George nodded deferentially. “Yes, ma’am,” he said again, giving her a little bit of a bow. He grinned at Vivian as he walked to the door. “Just business, girlie. No hard feelings, I hope?”
Vivian took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to let herself be afraid anymore. “Four times.”
He paused. “What was that?” he demanded. Behind him, even Hattie looked puzzled.
“We met four times, not three.” Vivian knew she should have kept her mouth shut, but she couldn’t let him leave thinking he had won. She was tired of folks looking at her and seeing fear. She lifted her chin and tapped one finger against her temple, the spot where he still had the shadow of a nasty bruise. “How’s your head, George?”
It took him raising his hand to his own head to realize what she meant. Then his face darkened. “Why, you little b—”
“I said that’s enough.” This time Hattie Wilson’s voice cracked out like a whip, and her bully boy subsided instantly. “You’re done here.”
“No hard feelings, I hope?” Vivian couldn’t help one last taunt as he reached the door, thrilled to be ending the exchange with something like the upper hand.
He turned back, one hand resting on the doorknob, and glared like he wanted to wring her neck. Then he laughed. “Just business,” he agreed. “Maybe we’ll meet a fifth time to discuss it.”
“Peachy,” Vivian said, too quickly, glad her voice didn’t crack on the word. She made herself keep smiling as he left, though her expression grew wary as she turned to Mrs. Wilson.
They eyed each other. Vivian wondered how she had missed how far the other woman’s hardness, her flinty determination, went. Hattie Wilson might have been a debutante, but she knew something about surviving in a dangerous world.
She was also already moving on, standing up and closing the curtains behind her. “Well, don’t stand there looking smug, get the dresses out. You’ll need to fit these ones—they were made from my measurements on file.”
She was already unbuttoning her day dress with careless immodesty, and Vivian scrambled to catch up with the sudden change of topic. Her hands were shaking as she laid the two dresses out over the lounging sofa that took up one side of the room. Half of her wanted to rush out of the room, far away from the dangerous woman in front of her. The other half, the one that wanted to show she couldn’t be scared into submission, kept her feet firmly in place. But it wasn’t until she was on her knees pinning the hem that she got up the courage to speak.
“Guess you sent them after me because I asked too many questions that first time?”
“Yes.” Hattie Wilson glanced down. “And since you work at the Nightingale.”
“I don’t work there,” Vivian said. “Just dance.”
“And you just got curious all of a sudden about the man who died there?” Hattie asked, plainly skeptical.
Vivian bit her lip, wondering for a moment how much to admit. “I was the one who found your husband,” she said at last. “In that alley, after Roy shot him.”
“What do you know about Roy?” Hattie asked, the iron back in her voice.
Slowly, Vivian sat back on her heels and unwound the scarf from her neck. She didn’t look away as Hattie took in the bruises it had been hiding.
“You were the girl he attacked last night. You shot him?”
“Someone else did.”
“Well, sorry about that.” Hattie shrugged, stepping aside to pull off the dress and toss it over a chair. “That one’s fine, hand me the next.”
Vivian hid a flare of anger at seeing the beautiful garment flung aside and did as she was told. “Guess you were the commissioner’s interested party, then, who was so curious about how Willard Wilson died?”
“He was my husband,” Hattie said, tugging the black-and-gray day dress over her head. She shimmied a little to settle it over her hips and shoulders. “And it’s bad for business if folks think someone got away with killing him. Never dreamed Roy would have the nerve to shoot anyone, though.”
“I saw him coming out of the alley that night,” Vivian said quietly. “At first I thought he had been the one to take over, and that’s why he was sending George and Eddie after me. Then I realized he just had a secret he needed to hide.”
Hattie laughed. “Roy, take over the business? Even if he had the brains for it, I never would have let him. Willard may have been a monster, but he built a nice little empire. I’d have been a fool to let anyone else get their hands on it.” She frowned, twitching a little. “Are there still pins in this one? Something’s scratching my hip.”
Vivian knelt in front of her to check, thinking that Mags had been right. Hattie Wilson was completely cold, at least where anyone but her sister was concerned. Her careful fingers skimmed across Hattie’s hips and belly, searching for any stray pins—and that’s when she realized that something was wrong.
Vivian let her hands fall, staring at the other woman in astonishment. “You’re not pregnant.”
Hattie took a step back, her face suddenly pale. “What?”
Vivian’s mind raced. There were any number of explanations: that Hattie had lost the baby, that the gossip writers had been mistaken. But Vivian remembered seeing Myrtle during her last visit, that moment when she had been silhouetted against the window. There had been something odd about the girl that caught her eye. Just like there had been something odd about the reactions in the Wilson household whenever she mentioned the younger sister.
