Somewhere in the background, my uncle’s voice finally went silent. Then ... “China, are you listening to me?”
I almost missed those softly spoken words. “I hear you, Uncle.”
“Yes,” he said, “but are you listening to me? Don’t forget Grat and I have contracted security with the racing commission for this meet. We don’t need an amateur, namely you, horning in on the business. And no matter if you have been on the mark with a couple cases, it doesn’t mean you’re a professional.”
“I know.” I dabbed my toast in the puddle of jam on my plate. “As you both take every opportunity to remind me.”
I should’ve filled my mouth with toast instead of a rebuttal.
“You listen here, young lady. We had a deal. Grat and I investigate, your job is to mind the office. Answer the telephone, keep the books, smile ...”
“Yes, yes. Smile pretty for the clients.” I could no more have prevented the scowl on my face than I could’ve stood on the tracks and stopped a train.
“Right.” His mustache waggled. “Looks like you need a little practice, lambie.”
I harrumphed. “But why should it bother anyone if I help Neva? Especially so small a thing as accompanying her to the morgue last night. The poor girl simply wanted to say good-bye to her brother. She was afraid they’d take him away and bury him and she’d never get the chance if she didn’t go right then.”
“Her mother—” Monk began.
“Her mother refused to even tell her where Robbie’s body had been taken. Neva found out by chance.”
“Mrs. O’Dell probably figured her daughter too young.”
“Mrs. O’Dell is not a nice woman. Haven’t you seen for yourself how she is? I doubt her daughter’s feelings enter into any decision she makes. Personally, I consider the woman’s actions quite despicable.”
“It ain’t up to you.” My uncle’s exasperation grew as he took a giant slurp of scalding coffee, burned his tongue and broke out in strangled coughing mixed with a mild curse word or three.
I waited until he stopped. “No, it isn’t. But it is up to Neva and I support her.”
“Could be a conflict of interest for the agency,” Monk said, “and our job comes first.”
I blew a raspberry. “Pooh. I don’t see any conflict of interest. You’re doing one job, I’m doing another. Trying to do another. That they’re taking place in the same location is coincidental.”
He stared at me. “Is it?”
“Isn’t it?”
“Doubtful,” he said.
So. He, and I expect Gratton as well, were willing to ignore those doubts in order to keep to the letter of the agency’s employment. Maybe Neva had done more convincing than she thought when she spoke with Monk last evening. This was the first time my uncle had admitted he wasn’t satisfied with the official word on Robbie’s death.
Robbie’s murder, rather. I didn’t think I’d wave the murder word in front of him so early this morning. He was aggravated enough without me setting match to the wick.
“You talked with Neva last night,” I finally said. “Doesn’t her story ring true to you? It does to me.”
“I’m betting she doesn’t know as much as you think she does. She’s young. Imaginative.” He eyed me. “Female.”
I glared back at him. “She didn’t imagine her brother’s death. And I didn’t imagine the slap marks on her face. I’m convinced she didn’t invent the man she saw meet with her grandfather, either.”
His jaw tightened. Oho. He was convinced as well.
We might have gone on bandying words all morning if someone hadn’t rattled the office door downstairs just then. A impatient banging arose. A client? Whoever it was sounded quite desperate.
Glad of the interruption, I jumped to my feet. “I’ll get it.”
Monk, whose knees protest climbing the flight of stairs more than a half dozen times a day, waved me on.
I flung open the door to a gentleman wearing a brown suit, well-tailored to hide a few pounds of extraneous weight, with a gorgeous vest of gold and brown brocade atop a crisp white shirt. His sandy-colored hair and beard were neatly trimmed. His demeanor shouted wealth and power. As though to amplify this impression, I glimpsed a closed carriage drawn by two white horses parked outside our door. A hulking man wearing a uniform-like suit waited at the horses’ heads.
A coachman, no less. I almost giggled.
“I need to speak with Mr. Howe or Mr. Doyle immediately,” he said as if I were below his notice. Pale-blue eyes seemed to stare right through me. “Hurry and fetch one of the detectives.”
Hoity-toity. “Who should I say is calling?” I stood in the doorway barring entry even though I recognized his fruity voice.
“I’m Mr. L. L. Branston,” he said, his intonation indicating he was an important man and I should’ve immediately known as important a personage as he.
In other words, jump, little froggie.
“Come in.” Gritting my teeth, I stood aside and made a sweeping gesture with my hand. “Wait here, please. Be seated while I tell my uncle you’re here. I’m sure he’ll be with you shortly.”
“Your uncle?”
“Yes. Mr. Howe is my uncle.”
He removed his bowler hat as if I’d risen the smallest of notches in the social strata.
“Ah,” he said. “I’ve heard about you. Pardon me for arriving before office hours, but I have an important appointment in a few minutes and I must speak to Mr. Howe first.” He paused. “Quickly, if you please, young lady.”
His insincere smile failed to move me. What had he heard? I wondered. And from whom? His wife, whom I’d met yesterday? But she hadn’t known I was connected to the detective agency.
Wondering how such a nice lady had come to marry an arrogant fellow like Mr. L. L. Branston, I went upstairs to let Monk know he had the racing commission bigwig waiting for him. I found him finishing the last of his coffee, the newspaper strewn across the table as he always left it.
“Branston here?” He looked thoughtful. “He say what he wanted?”
“Not to me.” But I daresay I planned on finding out. “He said he’s in a hurry. So ... chop, chop, Mr. Howe. He demands your presence immediately, if not sooner!”
“He does, does he?” Without any particular haste, Monk shook a handkerchief out of his pocket. He wiped his mustache and brushed a few stray crumbs from his shirt front before rising from the chair. Winking at me, he started down the stairway. “Don’t let him catch you listening, lambie. He’s a queer duck. Might take your ... interest ... the wrong way.”
I waited at the top of the stairs until I heard voices in the office below. One of them, to my surprise, belonged to Gratton. I hadn’t heard him come in. What brought him here so early?
Two probable choices. My peccadillo from the previous evening, or the lordly Mr. Branston had called him earlier. I sighed. Only one way to find out.
I crept down the stairs, staying to the inside wall to prevent the treads from creaking.
“... a message last night saying someone from this office was poking around in the morgue, most particularly, around the O’Dell boy’s body,” Branston was saying.
Drat. My peccadillo.
Lars. He must’ve sent Mr. Branston the same information as he had Monk. But why?
I hadn’t expected this. Ears straining, I held my breath.
Curiously enough, Grat answered instead of Monk. With a question, one of his investigative techniques I find handy myself.
“Is there a problem?” he asked.
I tensed.
“No, no. I’m sure not,” Branston said. “However, I don’t like it. We—I’m referring to the racing commission—have decided we’d be better off if no undue attention is paid to the boy’s death.”
Undue attention indeed!
“Any accident is newsworthy, of course,” he went on, “but the less notoriety connected with the incident, the better. We don’t want to discourage paying customers from att
ending the fair. This race meet needs to be a success if we plan to remunerate Corbin for the continued use of his track.”
“Did your message mention who from this office was involved?” Grat spoke again. “Or why?”
“No.” Branston’s answer came almost too fast and sounded snappish indeed. “I expected both of you to know better. My only concern is keeping the public safe and avoiding bad publicity. We hired your firm to make it so. The only reason we hired your firm. Anything else is up to the police.”
By which he meant keeping a lid on any criminal doings. And the police, according to their reputation, would be only too happy to oblige the power brokers of the city.
For a hefty fee, no doubt.
My uncle said, his voice cool, “The visit to the morgue was personal, nothing to do with either the police or the racing commission.”
I sagged with relief, even though his support was no more than I expected. Being family, we looked after each other, even if we disagreed with certain positions. A wholly different situation than the one between poor Neva and her relatives.
“I wonder why Hansen thought to tell you anything,” Gratton said, and I fancied I heard wariness when he added, “Is something going on the agency needs to know about?”
“You know what you’ve been hired to do.” Branston’s words and the tone of voice in which he delivered them struck me as vaguely menacing. “No more, no less. I won’t have you or anyone from your office stepping outside your contract obligations. Period.”
Was I the only one who heard a peculiar emphasis on a few of those words?
“Do as you’re told,” he finished crisply.
I could very well imagine the stifled retorts and clenched jaws this statement caused Monk and Grat. Neither man takes to condescension—not from anybody. I figured Mr. Branston had just used up his one pass.
A charged silence fell among the men. Nimble provided a welcome break as she ran past me down the stairs, bursting into the office with a yelp of joy at spying Grat. Have I mentioned he’s her favorite person after me?
With enough noise to serve as warning, I followed her and entered the office. All three men stood in stiff postures. Monk’s face was so red I feared an apoplexy. Grat’s expression had gone stone cold. He unbent enough to pat Nimble on her bony little head.
“Sorry,” I said, assuming an innocent expression. I smiled. “Are we interrupting?”
I think Grat and Monk both were a bit relieved at my intrusion. Gratton caught my eye and made a preemptory gesture which meant see me in private.
No choice. I nodded.
“Excuse us. I’m expecting word on a case, and have instructions for Miss Bohannon,” he told Branston, lying so smoothly I almost believed him myself.
Until, with Nimble bursting through the door ahead of me, we got outside.
10
“Tell me, sweetheart,” Grat said in a tone I knew meant he’d rather be calling me some other name, “what in the ... what were you doing at the morgue last night? Besides getting yourself in trouble.”
The best way to handle this kind of question—the ask-and-answer-oneself kind, I mean—was to start out firm and not take any guff. As I’ve learned from previous experience.
“Trouble? Why on earth do you think I’m in trouble? All I did was accompany a young friend on a sad errand.” Head up, voice crisp, I looked him right in the eyes. I loved his eyes, a mysterious deep warm gray. Except when they turned cold, of course, which they hadn’t. Yet.
“A friend?” He folded his arms across his chest. “Or one of your so-called clients?”
I took a deep breath. “Both.” No point in ducking the issue. All he had to do was speak to Monk.
“Doggone it, China,” he began, but stopped when I took aim and poked him in the chest with my forefinger.
“I am not interfering with your job for the racing commission,” I said. “I heard Mr. Branston restating your task and Miss Neva Sue O’Dell’s request of me is different. Connected I suppose, in a way, but different.” Sometimes one had to drive the point home, so I poked him again.
“Don’t.” He captured my hand and held it. “How different?”
I could see no advantage in withholding the facts of Neva’s case. Once he considered the evidence, he might be more open to her argument than my uncle had proven himself to be. Besides, it never hurt to let someone know what I was working on. I had gained a healthy sense of self-preservation in these last few months. Caution is now my watchword.
His lips tightened as he heard me out. “Doesn’t sound like much to go on. What are the facts? That her mother and grandpa took money to throw a race? We already pretty well knew they had, although proving it might be difficult. Not unless—” He stopped what he’d started to say and, perhaps involuntarily, gave my hand a little squeeze.
Not unless what? I wondered.
Gratton quickly shifted tactics. “So the girl thinks she saw a man giving her grandpa some money. Can she even identify the man?”
“Knows she saw the man give her grandpa money. And no. She can’t identify him.” I snatched my hand away. “Not yet. But here’s one undeniable fact. Her brother is lying dead in the Spokane morgue.”
“Accidents happen. You know they do.”
“Yes. And I know murder can be made to look like one of those accidents.”
Grat frowned. “People get killed riding horseback every day. All it takes is a stumble, the horse to shy, or a rider not paying enough attention to his surroundings. And when racing at top speed in a crowd of other horses and riders, it’s bound to happen on occasion.”
“You don’t find it suspicious when a boy’s death is swept under the rug by his own mother and grandfather? And it’s not so common to find the boy’s throat marked up with welts and bleeding cuts, either. Especially considering he had gotten threats.”
“Welts? Cuts? Threats?” Grat’s voice rose. “China, what are you talking about? You sure you didn’t leave a thing or two out of this talk?”
“Shh. Not so loud.” Our backyard was empty, the ground as dusty and dry as summer, but sound carried well out here, bouncing off the brick walls of neighboring buildings as though in a canyon. I glanced toward the door where I heard Uncle Monk and Mr. Branston still speaking, their conversation indistinct and perhaps a little friendlier now. “Yes, threats. I’m trying to tell you.”
In a happy interruption, Monk stuck his head out and said, “Grat, Branston needs a word with both of us before he goes.”
Grat nodded, and with what I suppose he thought was a scowl threatening enough to quell any errant detecting aspirations on my part, strode inside to glad-hand Mr. Branston.
Calling Nimble to come inside with me, I escaped upstairs to the apartment, the dog on my heels. Soon my uncle called to me, “China, we’re leaving. You’re in charge of the office. Don’t”—there was a wealth of meaning in such a short word—“go off on any harebrained schemes of your own. I’ll talk to you tonight. Understand?”
“I understand, Uncle. I’ll be happy to talk with you tonight,” I said. Harebrained schemes indeed!
I heard the rumble of the men’s voices as they left, upon which I deemed it safe enough to get to work opening the office and taking care of a few minor billings. I anticipated a day of tedium stretching in front of me.
As it turned out, I couldn’t have been more wrong about the tedium. The morning, which had started off badly, soon grew downright awful. Although, eventually, the day turned into what was almost a family reunion, only without the family. Just friends. But first, I had to get through a visit from Sergeant Lars Hansen of the Spokane Police Department.
Oh happy day.
Sunshine blazed through the office window. Remember? I don’t like to close the shades. Nimble lay sprawled on the floor snoozing in a puddle of light. She lifted her head as the door banged open and Lars Hansen bulled his way in. All signs of drowsiness disappearing, the little dog jumped to her feet, pushed in between my legs, a
nd hid in the kneehole aperture of my desk.
In league with Monk and Gratton, she doesn’t care much for Lars. Sometimes I don’t either. Sometimes I’m merely ambivalent on the subject.
We started off with this being one of those ambivalent times, until we got to the events of yesterday evening.
“China,” Lars said in his deep booming voice, “here you are, pretty as ever after your ... uh ... adventure last night.”
Taking my fingers from the keys of my typewriter where I’d been filling out a billing requisition, I rested my hands in my lap. Easy to guess this meeting would not go well, not with such an inauspicious beginning.
“I’m busy, Officer Hansen. What do you want?” I asked. He only talks like this when he wants to get around me somehow. Besides, this wasn’t a good time for false geniality. I knew I looked quite haggard. And why not, considering the hours of sleep I’d missed? Viewing dead bodies is not conducive to a restful night.
He sat on the corner of my desk and swung his leg in a casual way. “Want? No, no. You’ve got me all wrong. That isn’t my intention. In fact, in a manner of speaking, I’m looking out for your welfare. I want to make sure you understand the privacy laws in this city. I don’t want the office manager of this fine establishment”—he was being sarcastic—“landing in a pile of trouble, now do I?”
“I don’t know, do you?” Then, a tick later, “What privacy laws?”
His leg kept up its rhythmic swing, moving perhaps a trifle faster. “The ones preventing young ladies from sneaking into the morgue to view the remains of an unrelated person.”
Hah! How long had it taken him to make up that particular law?
“I was with a related person at her request,” I said.
“You were with a young girl who could’ve been anybody.”
“Nonsense.” I was getting a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. This was on the edge of indecency even for Lars. “She’s the boy’s sister, as we all very well know. I went to the morgue with her out of consideration of her feelings. She needed to see her brother one last time.”
Four Furlongs Page 8
