The sheriff shifted his hat and turned to face the men gathered in a half-circle around them. “Roger, you know that Deputy Kopp carries a police gun and handcuffs and used them to capture a dangerous fugitive only a couple of months ago,” he said calmly. “She’s been in all your papers, so don’t pretend that you don’t know about it just to get a fresh quote from me. There was some delay in having a badge engraved, owing to the metal being in short supply, but it’s done now. As to her duties, Deputy Kopp has charge of the women in my jail and I will continue to deploy her as I do any man under my command.”
It was just then that Constance noticed Carrie Hart stepping off a streetcar. She was wrapped in a smart green coat and wore shoes to match. From the brim of her hat stood a single black ostrich feather, which waved about in the wind like a weather-vane. She waltzed up behind the scrum of reporters just as the sheriff was dismissing them.
“Go on, boys,” he said, and they wandered off morosely. “Good afternoon, Miss Hart.”
“Sheriff. Deputy.” She laughed. Her lips were painted a bright geranium red.
“What did you do to get sent all the way to Hackensack?” Constance asked.
She raised an eyebrow and looked back at the reporters, who had returned to their posts on the courthouse steps. “I told my editor I wanted off the club luncheon track. After three stories about a lady deputy in Hackensack, I thought I could handle the city crime pages. He said I could, as long as the city wasn’t New York. I had my choice of Hackensack or Trenton.”
“And you chose us.”
“Of course I did! Take me up to the top of that jail and introduce me to all your dangerous dames. One of them must want to tell her story to the papers.”
“Oh, they might want to, but I won’t allow it,” Constance said. “Do you know the kinds of letters I’ve had because of your stories?”
“Those girls might like a letter from a handsome stranger,” Carrie said.
“And what was that about my velvety brown eyes giving the novelists a page of descriptive matter?”
She gave a shrug and a false little frown. “My editor put that in himself. He said no male reporter would’ve neglected the lady deputy’s good looks.”
Carrie glanced over at the sheriff, who had been standing by impassively with the air of a man who knew better than to come between two sharp-tongued women. Then she looked back at Constance’s coat. “Say, how about that pretty little badge?”
“It’s an ordinary badge,” Constance said. “No different than?—”
Carrie leaned in close to examine it. “Oh, it’s far from ordinary! There’s nothing stopping me from writing about it, is there? You’re wearing it out in public, after all.”
“So does every man with a badge,” Constance said. “It’s never made the papers before.”
“We’ve never had a girl deputy before,” Carrie said brightly. “I’m sure I can get a paragraph out of it. Watch these pages, as they say.”
“You can’t mean to put me in the papers again,” Constance said. “I don’t think I can endure another marriage proposal.”
She and Sheriff Heath watched as Carrie ran to join the reporters on the courthouse steps. She looked like a bright exotic bird that had just landed among tree stumps.
“Reporters go along with the badge,” the sheriff said resignedly. “You can give it back if you don’t like it.”
She wasn’t about to give it back.
9
“OH, YOU MAKE such a handsome fellow,” Fleurette said as she draped a length of striped navy serge around Helen Stewart’s shoulders. “Put your hair up under the hat.”
Helen laughed and did as she was told, pushing a knot of red hair beneath the brim of a battered old bowler.
Fleurette took a step back and sang out in admiration. “I’ll marry you tonight!”
Helen shook off the hat. “You’re supposed to refuse.”
“No, you’re supposed to refuse.”
“Oh, I will, at first.”
The two of them were squirreled away in Fleurette’s sewing room to make their preparations for the audition. Surrounding them was an empire of luxury goods: the newest pattern-books, spools of silk ribbon, jars of buttons and hooks, an entire library of pin-books, including the kind with the pearls, both silk and muslin flowers, glittering buckles and hat-pins, dress nets, feathers, braids and trimming, and endless lengths of lace. Bolts of fabric towered nearly to the ceiling along one wall and spoke of every whim that had ever taken Fleurette’s fancy: oriental patterns of peacock flowers and water lilies, lengths of purple silk embroidered with Napoleon’s gold bees, dizzyingly tiny prints of miniature roses, sheer emerald-colored chiffon, polka-dotted satin, georgette and crêpe de Chine, and velvet and silk in whatever yardage and hue she could charge on the account that Constance kept for her at Schoonmaker’s.
With Norma now in custody of the household ledger, it was incumbent upon Constance to hold a little back from her weekly pay and to distribute it among the various merchants around town to whom Fleurette was indebted. In addition to the dry goods and clothiers, there was a ribbon shop where they knew her by name, a shoe store that kept a supply of beaded slippers in her size alone, and a millinery that should have hung her portrait in the window, in honor of its benefactress. They could not all be paid at once, but Constance managed to put a little toward each in turn, and to save a few extra coins and bills in a tin box in her dresser (where, she mistakenly believed, Fleurette wouldn’t know about it) in case funds were needed and Norma refused to relinquish them. These extra expenses put a strain on their finances, but Constance seemed to enjoy sharing a secret with Fleurette, and Fleurette couldn’t think of a reason to deny her the pleasure.
With so much finery around them, it was nothing but an adventure for Fleurette and Helen to pin together their costumes. They didn’t dare rehearse the song at home for fear of being overheard—the sewing room was one of those awkward windowless chambers so often situated off the parlors of old country homes, originally intended as a fainting room, a place to lay out the dead, or some other antiquated purpose—so they were forced to run far out into the shorn and snow-covered hay meadow to sing and to choreograph their dance.
But the day had been too bleak and miserable to rehearse out-of-doors. They were far more content indoors, and found themselves making all sorts of plans for their future as two of May Ward’s Dresden Dolls.
“Have there always only been eight of them?” Helen asked.
“As far as I know, but I think May Ward will want more Dolls when she sees us. I’ll be the ninth and you can be the tenth,” Fleurette said.
“But the other eight already have their parts. They hardly need two extra, except for the chorus.”
“They’ll write new parts for us.” Fleurette stood and tucked another ruffle into her skirt, raising the hem halfway to her knee. She wondered idly if it was possible to rig up some kind of cord that would raise the skirt when she left home and lower it again when she returned, like the canvas blinds in a shop window.
Helen watched her from the little embroidered stool where she sat. “I don’t know how you persuaded them to let you join the troupe. My father would never agree to it. I had to promise him that I was only going through the pretense of auditioning because you wanted to put on a duet.”