The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [185]
“Then it was they who …?”
She nodded. “He had underestimated their strength in Chicago. They had powerful friends and already had the place sewn up. They just let him go ahead and spend his money on his club and then …” She bowed her head, “No charges were ever brought, of course. It was just another seven-day wonder written off as an ‘unknown gangland killing.’ But that is what I have always believed.”
Nurse Milgrim reappeared silently with plates of neat crustless sandwiches and a chocolate cake. “Eat a little,” she urged Missie. “You’ll need to keep your strength up.”
Missie sipped her tea gratefully and said to Cal, “I took Azaylee out of the hospital and went back to California and Rosa. I thought being back home again would bring her out of her depression. Everyone was so sweet and kind, telling her their stories about their work in the movies, but she didn’t seem to notice. All she cared about was Viktor, she wouldn’t let him out of her sight. I can see them now, on the porch at Rosemont, Viktor’s head on her lap as she stared across the lawn at the passersby in the street without ever seeing them. O’Hara had left me a little money, not a fortune, because he was a man who spent it as fast as it came in, but then, you see, he thought he had all the time in the world.
“A year passed and I could stand it no longer. I decided to take Azaylee to Switzerland to the eminent psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung. I wanted to know for certain whether her problem was medical or mental.” She looked at Cal again. “And I want to tell you, I prayed that it was medical because at least then we might be able to do something about it.
“Jung was very interested in her case. Of course his work was confidential and I told him, without mentioning names, how she had lost her family, of our escape and our life afterward, and that she did not know the details. I told him she had never seen a photograph of her family and didn’t even know their real identities. And of course I told him about O’Hara.
“Jung said her case was one of the most interesting he had ever come across. He said Azaylee was suffering from a combination of things: depression, hysteria, and repressed emotions, locked away in her since childhood. She was in danger of losing her identity, ‘a personality disorder’ he called it. I told him how she had never mentioned her mama and papa and how she had just seemed to accept the fact that she lived on Rivington Street with Sofia and me. And I told him how she clung to the dog. He nodded and said she was a classic case and he would do his best to treat her.
“We lived in Zurich, off and on, for more than two years. We rented an apartment in a little hotel in the mountains; we loved the crisp clear air and the unending views, and I think somehow we both finally felt safe there. Every now and then we would journey back to California and stay for a month or two, but Azaylee was making progress and I was afraid to take her away from Dr. Jung. I knew that behind those long, lovely quiet eyes lay a mind in turmoil, and I wanted it all to be straightened out.
“Finally Jung said that for the moment he had done all he could, and we went back to Hollywood for good. Azaylee seemed happy and more outgoing than I had ever seen her. She went back to school and picked up her old friendships with Rosa’s girls as if nothing had ever happened. She took up her dance lessons again and somehow they became the focus of her life. I suppose that was what she always wanted to do, really. Just dance.”
She looked levelly at Cal and said, “Of course you realize I’m talking about Ava Adair.”
He stared back at her, stunned. “Ava Adair? The movie star?”
“I’ll tell you how it happened.” She took a sip of the cold tea and pressed a hand to her brow, thinking. Then she said, “It all began with a chance meeting, and for the life of me I’ve never been able to decide whether it created her life or whether it ruined it….”
She thought of how innocently it had all started out, telling Cal how Dick Nevern