The bells on the shop door jangled softly as it closed behind him. Ashlyn stepped to the window, watching as Ethan headed down the sidewalk. But his parting words about happy endings not running in his family continued to resonate long after his yellow anorak had disappeared from sight. Perhaps because they rang so true. She looked down at her right hand, at the line of puckered white flesh bisecting her palm. They didn’t run in hers either.
EIGHT
ASHLYN
To read a book is to take a journey, to travel into a vast unknown, to hear the voices of angels both living and dead.
—Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books
September 30, 1984
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
The next afternoon, Ashlyn was in the bindery, still processing what she’d learned during Ethan’s unexpected visit to the shop, when the phone rang. She dropped what she was doing and scurried up front to answer it.
“Who’s your favorite librarian?” the voice on the other end chirped.
Ashlyn felt the sharp tingle of excitement. She hadn’t expected to hear from Ruth so soon, but her triumphant tone certainly seemed to signal good news. “You can’t possibly have found her already.”
“I have, though it was a bit of a job. Turns out there were more women in the newspaper business in those days than either of us expected. Big names, like Agnes Meyer at The Washington Post and Alicia Patterson at Newsday. But neither matched the woman you described. For starters, both were married. So I kept digging. You wouldn’t believe how much microfilm I had to comb through, but eventually I hit pay dirt.”
“And?”
“Her real name was Geraldine Evelyn Spencer. Born in 1899. Chicago, Illinois. Daughter of Ronald P. Spencer, who made his fortune in coal and owned a string of second-rate dailies as a hobby. Ronald and wife, Edith, were on the SS Afrique, bound for Senegal when the ship struck a reef and went down, taking six hundred and three passengers down with it. Geraldine—or Goldie, as her father called her—was twenty-one at the time and inherited the whole kit and caboodle. About six million in 1920, which would equate to more than thirty million today.”
Ashlyn was silent as she absorbed the information. A newspaper heiress at the age of twenty-one. The equivalent of more than $30 million. No wonder Goldie didn’t care what anyone thought of her.
“Ashlyn? Did I lose you?”
“Oh, no. Sorry. I was just sorting through it all. How on earth did you piece it together?”
“Like I said—microfilm. I also called in a favor from a colleague in Albany. Once I knew who I was looking for, the rest was easy. The press has never been shy about tattling on their own, no matter what they like to pretend. There’s more, by the way.”
“More?”
“The dirty laundry, you might say. I assumed you’d want that too.”
“Whatever you’ve got, I want.”
“Well, she certainly wasn’t your typical heiress. Men, booze, a real wild child. No one ever expected her to actually step in and run the publishing arm of Daddy’s empire. Caused quite a stir. Ronald Spencer was always fairly moderate in his politics. Didn’t like to bother anyone. Not so for his little girl. She made it clear out of the gate that she wasn’t walking on eggshells for anyone. She rolled up her sleeves and took on the social issues of the day. Birth control. Wages for women. Eugenics. Child labor. Had quite a lot to say about the Nazis too. Not the ones in Europe. The ones she claimed lived right here in the US of A. Named names too.”
“I’ll bet that went over like the proverbial lead balloon.”
“She was none too popular with her father’s crowd, I can tell you. Labeled a lefty and a commie, but she never backed down. She had a knack for finding dirt on the big boys. Bribery. Corruption. Cronyism. If she got a whiff of something rotten, she dug it up, and then she printed it. Took down more than one bigwig in her day, and by any means necessary. But none of that altered her reputation as a party girl. Actually managed to get herself caught up in a raid at some jazz club in Harlem, complete with photos of her being hauled away in an honest-to-god paddy wagon. Her rivals had a field day, but she didn’t care. The woman had no shame. There are quite a lot of photos of her. Always dressed to the nines. And you never saw such jewelry.”
“And the rumors about the men she collected?”
“All true. Young. Old. Rich. Poor. She was fond of them all. Never married, as far as I can tell, but she did finally level off when someone named Steven Schwab entered the picture. He appears to have been a longtime protégé and love interest. Looks like he worked for a couple of her newspapers, though I’m not sure which or in what capacity. Maybe he was just, as they say . . . on the payroll. Apparently, they were on and off for years.”
Ashlyn felt the hair on her arms prickle. “A love interest?”
“Well, that part’s a little murky, but he does appear on her arm in several photos. Definitely younger and handsome as they come. One article mentions his utter devotion to her. Another piece describes him as an aspiring novelist whose aspirations far outweigh his talent. It might be true too. I looked, but I couldn’t find a single book attributed to him anywhere. At any rate, he lived with Goldie for the last ten years of her life and she left him a fistful of cash when she died. Clearly, something was going on.”
Ashlyn laid the new pieces end to end. Steven Schwab. Young and handsome. Worked for one of Goldie’s papers. An aspiring novelist with no books to his credit. Was it possible Hemi and Steven Schwab were one and the same? If her math was right, Hemi was twenty-six when he and Belle met in 1941, which meant he’d be in his sixties now.
The thought raised a host of possibilities. “Ruth, you didn’t happen to run across anything that mentioned where Mr. Schwab might be living these days, did you?”
“He doesn’t live anywhere. He’s dead. Goldie died in ’79 and he went a couple years later. I tried to find more on him, but apart from his connection to Goldie, he appears to have been remarkably unremarkable. At any rate, he’s dead.”
Dead. The word left Ashlyn feeling vaguely deflated. “Right.”
“So now are you going to tell me what you’re working on? I must say, I’m intrigued by the naughty Miss Spencer.”
Ashlyn bit her lip. Revealing what she’d stumbled upon, now that she knew Belle and Hemi’s story was true, would feel like betraying a confidence.
“I don’t blame you for being curious about Goldie. She’s certainly a colorful character. But at this point, I don’t think I should share much. Partly because I don’t know much but also because of privacy issues. For now, I think it best that I keep what I do know to myself and just keep digging.”
Ruth blew a sigh into the phone, clearly disappointed. “All right. I get it. I made copies of a few of the articles and photos. I’m guessing you’d like to have those.”
“I would. I’m not sure when I can pick them up, though.”
“I’m off at two today. I’ll run them by the shop if that works.”
“Thank you. I owe you huge, Ruth.”
“Yes, you do. But honestly, it was fun. I think I may have missed my calling. Maybe I’ll pen a series of novels about a crusty New England literary detective and give Agatha Christie and her Miss Marple a run for their money. See you after two.”