Too Black for Heaven (13 page)

Ames returned to the table and sat next to Dona.

“How are you feelin’, sugar?”

“I’m scared,” Dona admitted.

Ames said, “Don’t be. Even the coroner’s on your side. We think we know who did it.” He added dryly, “If not why Sterlin’ lied.”

The inquest got under way slowly, picking up speed as it went. The butler identified the sheet-covered body on the table that one of the deputies rolled in as Mr. Blair Sterling. One of the two deputies first to arrive at the cottage followed the butler on the stand. Then, as from a long distance away, Dona heard the coroner say, “Now, if you’ll be so kind, Miss Santos.”

Dona manged to get to her feet and sit in the chair he indicated. As she sat down, Hattie stood up and cried, “That’s the one who did. That’s the girl who killed Mister Sterlin’!”

The cameraman took another picture of Dona. Kelly made a few notes on a pad. Dona answered questions mechanically, constantly fighting the darkness that threatened to engulf her. Yes, her name was Dona Santos. Her mother was Estrella Santos. She’d come south for a vacation. Her choice of Blair Sterling’s cottage on Loon Lake had been entirely coincidental. Yes, Sterling had made advances to her but she had repulsed him.

Then the coroner read Sterling’s statement and Dona could see that the six jurors were impressed. The woman with the shopping bag glowered at her. The old man turned up his hearing aid. The girl member of the young couple looked embarrassed. The business man looked thoughtful. The jaws of the tobacco-chewing man worked furiously and he spat into the receptacle beside him.

His voice was emotionless, as the coroner read on:

“‘The following night I went to her cottage again. She seemed pleased to see me, at least pleased by the prospect of gainfully prostituting her body. But it didn’t turn out at all as the other evenings had.’” Tennent came to the part of the statement that had been read to Dona by Yarnell. “‘After being intimate with her in her cottage, with her active consent and cooperation, instead of accepting the fee of fifty dollars as agreed, the girl who calls herself Dona Santos demanded that I give her five hundred dollars or she would go to the sheriff’s office and claim I raped her.’”

Dona said hotly, “Mr. Sterling’s statement isn’t true.”

Hattie stood up again. Her voice was shrill. Her ear bobs jingled as she spoke. “Doan let her lie to you, Mister Coroner. Look at the paint and powder she wearin’. Smell the way she smell. Anyone with one eye kin see she’s nothin’ but a li’l ol’ white whore-girl.”

Dona felt her cheeks redden.

The deputy who’d driven Dona to the funeral home forced Hattie back into the pew. “Set down an’ be quiet. You’ll git a chance to testify.”

Hattie preened herself. “When I do, I give it to her good.”

Coroner Tennent resumed reading from Sterling’s statement. “‘Naturally I refused. On my refusal she became very angry and walked out to her car. I dressed and followed her trying to persuade her from making a fool of herself. We stood arguing beside her car for some time. Then I lost my temper and told her to do whatever she damned pleased and started back to the cottage. As I did, I heard three pistol or revolver shots and felt a sharp pain in my back. I turned and saw her holding a revolver she’d taken from her bag.’” Coroner Tennent paused and looked over the statement at Dona. “What have you to say to that, Miss Santos?”

In Dona’s fevered eyes, the figures in the chapel were rapidly becoming grotesque, unreal creatures. Coroner Tennent was ten feet tall. She was so unutterably weary it was an effort to sit upright in her chair. She said, “I say it’s a lie. The whole thing is a lie.”

Hattie got back to her feet. “She’s the one who’s lyin’. She put a hex on Mister Sterlin’. He doan be hisse’f since the first afternoon he meet her.” Her voice was fierce. “He go down to her cottage that first night. When he come back he tell me he doan do nothin’ to her. She say the same thing by sweet-talkin’ me the next mo’nin’. But I know better. An’ he go again the next night. I know. When I rid up the cottage that mawnin’ I fin’ money under her baid. An’ las’ night he right back at her again. An’ he doan git enough inside the cottage, so he follow her outside an’ back her up against her car. She puttin’ him off to excite him but he hug an’ kiss her. Then he — ”

Coroner Tennent said, sharply, “And just how do you know all this, Hattie? According to the statement you made to Sheriff Early, you didn’t go anywhere near the cottage last night. You said you were at your folks’ house.”

Hattie stood poised to run, like some young animal. Then she smoothed the cloth over her breasts and said with simply dignity, “All right, let her free. I done it. The blame belongs to me. I bin Mister Sterlin’s gal since I come woman-size.” She added proudly, “When we were alone he let me call him Blair.” She cried silently, as she touched her ears. “He even give me these. They’s bin other girls, lots of ‘em. But Miss Santos, she different somehow. I know once he take up with her he never come back to me.” Her chin tilted. “So I snuck her gun from under her pillow an’ I shot him. An’ now he’s daid an’ I doan care what you do with me.”

A deep silence filled the chapel. Two deputies left their places against the wall. Dona’s feeling of unreality deepened. As if she were looking through the wrong end of a telescope she imagined she saw Estrella and Bernie. The minute figures grew and became real as Estrella, followed by Bernie, walked down the aisle.

Estrella’s throaty voice was familiar. “Baby,” she said. “What have you done? What are they doing to you?”

Dona heard herself say, “Mother.” Then, calmly, “Why did you come here? How did you know where I was?”

Estrella held her fiercely. “I was worried about you when I left. Then when you didn’t answer the phone and Charles said no one had seen you since I’d left, I flew back from Los Angeles.” She smiled sadly. “I arrived the day Charles got his ring in the mail with the postmark Blairville on the envelope. It didn’t mean anything to him. It did to me.” Estrella drew off her gloves and laid them on the table. “You see, I went through this once and I knew what you probably had in mind. When Bernie told me you’d bought a gun I was certain.”

Estrella looked at Sheriff Early. “Whatever she’s done, blame me. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have told her.”

“Told her what?”

Estrella answered him. “That we both have a faint streak of the tar brush, mine a shade wider than hers. You don’t remember me, do you, Sheriff Early?”

“I know you’re Estrella Santos.”

Dona tried to stop Estrella and couldn’t. The chapel was tilting so badly she had to cling to the arms of her chair. Her frenzied, “No!” stuck in a sore spot in her throat.

“Born Beth Wilbur,” Estrella said. “And you should remember me. Unless it’s been outlawed by the statute of limitations, you have a warrant in your files, a warrant charging me with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. I gave Blair Sterling his scar. With good reason. I did my best to kill him. Blair Sterling is Dona’s father.”

“Of course,” Early said. “I recognize you now. You always was a pretty girl.”

Dona’s voice trembled. “Where’s Charles?”

Estrella kissed her wet cheeks. “I don’t know what you told him, baby. It doesn’t matter. I told him the truth and the truth was quite sufficient. He crawled and he hemmed and hawed when I asked him to drive down here with me. You’d think having a colored grandmother suddenly transformed you into a leper.”

Dona attempted to stop her. “Please, mother.”

Estrella shook her head. “No. Let’s get it all off our chests. From here on in, my beloved public can take me for what I am or not at all. And that goes for Hollywood, too.” She found a package of Turkish cigarettes in her purse and lit one with a diamond-studded platinum lighter, then looked at Kelly and the cameraman. “You look like reporters to me.”

“That’s right, Miss Santos,” Kelly said.

“Then start popping your flash bulbs. Here’s ten bucks more in your pay envelope and maybe a job in Atlanta. My gown is by Nardi’s of Texas. My hat is by Jules of Hollywood. Shoes by I. Miller. Make-up by Max Factor. My jewels by Tiffany. I’ve just signed a contract to do three pictures a year for seven years at two hundred thousand a picture and ten per cent of the gross. My professional name is Estrella Santos but the closest I’ve ever been to Spain is a fifth of Malaga tawny port. I was born Beth Wilbur right here in Blairville and my mother was about the color of that pretty girl crying in the front pew. I never knew my father. All I know he was white and both he and my mother were young and fond enough of each other to defy convention and allow me to happen. All she’d ever say was that he was a good man.” Estrella blew smoke at the ceiling of the chapel. “Now call A.P. and I.N.S. and spread what I’ve told you on the front page of every paper in the country. And maybe tomorrow morning, for the first time in eighteen years, I can look at my face in a mirror and not feel like a female Judas.” She looked back at Sheriff Early. “Now that we have that settled, what’s the charge against Dona?”

The faint trembling of his blue veined hands barely perceptible, Sheriff Early ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “No charge, Beth,” he said, quietly. “There is no charge against Dona.”

The diffused light streaming through the stained glass windows grew dimmer. The figures around her grew more grotesque. The chapel tilted again, much more violently, and Dona tightened her hold on the arms of the chair, as the floor became the ceiling. She sat a moment looking down into space, then felt herself falling.

Bernie cried out, “She’s fainting.”

Strong arms broke her fall and Jack Ames said, fiercely, “I have her.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

T
HE ROOM
was huge, high-ceilinged and bright with flowers arranged in three tall vases. Her life, Dona thought, had resolved itself into a pattern of threes.

She’d been ill for three weeks. At the end of the third week, Estrella had returned to Los Angeles and Bernie went back to Chicago. This was the third day she’d been permitted to sit up.

From where she sat in the cherry-wood rocker in front of the open second-floor window, she could see the old-fashioned country garden in which the flowers had been picked. The gravel path was edged with dwarf ageratum and sweet alyssum. Behind the border, in graduated tiers, the flower-bed was gay with pinks and phlox and marigolds and flame-red salvua. There was a white flower she didn’t recognize, backed by asters and large colorful zinnias, tall delphinium and French holyhocks with dozens of clusters of miniature peony-like flowers to each sturdy stalk.

Beside a small lily pond was a bird bath and a home-made feeding stand. The green foliage of the trees shading the garden was alive with crested cardinals, thrushes and mocking birds. Bobwhites called in the tall grass. As she watched, a young flicker fluttered down from the branches of a tree and hung precariously to the edge of the feeding stand, scattering the grain on it to the bobbing heads of the mourning doves, waddling around the base of the stand.

This was the only room of the Ames house she’d seen but beyond the garden she could see two huge, white-painted barns, some machinery sheds and beyond them, planted fields extending to the river. There was an almost ethereal quality to the scene.

It felt good to sit up, to dress and to do for herself, to be able to think with some degree of objectivity. The three weeks just past were a blur. She remembered Doctor Nelson doing unpleasant things to her, telling her she was a very sick girl. She remembered talking to Bernie. She remembered Estrella lying beside her, trying to control her wild weeping, whispering, “Baby” in her beautiful throaty voice. She remembered waking, frightened, in the night, to find Jack sitting beside her, holding her small hand in his big one, helping to guide her back across the wafer-thin demarcation that separated mental chaos from reason. She remembered Father Miller. His lined face had been stern but kind and understanding. He’d talked to her a long time about the ways of man and God but in the end he’d given her absolution with permission to do penance later, when she was well.

Dona closed her eyes and dozed. When she opened them again May Ames was standing beside her chair, holding a luncheon tray. “Think you can eat a bit, Dona?” she smiled.

Dona studied the patrician face of the white-haired woman. Jack’s sister had been very kind. She’d done a hundred small things for her along with the trio of nurses who’d watched her around the clock. But there was a strained quality to her kindness. Dona could sense the invisible wall between them. May Ames would be glad to get her out of the house. She would never say an unkind word or do an unkind thing. But to her, with her fierce pride of family and tradition, her younger brother’s love for a girl with colored blood was unnatural and abnormal.

I’ll leave as soon as I can, Dona thought. I won’t embarrass her much longer. Aloud, she said, “I’ll try. I want to be strong again. I know I’ve been an awful bother to you.”

May Ames arranged the tray on a chair. “Not at all. Neither Jack nor I would hear of you going to a hospital.” She spoke before she thought, “Although it has been a bit rough on his practice.”

“In what way?”

“Well, you know how some people are.”

“Yes,” Dona said. “I know.” She forced herself to eat the succulent chicken liver omelet. “Mother isn’t coming back, is she, Miss Ames?”

“No. As soon as you’re well enough you’re to join her in Los Angeles.” She rearranged the flowers in one of the vases. “A remarkable woman, Estrella. I read in the morning
Courier
that they’re going to start shooting her first picture next week.”

Dona didn’t know. She hadn’t been able to force herself to ask. “Then they didn’t cancel her contract?”

May Ames laughed. “Heavens, no. She told Jack the studio was delighted by the publicity. Besides, this way Estrella has a foot in both camps and is certain to be a big box office draw.”

Despite her many kindnesses, the woman was so smug that Dona could have slapped her. Who in the name of God did she think she was?

May Ames continued, “But we’re talking too much. You’re supposed to be quiet and rest.”

So I can get out of your house, Dona thought.

“After all, this is only your third day up. And you’ve had a tough time of it. According to Doctor Nelson, you’ve been a walking fever for months.”

“In other words, out of my mind.”

May Ames was kind. She would be kind to a stray dog. “In a very mild way.”

Dona looked back at the garden. Her period of mental upset hadn’t been mild. It had been as virulent as the shock-induced fever. No one in her right mind would have done the things she’d done. But she was glad now that some of them had happened. In time she would be able to separate the good from the bad in her memories and to have certain small straws of tenderness to which to cling. For all the unpleasantness that had occurred, it saddened her to think of leaving Blairville, of never seeing it nor Jack again. There were a good many sleepless, tear-stained nights ahead for her. Jack was kind and understanding. He loved her. She loved him. She knew that now. But she couldn’t do this thing to him, hurt him as she’d been hurt.

Some of her bitterness returned. It wasn’t fair. Estrella had talent and her profession. She had nothing but herself. She was nothing but a bright skin.

Then there were still so many things she might never know, why Sheriff Early’s fingers had trembled when her mother had called herself a female Judas; the ultimate disposition of Hattie’s case; what would happen to Blair Sterling’s estate; if Beau would ever be admitted to the bar; what the broad solution of the problem was.

She finished her lunch and dutifully drank the milk in her glass.

“Good girl,” May said. “Now I know you’re getting well.” She left the room with the empty tray.

Dona sat a moment longer looking at the garden, then tried to stand by herself. The mere effort of getting out of the chair caused beads of perspiration to blossom all over her body. Her legs felt as if they were made of rubber. By clinging to chairs and tables and feeling her way along the wall, she managed to walk to the dresser and stood clinging to the wood, looking at herself in the beveled mirror.

Her eyes were rimmed with blue shadows. Her cheek bones were more pronounced than they had been. Her face looked pale and juvenile without make-up. She found her compact and lipstick and used them. They helped. They gave her a harsh rather brassy look.

When she finished with her face she untied the belt of her peignoir. There was nothing juvenile about her body. The perfect example of the best in miscegenation, Blair Sterling had said.

She dropped her peignoir on the floor beside the bed and lay with the top sheet folded over her lap. Her entire body was enervated and bathed in perspiration from the simple effort of walking and making up.

She closed her eyes for a moment and slept. When she awakened, she felt cool and refreshed. The room was dim with twilight. From where she lay in the big double bed, the garden was barely discernible in the rapidly deepening night. She tried to lift her right hand but something was holding it to the mattress. She turned her head.

“Hi, sugar,” Jack said, quietly. “I was beginning to wonder if you were ever goin’ to come to.”

Dona lay a moment orienting her thoughts. She knew what she had to do. There was only one thing she could do. “Light the light, will you, Jack?”

A switch clicked and the light by the bed came on.

“My. Aren’t we pretty?” Jack admired. He kissed her lightly. “Have a good day, Dona?”

“A fine day.”

“Hungry?”

“Not particularly.” Dona wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. She needed to be alone with Jack for what she intended to do. Men were simple creatures. What had worked with one man would work with another. “Where is your sister?” she asked him.

Jack laughed. “Gone to one o’ her clubs. May’s been kinda tied down since you’ve been sick so as soon as I got home I told her to take off. But the cook has your supper in the oven.”

Dona released her hand and played with his fingers. “Did you have a good day?”

Ames was tired. He looked it. “So-so.”

“Have they decided what they’re going to do with Hattie?”

“They sent her to a girl’s school this mornin’. Until she’s twenty-one. Then to be released only at the discretion of the court.”

“That’s all they’re going to do to her?”

“Her bein’ a juvenile, that’s all they can do.”

“What about Sterling’s property?”

“I filed a claim with the Appellate Court a week ago.”

“For whom?”

“For you.”

“Why me?”

“You’re his natural daughter.”

“I’m not proud of it.”

“The court won’t take that into its deliberation.”

“But I don’t want his money.”

“Want it or not, the chances are you’ll get it. The Sterlin’ genealogy has run out and you’re his only heir.”

“I’ve caused you a lot of trouble, haven’t I, Jack?”

“No more than I can bear up under.”

Dona pressed her cheek against the palm of his hand. “Anyway, I won’t bother you much longer.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’ll be leaving for Los Angeles in a few days.”

“But I thought — ”

“You thought what?”

“When you were well enough we’d be married.”

“Did I ever say I’d marry you?”

“No.”

The flushed feeling returned to Dona’s cheeks. Her entire body felt feverish. “Not that I’m not grateful to you. I am. I’ll always be grateful. But just because I stayed with you my first night here is no reason why you have to marry me. I don’t think it would work out for either of us. In fact I know it wouldn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m Estrella’s daughter.”

Ames tried to free his hand. “I think I’d better phone Doctor Nelson.”

Dona pulled him back beside her. “No. I’m not delirious. I know exactly what I’m saying. You’ve been very kind to me and I appreciate it. But marrying you is out of the question.”

“Why?”

“From your side, you’d lose what practice you have left after defending me as you have, taking me into your home. For my part, all I’d get out of it is babies and being treated politely in private by women like your sister and cut dead on the street.”

“May doesn’t feel that way.”

“I know differently. It isn’t because she isn’t genuinely sweet and kind. She just can’t help the way she feels.”

Dona shrugged her slim shoulders and one strap of her nightgown slipped down slightly. Jack stared at it, fascinated.

She continued to toy with his fingers. “But that, after all, is immaterial as long as we don’t make this thing permanent. I like you. You like me. We can have fun together for as long as you like, now that I’m well and strong enough again.” She slipped his hand under the top sheet and pressed it coarsely against her body, like some tart from North Clark Street in a frenetic effort to separate a sucker from twenty dollars of his money. “Please. That is, if you don’t mind finishing the third round, now that you know I’m partly colored. And this time I won’t cry.

Ames recovered his hand and stood up. “I’ll send a maid up with your supper.”

The bedroom door closed solidly behind him. Dona heard his footsteps descending the stairs and he was gone. She lay dry-eyed staring at the ceiling. Her supper was untouched on the tray and she was still staring at the ceiling when she heard May’s car return at ten o’clock. Twice, after knocking discreetly, a maid popped her head in the door to see if there was anything she wanted, but neither Jack nor May Ames came into the room. Once Dona heard their voices briefly. May’s was cool, collected, well-bred. Jack’s was harsh and angry. A door slammed in the distance. Dona heard a car motor. Then there was only silence.

At midnight she opened the door of her room and looked out into the hall. The old house was even lovelier than she’d imagined. A broad, winding, white-railed stairway led down to a spacious entrance foyer, dimly lighted by a cut-glass night lamp.

Dona looked down the stairs with hot eyes. From what she could see of the house, it was very beautiful. She could have been happy here. That was why flight was imperative. Heaven, such as this, was not for her.

She closed the door and dressed with feverish haste. Her fingertips still felt numb. They hooked her brassière with difficulty. She tried to put both legs into one side of her panties. The dress she’d worn at the inquest was hanging in the closet. She pulled it over her head, made sure her car keys were in her purse and, with her shoes and purse in one hand, her other gripping the rail, she tiptoed down the stairs.

The big front door gave her trouble. She tugged it open and her legs threatened to give as she walked around the house in the moonlight in search of her car. She was still very weak. She would drive as far as she could, rest and drive on again.

A squirrel in one of the trees scolded sleepily. Dona stopped until he was quiet and walked on. She found her car under a porte cochere on the far side of the house. The air was filled with the fragrance of flowering magnolia, rich, lush earth and the spicy tang of night-blooming jasmine.

Dona pressed her fingers to her lips and raised her hand to the old house. As she did, from behind her Jack Ames quietly asked, “Figurin’ on goin’ somewhere, sugar?”

Dona turned slowly to face him. Words formed in her throat but wouldn’t come out of her mouth.

Ames held her so she wouldn’t fall. “Just because one man was chump enough to fall for that routine, what made you think I would?”

Dona tried to escape his arms. “No, Jack. Please.”

“You love me an’ you’re afraid I’ll be hurt. That’s why you’re runnin’ away?”

“Yes.”

“I figured that,” Ames said. “An’ you’re right. I’ll be hurt an’ so will you. You were right about May. An’ probably most of the men and women in town are goin’ to feel the same way. But we’re goin’ to stick an’ fight it if we can. An’ if it gets too tough, we’ll run.”