Winter in June (30 page)

“Who is she seeing?” I asked.

“An officer?” said Jayne.

“That's hardly a call for secrecy.”

Jayne shrugged. “Maybe it's a taken officer.”

Could Candy have fallen under the spell of Late Nate too?

Lightning flashed, illuminating Candy. The bag slung across her waist was so full it looked like she was pregnant.

“I think we just found the missing supplies.”

Jayne gasped. “Really?”

“Every time I've seen her at night, it's been when she's heading home and the bag is empty. What else could it be?”

Jayne strained to get a better slant on her. “Do you think Candy's selling things to the Japanese?”

It was possible. Candy knew their language and seemed to have a soft spot for them.

“There's only one way to find out for sure,” I told Jayne. “Any chance you're up for a little surveillance?”

Jayne deposited her scrub brush in the bucket. “Anything's better than doing this.”

 

The rain was falling harder, which worked to our advantage. Wrapped in our rain gear, our footsteps masked by the storm, we were able to catch up with Candy just enough to keep sight of her without alerting her to our presence. We ducked behind tents, in foliage, and wherever else we could easily hide ourselves from view. It wasn't a fast trip. Wherever Candy was headed, it looked like it was on the other side of the island.

We arrived in the village and watched Candy enter a small ram-shackle hut. We crouched down low and approached the building. Conversation flitted through the air in a strange sort of pidgin English. The inhabitants were thanking her. She was thanking them. I shifted so that I could see through a window. Candy stood in a circle with a native family examining items set on a table. There were syringes, small glass vials of medications, and assorted foods taken from the mess hall. Her bag hung limp and empty across her body. One of the natives produced his own bag and transferred the supplies inside it.

“Well?” asked Jayne.

“She just gave the missing supplies to some natives, but no money's changed hands.”

A woman naked from the waist up placed a number of betel-bead necklaces on the table. Candy scrounged around in her pocket and
came up with a few bills. In exchange she took the smaller of the necklaces and wrapped it around her neck.

I felt ashamed of myself. Of course Candy was just helping out a native family in need. Why did I have to think the worst of her? Irene must've told her what Blake was up to. When his thievery stopped, Candy decided to take advantage of the situation by taking what she could for people who really needed it.

 

We started back to camp. We were making good progress when a noise stopped us in our tracks. We ducked into the bushes and froze, waiting for the source of the sound to pass. Someone was out there with us.

“Where'd they go? I'm sure I saw them go this way,” said a gruff male voice.

“They couldn't have gone far.”

“And yet here we are, still looking for them. What do they want with that other dame anyway?”

“Bet she's sleeping with someone's boyfriend.”

Men: they had us all figured out, didn't they?

The bearers of the voices came into view. It was Gris and Lefty.

“If something happens to her again, he's going to kill us,” said Lefty.

“There is no again,” said Gris. “He doesn't know about the first time, got it?” He peered into the night. I swear my heart was beating so loud it was scaring the birds nesting above us.

“Think we should split up and see if we can find 'em?”

“Naw,” said Gris. “I'm heading back. I got a big order that needs to be on that ship.”

They turned and headed in the direction of camp.

“What do we do?” asked Jayne.

“I say we follow them. I want to know who's put a tail on us, and I'm not paying to find out.” I tried to move out of the bushes, but my rain gear wouldn't budge. I was snagged on something. “A little help, please,” I told Jayne.

She searched for what was holding me. “You're stuck,” she said.

“So I figured. Unstick me.”

She yanked on the rain gear and something ripped. Despite the sound of destruction, I still couldn't move.

“Help me out of this.” I struggled to slip out of the poncho.

“But it's pouring.”

“Wet I can handle. Their getting away I can't.”

We left my rain gear hanging on a tree. As we tried to catch up with the men, I bubbled with excitement. Whoever put them on our tail had a vested interest in our safety and was paying top dollar for the privilege. And clearly our anonymous benefactor didn't want to be found.

All was not lost. I knew there was one person Gris knew who wasn't keen on being seen by anyone these days: Jack.

“Hey!” I yelled in to the night. “Hold up!”

Lefty froze. Gris's hand sank into his pocket and emerged with a piece. The moonlight reflected off the revolver.

“Easy, tiger,” I said. “It's Rosie. And Jayne.”

Just as quickly as it had emerged, Gris's gun disappeared back into his pocket. “Close your heads,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I said so, that's why.”

“That's not good enough,” I said. I backed toward the jungle and shielded myself beneath a palm tree. The others followed suit. “See, I've been thinking since last we met. It seems to me we're a lot more dangerous to you than you are to us. After all, we're not operating an illegal distillery, are we, Jayne?”

“Nope,” she said.

“And from what I hear tell, that's something the higher-ups wouldn't be too happy about.”

“What do you want?” asked Gris.

“A name,” I said. “That's all. And then we'll leave you alone to do whatever it is you do that we've completely forgotten about.” They didn't respond, so I decided to plunge forward. “Who hired you to shadow us?”

“It's not an ‘us,' it's a ‘her.'” He pointed his finger at Jayne.

“Lefty said ‘us' before.”

“He was being polite. Our contact couldn't care less if you live or die.”

“Oh.” It wasn't the answer I was hoping for. “So who is it?”

Jayne watched our conversation like it was a game she was hoping to learn the rules to so she could join in later on. As Gris did battle with telling us the truth or calling my bluff, she took a step toward him.

“It's Tony, isn't it?”

Relief showed on his face. He wasn't going to have to betray anyone's confidence.

“I'm not saying it is, and I'm not saying it isn't.”

“Of all the rotten…. Does he knows everything I've been doing here?” she asked.

He showed her his palms. “No. It ain't like a Peeping Tom thing. We just write a letter now and again to let him know you're safe.”

“Can't you do that without following us?” I said.

“Again, it's not an ‘us,' it's a ‘her.' And after the shooting, we decided to step things up, just in case.”

I was dumbfounded by Tony's reach. He was hardly the most powerful mobster in Manhattan, and yet here he was with eyes in the South Pacific. “If you were supposed to be tailing Jayne, why were you watching me when Jayne was in the hospital?” I asked.

Gris threw Lefty a look that should've felled him. “'Cause we didn't know she was in the hospital. Somebody”—he elbowed Lefty—“told me it was one of the other girls who got hit.”

“So you were there the night Gilda was shot?” I asked.

Lefty nodded and rubbed at the spot where Gris's elbow had made contact with him.

“Did you see anything unusual?” I asked him.

“Sure did. There was a wolf in the cliffs, and it wouldn't let me pass. Big thing with teeth like knives. Thank God I brought my piece with me.” He pulled out a revolver that matched Gris's and pantomimed the scene.

I decided it wouldn't help anyone to tell him he hadn't shot a wolf. He'd shot Mac, Spanky's dog.

 

By the time we finished cleaning the latrine, the sun was coming up. Or at least it was trying to. It was raining so hard by that point that we couldn't be sure if it really was dawn.

I only got about an hour's sleep before the blasted bugle announced that it was time to rise and shine. I groaned and rolled over. Candy was back in her bed, safe and sound. She grinned at me and stretched her arms above her head.

“Good night?” I asked.

“Great night,” she said.

The rain pounded a Sousa march on the tent roof. Surely they didn't expect us to get up when the weather was like this? It was cruel to make us do anything but fall asleep to the steady rhythm of the storm. My eyes began to close again, and my body went limp. I was almost totally out when Violet's voice woke me.

“We're traveling today,” she announced.

“In the rain?”

“As long as there's no lightning, we can fly. It's another hospital visit. Most of the men are going to be shipped out at the end of the week.”

I groaned again. I didn't want to perform. My head still hurt, and I wanted to wallow in self-pity. Slowly I got dressed and packed up my things for our trip. I was about to put on my rain gear when I remembered it was somewhere in the jungle, snagged on a tree limb. “Nuts,” I said.

“What's the matter?” asked Kay.

“I lost my rain gear.”

She pointed toward the end of her cot. “I've got Gilda's. Help yourself.”

She left to use the latrine while I opened her trunk. It was still as pin neat as it had been the day we arrived. I didn't see the rain gear on top, so I blindly reached toward the bottom. My fingers found vinyl fabric. And something else.

I parted the neat stacks of clothes and peered into the bottom of the trunk. Gilda's beat-up leather handbag was there, the one she'd had with her that first day on the boat. I wrapped the bag in the rain gear and hurriedly brought the bundle back to my own cot. As I stashed the purse, Kay returned.

“Find the gear?” she asked.

“Yeah. Thanks again.”

“No problem,” she said with a grin. “You're welcome to borrow whatever you need.”

 

We took a bumpy, frightening flight to another island, arriving much later than we had planned. We were rushed to the hospital, where a group of men responded to our performance with drug-induced apathy. It was not one of our better shows.

When the performance was done, we went back to the airstrip only to be told that the lightning had finally arrived, grounding us for at least a few hours.

Our hosts took us to a tent to wait out the storm. While the others amused themselves by playing cards, my mind kept turning to the purse. Why had Kay taken it? If she wanted it so badly, she could've asked for it the day we each selected a memento.

Unless she already had it.

But why the thievery? It was contrary to everything (I thought) I knew about Kay. I shook the thought out of my head. Violet was our culprit. She was the only one who made sense.

Violet asked no one in particular, “Do you think the men were able to leave today?”

“Probably,” said Kay. “They're used to lightning on the ships.”

Violet sighed heavily. “I am so tired of all this rain. I can't wait until we're out of here and back in Hollywood.”

“You're not going to do another tour?” asked Jayne.

“Oh no. I'm done with the USO.” She collected the cards and shuffled them.

“So what will you do?” I asked.

The cards smacked against each other just as a rumble of thunder sounded outside. “Go back to MGM, I imagine.”

“Are you sure they'll want you?” I said.

Violet's lip curled in a warning. “I imagine they'll want me more than ever, now that Gilda's gone.”

“That's cold,” said Jayne.

Lightning lit up the room. “Maybe so, but it's true. I miss her as much as the rest of you, but she's going to leave a void someone's going to have to fill.”

That someone should've been Irene.

“And what about Spanky?” asked Jayne.

Violet cut the deck. “Oh, well, that was lovely while it lasted, but we couldn't be more different if we tried. I just don't think we have a future together.”

“It might've been nice if you'd told him that,” I said.

She rolled her eyes at me. “He'll meet another girl and forget about me, I guarantee it.”

But he wouldn't—because he was in love with Violet. So in love with her that he did the unthinkable at her urging.

“You told him to do it, didn't you?” I said.

“What are you talking about?” asked Violet.

“Gilda. You told Spanky to kill her.”

“Are you nuts? Spanky wouldn't hurt a fly.” Violet wasn't that good an actress. I could see the lie in her eyes.

“How'd you convince him? Did you tell him Gilda was saying nasty things behind everyone's back? Or did it just take some island-brewed booze to sway his opinion? After all, with the way he drank, he probably wouldn't have remembered what he'd done.”

Violet pounded the table with her hand. “If he did anything, I'm not the one who convinced him to do it.”

“Then who is?”

“I am,” said Kay.

A clap of thunder shook the tent. Jayne and I stared at Kay, our faces frozen in horror. Had she really just said that?

“Be quiet, Kay,” hissed Violet.

“No. I'm tired of keeping quiet. They deserve to know what happened to her.”

“We made a promise.”

“That promise ended the day Gilda died.”

Violet pushed against the table with such force that it momentarily stood on two feet. The cards slid to the floor. Kay bent down to retrieve them, but Jayne stopped her with her hand.

“No,” said Jayne. “Let me.”

Kay put her hands on the table to steady it. “Spanky wasn't supposed to kill her. We just wanted to hurt her, just for a little while. But he was drunk and confused and his aim was off….” Her voice faded away. “She would've been fine if it weren't for the malaria.”

“You don't know that,” said Violet.

“But why?” I asked. “What on earth could make you want to hurt Gilda?”

Kay took a deep breath, and I noticed for the first time the dark circles marring the skin beneath her eyes. “Because she killed Irene.”

 

Gilda was the one who'd asked Irene to meet her in San Francisco that day. Irene thought she was going to meet her idol. She never could've imagined that Gilda's plan was to get rid of the up-and-comer who was supposed to replace her so that by the time she returned from her heroic USO tour, reinvented as the vivacious, brave ingénue, MGM would have no choice but to hire her back.

Kay realized what had happened the day we arrived at Tulagi when we were unpacking our things. It was the purse that was the giveaway—Irene's purse—a bag she hadn't recognized that first day on the boat. “If I'd known she was dead then, maybe I would've seen it for what it was. At the time I just remember thinking that the
bag didn't match Gilda's shoes.” After learning of Irene's death, she realized the significance of that beat-up leather handbag and decided she needed to see it again. One afternoon, while the rest of us were gone, she opened Gilda's trunk and started looking for it. Just as her hands landed on the bag, Violet walked in and caught her.

“She thought I was stealing,” said Kay. “I was afraid that if Violet told Gilda what I was up to, Gilda might—” She swallowed hard, unable to complete the sentence. “So I told Violet what I knew about the purse, and together we went through it. It was Irene's all right. There was no doubt about it. Her identification was there. Her photograph.”

Was it really possible that Gilda was a murderer? We knew she was a liar. And while I didn't want to believe her capable of something like this, I'd seen enough bad behavior over the past year to know that people are rarely what they seem. I'd fallen for a murderer. Jayne had dated one. We had lived side by side with someone who killed for what they thought were all the right reasons. And now we were on an island full of people trained to kill based on a military edict. It didn't take much for someone to do something so terrible, especially when they convinced themselves that they had no other choice. Not that that excused her. Murder during wartime seemed particularly unforgivable. We were losing enough men to the enemy—did we have to slaughter our own kind too?

“Is that why it took you so long to admit you knew Irene?” I asked. “Because you were scared?”

Kay nodded. “On the boat, it was shock that kept me silent. But once I realized what Gilda had done, I didn't want her to think that I could identify her as the killer.”

A chill passed through my body. Kay was right. If Gilda was willing to kill for her career once, it wasn't farfetched to assume that she might do it a second time.

“So whose idea was it to shoot her?” Neither responded, but a look passed between them that made it clear: Violet was the one out for justice. Kay was too meek to ever propose anything beyond keeping quiet. I'd been right about one thing: Violet knew that
with both Irene and Gilda out of the picture, she might have a shot at real stardom. “And so the two of you convinced Spanky that it was only fitting that Gilda be punished for what she did—only he screwed up.”

Kay began to cry. “We wanted to scare her. That's all. We certainly didn't intend to hurt Jayne too.'

“And when that didn't work out, instead of owning up to what you did you blamed it on a Japanese sniper.” I shook my head. “Unbelievable. You were going to let that boy take the fall for this. You were going to let him die just to keep your stupid little scheme covered up. Why didn't you go to Late Nate?”

“Are you kidding?” Violet stood up. “She was sleeping with him. Do you honestly think he would've taken our word over hers?”

No, but at least they should've tried.

“Well, we're going to have to tell him now,” I said.

Violet leaned toward me. Through the neck of her blouse I could see a cluster of moles and age spots brought out by the island sun. “If you do that, Spanky's the only one who's going to be punished. He fired the gun. There's no evidence that Kay and I had anything to do with it. And you know Blake's not going to believe a word you two say.”

She was right. Somehow, with all their screw ups, they'd managed to stumble into committing the perfect crime.

 

We finished out the hour in stony silence, relieved when we could finally board the plane and lose our thoughts in the roar of the engines. We landed and went off in pairs in opposite directions.