lips that would’ve looked too thin on anyone else.
Pembroke wasn’t Forrest’s manservant, or bodyguard, or goon. Pembroke was Forrest’s father.
But Gloria had told Jerome that Forrest said his father was dead. Why had he lied? And why was his father pretending to be a butler?
Jerome heard the grandfather clock in the foyer begin to chime. He’d been up here for half an hour already! Far too long to merely fetch a jacket. He reassembled the drawer as fast as he could and replaced the clothes.
He turned, ready to bolt out the door. And he met a pair of pale, bloodshot eyes. The same ones in the photograph.
Jerome gulped and dropped the jacket in his hands on the floor. He stumbled backward, bumping up against the cold metal handles of the dresser drawers. A framed photo of Forrest and some dancer fell on the floor, the glass shattering. Jerome looked quickly out the window, searching for some other escape. Then he stared into those eyes and they chilled him to the bone. What could he do now?
Pembroke stood in the doorway and chuckled, low and deep, at Jerome’s distress.
His arms were crossed, but the doorframe still seemed too small to contain his bulk. Pembroke’s lips curved into a garish, crooked smile beneath his bushy gray mustache. Like his son, he was dressed in a blue pin-striped suit. But his pale blue eyes held none of Forrest’s good humor. They were flat and soulless—a killer’s eyes.
Pembroke clucked his tongue disapprovingly. “A floozy singer and a colored boy. They must not think much of my son over at the bureau if this is the cavalry they send after him.”
Pembroke continued to grin, making his jagged scar even more unsettling. He moved a few steps closer and Jerome backed away from the dresser and farther into the room, until he was against the wood-paneled wall. Then Pembroke pulled a hefty black pistol from his side holster. Jerome didn’t know much about guns, but he knew a gun that size at this range would take his head clean off.
Pembroke pointed the gun at Jerome’s temple. “So. Did you find what you were looking for, Detective?”
GLORIA
Gloria was beginning to understand why none of Forrest’s shows had done well.
“Hey, Gretchen!” Earl slurred, slumped on his piano bench. “You ready to run through ‘A Penny for Your Thoughts’?”
“It’s Gloria,” she replied, “and I’m not sure that’s—”
“Come on, Glo!” Glitz called from her cushioned golden chair at the other end of the salon. She and the others sat by the floor-to-ceiling arched windows in the informal audience area. “Keep going! It’s all been jake so far. Ain’t that right, Glam?”
Beside Glitz, Glamour clapped. “Encore, encore! These songs are just the rage, Forrest. Much better than the ones in your other shows.”
What are the songs from his other shows like? Gloria wondered. Maybe the actors just scratch their fingernails across a blackboard for ninety minutes.
Gloria stood next to a grand piano in a salon on the first floor of Forrest’s villa, looking over the pianist’s shoulder at sheet music from Moonshine Melody. The pianist was a middle-aged man named Earl with messy dark hair and a thin mustache, still dressed in the tuxedo he’d worn to Forrest’s party the evening before. He was more than a little tipsy, his fingers drunkenly caressing the black-and-white keys.
After the bright, sugar-sweet intro, she began to sing:
“Oh, how I wish you would hold me tight
And tell me all that keeps you up at night,
All your greatest dreams and fears
Words that would bring you to tears.
Only then will I truly know your love
And believe you were sent from above
To give me strength and happy thoughts
So here’s a penny, a penny for your thoughts.”
There were so, so many things wrong with the song—even discounting obvious mistakes like rhyming thoughts with thoughts. The timing was off and the song was filled with sappy clichés. Who on earth was the lyricist Forrest had hired?
It wasn’t like Forrest was paying attention anyway. When he had proposed that Earl run through a few songs from Forrest’s new show with Gloria, she’d been so excited. Forrest was really considering her for a lead role—a role he’d previously wanted a star like Ruby Hayworth to fill!
But instead of watching Gloria perform, Forrest spent the whole time staring at Ruby. Finally the glamorous actress met his eyes and smiled at him. Then she turned to her husband. “Marty, could you get me another rum and soda?”
“Tell the waiter,” Marty replied tersely.
“Oh, but no