Passion and Scandal (7 page)

"Then you've been here since 1968, too?" Willow asked, hoping for yet another possible source of information about the mother she'd never known.

"Oh, my dear child, heavens no. I have been a resident of the Wilshire Arms since 1947."

A moment of stunned silence greeted her announcement.

"This has all been way too easy," Steve said. "It's almost scary, it's been so easy. Everything's just been falling into place as if it were meant to be."

"Perhaps the lady in the mirror has something do with it," the tiny woman suggested.

"The lady in the mirror?" Willow asked.

The woman inclined her head toward the brass plaque on the wall." 'Believe the legend,' " she quoted.

"What legend?" Steve demanded, his tone a shade peremptory. Willow nudged him with her elbow, giving him a disapproving little shake of her head when he turned to look down at her. He glanced at the little woman in the pink jogging suit. "What's this legend about?" he asked again, making it a request this time, rather than a demand.

"It's quite a long story," the woman replied. "Please, come to my apartment," she invited them, "and we can all have a nice glass of tea while I tell you about it." She held her hand out, the gesture as gracefully elegant as if they had just been introduced at a ball. "I am Irina Markova."

"Steve Hart." He reached out to take her offered hand as he spoke, carefully enclosing it in his oversize palm. "And this is Willow Ryan. We're both very pleased to meet you, Ms. Markova." And then, without thinking, he lifted her hand to his lips and placed a kiss on her fragile fingertips. It seemed to be the only appropriate response to the way she had presented it to him.

Irina Markova's green eyes beamed her approval. "The young people here call me Madame," she said regally. "You may do the same."

* * *

"Although there are many rumors, the true identity of the lady in the mirror is not known," Madame Markova said as she poured a small amount of strong black tea into each of three small glasses fitted into silver filigree holders. "She is said to have lived here in the 1920s when the Wilshire Arms was still a magnificent private residence but how the poor lady died remains a mystery." She added hot water to each glass from the ornate brass samovar sitting on the small lace-draped table beside her chair, handing them to her guests as each one was filled.

Steve accepted his a little awkwardly, holding the whole thing, saucer and all, cradled in his palm. He looked distinctly uncomfortable sitting on Madame Markova's shawl-draped, red velvet settee, surrounded by lace-covered tables and delicate china bric-a-brac. Willow watched him from under her lashes, smiling when he lifted the tea glass by the rim to drink because his finger wouldn't fit through the delicate silver handle. He glanced up over the edge of the glass as he sipped, catching Willow grinning at him, and gave her a dirty look.

"According to the legend, the circumstances of her death were deeply tragic," Irina said, unaware of—or ignoring—the byplay between her guests. "She is said to haunt the mirror in apartment 1-G, revealing herself only infrequently, and then only to someone whose life is about to change in some significant way. Her appearance foretells the attainment of your greatest dream or predicts the occasion when your greatest fear will come to pass." Irina Markova slanted a glance across her teacup at Steve. "I see by your expression you do not believe it."

"No offense to you, Madame, but it sounds like a load of bull... ah, manure to me."

"And if I told you that I, myself, have seen the lady? It was on the very night Errol Flynn and I became lovers."

"And was that the attainment of your greatest dream or the occasion of your deepest fear?" he asked, deadpan.

Irina Markova let out a peal of delighted laughter and shook her head at him. "A lady does not kiss and tell," she admonished him.

* * *

"These girls, they did not live here long, I think," Irina said as she looked at the pictures Willow had handed to her after the tea and tiny almond cakes had been set aside. "A month." She shrugged. "Maybe two. But this one, yes." She tapped her finger against Donna Ryan's smiling face. "I remember her very well. A great beauty. Superb bones. I was a makeup artist for many, many years with Xanadu Studios," she told them proudly, "so I know how important good bones are for true beauty. All of the young men in the building pursued her from the day she and the other girl moved into Wilshire Arms." Madame glanced up, her sharp green eyes narrowing as she stared into Willow's face. "You have a bit of her look around the eyes, although the angle is not so sharp."

"She was my mother."

Irina Markova nodded, as if that explained something she'd been wondering about.

"Do you happen to remember whether she dated anyone in particular while she lived here?" Willow asked. "Anyone in these pictures?"

"Ah, back then, who could tell?" Irina shrugged and rolled her eyes. "There was all that ridiculous talk of free love and sexual liberation. I saw her with all these young men at one time or another, but to say she was the special sweetheart of any one of them...? I could not even begin to guess."

"What about the guys in the pictures?" Steve urged. "Do you remember anything about any of them?"

"Oh, my heavens, yes," Irina said. "I remember these young men very well. Very well, indeed. This one with the dashing mustache is Ethan." She sighed and pressed her lips together. "He was not my favorite of the boys."

"Oh?" Steve said encouragingly.

"Too arrogant and full of himself. A failing of many young men, I'm afraid." She looked up, giving Steve a teasing smile. "But perhaps
he
grew out of it."

He smiled in silent acknowledgment of her gentle gibe. "And the others?"

"These two, here, they were brothers," she said, pointing them out as she spoke. "This one is Jack. He was the younger. And this one—" The bright light in her eyes dimmed slightly for a moment. "This one is Eric."

Steve and Willow sought each other's eyes over the old woman's head. Eric? Another man with the initial E to add to the mystery surrounding her mother?

"He is dead now," Irina said sadly. "A suicide, the police said, but I was never convinced of that. I have always preferred to believe it was an unfortunate accident. Although... there
was
talk that he had seen the lady in the mirror, so perhaps the police were right."

"Suicide?" Willow echoed, struggling to keep the disappointment out of her voice. "When?"

"Not long after these pictures were taken, I should think. It happened in the summer of 1970. In June. Or perhaps it was July." She shook her head. "My memory is not so good as it once was. You should ask Mr. Mueller if it is important that you know about this. Or, perhaps, you could contact young Jack Shannon. I'm sure Mr. Mueller could give you his forwarding address."

"I doubt any forwarding address he might have would be any good after all this time," Steve said.

"It has only been a few months since young Jack and his new bride moved out of apartment 1-G. I am quite sure Mr. Mueller will know where they have gone."

"A few months? You mean he's been living here for the last twenty-five years?"

"Oh, no. No, a few months only. He went away after his brother died. It is rumored that he joined the army for a time and then roamed the world trying to forget. It was the lady in the mirror who drew him back. She knew he needed to be here to attain his dream." She looked down at the photographs in her hands. "As did Ezekiel," she said, running her fingertip over the youthful face of Zeke Blackstone. "He had lost his dream, too, and needed to come back to the Wilshire Arms to regain it."

"Now let me get this straight," Steve said. "Are you telling me both those guys have been back here in the last—Did you say
Ezekiel?"

Irina nodded. "It is his given name. He admitted it to me one afternoon when he was feeling a little homesick for his mother, soon after he came out here from New York to be a movie star. She was the only one who called him by his true name and he missed hearing it, I think." She smiled a little at the memory. "I thought it a charming name for a charming young man. A little old-fashioned, perhaps, but so much more melodious than Zeke, don't you think?"

Chapter 4

"Three of them", Willow said. "Three of them with the initial E. And all of them knew my mother at the right time. All of them may have dated her. Which means any one of them could be my father." She looked up at Steve. "What do we do now?"

"We talk to the manager," Steve said, "and see if he can add anything to what Madame Markova told us."

He put his hand under her elbow again, politely ushering her across the pebbled concrete surface of the courtyard. Irina Markova had told them that if Carl Mueller was back from his errand at the hardware store, they would most likely find him in apartment 1-G. There had been a persistent leak in one of the bathroom faucets.

"It is across the courtyard and through the door on the other side," she'd said as she escorted them out of her cozy potpourri-scented apartment. "One-G is the third door on your left after you enter the hallway."

They found it easily enough. The door was standing half-open, the sounds of metal clanging against metal reverberating into the hall. Steve pushed the door all the way open and stepped back, letting Willow enter ahead of him. They walked down a short hallway and into an empty, airy room. The walls were painted a soft, creamy white. Two tall arched windows, flanked by open slatted wooden shutters, spilled long lozenges of sunlight across the floor. A large mirror, easily four feet wide by five feet high, hung on one wall.

It had a heavy ornate pewter frame, distinctively Victorian and elaborately cast with dozens of roses and twining ribbons. It should have looked out of place in the elegant simplicity of the room but, somehow, it didn't.

"Do you think that's the mirror?" Willow whispered.

"Must be. It's the only one in here."

Willow hesitated for a moment, then walked over and stood directly in front of the mirror. There was nothing looking back at her but her own reflection—and then Steve's, as he came up behind her. They were a study in contrasts. He was so big and blond and masculine, with a sexy, laid-back Southern California style that suited him right town to the size-twelve Reeboks on his feet. She was slender and dark, a sleek, sophisticated woman in expensive, tailored clothes.

She had never thought of herself as particularly feminine or fragile—certainly no more so than the average woman—but she looked both standing next to him. It wasn't his height, because he wasn't overpoweringly tall; in her heels, the top of her head came to his nose. It wasn't his physique, either; although that was impressive, his muscles weren't the bulked-up kind so beloved by weight lifters. It was his basic, elemental maleness that made him look so solid and bigger than life. He was totally, unapologetically masculine and he made her feel totally feminine in return. She wasn't quite sure she liked the feeling; it didn't fit in with her image of herself as a modern woman of the world. Willow Ryan didn't lean on anybody, and Steve Hart had shoulders tailor-made for leaning on. Her head had been tilting toward them from the minute she turned her problem over to his capable hands.

"See anything in there?" he asked, leaning forward to whisper the words in her ear.

"No," she murmured and moved away from the mirror. And him. "The banging has stopped," she said, as if he couldn't hear it for himself. "Don't you think we'd better let this Mr. Mueller know we're here so we can ask our questions?"

But Mueller came out of the bathroom before either of them could move to make their presence known. He was a small man, wiry looking, with a shining bald head and a belligerent expression in his pale gray eyes. He was wearing faded green coveralls and carried a length of pipe in his hand. Willow took an instant aversion to him.

"Who're you?" he demanded, looking back and forth between the two of them. "What are you doing in here? This apartment ain't for rent right now."

Willow took a step back, unconsciously edging closer to Steve, more than willing to let him handle the manager of the Wilshire Arms. She'd worry about standing on her own two feet later.

"We're not here to rent an apartment," Steve said. "We'd just like to ask you a few questions."

"You reporters?"

"No, we're—"

"Been a lot of reporters nosin' around here ever since it leaked out about Blackstone renting this place. Damned bloodsucking nuisances, every one of them. Well, he's gone," he said, gesturing at the empty room with the piece of pipe he held in his hand. "Left last month, right after his kid's wedding. So if you're working for one of them tabloids or that 'Hard Copy' program, you can get the hell out of here, right now. I ain't got nothin' to say."

"We're not reporters, Mr. Mueller," Steve assured him. He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out his wallet. "I'm a private investigator." He extracted a business card and handed it to Mueller. "Ms. Ryan is my client."