The Last Time I Saw Paris (2 page)

“Now, Davis.”

“Yes, Mrs. Stone. Ring the bell should you require anything.” He pulled the door shut behind him.

The visitor’s sour mouth turned down as he examined Claire. “My, my Clara May. Don’t you look fancy.”

“Bernard. What do you want?”

“I saw you in the paper, read about your fancy sham pedigree and your rich husband.” He sneered at her thin dress, the creamy skin that glimmered in the moonlight. “I got a little something for you.”

Her jaw clenched. She’d had plenty from him and his sweaty obsessions years ago. She reached for the door.

“It’s a letter from your family. Your real family.”

Claire crossed her arms in front of her. It wasn’t possible. Not after eleven years.

Bernard pulled out a tattered envelope and flashed rotted teeth in a caricature of the smile he plied on her father’s doorstep years ago. “I’ve carried it a long way. Maybe you could spare a little something for my effort?”

She examined him. A bum, but there were vultures inside who would pick his story apart. And a goddamn reporter and photographer. “Fine. I’ll be right back. Don’t speak to anyone.” She turned toward the door.

He grabbed her arm. “I don’t believe you, Clara May. You have a habit of leaving me behind. I remember where you keep your money.” His gaze fell to her breasts.

Claire yanked her arm free. The bastard was right. Old insecurities died hard. She fished out the folded bills tucked in her cleavage. Bernard snatched the money, his face greedy. Claire slipped the letter inside her dress.

He leered at her and rubbed a dirty hand against his crotch. “I still got my Studebaker. I’ll give you a ride anywhere you like.”

“Get out.”

He crowded her against the door, his bulk blocking out the night. The stench nearly overwhelmed her. “That’s a pretty necklace you got. You wouldn’t want anyone in there to find out what you really are, Clara May Wagner. I might just go tell them where you come from.”

A latch clicked behind them.

Russell Stone towered in the doorway, cigar clenched in his mouth. Going on fifty, his powerful physical presence made him look younger. His silk tuxedo didn’t disguise the hardness won from the street. “Who’s this, Claire?” Russell’s eyes were on Bernard.

“You the husband? I got something to tell you about this one.”

Russell took a deep pull on his cigar as he stepped between them. In one movement, he flicked the cigar into the darkness and swung a meaty fist at Bernard’s jaw. The man crumpled onto the sidewalk, blood pouring from his face. With the toe of a polished shoe, Russell flicked him off the bricks and into the grass.

A gasp came from the doorway where Davis stood wide-eyed.

“Clean up this mess, Davis.” Russell reached for Claire.

His grip dug into her arm as he led her toward the party. She struggled to build a lie. A friend of her eccentric uncle’s. A charity case. A crazy drunk.

“Take the Germans to my study. I want them softened, understand? I’ll give you an hour.” He straightened her necklace and prodded the diamond pendant with a thick finger; the force pushed Claire back a step. “Take better care of that.”

Claire hid a wince as he jerked her through the doorway.

Flora met them just inside the ballroom. “Oh, how wonderful. Mr. Stone has arrived. We must have a photo of the darling couple.” A smile and a flash.

Russell’s hand enveloped Flora’s thin fingers in greeting. “Mrs. Foster, we are so pleased you joined our little soiree tonight, hosted by my talented and beautiful wife.”

Claire offered her cheek for a perfunctory kiss from the adoring husband.

As Flora walked away, Russell faced Claire. He stroked her lips with skinned knuckles. “That grifter called you Clara May Wagner. Funny you responded, isn’t it, Claire Harris? Or maybe I should call you Clara too?” His hand moved down her arm, stopping to dig a thumbnail into the soft skin inside her elbow. She flinched. “Maybe you need to join him in the gutter, huh?”

Her throat constricted as she watched him stride into the crowd at the center of the ballroom. Russell didn’t tolerate disloyalty from any of his crew. Not at all. She picked a glass from the silver tray of a passing waiter and took a long drink, allowing the cold bubbles to wash the knot down her throat. His dealings with the Germans would take a few hours. She’d find a way to cover this up. She had to.

 

 

V
on Richter and his business partner, Heimler Merkel, stood together near the fireplace, heads bent together in conversation. If von Richter was the playboy, Merkel was the accountant. A grey little man in his sixties, silently noting every gay laugh, kiss and toast. Claire imagined a tally sheet in his breast pocket.
Bottles of champagne, twenty four.

A partygoer in a tuxedo wobbled over to the fireplace to face von Richter. Holding himself up with an arm slung across the mantel, he swung an empty glass in his free hand.

Claire cringed as she overheard the man mutter
Nazis
. She straightened the seams of her Schiaparelli gown, traced fingers over her necklace and sauntered toward them.

His voice dropped to a piercing whisper. “They say they’re going to invade France or England next.”

Claire slid in next to von Richter, hooked her arm in his. “Alby, darling, are you going to attack those Parisian clubs you were telling me about?”

The thin scar on his chin curled as he smirked and slid his hand out of view down her backside. “I already have,
Fraulein
, many times.”

“Russell sends his regrets for his tardiness. He’ll meet you in his study shortly. May I pull you gentlemen away from our festivities?”

 

 

T
he dim light of the study revealed heavy chairs gathered around a fireplace and leather-bound books in mahogany shelves from ceiling to floor. Russell’s immense desk faced the door.

“Your husband must be quite a scholar,” von Richter said as Claire shut the door behind them, bottle of scotch and three glasses in her hand.

“So it seems.” Claire waved Merkel and von Richter into chairs as she poured. She sat on the arm of von Richter’s chair, curving against his side. “Alby, darling, tell me about Paris.”

 

 

T
he bottle was empty and the last revelers were being poured into waiting cars when Russell materialized. Von Richter clumsily disentangled Claire from his lap. Merkel swayed as he stood. Russell appeared not to notice and apologized for the delay. Claire bid the men good night and blew von Richter a kiss as she closed the door behind her. With that performance, those Germans should buy Russell’s steel at top dollar. Not that the success would pay for Russell’s mercy. But it would give her more time.

 

 

T
he upper floor was quiet; gold-leaf sconces radiated ovals of light through the hallway. Claire shut her bedroom door and slumped onto a velvet stool facing her mirrored vanity. She frowned at her pale reflection and smoothed the dark honey curl over her right brow. A fresh coat of lipstick was drawn over her full lips and mascara combed onto thick lashes, but her deep blue eyes were hard as images careened through her mind.

She was sixteen when she met Bernard R. Morris. That was how he introduced himself as he stood on her porch in a pressed shirt and tie, his hair slicked back with pomade. She stepped out to get a better look; no one had come to their Oklahoma farm in so long.

Clara May, as she was called then, had been up for days, soothing Mama’s gaunt face with a wet cloth, washing her wasted body, cooking anything she could scrounge up into a broth in hopes Mama would eat. Clara begged her to accept even a sip of water, but her mother’s cracked mouth stayed closed.
Tired, so tired,
was all Mama would say. Tired of living, Clara thought she meant, or what passed for living on that dried-up land. And so Mama starved and withered in Clara’s weary arms while Pa and her brothers worked the farm, only coming inside at night to sleep and be fed.

Seeing another soul that morning made Clara come alive. Bernard was clean-shaven with a thin moustache and smelled like warm wood. He looked her up and down and stepped close. Selling Bibles all the way from New York City.

Three days later the musty scent of death settled over the dusty farmhouse, and Mama’s rough-hewn casket was laid out across the worn table in the middle of the room. Her brothers, Hank and Willy, stood heads down, their meaty hands folded in front of them. Pa seethed silently behind Clara’s shoulder. To him, Mama’s death was a personal insult, just like the drought. Clara stepped forward and fingered the jagged edge of the coffin rim, breathing in the sharp tang of freshly cut pine.

She felt Pa’s hard gaze digging into her back. “If you can’t stand here like a proper daughter and honor your Ma, Clara May, you get back in that kitchen.”

There was no need for Clara to look inside the casket. She’d dressed Mama in that sky-blue dress she favored, combed her thin hair into a bun, tucked a faded yellow flower into her top buttonhole. Though Clara felt a piece had been torn from inside her, from her aching stomach to her burning eyes, she knew there wasn’t even any need to cry. Her mother wasn’t really in there anymore. Mama had escaped Pa’s temper and the farm the only way she could.

A burst of heat burned away the pain in Clara’s heart. There
had
to be more to look forward to than dying. She needed more.

It had only been two long steps to the screen door. Three short miles to town and Mrs. Johnson’s boardinghouse, where that handsome Bible salesman was loading up to head back to New York City. Clara left town that night in the front seat of a Studebaker with Bernard’s hand on her knee.

 

 

T
he sting of the long-buried pain pulled Claire back to the present. She took a deep breath and fished inside her gown for the letter. Thick fingers had painstakingly printed
Clara May Wagner, New York City
.

Claire could recognize Willy’s heavy-handed print anywhere. She had worked on it with him, their heads bent close over a flickering candle the winter after he quit school to help Pa. She felt a familiar pang as she remembered the soft smile lighting his sweet eyes when she’d praised his careful lettering in front of Mama. But by the following winter, when he had time to practice again, he had given up the idea of learning.

She carefully smoothed the letter open against the vanity’s lacquered surface.

Claire stared into the mirror’s reflection, the letter gripped in numb hands.

Gone. The past she had worked so hard to escape had disintegrated on its own. She couldn’t scrape together any sympathy for Pa. Any strained bond they might have shared died long ago with Mama. The farm—well, it was just a dirt hellhole that swallowed up lives. Maybe Willy and Hank could have a life now. She’d send money to help.

I hope New York City is as pretty as you wanted.
Claire examined the room surrounding her. The glitter of the Venetian chandelier reflected off the white Italian marble floors and lacquered furniture. The best money could buy, a room of her own, designed for a woman of her standing. But also a crypt, a mausoleum filled with finery. As cold and empty as her insides.

Heavy footsteps lumbered down the hall. Claire listened, breath held. A high-pitched giggle, the steps continued, a door opened and closed. Air drained from her chest. Russell had once again found himself one of the serving girls they’d hired for the night. Good. A few hours reprieve, then.

Clara May Wagner.
Still, with his connections, Russell would uncover everything tomorrow. The blue-blooded wife he’d married to claim a glimmer of respectability was a fraud. A destitute farmer’s daughter.

Bernard received just the tip of Russell’s anger. Claire had made a fool out of him for the past five years. He wouldn’t let her stay, not now. But his reputation was on the line. He couldn’t afford to drag her through the mud; he’d be exposed too.

He’d make her disappear.

She fought to breathe. The walls were cracking around her. Claire Harris Stone was exposed. Lost.

Her eyes focused on a black-and-white photo tucked in the corner of the mirror. A quiet garden scene, artfully captured, no larger than a snapshot. A gift from Laurent during their final afternoon together, months ago. Before her lover returned to Paris. Alone.

The beating of her heart sparked a warmth in her chest that spread through her body. She pulled the photo from the frame, caressed the crisp paper with her fingers.

Lost, or could this mean free?

The word fluttered inside her. She glided to the painting hanging next to her bed. In a massive portrait, nearly life-size, Russell leaned against a fireplace, a bulky elbow resting on a stone mantelpiece.

Claire smirked up at his glaring face. “Have you enjoyed guarding your wife’s bed and her so very valuable jewels, Russell darling?”

She tugged on the right edge of the carved frame. The painting swung away from the wall, revealing a locked safe. The walls might be cracking, but she was going to kick them down.

A single phone call, a flurry of packing, and Claire slipped downstairs. Emptied of guests and staff hired for the night, the house was dark and still. She crept into the shadowed kitchen, padding toward the door.