“He likes to win cases.”
Sheriff Heath was sorting through a box of mail and tossing letters at her. She had only to glance at the postmarks to see that they came from the usual far-flung places where her admirers lived: Pie Town, New Mexico; Burden, Kansas; and Chance, South Dakota. Norma would answer them, and all the others that were sure to follow, as the loneliest men in the world read about her gold-plated badge.
Sheriff Heath said, “I don’t suppose Miss Davis had anything more to say on the way to the reformatory.”
It wasn’t easy for Constance to keep the truth to herself, but she thought it in the girl’s best interests. She said, “What could she possibly tell me? She wasn’t held against her will or misled, except for the promise of marriage that went unfulfilled, but you already know about that.”
“Mr. Courter would like to know how Anthony Leo convinced her to go off with him in the first place. Was she drugged? Does she remember a handkerchief going over her mouth, or a powder being slipped into a drink?”
“Of course not!”
“Then how did it happen?”
“Are you asking me why a girl would give up her factory job and the bed she shares with her sister to run away with a handsome man on a river-boat?”
He made a face at that and put his letters down. “It’s the prosecutor asking these questions, not me. But I wouldn’t mind knowing why a girl would give up a decent home for a furnished room rented under a false name, and an empty promise to go along with it.”
“Her parents are very strict. I saw it myself. A girl like that—she starts to earn a little money, and she doesn’t want to hand it all over to her father. She wants something for herself, in exchange for all the work she’s putting in down at the factory. Something that belongs to her. She doesn’t want to live her whole life for her parents.”
Constance had to fight a little shudder as she said it. Who was she talking about, Minnie or Fleurette?
“She could get married,” the sheriff said.
“She tried to.”
“She didn’t try very hard.”
“All right,” Constance said with a sigh. “I can’t explain sixteen-year-old girls to you. What’s to become of her?”
“It’s Mr. Courter’s idea that if Minnie won’t cast herself as the victim, he’ll decide that she went willingly into a life of depravity, and formally sentence her to the reformatory. He’ll try to make an example out of her.”
“She doesn’t belong there. It’ll ruin her.”
“She’s sixteen years old and she ran away from home. That’s exactly the sort of girl who goes to a reformatory.”
“But Edna Heustis ran away from home and no one sent her away.”
“Miss Heustis was found working at a steady job and living in a good Christian home, or at least that’s what you told me.”
“Yes, and Miss Heustis had a chance to make her case in front of a judge. Minnie deserves the same.”
“Are you going to argue in favor of releasing a sixteen-year-old girl, with no assurances as to her welfare? Even Judge Seufert won’t go along with that. If she hasn’t already been taking favors from men, she’ll fall into it easily enough. She’d have no other prospects and no one to look out for her.”
Sheriff Heath finished his sorting of the mail and dropped another stack in front of Constance. “Besides, John Courter’s running for my office. He thinks a few cases like this will put him on the side of all that is good and righteous in Bergen County.”
“He wants to be sheriff?”
“I thought you knew.”
“I knew he was running for office. I didn’t know he wanted to be sheriff.” She felt considerably deflated at the prospect of having to watch John Courter campaign against Sheriff Heath and toss insults at him, although she had no doubt that Sheriff Heath would win. Nor did she think she could persuade Mr. Courter to do the good and decent thing for Minnie Davis and drop the charges.
“Talk to her parents again,” Sheriff Heath said. “She’s going home or she’s going to the state home. Put it to them like that, and try to get them to think sensibly about it.”
“I’m not sure the Davises go in for sensible thinking, but I’ll try. I should check up on Edna, too.”
“Go ahead.”
She took up her stack of letters, and then she saw it.
A postcard from Fleurette.
38
By now you know it, or if you don’t, you’re no kind of detective at all. I’ve gone off with May Ward & Dresden Dolls—I’m now quite the doll myself—know all the songs & am learning the dance steps—This is the kind of life I love and you know it—not to worry, there is a Mrs. Ironsides and a Mr. Impediment to keep us straight, and they do, usually—
F.
“This doesn’t tell us a thing,” Norma muttered.
Constance sat at the writing desk in their parlor. Norma stood over her and peered at the postcard through her ill-fitting steel-rimmed spectacles.
“It tells us that she has a chaperone, and that she’s keeping busy with work that she enjoys. What else would you have her tell us?”
Norma shook her head. “There’s something about this Bernstein. You’re too trusting of him.”
“I’m not trusting of him at all! He proposed turning my life into a moving picture, and told us how to run our own household, and what we ought to think of him, and how we ought to regard Fleurette, as if he knows a thing about her. But I don’t have to trust Freeman Bernstein, as long as I trust Fleurette.”
“Well, don’t try to tell me that you trust her,” Norma said. “This is the girl who ran away without so much as a word of good-bye. What would you think if I did that?”
Constance found the idea momentarily cheering, but didn’t say so. Instead she looked up at Norma, who was still standing over her, waiting for an answer, and said, “She’s always wanted to be on the stage. If we weren’t going to allow it, we should’ve told her before now. She’s having the time of her life, and it isn’t our place to stop her.”
THE EIGHT DRESDEN DOLLS usually slept four to a room, which meant two to a bed. With Fleurette added to the company they now slept three to a room, a state of unexpected luxury that had the effect of ingratiating Fleurette to the entire company.
She had, of course, paid the cost of the third room, at the rate of a dollar a night, although there was no discussion of her having it to herself. Charlotte and Eliza eagerly volunteered to share the room with her. There was likewise no debating the sleeping arrangements: they each took a bed, and Fleurette slept on a cot.
“You’re the smallest,” Eliza said. “Look at how perfectly that little cot fits you!”