The Secret Life of Anna Blanc (30 page)

Edgar stormed to the car and got into the driver's seat, slamming the door. He was sweating and, forgoing his handkerchief, wiped his brow on his crisp sleeve, which was nothing like Edgar. No one spoke as they drove off.

When the shiny blue car was out of sight, Joe's anger was subsumed by a sinking, a sense that he'd dropped something important and it had fallen where it could not be retrieved. Anna Holmes was dead. He didn't know what would become of Anna Blanc, but he didn't think he would see her again. He felt powerless to protect her. What if Edgar asked about Matron Holmes around the station? What if he heard the rumor that he and Anna were lovers? That they had been seen having
sex in the stables behind the station? Even if Edgar loved her, even if he could forgive her secret work as a matron, no man could forgive that. Anna would be ruined.

Joe's brows drew together. “Wolf, don't tell Edgar Wright I kissed his fiancée.”

“Well, last I heard, you didn't kiss Edgar Wright's fiancée,” Wolf said.

“I never said that. I said we didn't have dinner.”

Wolf smiled. “You know, if you aspire to be a great seducer of women, you got to learn how to lie.” He saw the look in Joe's eyes and his smile waivered. “You look pathetic, like a love sick puppy.” He slipped his arm through Joe's. “What do you say I dress up in ladies' clothes and you take me out on the town?”

Anna sat in a velvet chair under a gilded mirror in the hall outside her father's study. She rubbed her soft hands along the fabric, letting the tiny fibers brush her palms. She kicked her shoes off and felt glad that she had blisters. She deserved them. She had failed both Edgar and Lady Justice.

Dread ate at her insides. At least Edgar didn't know the full extent of her police work. Though she longed to tell him, he wouldn't understand. Cigar smoke drifted from under the door. She faintly heard her father's plaintive, scratchy voice and the occasional angry swell of Edgar's smooth voice, but she couldn't understand their words. After an hour, the study door opened and Mr. Blanc came out.

Anna stood mute. Her father's face was furrowed, and he smelled of whiskey. He pointed his finger at her. “Watch your step, Anna. No more antics or you'll end up a spinster in my house or locked away in a convent. Either way, your beauty would be wasted!”

Anna squeezed her eyes closed and said a silent prayer to St. Agatha, patron saint of unmarried women. She begged not to be a pitiful old maid, and then kicked herself for insulting the holy spinster.

Mr. Blanc pointed violently toward his study. “Go in! He's waiting for you!”

He moved off like a freight train, billowing black smoke down the hall. “
Mon Dieu
!” She heard a crash and heard him bellow something at Cook. Anna took a deep breath and forced her feet to walk toward the room where she would face Edgar.

She entered quietly and shut the door. The room smelled of tanned hides, lemon oil, and tobacco. Edgar paced, tugging tufts of hair so that when he dropped his arms his normally perfect curls stood up like
little dust devils. His jacket lay on the floor and his tie hung loose and crooked. He turned his white face to look at her. Anna stood quietly and bit her lower lip.

He made a strangled sound. “I love you. But…” He let the words dwindle.

“I'm a business deal!” Anna blurted before she knew what she was going to say. She would have never told the truth if she had thought about it in advance. But they were angry because she trapped criminals, which was perfectly legal, when they bartered her like a pawn, trading her like a slave, which was clearly against the law. It was something she had always known but hadn't cared to dwell upon. She wanted freedom and so had accepted it. Edgar treated her tenderly and she liked him. He was chivalrous, intelligent, funny, well dressed, and well made. She thought she could love him, once she had the opportunity.

Edgar lowered his voice so they couldn't be overheard, even as he spit out the words. “You think I need Blanc National? It's a liability. Your father is a liability. His bank is bust. I've been loaning him large sums of money, which I never expect to see again.”

She blinked. “I beg your pardon? Our bank is bust?”

“Anna, I didn't court you to get a bank deal. I made a bad bank deal so I could marry you!” He groaned. “And you lie to me and treat me like the fool that I am.”

Anna dropped like a lead weight onto the velvet pouf. Air hissed out of it. She had known the match was advantageous to her father, but she had always assumed it was mutual. Edgar walked to the paned window and stared out at nothing. They were finally alone, but he couldn't be more distant. He shook his head slowly, his curls swaying. “I broke up your marriage.”

Anna gave him a bewildered look. “What?”

“That morning at the Mission Inn. I called your father and told him you were there with Taylor.” He went back to tugging his curls.

Normally, this kind of revelation would make Anna throw chairs, but she had nothing left in her, not even the strength to raise her voice. She whispered. “Why?”

“Because he is a rotten gold digger and I wanted you for myself!”

Edgar's confession flooded her with hope. Perhaps he already loved her with a love like Heathcliff's—a love that transcended marriage to another man, or even death. A love that could forgive a transgression.

She went to him and laid her hand gently on his arm. His body heat had made his shirt-sleeve limp and his petunia scent stronger. She stroked his arm down to his hand, where a little black curl peeked from under his cuff. “Kiss me.”

Edgar shook off her hand and kept staring out the window. Anna blinked. Two rejections in one evening exceeded her limit. His confession hadn't made her angry, but this did—not just that he didn't kiss her now, didn't draw her heart away from Joe Singer and seal her to himself, but that he had never kissed her. Not once. Her throat ached. “I forgive your betrayal, and you can't forgive me?”

“I don't know.”

Her voice pleaded. “Edgar, if you love me, can't you try to understand? Someone is violating innocent women. The police needed a girl. They approached me because I'm smart.”

He smiled cynically. “Joe Singer approached you because you're smart?”

“Yes.”

He chuckled, but his eyes were flat. Anna's brows drew together. “Can't you see it made me happy? I'd always dreamed of doing detective work, like
Lady Molly of Scotland Yard
, or the spinster in the
Circular Staircase
. I'm good at it. If I'd told you the truth, you'd never have allowed it.”

“That's right. I wouldn't!” He swiped a hand across his eyes and sighed. “It isn't just embarrassing, Anna, it's dangerous. You could have been killed tonight, or worse.” He turned and looked her square in the eye. “Do you want to be my wife?”

She blinked. “I…I do, but…”

He spoke with a sudden violence that made her step back. “Then you will stay away from the police station! If I see Joe Singer within a hundred yards of you, I'll kill him!”

Anna raised a hand and let it fall. “He's just a policeman.”

Edgar's eyes were bulging now and a vein stood out on his temple. “I will know, Anna, if you've been unfaithful.”

“How dare you!” Anna moved to slap him, but he caught her wrist and twisted. She shrieked. Edgar quickly dropped her arm. He recoiled, mouth dumb and open, as if horrified at his own internal monster. Anna flew down the hall and up the stairs, her arm turning red where his hand had been. He followed, but she was faster, and propriety stopped him at the stairs. Her bedroom door slammed.

She heard him call out, “Anna, darling, I'm sorry!”

The following morning, Detective Wolf ushered the Widow Crisp from her room in the Blanc Mansion, down the cool marble steps to a paddy wagon bound for San Francisco. He had recovered all of Anna's jewelry, as well as her tortoiseshell shoehorn, silver candlesticks, a bottle of Ambre Antique perfume, and several pairs of fancy drawers. He returned the things to Mrs. Morales, except for one silky pair of Anna's drawers, which he surreptitiously tucked into his coat.

Mrs. Morales waited at the threshold, and when the Widow Crisp shuffled out the door Mrs. Morales kicked her in the bottom.

Anna stayed in bed all morning, grieving her secret life as a detective. She had tried to solve the murders and failed. She had not turned her back on injustice, but it hadn't been her responsibility to start with. She was just a silly girl.

Anna would have stayed in bed all day, but she was terribly bored. Plus, her stomach was growling. Heartbreak and desperation were no reasons not to eat, and so she slipped into a negligee appropriate for breakfast. Anna's eyes stung and her nose glowed from blowing as she dragged herself down the hall.

Coming to the top of the spiral staircase, she caught her breath and sneezed. The room looked like a florist shop. She descended into a sea of blood-red roses, some buds, some blooming. Her heart bounced around her chest like a rubber ball. Every red rose in Los Angeles adorned her conservatory. She plucked a flower and lifted it to her nose, but her nose was swollen and the fragrance faint.

She headed for the breakfast table where her father was having a slice of pork cake. He smiled. “Apparently, Mr. Wright has lost his mind.”

After breakfast, Mrs. Morales and Mr. Blanc escorted Anna to confession, and from that point on Anna resolved to obey. Not that she had an opportunity to disobey, as her father dogged her every step. She was surprised he hadn't leashed her. He had installed locks to keep Anna in, and a team of chaperones were on their way. This was unnecessary. Anna had repented of her lies in the confessional that morning, though Father Depaul might say he'd heard it all before. He gave her a thousand Hail Marys as penance and ordered her to volunteer at the Orphans' Asylum.

God was quite cruel. For just as Anna was trying to be good, to forget police work and Joe Singer, she opened the morning paper and saw an advertisement for the new Arrow Shirt Suit. Her heart leapt like a suicidal goldfish. There was the Arrow Collar Man, bare-legged and standing in his Arrow shirt suit, a one-piece combination overshirt and underdrawers, brand new this year. It was rather sheer and unbuttoned up to the very curve of his bottom. While she liked this advertisement intensely, she didn't know why she had ever thought Joe Singer looked like the Arrow Collar Man. Joe Singer looked much, much better. But because she didn't have a picture of the real Joe Singer, she clipped the advertisement of the half-naked man as a memento of the man she must never see again.