“Yes, of course.”
“Good, because Hannah and I have been thinking you ought to come around again. It’s been a long time. I think maybe since you were shot.”
It had been exactly that long, but Roen did not confirm it. “You and Hannah think too much. It can’t be good for you.”
“What? Oh, you’re funnin’ me again.”
“I’m not sure I am. Regardless, I am not showing up at your house again uninvited.”
“I invited you.”
Roen clarified, “The invitation needs to come from your mother.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen. She says she doesn’t have a lot of use for company, even when it’s the minister.”
“That’s my point, Clay. I’m not going to trespass on your mother’s privacy.”
Clay sighed heavily and plowed his fingers through his coal black hair. “This is a conundrum worse than any problem you ever gave me.”
Roen didn’t laugh because he knew Clay was serious, but he couldn’t stop his lips from twitching. He cleared his throat and tamped down his smile. “I can’t fix your conundrum, but I can give you a harder problem.”
•••
Three days later, Clay’s conundrum became Roen’s when he received a telegram from Victorine Headley while he was enjoying a late lunch at the Butterworth. He gave young Frankie Fuller a nickel for delivering it and hoped the boy hadn’t heard him swear under his breath when he saw who it was from. Except for him, Deputy Hitch Springer, who was waiting for a tray to take back to the jail, and an older couple in town for their daughter’s wedding, the hotel’s dining room was deserted. Roen was aware the arrival of the telegram brought attention to his table. “Business,” he said in response to their inquiring stares. He said it so matter-of-factly that he almost believed it himself. He waited until the others were no longer looking in his direction before he opened it. The message was brief and everything he feared.
FOUND YOU STOP ARRIVING WEDS STOP
Obviously she had found him. The telegram delivery confirmed that. Victorine wanted to underscore her triumph. She’d switched weapons, abandoned her palm pistol in favor of driving a knife in his back.
Wednesday. If he could believe her, she was going to arrive on Wednesday, but that was a very big “if.” The best he could hope for was that she was merely funnin’ him and wouldn’t arrive at all. It strained his thinking to imagine her in Frost Falls. She lived on Fifth Avenue north of Fiftieth Street in an impressive—some would say imperious—gray stone mansion overlooking Central Park. The whole of the Butterworth Hotel, grand by Frost Falls standards, was not much bigger than the coach house at the back of the property. Where on earth did she imagine she would be staying?
Victorine came from transportation money. First, shipping. Later, railroads. Her father was rumored to be investing in the development of automobiles though no one had ever seen him ride in one of the horseless carriages. Their popularity was still a novelty, but Roen suspected that if the rumors were true, Victor Headley’s interest would take the automobile from novelty to necessity. Victorine’s father was no one’s fool.
It was Victor Headley who had introduced Roen to his daughter. Reluctantly, Roen thought now. Victorine had forced the introduction when she sailed into her father’s study and interrupted negotiations on the contract Victor was proposing to Roen. “This is why I don’t like to work at home,” Victor had said, but because he smiled warmly at his daughter as he said it, Roen thought he had a father’s happy tolerance for the intrusion. He learned later that he was under a misapprehension. Victor Headley suffered his only child’s presence but did not embrace it. According to Victorine, that warm, welcoming smile was for Roen’s benefit.
Recalling that she had been in his bed when she offered that explanation, Roen knew why he had found it easy to believe. The shot that nearly unmanned him made him question everything. Sighing, he folded the telegram and slipped it inside his jacket. He looked down at his plate. He’d finished only half the serving of chicken and gravy over biscuits, and now the whole of it appeared to be congealing in a cold, unappetizing fashion. No longer hungry, he pushed the plate away and leaned back in his chair.
“You don’t like it, Mr. Shepard?”
Roen’s head snapped up. He’d been staring at the pattern of cabbage roses on the far wall. Fedora put him in mind of ahummingbird the way she seemed to hover beside his table. She watched him, her dark eyes wary. Nothing about that had changed since she’d first waited on him. Roen thought if he moved unexpectedly, she would dart away. “I liked it just fine, Miss Chen, but I’m done. Please extend my compliments to Mrs. Vandergrift. I’d like a beer, though, no more coffee.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” She cleared the table.
Roen anticipated that she would leave then. When she didn’t, he slowly raised a questioning eyebrow. He watched her take a breath, pause, then take another before she found the courage to speak.
“Is he looking this way?” She mouthed the words more than whispered them.
It could only be the deputy or the man sitting with his wife to whom she was referring. Roen casually let his gaze roam without focusing on any of the occupants. Hitchcock Springer was certainly looking this way. In answer to Fedora’s question, he nodded. For the life of him, he couldn’t tell if she was pleased or disturbed.
“Thank you. I’ll bring your beer.”
Roen watched her make a graceful turn and dart away. The deputy’s eyes followed her. If Hitchcock Springer wasn’t lovesick, then Roen needed a new word for what he was seeing. He wondered if he had ever looked at Victorine like that. He didn’t think so. She’d never provoked that feeling in him, and he would wager everything he had that it had been the same for her. There was mutual attraction, some shared interests, and a reciprocated need for companionship. None of it justified a proposal. He never once entertained the idea of marrying her, and he would have sworn it was not something she wanted either, yet when he ended their arrangement, she spoke as if marriage was exactly what she expected. He knew she had been unfaithful; she didn’t deny it. It was the odd sense of relief that he felt that told him it was time to step away.
It came to him gradually that Victorine Headley wasn’t who he thought she was, though in fairness, perhaps she would say the same of him. He began to understand that she was attracted to him in part because he was working for her father. She was the princess and he was the help. Over time he also recognized there were no common interests. She pretended toshare his enjoyment for walking or skating in the park, milling with the artists in Greenwich and the rabble in the Bowery, or sailing on the Hudson, in which she was expected to help with the sails. He, on the other hand, made no secret of the fact that he did not like fancy dress balls, theater openings, or dinners with fifteen courses and fifty people at the table. He went because it was important to her. She was headstrong and spoiled and had a dog-in-the-manger view of people and things. Once she laid claim to someone or something, what became important was that no one else had it.
She’d aimed her gun at him only after she’d learned he’d gone riding in Central Park with Mary Ellen Glidden. His arrangement with Victorine had ended three weeks earlier, but Roen had time to reflect on what she’d done while he was convalescing in his parents’ home. He came to understand that Victorine had merely bided her time in anticipation of an opportunity. Mary Ellen Glidden was the catalyst for revenge. The whole affair was tawdry enough that his brother was contemplating using it in his next book.
From time to time, Roen wondered if he should have reported the incident to the police instead of arriving at the hospital with the claim that he’d shot himself while cleaning his pistol. No one questioned him so he stayed with his story. The hospital doctors and matrons were familiar with his family, the talent and the eccentricities, and that was enough to assure that he was believed. Hadn’t his mother once shot a blank canvas when she couldn’t find inspiration? And his father had severed the head of a sculpture nearing completion with such passion that bits of flying marble embedded in his forehead, cheek, and neck. Artemis flew at her second husband with a barber’s razor during a rehearsal ofFigaro, and the poor man required thirteen stitches in his arm.
