Sweet Liar Read online

  Two pretty young women came in together, their gangster men behind them, the men looking tough and complacent, smug even.

  Watching them, Samantha moved farther back into the shadows so they wouldn’t see her, for she was beginning to feel as though she were an anachronism in her slacks and casual blouse. Gradually, the club was beginning to fill up, and the more people who entered, the more Samantha felt as though she had stumbled into a time warp, for all the people and their surroundings were part of 1928.

  When Mike entered the room, Sam pressed herself back against the wall as she watched him move about the club, obviously very familiar with it. Maybe she should have been jealous, for Mike flirted with every female in the place, but she wasn’t, because this man didn’t seem like her Mike; this man was Michael Ransome. This Mike walked differently in his beautifully cut tuxedo, and he used his good looks to advantage.

  Samantha watched Mike go to one tootsie—the name perfectly suited the woman: too much makeup, movements too silly, a giggle that could be heard in Peoria, and, frankly, to Samantha’s eye, too much breast—and ask her to dance. With a squeal of delight, the woman stood, actually, she wiggled into an upright stance, managing to make all the excessive parts of her jiggle. Before Mike took the hand she was offering to him, he looked to the man sitting across the little table for permission. The man had a fat belly that he’d encased in a spectacularly tasteless vest of black and yellow plaid. Looking over his belly, he gave a superior nod to Mike, as though he were a king granting a request to a subject. It always amazed Samantha that a person could feel superior because he or she was a criminal, as though the person had accomplished something that had meaning in life.

  Escorting the woman to the silver dance floor, under lights so soft they would make the Wicked Witch look good, Mike took the woman in his arms and led her in a tango. Startled, for a moment Samantha held her breath, for she’d just discovered another of Mike’s lies. He’d said he wasn’t any good on a dance floor, at least not for anything except holding a girl tight and rubbing together, but as Sam watched him, she saw that he was a dream of a dancer. With as much muscle as he had at his disposal, he could lead a woman who was a less than perfect dancer in a dip; he could turn her when she was supposed to turn. Mike was even able to make the bimbo in his arms look as though she could dance.

  When the tango was over, Mike led the floozy back to her gangster. After looking at him for permission, Mike kissed the back of the woman’s hand.

  “Hey, kid!” the gangster said as he imperiously motioned for Mike to come to him.

  With no sign of what he must be feeling at such an autocratic command, Mike went to the man who then stuffed a ten-dollar bill in Mike’s jacket pocket.

  Samantha had to catch herself, for she was about to step forward into the light. How dare that two-bit nobody whose only claim to fame was that he’d engaged in illegal activities treat Mike like that!

  “Are you ready?”

  Startled, Samantha turned to see Vicky, who was wearing a lovely, slinky dress of blue satin, white feathers sticking up at the back of her head, a triple band of what Samantha had no doubt were real diamonds about her forehead. “Yes, I’m ready,” Sam answered softly.

  Following Vicky back to the dressing room, Samantha knew that with each passing minute, she was beginning to lose touch with reality. When Vicky opened the door, Sam was sure she was no longer in the nineties. Daphne and the other women were in various stages of undress; there were clothes strewn everywhere in front of a long, garishly lit, mirror-backed counter that held countless dirty bottles and pots of makeup.

  “Lila?” Samantha whispered.

  “Yeah, honey?” Daphne/Lila said, then turned to look Sam up and down. “You better get ready. You’re on in no time flat.” Bending forward, Lila whispered. “Wouldn’t want to disappoint Mike on the last night.”

  As though she’d been kicked in the stomach, Samantha drew in her breath. Lila wasn’t supposed to know that this was Maxie’s last night to sing in Jubilee’s club.

  Looking over her shoulder at the other girls, Lila whispered, “Don’t worry, not one of them is going to tell.”

  Maxie—no, Samantha—nodded.

  “Your dress,” Vicky said, and when Sam turned, across Vicky’s arms was Maxie’s dress. It wasn’t a reproduction as first planned, but the original dress. Mike had explained that it would have cost too much to reproduce the dress, so Jilly had contacted the Costume Society of America and through them had found a conservator who could clean the dress properly.

  Samantha’s hands were shaking as she took the dress from Vicky.

  “The jewelry is on the table, and underwear is behind you.”

  “Break a leg,” Lila called as she and the others trooped out of the dressing room, followed by Vicky.

  Standing in the middle of the dressing room, the once-bloody red gown across her arms, alone in the long, narrow room, Samantha felt a chill go through her. Turning, she saw the couch, as always, covered with the discards of the women: torn hose, soiled blouses, heelless shoes. In the corner was another pile of clothes and Samantha knew without a doubt that buried under the heap was Maxie’s little traveling purse that contained the life savings of both her and Mike, about five thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills.

  Still trembling, Samantha draped the dress over the back of a chair and began to take her clothes off, then put on Maxie’s underwear. As before when she’d put on Maxie’s clothes, she began to feel as though she were a different person. It was almost as though the clothes had magical properties that transformed the wearer into someone else. And no wonder, Samantha thought as she pulled the silk gown over her head. What the dress had witnessed that night was enough to leave an impression on fabric.

  A few days ago her grandmother had told her what had actually happened that night that had changed so many people’s lives. Maxie had told Sam everything up until she had walked out the stage door carrying her purse and Half Hand’s bag.

  Samantha had listened to her grandmother, had even felt some of what she was telling her, but sometimes it seemed to Sam as though she were almost numb. Just days before she heard Maxie’s story she had been told that her mother had been tortured before she had been cold-bloodedly murdered. Wasn’t there a limit to how much a person could feel? How much a person could even comprehend?

  With the dress on, she sat down at the counter to check her makeup.

  “Ten minutes, Maxie,” came a man’s voice from outside the door.

  In ten minutes she was going to have to go in front of these people and sing for them; she was going to have to do what Maxie did that night.

  Abruptly, she looked at the closed door of the dressing room. It was dirty looking, but there were no lacerations on it. No one had tried to claw her way out of this dressing room.

  Making herself turn back around, Sam looked in the mirror. She had to remember that this was just a play; she was acting and she was trying to help Mike. He said he was going to have pictures taken to use in his book and he was—

  Bowing her head, she put her head in her hands. Ornette was playing outside now, and she was having difficulty remembering that this was just an act. She was having a very hard time not thinking about her mother and her granddad Cal’s loneliness after his wife had left him. Everything that she knew seemed to be screaming in her head, not being quiet as she usually managed to keep it.

  It had all started on this night, everything that had happened began on this one long harrowing night: lives ruined, lives extinguished, hatreds kindled.

  “I can’t do this,” Samantha whispered and started to get up, but then she saw a box of powder on the counter. It was an ordinary box, blue and white, with a big lambswool puff with a pink ribbon on top; the box was full of ordinary dusting powder.

  Picking up the puff, she looked at it. Maybe it had started with the powder Maxie dumped over Michael Ransome’s head. For a few moments Samantha put her head on her arms on the counter