Free The Do-Right by Lisa Sandlin

bottles.
    She sat on the chipped-gilt bench at the vanity table to study the sepia photograph of a bride and groom. Ramrod back, cascade of veil, high lace collar, she had a swan’s neck on her then, didn’t she—young Jessie angled away from the new husband, offering him a chiseled cheek. Young Mr. Speir—high shine to his shoes, boutonniere—had a forward nose and receding chin that might have made him look rat-likeif it hadn’t been for his thick legs, the shoulders far wider than the upright chair he sat in.
    The old photo was in a black dime store frame. Delpha bet it had replaced a silver one.
    Her own face in the three-way mirror. Tired, lines at her eyes, both wary and calm. Way different than a horror-struck girl’s mug shot in 1959.
    She unscrewed a jar on the mirrored vanity table, cold cream dried to a solid white paste. Pulled open the top side drawer to sniff at the faint sweet of face powder. Peeled off a clumsy rubber glove and slid her flat palm along the ceiling of the drawer, make sure nothing was taped up there. There was a powdery coating over the items in the drawer: lipstick tubes, a deep red called “Honor Bright,” scattering of bobby pins, tweezer and dull brow pencils. Heavy gold compacts with their tiny latches—one containing pressed powder, in the other a crescent of rouge. She bent sideways, peering in. Pushed to the very back, a round box. She grasped it, knuckles grazing the drawer-back, and brought the box out.
    It was cardboard but look, painted on its lid—oh, she liked it. Still a bright, cheerful orange, the women drawn on it so clear, a ruffled lady at a vanity and her sharp-nosed hairdresser. Delpha had met those two in prison more than once, the privileged bitch and the sly suck-up you keep your front toward.
    Three Blossoms Face Powder , shade Naturelle . “Naturelle,” she said aloud, “naturelle.” Pretty word. Reluctantly, she set the box back, feeling the powder-dust rub between her fingers. Below, in the lower drawer, a comb, a brush, and four jewelry cases, one for a ring, three rectangular. Green leather.
    She held her breath. Pried them open, one by one, to satin and velvet. The only gold inside was lettering: Tiffany and Co. 550 Broadway New York .
    Had Ida sold the jewels or kept them? Sold, according to Miss Blanchard.
    The mantel clock read 10:03.
    Got her handkerchief out of her purse and wiped the lipstick tubes, the compacts, the jewelry boxes, drawer-knobs thoroughly. Not great but better than her prints on them—she’d be blamed for anything that went wrong here.
    Then her fingers darted back in for the pretty Three Blossoms box that nobody had used in decades. Her knuckles knocked tock against the drawer-back, which fell over them. She froze, the thin piece of wood lying over her fingers.
    Delpha reached them both out, the powder box and piece of wood. She set the box in her purse. As for the drawer-back, it was a shorter square of wood that must have been wedged or lightly glued in there. She got down on her knees and craning, saw the true back of the drawer.
    Things in front of it.
    She reached in and took out a small pad with marks on it. Grandma , line down the middle, Ida . A scorepad, pencil hatchmarks on it. She peered in again. Pair of dice and a light-colored pouch. A white scrap.
    Could put jewels in a pouch.
    Her hand stayed where it was, and her stomach hitched. Find a necklace in a nice leather case, she’d tell Miss Blanchard. That was big, and her connection with it would be big too, if anyone went looking. Find a handful of loose gemstones, well, a problem. A situation. Was that the right word—a dilemma, maybe.
    There could be one ruby less inside a pouch somebody’d hid away.
    She would not go back to prison. Would not go. That prohibition sharp as a whack to the jaw, real as a concretefloor under a pair of bare knees. Pawnbroker give her a penny on the dollar for any