit, and sailed through the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, “I'm going outside to pick some flowers for the table, Sally,” as she went out the back door.

She found the patch of poison ivy Tassie had fallen into. The leaves were shiny and evil looking. The rash was going to drive her crazy. She hated it when she got a mosquito bite.

Don't think about it.

She reached out, picked several of the shiny leaves, and carefully, thoroughly, rubbed them over her face. For good measure she rubbed one over her neck as well. In for a penny, in for a pound. She checked her watch, hoping she'd react as quickly—and violently—to the nasty weed as Tassie did.

Thankfully, by the time she'd cut an armful of daisies, her face was already starting to itch. She couldn't wait to get into the house to smear more soothing calamine on it.

An hour and a half later, with a pounding heart and a face that was now covered with red blotches, she was greeting her mystery guest at the front door. Mr. Jenkins was well dressed. A preacher? A doctor? A lawyer? He looked like the kind of person who was very sure of himself and expected people to listen to him, but at the moment he was frowning. Which could be explained by the “frightful row.” Or her calamine coverup. He was trying not to stare, but he couldn't help himself. He was fascinated by her distraction prop.

Or maybe he hadn't been distracted at all. Maybe—please God, no—he had noticed that Myrtis was suddenly slimmer and taller than she had been.

“Mr. Jenkins, do come in,” she said, in her new accent. “I apologize for my appearance, but I'm afraid I have a dreadful case of poison ivy. I haven't been out of the house in three days.”

She held her breath and waited.

“How unpleasant for you,” he said.

There wasn't a trace of suspicion in the look he was giving her. She'd passed the first test! But the big one was still in front of her, because unless she could find out who he was and what he meant to Myrtis, she wasn't going to get past the chicken salad at lunch—or survive the rest of her stay in Beneville. She had to make him reveal himself.

Suddenly, she remembered the hours spent backstage with Benny Ritz and his stories about his days as the Great Otto the mind reader. “You gotta get the mark to tell you what you want to know without him knowing it,” Benny had said. “There's two tricks that always work. Keep him off balance, and keep him talking. If one thing don't make him open up, try another. And watch him like a hawk. Not just the eyes, watch the hands, the feet, everything. Eventually something you say is gonna hit pay dirt, and you'll see it in his body. Then you got to take the leap and go with it.”

Iva Claire eyed the stern middle-aged man who was standing in front of her and began to talk. “I'm sorry about the way we left each other the last time we spoke,” she tried.

His eyes narrowed. “It was unfortunate,” he said, through lips that were so tight they barely opened. He was really angry about something. Iva Claire thought back to her initial impression that he was a man who expected to be listened to. What kind of person felt like that? A preacher, she thought, and decided to take a leap. “I really enjoyed the sermon you gave last week,” she said.

He looked at her blankly. “The sermon?” he repeated. He wasn't a preacher! She'd leaped too far. Now what?

Don't panic. You can do this.

She made herself smile. She could feel the calamine cracking and thought the effect had to be grotesque. Mr. Jenkins was looking away again. Good. He wouldn't see the terror in her eyes. “I'm sorry,” she said. “That was a bad joke.”

His mouth tightened even more. “If you feel my attempts to give you advice are humorous—”

“Oh, no!” she said quickly. “Please let me explain.” But how? What would Myrtis say? “I've been under so much strain since Daddy passed. . . . But of course you were just trying to give me good advice.” Yes, that was it.

“I assure you, I have only your best interests at heart.” His mouth eased up. It wasn't a big improvement, but she'd take what she could get.

“I've been thinking about what you said,” she ventured. There was a softening in his eyes. “Maybe we can talk about it over luncheon.” He hardened up again. He didn't like talking, he wanted to be agreed with. She calculated his age and the fact that he had Myrtis's best interests at heart. An old family friend? Should she try another leap? A smaller one this time? She had to do something. “Daddy trusted you so much.”

“I take my position as your executor very seriously,” he said. She'd hit pay dirt! Myrtis had an estate; of course, there would be an executor who was in charge of it! She'd read about that kind of thing in novels. Myrtis had wanted to have control of her money so she could buy a house in London. But if Mr. Jenkins was her executor and he was standing in her way, wouldn't that explain the frightful rows?

“You were just trying to help me, Mr. Jenkins,” she said. “I realize that now.” He was still wary. She wondered if she should try to cry a little.

“You were listening to your friends. On the other hand, as a professional I have to be firm with you.”

A professional—what?

“I understand, you were just doing what you had to—as a professional,” she vamped.

He didn't pick up the cue.

Keep talking.
There had been something in the way he said the word
friends
. Time for another leap. “I know you don't like my friends,” she said.

He sighed wearily; they'd had this discussion many times before. “I don't know your friends, Myrtis. Or anything about your life abroad. As you have pointed out to me, I am hopelessly provincial. But if the trustee of any bank in England would allow a young woman in your position to run through her money the way you seem to want to do, I'd call him damnably irresponsible.”

He was a banker! That made perfect sense. And he didn't like it that Myrtis lived out of the country. Time to give him the good news.

“You don't approve of my living abroad . . .” she began.

“I merely suggested that you might want to try your own country before you abandon it,” he huffed.

“I agree with you. That's why I won't be going back to England, Mr. Jenkins.”

He looking at her in disbelief. She'd told him too fast. In another second he was going to notice her full mouth and the fact that she was too tall.

Keep talking.

“I know I said I wanted to go back. But this is where I was born, and my family has a history
here. . . .” She wasn't getting through. He was still looking at her like he'd never seen her before. Which he hadn't.

Don't think about that.

She made herself smile. “It's all your fault, Mr. Jenkins,” she said. “I've been thinking about all the things you've said to me. It must have seemed as though I wasn't listening because I've been so angry. But you know how sometimes even though you're fighting with someone, the words they're saying sink in? That's what's happened with me. And everything you said made so much sense, Mr. Jenkins. So I canceled my reservation on the
Rex
, and I won't be leaving,” she added desperately. She'd run out of things to say. All she could do was wait. And pray. It seemed to take forever, but he finally smiled at her—a big beaming smile with lots of teeth.

“I'm glad to hear this, Myrtis,” he said. “Very glad.”

Not half as glad as I am.

“Shall we go into the dining room, Mr. Jenkins?” she asked, a little breathlessly.

He wasn't half bad once he stopped frowning, and he really did seem to have Myrtis's best interests at heart. But, unlike Sally, he had known the Benedict family for years. And while Myrtis hadn't lived in Beneville for a long time, there had been vacations and Christmases at home. Iva Claire got through the chicken salad by doing a lot of smiling and nodding while Mr. Jenkins reminisced, but there were traps everywhere. She had to get out of town quickly. She broke the news to Mr. Jenkins over dessert.

“But why would you want to live in Atlanta?” he demanded. “A young girl on her own in that big city? This is your home.”

He had that disapproving look again, and she didn't want him getting angry.

Keep him off balance
. Benny's voice came at her from the past.

It gave her an idea, a dangerous one. It could backfire on her so easily. And if it did . . . but she didn't want to leave Beneville without his approval. It would be so much easier if he was on her side. And besides, if she played her cards right, she'd find out what, if anything, Mr. Jenkins knew about Mama. And Mama's daughter.

Her hands were in her lap. She gripped them together so tightly she could feel the nails cutting into her palms, and said, “Mr. Jenkins, what do you know about the woman my father was supporting?” She lowered her eyes as if she was too embarrassed to face him, but she heard him draw in a sharp breath.

“I . . . don't. . . .” he stumbled.

“Daddy sent money twice a year to a woman. I found the canceled checks. What do you know about her?”

“Nothing,” he said, and she believed him. “I was never sure there was one specific—” He stopped short, embarrassed. “I mean, I knew there were withdrawals, but I never . . . I had my suspicions.”

“Well, there was a woman. I found out when I was going through Daddy's papers. All those years . . .” And suddenly she was crying—for real. It was partly relief, she knew that. But it was also grief. She was crying for Mama, and the years when the checks had kept them safe, and for Mama's sad little dreams. The sobs came up inside her, and for a moment she couldn't fight them back, until she felt the tears start to wash away the calamine mask. That stopped her. But the tears had had their effect. Mr. Jenkins looked like he'd rather be anywhere else in the world.

“I want a fresh beginning, Mr. Jenkins,” she said, calmer now, but with total honesty. “I want to get out of this town. Daddy died in a car with a woman. There were others, too—Lord knows how many—and everyone in Benneville gossips about it. Can't you understand why I want to start over?”

The statement didn't make much sense in terms of Myrtis and her life, but a new start was what Iva Claire needed with all her heart, and her feelings were so real that Mr. Jenkins was swept away. Like Benny always said, if you gave your audience something real and fresh, you'd get them every time.

It only took her two days to tie up the loose ends and get out of town. She took the house off the market on Mr. Jenkins's advice; she knew he was hoping she'd get over her prejudice against Beneville and come back home where she belonged. Sally was hired to keep the place running in her absence. Mr. Jenkins opened an account for her in an Atlanta bank. Her money, it seemed, was in trust and she'd receive an allowance every quarter. Mr. Jenkins mentioned the amount in passing and she was so shocked she almost gave herself away. She couldn't imagine spending a fraction of it. And when she was twenty-one she'd get control of her entire inheritance. She was relieved when Mr. Jenkins didn't say how much that was.