“I-I don’t remember,” she heard herself say.
“Well, don’t you worry, Betty. I’m here now,” Roy said, and Theta’s gut screamed at her like a scared child. Run. Go. Hide. She remembered how his threat used to lay coiled under caring words, like a venomous snake hidden deep inside a pretty velvet bag.
“Tomorrow we can go back to Kansas.”
“I got a contract,” Theta said, again too quickly. “At the Follies.”
“Yeah? You make good money? I’ll bet you make good money. Okay. We’ll wait till your contract is up. Tell the sissy you’re moving out.” He patted the bed. “After all, I’m still your husband in the eyes of the law.” Roy’s smile changed. “Or did you get yourself another sucker?”
Theta could only imagine Memphis’s fate if Roy found out.
“I told you, I work all the time,” Theta said.
“Work is good. Keeps a girl outta trouble,” Roy said meaningfully. And then, like a wind, his glowering face changed. He smiled. “You know, now I think about it, why go back to that lousy two-flea circus in Kansas? This town’s gonna be good for us. I could be your agent. Look after your career.”
He would own her. “People don’t know me as married.”
“So now they will.”
“It ain’t that simple, Roy.” Her voice had gotten so tiny.
A familiar shadow passed over Roy’s face. He didn’t like no. “Gee, if I go to the newspapers, this sure would look bad on you. I mean, lotsa people remember you was my wife. Lotsa people remember that fire. How suspicious it was. The whole place goin’ up like that? Police back home might wanna ask you questions.”
There it was, the snake in the bag. She had to stall him until she could figure this whole mess out. “I just have to find a way to tell Flo without him getting sore. He’s worked so hard on this Russian princess angle. If he got mad, I could be out of a job. Out of money.”
Roy searched her face. Theta spent every ounce of energy maintaining a look of pure truth. “Okay. You figure it out. I’ll give you till next week, but then I want a meeting.”
Theta’s heart sank. A week was no time at all. “Sure, Roy. Sure.” Theta inched toward the door. “I better get some rest before tomorrow’s rehears—”
Roy crossed the floor in three quick strides and pulled Theta to him. Gripping the back of her head, he forced his kiss on her. When he pulled away, he was smiling. “Now I found you, Betty, things’ll be like they was again. Just the two of us.” He stroked her hair, wrapping a section tightly between his fingers. He put his mouth to her ear, and even his whisper felt like a violation. “If I find out you been lying to me about another fella, well, I wouldn’t want to be that fella, Betty Sue. Nod if you understand me.”
Theta nodded.
The baby’s wailing was loud in Theta’s ears as she raced down the steps of Roy’s seedy building and out onto the Bowery. The Third Avenue El rumbled overhead, drowning out her choked sobs. What was she going to tell Flo? If the papers, if somebody like Harriet Henderson, got wind of this story, she’d be ruined. She was trapped. And if Roy found out about Memphis, he’d kill him. She knew that. Theta could still feel Roy’s foul kiss on her mouth as she stumbled down the streets of Chinatown. Feverishly, she wiped at her lips. She cried until she had no tears left, until she was numb and hollowed. Theta wandered the city until dawn. As the day’s first gray stirrings sniffed between the skyscrapers, she knew what she had to do.
HOPEFUL HARBOR
The Marlowe estate was nestled deep in the Adirondacks, nearly a day’s drive from the city. The clouds sat low on the mountaintops and blew out across the valley below. It was colder up here; snow still dotted the ground and the roads were muddy. Weak sunlight peeked between the towering firs. Marlowe’s chauffeur rounded a corner, and the sprawling gray estate came into view, stretched out across the hillside like a huge stone animal in repose.
A gray-haired butler met Jericho at the door. He seemed as if he’d come with the house as much as the furniture and trees. “I’ll tell Mr. Marlowe you’ve arrived, Mr. Jones,” he said, disappearing up the massive, red-carpeted staircase, which was backlit by the most impressive set of stained-glass windows Jericho had ever seen outside a church. Moments later, a shiny, pressed Marlowe bounded down those stairs with the energy of a boy.
“Jericho! Welcome to Hopeful Harbor! Leave your suitcase here. Ames’ll see to it. Let me show you around.”
Marlowe led a wide-eyed Jericho down a long, chandelier-lit hallway whose walls boasted Chinese vases on pedestals, expensive-looking paintings of somber ancestors, and a wooden, gold-leafed coat of arms with a crowned, upright lion at its center under the motto VICTORIA SINE TERMINO: Victory without end. In the billiards room, a bust of Caesar stared down from a long marble mantel while another of Hannibal topped a tall stack of books, all of them about conquerors. There was a dining room the size of a football field where two maids vigorously buffed the silver laid out in a neat line across the gleaming table fit for a king’s court. Jericho had thought that the museum was the most impressive place he’d ever seen. But it was no match for Hopeful Harbor. As they passed from room to room, Jericho kept his eyes open for a possible card reader, but so far, he’d seen nothing.
Back on the first floor, Jericho stopped outside a long room that held a dozen iron beds. “What’s this?”
“We opened the estate to some soldiers during the war. There wasn’t adequate housing. It was the patriotic thing to do. You know, I don’t believe anyone’s stayed in this room since.” Marlowe barked out a hearty laugh. “Jericho, there are just too many rooms in this house—I’ve forgotten half of them!”
Marlowe showed Jericho a dizzying number of other rooms before ending the tour in a tasteful library.
“What do you think?” Marlowe asked.
“Nice castle,” Jericho said.
Marlowe laughed. “Well, every man’s home is his castle, they say. But I saved the best for last.”
Marlowe tipped down two books on the third shelf of a bookcase, and it opened, revealing a secret lift. A grinning Marlowe ushered Jericho inside.
“This is my crowning glory,” he said, his fingers trailing over the golden panel of buttons—B, 1, 2, 3, and S—before selecting the B. The lift descended, and the doors opened again onto a long, shadowy corridor with steel doors lining each side.