The Impersonator (7 page)

But the show was over. There was no turning back now. Ring down the curtain. Applause, applause for Jessie Carr.

9

That milestone was but the first on the road to riches, and while gratified by my success, I knew it was not yet time to pop a champagne cork.

I returned to the Grande Hotel to find my room had been searched during my absence. The signs were subtle but unmistakable to someone who had prepared for it. I dropped my hat and gloves on the bed, kicked off my shoes, and surveyed the premises. The two drawers I had left not quite closed were shut tight, the clothes hanging in my closet had shifted as pockets were searched, and the suitcase I had positioned in the corner precisely between two purple flowers on the carpet now sat directly on top of one of those blossoms.

The intrusion caused me no alarm. The trustees had hired someone to scour my belongings for clues while I was away. He had found nothing. There was nothing to find. Only one thing could harm me, one item that would, in the wrong hands, utterly destroy our plans. My most precious possession—the collection of publicity photos and playbills from my mother’s career and my own early years.

I knew back in Cleveland that I should destroy the lot, but I could no more have done that than I could take an innocent life. They were all I had of my mother and of my childhood. I knew I could not keep them with me. Nor could I give them to Oliver to hold. I dared not even remind him of their existence. He was not above destroying them himself if I refused to.

Finally, I had separated out the playbills and pictures of recent vintage to serve as props for my charade, and wrapped the others in plain brown paper. On the front of the package, I wrote a note that read, “Treasured photos and personal papers belonging to Leah Randall. Do not throw away! Please hold until she returns to claim them.” Before leaving Randolph Stouffer’s mansion in Cleveland, I placed the package in a bottom drawer of the desk in his study, a desk that looked as if it hadn’t been disturbed by Mr. Stouffer in years. With any luck, no one would even see the package until I was thoroughly ensconced in my new life and could return to claim them without fear of exposure. I regretted the risk, but life was risk and I was a player.

The trustees had advised me to alter my plans, to go directly to San Francisco to visit my grandmother. As matriarch of the Beckett family, she deserved my first allegiance. From her house I could proceed to the Carr estate near the coastal town of Dexter, Oregon.

My first reaction had been to ignore them. Our plan was for Oliver to stay as far from me as possible so that even the most suspicious mind could find nothing to link us, but a little reflection brought me around. The most difficult part of this deception would be convincing those who knew Jessie best—the aunt and the cousins—that I was Jessie reincarnate. How much stronger would my claim be if I arrived having already won the recognition of the trustees as well as my grandmother and uncle? I would appear at the Carr estate a veritable fait accompli.

So I had dutifully deferred to the trustees and accepted Mr. Wade’s offer to send a wire to my grandmother and arrange a short visit to San Francisco the next day. That was when Mr. Wade informed me that my uncle Oliver happened to be staying with her.

“I’ll be glad to see Uncle again,” I said. “He used to visit the house in Dexter often and brought me presents.”

“I’m sure a reminder of some of those presents will convince him of your true identity,” Mr. Wade offered. I thanked him for that excellent idea and for his offer to send a train ticket to my hotel this evening. I had no money, but Mr. Wade seemed disinclined to part with cash.

The afternoon was fine, and I had no desire to spend it cooped up in my room. I would do some window-shopping, enjoy a nice meal at the Grande Hotel, and have a long, hot bath before retiring.

No sooner had I stepped out onto the sidewalk than I felt hostile eyes on my back. It took only a few adjustments in my pace and direction to determine the owner of those eyes—an ordinary-looking man in a brown sack suit and fedora who resembled every other businessman in the capital that day. He was following me.

This gave me the willies. Searching my room was fair play, but I did not appreciate the trustees setting a bloodhound on my trail. I ducked into a lingerie shop, left by a rear door, and continued my stroll in peace. But I was not surprised that when I returned to the hotel a couple hours later, he was there waiting for me, leaning against a lamppost across from the entrance. For all I knew, he intended to follow me to San Francisco, perhaps to Oregon. That I would not tolerate.

I reminded myself that I was trying to appear trustworthy, not arouse anyone’s suspicions. I would have to lose Brown Fedora in a subtle, natural manner. Returning to the privacy of my room, I had my hot bath and ordered up a lovely dinner. After the sun had set, I packed my valise. At the front desk, I found the promised train ticket—a first-class reservation on tomorrow’s 1:10 to San Francisco. Making sure Brown Fedora was still out front, I left the hotel by a side entrance and walked the distance to the train station under cover of darkness, my valise in hand.

A glance at the departures board told me there were no trains to San Francisco tonight.

“Good evening,” I said to the ticket clerk. “I’d like to exchange this ticket for an earlier train. And make it second class, please.”

I left with a reserved seat on tomorrow’s 9:35
A.M.
and a couple of bucks’ refund—enough to pay for a room at one of the cheap hotels that cluster around every train station in America. I crossed the street, checked into the nearest one, and fell asleep.

The following morning I spent my last few coins on a cup of coffee, a cold roll, and a copy of the morning
Sacramento Union
to read on the trip. It wasn’t until the train had left the station that I looked at the front page. My original hotel, the Grande Hotel, had caught fire last night. They were still counting the bodies.

10

I arrived at the Southern Pacific station in San Francisco where I found a line of taxis waiting outside the Third Street entrance. I knew the city from having performed in several of its theaters as a child with my mother. I remembered it as a brash town that wore its gaudy glamour on the surface like greasepaint on an actor’s face. Mother and I had not stepped far beyond the theater district, so the San Francisco I was about to experience—the tame residential portion—was entirely new to me.

Fog had not yet drawn its curtain over the city as we drove through the privileged neighborhood of Pacific Heights. Its streets were lined with mansions built to outdo their predecessors on Nob Hill in size and luxury. I gaped at the exuberant architecture, the widow’s walks, turrets, bulging bay windows, French chateaux, columned porticos, and fanciful Victorian gingerbread, some of which I recognized from Oliver’s picture books.

“Here we are, miss,” said the driver as he stopped the car. He carried my valise to the door and waited for the maid to fetch my fare.

My grandmother Beckett’s modest house reminded me that it was the Carr side of Jessie’s family that had been blessed with money, not the Becketts. A plain, older Victorian home squashed between overweening upstarts, my grandmother’s house sat back from the curb, a proud survivor of the horrendous San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and a remnant of a less ostentatious era. I remembered Oliver saying that the old lady was all that stood between it and the wrecking ball.

As Oliver had instructed, I called her Grandmother. She was as he had described, cold and inscrutable. I didn’t mind a bit. The very idea of having a grandmother intrigued me. I thought she was fascinating.

She gave me a searching look before presenting her cheek to kiss. It was dry and powdery and smelled of lavender. Her white hair wound in a bun on the back of her head. She looked me over slowly and silently. Her face was like a plaster death mask. I could read nothing from it. Had I passed her inspection?

“Do come into the parlor, Jessie. Ruth will take your things upstairs.”

“Will I have the usual room?” I asked, eager to prove myself.

She looked puzzled. “Which room is that?”

“The blue room in the back. Where I used to stay when I came with Mother and Father.”

“Oh, did you? Yes, that’s right … the blue room … No, dear, Oliver is in that room. You may have the guest room on the third floor. Your young legs will manage the stairs. Ruth, take Jessie’s things up and then ask Delia to bring tea into the parlor. Be sure she includes some of those scones that Oliver likes.”

“Is there any of Delia’s queen’s cake? It was always my favorite!”

“Don’t try so hard, Jessie. I would not mistake my own granddaughter, even after seven years. We believe you. Ah, here’s Oliver.”

At last! I desperately needed some time alone with Oliver to tell him about the hotel fire, but Grandmother showed no sign of leaving us alone, even for a minute. We had a touching reunion where he exclaimed over the lovely young lady I had grown into, and I remarked how the years hadn’t changed him at all. We retired to the parlor where I blinked in surprise to see several of the photos I had studied only last week displayed on tables draped with Irish lace. There were so many framed photographs, I understood how Oliver had managed to borrow some of them without his mother noticing. I vowed to examine them all carefully as soon as I had some time to myself. I wanted to learn everything I could about Jessie, and the simplest way seemed to be through her photographs.

Warmed by a cheerful fire, I covered up my impatience with a calm outward manner. We spoke of the weather and the approaching elections. Coolidge had received the Republican nomination for president last month. The Democrats had chosen an obscure West Virginian. “No one I have talked to has heard anything about John Davis,” said Oliver, who expressed his assurance that President Coolidge would win a second term. “You will be twenty-one by the time of the November election,” he added. “I trust your first ballot will be cast for a Republican?”

I said I hadn’t given it much thought. “Politics is not a game vaudeville plays. Performers are constantly on the move, and without a permanent legal residence, they can’t register to vote.”

“Now that you have a permanent home, you’ll want to break that tradition,” Oliver said. “Decent people need to cast their ballots, or the democratic process will be overwhelmed by the self-serving votes of the ignorant rabble.”

I assured him that I would vote as he did himself, putting the welfare of the country before personal, selfish interests. His eyes narrowed in warning.

Grandmother made clear her disapproval of female suffrage, granted only four years ago. It was not ladylike to vote, and she would not demean herself by pushing into an election hall crowd to cast a ballot for some man she hadn’t even been introduced to socially. Oddly enough, she encouraged me to do that very thing. “Voting is for young people who have a stake in the future.”

It seemed like hours passed before Grandmother retired for her afternoon nap. Finally, I could tell Oliver about events in Sacramento!

“How did it go?” he asked as soon as his mother was out of earshot.

“I killed ’em,” I said smugly.

“Don’t get overconfident. Tomorrow I’m going to suggest that Mother go with you to Dexter and stay a week with Victoria and the children. I think she’ll agree if I accompany her, and I’ll allow myself to be persuaded after a little arm-twisting. With the trustees’ backing, and Mother’s and mine, you’ll walk into that house with a presumption of legitimacy.”

“There’s been … Something’s been worrying me. I was staying at the Grande Hotel.” Quickly, I filled him in on the room search, Brown Fedora, and the Grande Hotel fire. Even unflappable Oliver raised his eyebrows at that last bit.

“And you think all this was the work of the same man?”

“I don’t know what to think. Who else but the trustees would have had my room searched? That made sense, and we expected it. But the shadow? Maybe he wasn’t tailing me to see where I was going; maybe he was trying to find a quiet alley where he could knock me in the head.”

“Maybe he was trying to protect you.”

“From what?” Oliver turned up his hands in the universal gesture that meant, Who knows? “So maybe this fella burned down the Grande Hotel. What I can’t figure out is why Mr. Wade or one of the trustees would want Jessie dead. And no one else knew where I was staying, so it had to be one of them. You didn’t know, did you?”

He shook his head. “Severinus Wade has played this close to the chest.”

“No one else knew.”

“Au contraire, my dear. All the trustees might have known, not to mention anyone who worked in Wade’s office. Let me think.”

He stared into the fireplace for several minutes until I grew impatient and interrupted the silence. “I asked myself, why would the trustees want to kill Jessie? If they thought I was an imposter, they would have called the police. But no, they believed me. They were delighted I’d come home.”

“They damn well should have been. They’ve made fat fees for the past seven years managing Carr Industries, and when Jessie inherits, they’ll be able to continue their service. The Carr brothers were certain to terminate them and run the company themselves, but you couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“A woman can’t run a big company,” he said sneeringly.

“What if one of the trustees has been skimming funds and needs to cover up his crime?”

“By killing Jessie? Hardly. The truth is, all of the trustees are probably helping themselves to extras. So what? You aren’t equipped to expose them. They aren’t worried about you.”

He considered the circumstances a while longer, then pronounced his conclusion. “The fire was a coincidence. A lucky break for me—you might have been killed if you hadn’t checked out. The newspaper said it started in the kitchen, a logical place. There was no mention of arson. The man following you was probably the same one who searched your room, by order of Severinus Wade, as a precaution. Could even have been a Pinkerton. You said yourself that they were going to hire Pinkertons to investigate. But they know you’ve come here, and they know you’re going to Oregon, so if they want to shadow you, it won’t be hard. We’ll watch for it, but I don’t think it will be a problem.”