Secrets Page 8

  But every time he thought of getting closer to her, he remembered what had happened to Lillian. Happened because of him. Sometimes he thought he should send Elsbeth away so she’d be safe. If it weren’t for his father, a man who’d had a lifetime of training in being an agent, living with them, Jeff thought he might do that.

  How could he risk taking on another real relationship? he often wondered.

  When he reached the house, he quietly opened the door. His bedroom was on the ground floor, but he tiptoed up the main staircase, as he always did, to check on the windows, and the occupants. Elsbeth was asleep in her bed, looking as perfect as an angel. Down the hall was his father’s bedroom. Jeff didn’t knock but opened the door silently and looked in. His father was propped up in the bed, reading a book, and he didn’t look up or acknowledge his son.

  Jeff closed the door and smiled. He’d seen the way his father’s hand had disappeared under the covers. Jeff didn’t know and didn’t ask if his father slept with a weapon, but he wouldn’t doubt it. Old agents never changed their habits. Every birthday since he was eight, Jeff had given his father a gift that had 007 printed on it.

  Down the corridor, at the top of the back stairs, was Cassie’s room. The light was on; he could see it under her door. He wanted to knock; he wanted to talk to her. Sometimes what he missed most about marriage was having a confidante. He’d told Lillian all that he could. But, then, what she did or did not know had caused her death.

  He didn’t knock on Cassie’s door but silently went down the back stairs to his own bedroom.

  7

  CASSIE RAN THE RAZORup her leg, then slid back in the tub and closed her eyes. Both Dana and Althea said that waxing was the way to go. She hadn’t done that yet, but she planned to. Next week she had an appointment at a salon on Richmond Road where she was to get waxed and massaged, and her skin was to be made luminous. Or at least that’s what the ad promised.

  It had been a week since she and Dana had met Althea Fairmont, and it had been an exciting time. There had been no more talk of Cassie becoming Althea’s employee, but somehow, the woman had maneuvered both Dana and Cassie into working for her—without pay.

  But the work had been good for Cassie. For months she’d thought that if she had to leave Jeff’s house, had to leave Elsbeth, her life would be over. But in the last week she’d begun to see possibilities of a future without Jefferson Ames. Since she’d lived for over half her life with the idea that he was the only man for her, it hadn’t been an easy transition.

  But Althea’s energy and enthusiasm were helping her. On Monday morning, she and Elsbeth had met Dana at the end of the garden, ready to go to Althea’s house. Dana worried that they would tire Miss Fairmont. “After all, she is a woman of a certain age,” Dana said as they walked toward the house.

  “I dare you to say that to her face,” Cassie said.

  “No, I think I’ll continue to live for a while.”

  It had been at Althea’s invitation that they visited. She’d called Cassie on Sunday and asked if she and Dana would like to look at some memorabilia she’d saved from her many years in show business. “I have a few things that need to be cataloged,” she’d said on that first Monday as she’d climbed two flights of stairs, Cassie, Dana, and Elsbeth behind her, to a walk-in attic that covered the entire house. When she opened the door, the two women gasped. It was an Aladdin’s cave of treasure. There were hundreds of boxes and trunks, and what looked to be thousands of the most extraordinary items. Costumes, props, and printed matter from every play and movie that Althea had done were piled on top of one another.

  “This should be in a museum,” Cassie said in awe, looking inside a carton labeled Moments in the Sun. It had been the movie Althea had won her second Oscar for. “Is this…?” Cassie asked, lifting a silver cup from the bottom. At the end of the movie, Althea, as the heroine, had drunk poison and died in a futile attempt to take the blame for a murder the man she loved had committed.

  “The very one,” Althea said.

  Gently, with reverence, Cassie put the cup back, then stood up. There was furniture, posters, and bound scripts; costumes peeped out of big cloth bags. It was all gorgeous, and she wanted to go through every piece of it.

  “Now you’re seeing my dream,” Althea said. “I want to open a library for the study of film. It would not only be a repository of artifacts, but also a place where students can see films and learn.”

  “In L.A.?” Dana asked as she picked up a dress that was covered with silver beads.

  Elsbeth stuck her little feet into a pair of red shoes from the 1940s. Cassie recognized them as from Shadow of a Woman . She wondered if the matching dress was there.

  “I plan to leave everything, including my money, to the establishment of the library,” Althea said, ignoring Dana’s question. “But I do wish I could leave it all in better order than it is now.”

  “And that’s why you want to hire Cassie,” Dana said, sounding as though she’d solved a mystery.

  “Actually, I think there’s more than enough work here for two people,” Althea said, smiling and looking at Dana. “If that husband of yours can spare you from…” She waved her hand. “From whatever women who are supported by their husbands do all day.”

  Cassie saw Dana stiffen, so she stepped between them. “I don’t know how much I can do,” Cassie said. “I have Elsbeth to care for until…” She hesitated.

  “Until Skylar takes over your home and throws you out?” Althea asked. She looked at Elsbeth. “Think you could stand giving up your little playdates to spend time with me?”

  Most children wouldn’t want to spend time with an older woman, but Elsbeth wasn’t like other children. “Oh, yes,” she said, her eyes wide as she looked at a pile of hats that covered the centuries from the 1700s to the 1970s.

  “I think Elsbeth will do quite well here,” Althea said, eyeing the child with approval.

  “But I don’t know if Jeff will like this,” Cassie began.

  “And does he disagree with you often?” Althea asked.

  “No, not usually. Actually, not ever. But Thomas…I make lunch for him.”

  Althea smiled. “Do you think I’ve forgotten Jefferson’s handsome father? Rosalie is already working on a rather splendid lunch for him.”

  Dana and Cassie looked at each other in wonder. It seemed that everything had already been settled—and settled the way Althea wanted it, which they soon learned was always the way with her. Within two hours of arriving, Dana and Cassie were hard at work. By Tuesday afternoon, they had established a routine. And while Dana and Cassie worked like drudges upstairs, Althea and Thomas and Elsbeth spent the day downstairs, their laughter floating up to the women in the attic. From the second day on, the three of them went out to lunch together and didn’t return until evening. Cassie and Dana ate a sandwich while continuing to work.

  When Cassie put Elsbeth in the tub at night, she’d ask, “Where did you go today? What did you do?” but the child never told anything except uttered vague phrases. “To a restaurant,” she’d say. Or “to look at some old buildings.” That about covered every inch of Williamsburg, Cassie thought, frustrated that she couldn’t get much out of Elsbeth.

  She got no more out of Thomas. “Sightseeing,” he said.

  At dinner with Jeff, which had been cooked by Althea’s housekeeper, Rosalie, and carried home, Elsbeth and Thomas wouldn’t so much as mention what they’d done during the day. So Cassie followed suit. It wasn’t as though they were keeping a secret from Jeff; they just left out Althea from their talk.

  As for Cassie and Dana, they were loosening in their attitudes toward each other. It started on Tuesday when they were both sweating and dirty, and they heard more laughter from downstairs.

  “So how much are we being paid to do this?” Dana asked, standing up and stretching her aching back.

  “I think it’s four million an hour,” Cassie said, deadpan.

  “We should ask for a raise.” Dana
held up a green velvet dress. “Do you remember this one?”

  “ Watching You,” Cassie said. “It’s when she sees him off at the pier.”

  “Wasn’t that movie made in the 1940s? And wasn’t it in black-and-white?”

  “Yes.” Cassie looked at her in question.

  “So how do you recognize a green dress and how do you remember which movie, even which scene it was in?”

  “Chalk it up to a boring childhood spent alone with my very own video player and an account at a local video store.”

  “Rich kid,” Dana said, holding up a pair of black and white shoes.

  “Please tell me that you don’t remember these shoes.”

  “ The Last Night. She leaves one behind when he pushes her out the window of the stone tower.”

  There was another burst of laughter from downstairs. “I can understand why he did it,” Dana said, putting the shoes back in the trunk. “I think she should get a professional in here. I really don’t understand how I got rooked into doing this.”

  Cassie was sitting on a chair that looked as though it had been used in a play about Cleopatra, with a clipboard on her lap. “It must be nice to have the choice of not taking a job,” Cassie said, “but I need one. I’m about to be out of employment and a place to live, remember? Doing this beats sitting in an office and answering telephones.”

  “Sorry,” Dana said, ducking her head. “I’m complaining too much. Maybe I’m just jealous. I had an image of spending fascinating afternoons with the Great Althea, but instead, I’ve spent two days in her attic.”

  “She’d rather be with Thomas,” Cassie said, looking down at her clipboard.

  “I don’t blame her. He’s a very handsome man.” Dana hesitated.

  “Like his son. Jeff will look just like him when he’s that age.”

  Cassie put her head closer to the clipboard.

  Dana sat down on a purple stool. “On Saturday when we met Althea she suggested that you…well, that you liked Jeff.”

  “He’s a great guy,” Cassie said quickly. “Is there anything more in that box?” She was recording every item, then putting a number on the container. After they were done, it would be easy to see what Althea had and where it was.

  “Look,” Dana began, “I think you and I got off on the wrong foot.”

  “No,” Cassie said. “I understand. You were taking care of Elsbeth and I took her away from you. If I were you, I wouldn’t like me either.”

  “Damn!” Dana said. “Why do you have to be so blasted nice ?”

  “I grew up with a mother who doesn’t know the meaning of the word. I figured I had to be the opposite of her to balance the world.”

  Dana dug into the bottom of a hatbox and pulled out a silk scarf. “This important?”

  Cassie’s eyes widened. “ Wednesday’s Child,” she said. “Althea was about sixteen—give or take twenty years—and she murdered a little girl with that scarf.”

  Grimacing, Dana dropped it back into the box. “Do you have any idea why Jeff wants to marry Skylar?”

  Cassie looked up. “None whatever.”

  “Maybe she knows some fabulous tricks in bed,” Dana said as she lifted the lid of an old wooden crate. “She likes to tell a disgusting story about how she had a boyfriend in college that she went through the entire Kama Sutra with. Sometimes I have nightmares that she’s actually talking about Roger. I—” She broke off at a noise from Cassie.

  “Sorry,” Cassie said. “Pen broke.”

  Dana looked at the ink on the page on the clipboard. It wasn’t just the tip of the roller ballpoint pen that had broken but the barrel.

  “I, uh, better wash my hands,” Cassie said and got up.

  It was on Wednesday, at about 10A.M ., that everything changed. Althea sent Elsbeth up to the attic to ask that Dana come downstairs.

  “I wonder what I did to be so honored?” Dana asked sarcastically. Her enthusiasm for getting to know Althea had petered out on Tuesday afternoon when an old trunk lid had just missed slamming on her hand. She’d had to cancel three meetings at the Hamilton Hundred country club to be able to spend so much time at Althea’s house, but now all she wanted was to get out of the dusty attic.

  But Cassie was more than content. To her, every item was a piece of wonderment, something she remembered from her lonely childhood. Althea’s movies had been a close friend to her when she was growing up.

  Somehow, Althea had known exactly what was happening in the attic and who had done what. She lavished praise on Cassie, thanking her profusely. “You’re too good for Jefferson,” she’d said. “I don’t think he appreciates you.”

  Cassie smiled her thanks, but Dana stepped forward and said that she also thought Cassie was doing a great job. “Maybe we should talk about her salary and when she’s to start working for you officially.”

  Althea wasn’t about to be bullied by someone a third her age. “I think that’s a wonderful idea. Just as soon as Cassie quits her other job we can talk about terms. Now, who’d like tea? Or would you like a nice gin and tonic?”

  After four tries, Dana gave up trying to pin Althea down to hours and wages. She showed up at the mansion on Wednesday, but she didn’t want to stay. Seeming to be oblivious, Althea had bustled her up the stairs, but at ten she’d called Dana down again.

  Cassie didn’t know what happened, but Dana didn’t return. But then, she was quite happy to work alone. She and Dana had cleared a path back to an old wardrobe that stood against a back wall. She couldn’t remember for sure but she thought the wardrobe had been in a movie. It wasn’t the one where Althea hid from a couple of murderers, she was sure of that, but it did seem familiar.

  “ The Twenty-sixth of December,” came a voice and she looked up to see Brent in the doorway. Immediately, Cassie knew what he was talking about.

  “Of course. She kept her journal in the back, under a loose board.”

  “And after she was killed, the journal was what told the detective who’d murdered her.”

  Cassie smiled. “But she wasn’t dead. She was hiding.”

  Brent walked around three chairs and a steamer trunk to move closer to her. “And she was waiting.”

  “For the detective to find her.”

  Brent stopped by the wardrobe, put his hand on top of the door, and glanced inside, his head close to hers. “She said that—”

  “If he was smart enough to figure out the mystery, then she was interested, but if he wasn’t…”

  With their eyes locked, Brent and Cassie imitated Althea’s famous shrug of indifference.

  Together, they laughed.

  “So you’re a fan too,” Cassie said as she knelt to look into the bottom of the wardrobe and search for the panel that would move. A moment later, she said, “It’s empty.” She stood up again. “No journal.”

  “Of course not,” Brent said. “Reed, the detective, took it.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. How silly of me.”

  Brent leaned back against the wardrobe and looked about the huge room with all its paraphernalia. “Making much progress?”

  “A little. It’s slow. I keep stopping to look at things and think about them. How is everyone?” She nodded toward the doorway.

  “Great. Althea hasn’t been this happy in…Well, I’ve never known her to be this happy. She’s charming Thomas and he’s loving it.”

  “Two lonely people,” Cassie said and felt guilty that she’d never before realized how lonely Thomas probably was. He’d tried to make her and Elsbeth into the sophisticated company he liked, but they weren’t Althea. “He isn’t overdoing it, is he? His heart isn’t strong.”

  “His heart?” Brent said, then smiled. “Oh, right. His heart. The only danger there is that Althea might break it. She likes to do that.”

  “I think her heart has been broken a few times,” Cassie said more stiffly than she meant to.

  “I doubt that,” Brent said. “I think her heart is made of iron.”

  Cassie c
ouldn’t keep from frowning. “She doesn’t seem to please you, does she?”

  Brent smiled at her, his handsome face lighting up, and Cassie couldn’t keep her frown. “She pleases me so much that I’m damned jealous of Thomas. I work myself to death to try to keep her safe, but she’s never once flirted with me as she does with him.”

  Cassie laughed. What he was saying was ridiculous, since he was young enough to be Althea’s great-grandson.

  “Can I help you with this?” he asked, motioning toward the packed attic.

  “Dana—”

  “Has been sent away. Althea said something about the world’s committee women needing her.”

  “Yeow!” Cassie said. “That sounds nasty.”

  “Althea’s middle name.” Brent took a knife from his pocket, flipped out the blade, and cut open a big cardboard box and looked inside.

  “When she wants to be, that is. And when she wants to be nice, she can make people melt. I’ve decided that she’s not so much an actress as a wizard who puts spells on people.”

  Cassie walked around a 1930s ashtray on a stand to peer into the box beside him. “My goodness.”

  “Yes,” Brent said softly, reverently. “ Queen of the Morning.”

  Inside were three of the magnificent costumes from the historical drama in which Althea played a doomed queen of a fictional country. The critics had ridiculed it because the character was an amalgamation of Mary, Queen of Scots, Anne Boleyn, and Lady Jane Grey. But the audiences loved the movie.

  “Every time I saw it, I cried when they beheaded her,” Cassie said.

  “Me too,” Brent said, then smiled at her. “More or less, anyway.”

  She reached in and began to pull out one of the heavy dresses. It was burgundy velvet on top, burgundy silk on bottom, with a quilted gold skirt underneath. “It’s beautiful,” she breathed.

  “I think that would fit you,” Brent said.

  “And what have you been smoking?”

  “No, really. Don’t you remember that Althea was pregnant during that movie?”

  “Pregnant? Are you saying that to be as fat as I am she had to be pregnant?”