Free The Impersonator by Mary Miley Page A

I knew what she was thinking. Before she could speak, Oliver gently took her arm, breaking her concentration. The three of us crossed the threshold together.
    As Oliver paused to speak to the desk clerk, Grandmother drew me aside.
    “You could have been killed,” she said in a low voice.
    I nodded. “Accidents happen.”
    “Accidents can be made to happen.”
    “I wondered the same thing,” I admitted. “But only for a moment. No one knew when we were arriving, or even which hotel we would choose. And no one could predict that our taxi would unload in the street, or that I would stand near it. It was an accident.”
    Accident. Coincidence. The words taunted me. If Mr. Wade had spoken of our trip to others in his office, news might have leaked. It was no secret that I was traveling to Oregon and there were only so many train possibilities. But the rest? Staging that drama with all the cars would be no easy task. Was someone trying to kill Jessie? Or scare her away? Was it because they thought I was Jessie, or because they thought I wasn’t Jessie? I reassured myself that at the first sign of real danger, I would skip town, change my name, and return to the safety of vaudeville. I could always find something there. If there were any more coincidences in Dexter, I’d cancel the charade and do a flit. But I’d give it a couple more days.
    “It was just an accident,” I reassured Grandmother. She didn’t look convinced.
    Still, I would be glad to reach the Carr estate in Dexter where I would be safe.
    Years of living in cheap hotels and boardinghouses had not prepared me for the luxurious Benson, a veritable palace built by Simon Benson, lumber baron and friend of Jessie’s father. Oliver had procured for us the Presidential Suite—no president had ever darkened its door but it was ready and waiting should one stroll by. Remembering my fondness for champagne, he arranged for the chef to send up a meal of sautéed salmon on delicately herbed rice at our arrival, along with a chilled bottle of bubbly. What a life!
    “The story goes,” said Oliver, gesturing toward the polished paneled walls and massive columns that stood in the lobby like tree trunks in an enchanted woodland, “that this rare figured walnut came all the way from the czar’s forests in Russia, and when the bill arrived, it was so immense that Benson fainted when he saw it.” If he was trying to take my mind off the close call, he did not succeed.
    “Will I faint, like Simon Benson did, when I see our bill?” I asked idly after we had settled into our suite and Grandmother was out of earshot. I had speculated that Oliver was up to his usual mooching ways with some friend at the hotel. Silly me. The rise in Oliver’s standard of living had already begun.
    “Don’t bother your pretty head about expenses, my dear. This is how the heiress to the Carr fortune is expected to travel. Must travel, in point of fact. I don’t concern myself with mundane matters of money; I simply forward the bills to Severinus Wade.”
    Somehow, I had imagined that Carr cash would not start flowing until I reached the magic age of twenty-one. But no, Oliver had turned on the spigot and money was gushing like water from a broken main. This heiress gig was nice work.
    Unless it got you killed.

 
    12
     
    The next morning, after an extravagant breakfast, Grandmother, Oliver, and I left to catch the train for the short trip west—seventy-five miles or so—to Dexter, a small town on a small bay tucked behind a spit of land that formed a natural harbor all but invisible to passing boats. The town had prospered for decades, first from gold mining and salmon fishing, then lumbering. It was the last business that brought Jessie’s parents for a visit during the early years of their marriage. Lawrence Carr loved the hunting and fishing and his wife found the cool summer climate delightful and the town quaint, so on a whim, they ordered a summer cottage built overlooking the