Lovey Doll took from her purse a newspaper clipping, and handed it to Leo. He scanned it briefly, recognizing it as a story from the previous week concerning the discovery in New Mexico of a mutilated corpse, its innards strewn around for the buzzards to eat. “Yes, a shocking business, to be sure, but why bring it to my attention, Miss Starr?”
“Because the party responsible for the outrage is without a doubt the same fiend who came from your Grand Mogul mine so very recently with blood upon his hands.”
“Oh, well now, I don’t quite see how we can make such a bold assumption as that, Miss Starr. The fellow who was trapped, Slade, might be anywhere at all. He could have reached New York by now if he chose. It makes small sense to commit further outrages such as this New Mexican incident, when all he needs to do is lay low.”
“A man of sound mind would do exactly that, Mr. Brannan, but it is my belief this Slade person is mad, an animal in the guise of a man. This is his work, I know it, and since he escaped from your mine, don’t you think it would be a responsible act on your part to declare a connection between Slade and the latest outrage, before he quenches his thirst for blood again? Another such attack and the newspapers will certainly draw the conclusion I have shared with you. You must get there ahead of the press, Mr. Brannan, by personally posting a reward for the criminal. Your name alone would stimulate great interest in the affair, and in all likelihood lead to a quick arrest and hanging for the brute. Pardon my forwardness, but you do see the merit of my argument, do you not?”
“Oh, indeed yes. After he disappeared there were stories about his peculiarity of temperament, nothing very far from the ordinary, but in retrospect it may be that he was in actual fact a maniac of some kind. The accepted notion was that he … did what he did solely out of self-preservation, quite disgusting, of course, but understandable under the circumstances. And now you have opened my eyes, Miss Starr, to the fellow’s true nature. This may indeed be his handiwork, and you may very well be correct in assuming there will be other instances before too long.”
Price returned and set down a silver coffee tray.
“Rowland, have you heard what Miss Starr has to say?”
“The latter portion, yes. Milk, Miss Starr?”
“Thank you.”
“And what do you think?”
“I believe Miss Starr has introduced an original slant on a tragedy most of us have been trying to forget.”
“Are you agreeing that she’s right?”
“The point to consider is, if Miss Starr’s theory is sound, her suggestion is masterly. A reward for the capture or death of Slade would reflect well upon the company that inadvertently spawned him.”
“You’re not suggesting that we created the fellow.”
“Not at all, but we can certainly take the lead in eradicating him, can we not?”
Leo recalled the almost jocular tone some newspapers had adopted when it was revealed that he had presented the cannibal with one hundred dollars which undoubtedly was used to facilitate Slade’s escape from Glory Hole. Justice would be served if Miss Starr’s plan was adopted, and every newspaper reader would be made aware of it, thereby expunging any lingering sense of guilt or responsibility Brannan Mining might be perceived as having to account for.
“Miss Starr, I believe you fell onto the platform of my car direct from heaven.”
“Oh, no, Mr. Brannan.” Lovey Doll laughed. “I am an earthly creature to be sure.”
Price assumed Miss Starr would be set down at Leadville and provided with a ticket back to Glory Hole, but Leo seemed quite taken with her company, and chatted in a most cordial fashion with her all the way south to Salida, where once again she was not asked to leave. Price said nothing then, nor when night began to darken the mountains and the car lamps were lit. The chef prepared a dinner for three, at which Leo consumed more wine than usual and laughed aloud at Miss Starr’s many quips and comments. As the hour drew late, Price suggested that their guest might prefer to retire in comfort to the sleeping quarters he was prepared to vacate for her sake, and Miss Starr agreed with many thanks. Price tossed uncomfortably in an armchair until dawn, and was in a less than ebullient mood as breakfast for three was served while the train steamed north along the Front Range, through Colorado Springs to Denver.
Price began to worry once he became aware, when the train reached its destination, that Leo intended seeing more of Miss Starr. Taking Leo to one side, he said, “Are you sure this is wise?”
“Wise? To buy her dinner? Shame on you, Rowland. The lady has brought us a wonderful idea, at considerable risk to herself. Would you have me send her away with nothing more substantial than a thank you for her pains?”
“Miss Starr certainly deserves our gratitude, but Leo, you don’t entertain thoughts of seeing any more of her after tonight, do you?”
“Certainly not. I believe you see yourself as my chaperon sometimes.”
“Please select a restaurant with dim lighting. I suggest a private booth. If word of this perfectly innocent dinner engagement was to be passed around, it would do you no good at all.”
“I’m aware of that, and can assure you no harm will come to anyone. You worry too much.”
“Leo, a man in the public eye can worry too little, but never too much.”
“I shall have it engraved in stone.”
Price’s concern increased over the next two days. Leo escorted Imogen Starr to the theater, and after that to another dinner, this time at a restaurant far more popular among Denver’s elite than the shadowy place where he had dined her on the first evening. He bought her several dresses of expensive cut, insisting that her own had been ruined by exposure to flying particles of soot on the platform of his car. He bought hats to match the dresses, and purses to match the hats, then shoes to match the rest of Imogen’s ensemble. She was a delight to lavish money upon, he said with a smile, and Price felt a chill invade his stomach; Leo was not behaving as he ought to do.
When details of the plan to list a reward of five thousand dollars for the apprehension of the man-eater Slade were made public, Leo attended the declaration with Imogen in tow, and scandal was avoided only by Price’s insistence that she view the proceedings from his side, rather than Leo’s. Imogen obeyed, but Price had glimpsed a tiny spark of angry fire in her eyes as she sat beside him. The look she directed at Leo while he made the announcement to a carefully assembled group of reporters was bright with admiration of the worst kind; Price knew Leo had a smitten woman on his hands. Matters proceeded to worsen when Leo informed Price that Miss Starr would be returning to Glory Hole in Leo’s private car. That was bad enough, but the revelation that Rowland would not accompany them came as a shock.
“Leo, this is madness.… I confess I find myself disturbed by this course of action.”
“I’m aware of your concern, but my mind is made up. The chef will also take another train. We’ll serve ourselves dinner and enjoy each other’s company like civilized people. I must have some moments of personal privacy, Rowland, like any man.”
“As you wish.”
Price decided the matter should not be raised with the Praetorians yet; Leo might well burn the foolishness out of himself on the ride back to Glory Hole, and there the incident could rest, no danger to the man or the political movement Leo had thus far devoted much of his personal time toward. Price was aware of the many marital infidelities transpiring among the wealthy of Denver; the perpetrators were seldom if ever hauled before the court of public opinion to explain themselves, and the betrayed marriages remained marriages, despite the hollowing of their foundations. He supposed something of this nature was bound to occur sooner or later, given that Leo’s wife was not a normal woman. Zoe Brannan’s peculiarities and disfigurement would not in any way keep Leo from the highest public office; in fact, as a tragic figure kept well behind the scenes she might well assist him by way of her reclusiveness. But Imogen Starr was another proposition entirely. Price could see in her the lineaments
of ambition, a yen for importance that Leo unwittingly was feeding, with his dinners and clothing and evenings at the theater. Price had been impressed by the quickness of her mind, but now saw her differently. If Imogen Starr was digging for gold the easy way, he would find her out and reveal to Leo the true face of his paramour. No woman was worth the ruination of a career about to be elevated to a broader plane. Rowland Price promised himself, and Leo, that he would never allow such a thing to happen. Meantime, he would by careful inquiry seek out information on the lady in question.
Afterward, Leo would be able to plot the course of his decline from the moment when he made his impulsive decision to journey with no one but Imogen Starr for a day and a night on the long, boxed route to Glory Hole. That had been the beginning, not Price’s announcement that a woman had climbed onto the private car’s platform and was demanding to see him. At the outset, however, as he and Imogen watched Denver recede from the rear platform of his car, he felt nothing but anticipation of the most agreeable kind racing in his blood. Special champagnes had been loaded aboard, and a supper of cold meats, fresh fruit and sherbet prepared in advance.
Leo could not be sure to what extent Imogen knew what was to follow; she exhibited at first a charmingly coy reluctance to accompany him on the return trip, then had agreed, her cheeks aflame. He decided she was probably as unfamiliar with the ways of the opposite sex as himself; Leo had had carnal relations with only two women before marrying Zoe, neither one for any extended period. Imogen struck him as less than virginal—no female as attractive as she was could possibly have escaped the predatory attentions of men—but she conveyed a modicum of bashfulness that appealed to him very much. He wanted her, and was fairly certain she could be had, if he only made love to her in a way calculated not to shock or disturb her obvious regard for him as a famous man. The meal and champagne would lower her resistance, he was sure, and bolster his own slight nervousness at the same time. All would proceed as he wished it to, and Leo crammed intrusive thoughts of Zoe into the furthest corner of his mind, the better to pursue what he regarded as something owed him by virtue of his station and his tremendous forbearance in the face of coldness heaped upon him like snow by his wife.
Lovey Doll could scarcely believe the ease with which her scheme was bearing fruit of the most satisfying kind. Leo Brannan was as guileless as a schoolboy, as proud to have her on his arm as any other fool eager for her flesh. She was disappointed to find in so famous a personage the standard reaction to her beauty. He had presented no challenge at all, and now, as the silver rails behind them were made invisible by darkness, Lovey Doll prepared herself for the performance of a lifetime. The direction her remaining years would take depended on what was to follow, and she was determined, as only a single-minded individual can be, to guide the evening according to her own agenda, even though Leo Brannan might assume matters were proceeding according to his. He was already nervous, she could tell, seeing the light sweat that sprang to his forehead beneath the receding hair. She knew also, as if she had seen it revealed in a crystal ball, that when the sun rose tomorrow over the shining mountains, the man beside her would belong to Lovey Doll Pines, body and soul and fortune too.
35
Since her illness, the invisible hands that once had sprung from Omie’s midriff to grasp and move the furniture of Elk House had not manifested themselves once. Omie had tried on several occasions to make them come forth, wishing to reassure herself that, like old and familiar toys, the giant hands were still available for her amusement and distraction; but they were not. It must have been the illness that killed them off, Omie concluded, all the heat from her fever somehow burning the hands and their equally invisible arms away to nothing. She had not missed them at first, her attention having been caught up by her mother’s sad condition. Zoe had lost a real arm and hand, obliging Omie to see her own loss as trivial by comparison.
Now that Zoe was no longer so sad, Omie wished she had her unique furniture movers back again. She summoned them by willpower, but they did not respond. It had been a long time, too, since she had been granted a glimpse of the future, and Omie felt for the first time that perhaps she was becoming an ordinary person. This possibility was not welcome. While forgoing the hands and visions would not in itself have distressed her overmuch, Omie felt that their passing from her should have been compensated by another kind of removal, the lifting from her face of the deep-blue birthmark. With that still in place, she could never hope to be anything but what she was—an ugly girl. She spent hours doing what she had not done before, examining herself minutely in her mirror, bringing her skin so close to the glass she could see its pores and the faintest of blemishes. Clearly, no trade-off was being prepared for her; the things that made her different appeared to be waning, while the thing that made her hideous was in no way diminished. It was not fair, but then, Mama had not been granted anything at all to replace her lost arm; in fact she had lost her husband as well, or so it seemed to Omie.
The man she had learned to call Papa was seldom seen at home anymore. Mama had said Leo now had another house in town, a smaller house, nearer to the mines, so he had no need of Elk House. Omie sneaked into Leo’s room one day and saw that his closets and drawers were half empty. He still came up the winding road from Glory Hole every ten days or so, to get things he required, but on the last such occasion he had not even bothered to seek out Omie for so much as a casual greeting, let alone the kiss on her cheek she had been accustomed to in times past. It was true that Omie had hidden herself in her room during that latest visit by Leo, but that did not excuse his not attempting to find her. Papa didn’t care for her anymore, and it was obvious to Omie that the reason for it was his wish to avoid having to kiss that ugly blue cheek ever again. She assumed he no longer spoke to or looked at Mama for the same reason—an unwillingness to see her stump. While Omie could understand the retraction of Papa’s love from their lives, she could not bring herself to forgive it. Leo was doing something he ought not to have done. It was not Omie’s fault she was cursed with the blue mark, nor Zoe’s for having lost her arm. Leo should have been able to see that, but apparently he chose not to. It was bitter medicine for herself and Mama to swallow.
One evening, Omie asked Zoe if her analysis of recent events was correct, and when Zoe said no, Omie demanded to know what other reason there could be for the withdrawal of Papa from their house.
Zoe put down her book. Omie’s face was flushed with emotion; even the birthmark was darker than usual. It was time, Zoe decided, to tell Omie the little that she knew. The truth had come to her less than a week before, by way of the mail. The letter bore no return address, and was written with an awkward hand, unused to composition or the pen. The few lines contained references to an “absent husband” and his “dalliances” with a “scarlet hussy woman” by the name of Imogen Starr. Zoe had the very next day after receipt of the letter gone down to Glory Hole and knocked on the door of Leo’s town house. The maid who answered had refused to allow her in, although the effort required to withstand Zoe’s sudden rage had been considerable. The door having been shut in her face, Zoe retreated to the far side of the street and waited. Within minutes a figure appeared in an upper-story window, and Zoe knew the letter was truthful. The woman in the window was lovely, even at a distance, and it was clear why Leo had left instructions with the maid never to allow his wife inside. Against such beauty Zoe felt helpless. Even had she still possessed both arms, she could not have held Leo back from the woman displayed above her. Perhaps it was coincidence, but Imogen Starr had looked out the window at her rival while wearing a dress that revealed not only her creamy shoulders but the full extent of her shapely arms. Zoe had stood on the sidewalk, mesmerized by her own dismay, until her rival reached up and drew shut the curtains.
Omie’s sullen face demanded to be told, and Zoe did exactly that. When she was done, having encapsulated her betrayal in a few crisp sentences, she saw Omie’s expression soften with what Zoe recognize
d, surprisingly, as relief.
“Oh,” said Omie. “I thought it was the blue mark.”
“That’s a foolish thought.”
“Does Mr. Price live there with Papa and the lady?”
“I don’t know, but I doubt it.”
“He was always here when Papa was. Why wouldn’t he be there too?”
“Because Mr. Price is a business partner, or acquaintance, or some such, not a … friend, as this woman appears to be.”
“So we’re not Papa’s friends anymore?”
“Not for the moment. We may be again, at some later date. That is how these matters are sometimes resolved.”
“How long will it take, Mama?”
“That I cannot say. It may not happen at all. I tell you this because I hate to lie.”
“I know. Mama, can’t we go away from here until he comes home again?”
“Away?”
“To somewhere else, and when we come back he might be here again.”
“Where would you like to go?”
Omie thought hard for a moment, then ran to the globe that stood in the corner of the library and dragged it back to Zoe.
“There,” she said, stabbing a finger at the largest landmass she saw, and the furthest from America.
“That’s China, Omie. There is a great deal of disease and suffering there. I shouldn’t care to see it, so choose again.”
“I want to go on a sailing ship somewhere.”
“There are steamships now, that go much faster.”
“I want it to be one with big white sails, or I won’t go anywhere.”
“You still have not decided where it is we’re to go.”
Zoe found herself lifted from the leaden mood that had settled over her since she’d sighted Imogen Starr in the window of Leo’s love nest. Could Omie’s simple plan have been all she needed to shake off sorrow? Zoe was not averse to it, and with every passing minute was absorbing more of Omie’s intensity over the proposal. She had never been on the ocean, had never even seen it, and was as ignorant of foreign ports as her daughter.