How badly was he hurt? I wondered. In truth, he looked rather pale. Also, very unlike him, he’d left part of his breakfast on his plate. Who had bashed his head? We knew it hadn’t been Neva. Whoever she’d found to help her with Mercury had to be the culprit.
“So the horse is there?” Grat seemed to be sniffing the note—rather cautiously, I might add. “With some of those gypsies camped by the river?”
Porter shrugged. “Probably. But don’t ask me. If he was, I expect she moved him first thing when she caught on I’d followed her there.”
“If she had time,” I said.
A sulfur match scritched as Monk lit it on his boot heel. He held the flame to the end of his cigar, noxious smoke rising over the table in a blue haze. “What I want to know is how you got involved, Anderson.” He shot me a wry look. “China twisted your arm, I suppose.”
“Why, I did not, Uncle. I persuaded. And asked nicely,” I said, even as Porter nodded. I hesitate to say which of us he agreed with.
“Seemed like a good enough plan at the time,” he said, fiddling with his coffee cup until I got up and fetched him a refill. “After I saw the girl’s scrapes and bruises, it didn’t seem right to do nothing. China and me, we figured even if anyone suspected her of hiding the girl, nobody’d guess I was in on it. And they wouldn’t have, either,” he added bitterly, “if Neva hadn’t gone running off after the horse. I figure somebody spotted her, then me, and put two and two together. Bad luck.”
Grat disagreed—sort of. “Some bad luck,” he corrected Porter. “But not, I think, all. I can’t help thinking other forces might be involved here. For one, somebody who knows both you and China and that you’re in town. Somebody who might have his own ax to grind.”
My jaw clamped. Without thinking, I touched the sore spot on my cheekbone. “You’re not talking about Sawyer Kennett, I assume.”
“I met Kennett to talk about cutting some new timbers for his mine shaft,” Porter said. “He ain’t—”
Grat smiled. “Not Kennett. You assume right, China.”
“Lars Hansen,” Monk said, tapping his cigar until ashes floated down and landed on his pant leg. He brushed them away.
Porter banged one fist into the other as though he wished it was Lars’s face. “How’d you folks ...” He stopped just short of admitting how he’d gotten thrashed before I took Neva to him. “Hell, yes,” he went on. “Right up his alley. Clobber somebody over the head, or bump them off.”
I ran my tongue over my cut lip. There was a ridge, but it didn’t actively hurt anymore. Lars was an ass, all right, but— “Let me see that note again, please.”
Grat handed it over.
The vague observation that had eluded me before finally surfaced. What can I say? It was early. I hadn’t had enough sleep. Fear for Neva overrode the clues. “Whatever else Lars has done, however else he’s involved, he didn’t write this note,” I said.
Grat cocked his head. His lips twitched.
“He didn’t?” Porter said.
Monk blew out a puff of smoke. “What makes you so sure?”
I ran my thumb over the paper, evaluating the texture. “For one thing, the paper is fine, handmade parchment. In other words, stationery, the good kind. The second thing is, I can’t imagine he’s started wearing women’s perfume. Expensive women’s perfume.” I flapped the note again, puzzled. Did Mrs. O’Dell own a bottle of Jicky by Guerlain? I could hardly believe so, and yet—
Grat chuckled. “Got it in one.”
“Got what?” Porter said.
“This paper reeks of perfume,” I explained. “So much that Nimble got a bloody nose trying to clear the fumes away, and even Grat had a sneezing fit. So, not Lars. And not Mrs. O’Dell. This perfume comes straight from Paris. What’s more,” I paused, trying to think, “I’ve smelled it on someone recently.”
“Where?” Monk snapped. “Who?”
I pondered. Where had I been? Who had I seen? The list seemed endless.
Finally defeated, I slumped. “I don’t remember.”
23
No matter how I tried, the memory of who had smelled of Jicky and where I’d met her continued to elude me. I daresay three men peppering me with questions didn’t help. They strained my poor gray matter to the breaking point.
After a while, to my relief, they decided it wasn’t worth their time and gave up. Monk and Grat had no choice but attend the job they’d contracted. First on their docket, before the fair opened, they had an early meeting with both Warren Poole and Mr. Branston.
Porter, complaining of a headache, thought to drink a little whiskey for medicinal purposes, and ask his wide acquaintance if they’d heard any scuttlebutt making the rounds regarding Mercury.
Grat, before he left, grasped my shoulders and fixed me with a dark stare. “You be careful, China. I’d say close the office, lock yourself in, and lay low, but I don’t expect you’d pay me any mind.”
He knew me too well.
His smile crooked upward on one side. “You’d just give me some story about having to follow your conscience.”
I’d been known to say something like that, once or twice. Why not? It was the truth.
“But I still wish you’d stay put.”
“I wish I could.” I eyed him levelly. “But nobody is doing anything about Neva. You know I can’t just ignore what’s happened, Grat. Somebody has to do something.”
“I’m hiring Bill Jackson to see if he can trace Neva,” he said. “He’ll be on the job within an hour.”
Bill Jackson, an old friend of my uncle’s, used to be a brand inspector, too. He’d put himself out to pasture ten years ago as too old and too beat-up to be effective anymore, although he helped Doyle & Howe with surveillance and whatnot upon occasion.
“I’m sure he’ll be a big help,” I said. Inwardly, I had doubts.
“Meanwhile, keep in mind the note is meant to scare you—scare all of us,” he said. “Whoever wrote it has no intention on following through. Nobody’d harm a young girl like Neva. Why would he?”
He meant to reassure me with logic. The trouble is, Grat needed reassurance himself. I heard the worry in his voice, saw it in the way the muscles in his jaw tensed.
A stray thought came to me. “I wonder—”
“What?”
“If any of the police would help. They aren’t all like Lars. Are they?”
“No. They’re not. The problem is telling which is which.”
He tapped my cheek ever so gently—a bare touch on the bruise Lars had inflicted—with a couple fingers. “Whatever you do, sweetheart, do not leave this building without your pistol in your pocket. Got that?”
“Got it. I won’t.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
The men were no more than out of sight than I replaced my second-best skirt, donning an older one with a reinforced pocket specially added to support the .32’s weight. Grat’s advice—or order—made sense. I fetched my jacket and pocketbook, donned a blue felt hat with a plain band and a pheasant feather, and made ready to start the search for Neva.
Keeping my promise to Gratton, to which Monk had added yet another admonition to keep my pistol handy at all times, the .32 was in my right skirt pocket. I’d never have left the building without it anyway. I had money, paper and pencil, and an extra handkerchief in my purse. One never knows when a written missive or something to bind a wound will be called for.
As for money ... well, who can go anywhere without a bit of cash? One of Gratton’s lessons had been about bribes. He maintained that even small ones are sometimes effective.
I left Nimble, whom I warned to hide if any burglars came around, lounging on my bed. Sometimes she’s a help. Today, I feared she might be more of a hinderance. Lastly, I locked up, turning our sign on the office door to the “closed” side.
Then I was off, sadly without a clear destination in mind.
Where should I go and what should I do first? It seemed I had onl
y two choices. Or maybe three. I dreaded the third, thinking I’d leave it as a last resort. So of the two most likely, I decided to work backward, from the last known place of action. I’d visit Porter’s hotel, where he’d found the note shoved under his door.
The Michigan was several blocks away. At the corner, I hopped aboard a streetcar and took the last remaining seat. The car was crowded at this time of the morning with people on their way to work. As Grat and Monk always instructed, advice I sometimes ignore, I kept my wits about me and didn’t let my attention wander. I took careful notice of anyone who seemed the least bit suspicious. Only one got real consideration, a youngish man dressed in a fancy vest over a white shirt, its sleeves rolled to the elbows. He seemed rather familiar to me. But then he winked and his lips formed a whistle, leaving me to believe he was only flirting. I lifted my chin and ignored him the rest of the way.
Then there was the big fellow who kept dabbing at the side of his face with a blue bandanna, and another one who worried me because I fancied I saw a resemblance to Neva’s grandfather. He sat several rows ahead of me and kept his back turned.
After a while, when he showed no interest in me, I forgot about him, too.
It was after I reached my stop and started into the Michigan that I grew certain I had someone following me. I don’t know what tipped me off. An uncomfortable feeling, I guess, a bit like an itch in the middle of your back you can’t reach to scratch.
Once inside the hotel, I darted to the side and, through the wide, plate-glass window, watched as people, mostly men, streamed past. One of them was the man with the blue bandanna. He stepped into a nearby doorway, loitering as he built and lit a smoke.
He took up a position near the street where he leaned against the hitching rack. His gaze remained fixed on the hotel’s swinging door as if glued there. A woman I also recognized from the streetcar halted in front of the hotel entrance as if undecided whether to come inside. She was sharp-featured and a little too stylishly gowned for the time of day.
Some people, my own uncle among them, would’ve said, “Never mind her.” Not me. Women, I’ve found, are no more honest than men, and sometimes just as violent. I stood behind one of the stout pillars holding up the Michigan’s soaring ceiling and kept an eye on her.
Finally, she did enter. She stood looking around, an expression of utmost displeasure on her face, as though the decor was not to her liking. After a minute, she went over to the desk clerk and spoke to him. His shrug raised the shoulders of his cheap-looking suit almost to his ears. He shook his head. She bent toward him and whispered. He pointed his nose toward the ceiling and made broad shooing motions with his hands. “Certainly not,” he mouthed so precisely I had no trouble reading his lips.
“You’ll be sorry,” I heard her say, voice rising like a fishwife’s on a beach as she departed. She went out, shaking her head for someone’s—I couldn’t see whose—benefit before crossing the street to the other side. If she was indeed a conspirator, she wasn’t a very good one.
Interesting.
Before I approached the clerk—and believe me, I had to work up my nerve to do so as I didn’t look forward to a bum’s rush—I took a piece of the paper from my purse, folded it into a square, and wrote Porter’s name on the outside. Then, since I expected that if I were being described to someone my blue felt hat would get a mention, I removed it. Carrying the hat behind my back, I took a deep breath and approached the front desk.
“Good morning,” I told the clerk, stretching my nearly healed lip in an entirely false smile.
“Yes, madam,” he said. “How may I help you?”
He didn’t smile back. Not, perhaps, a good beginning.
“I have a note for one of your clients.” I waved the document I’d had the foresight to prepare, and using my best approximation of a British accent. “If you’ll give me his room number, I shall deliver it to his door myself.” Workers are often impressed by hoity-toity speech.
Other times they are not.
“You too?” he said. “I suppose you’re looking for this Anderson character. He seems to be popular today.”
My accent didn’t falter. “I beg your pardon?”
“Beg it all you want. You’re the second female in a row with an almost identical spiel, and the third person today. Well, I won’t allow it. Not again. I chased the other woman off just like I’m gonna chase you.” He made those obnoxious shooing motions again.
I ignored them.
“May I infer the first person did indeed leave Mr. Anderson a message?”
“Yeah, he did, and Anderson pitched a fit. Came storming out of his room asking who it was, when it was, and where did the fellow go. I ain’t leaving myself open for that again.”
Seeing the bum’s rush didn’t work on me as well as it had on the sharp-featured woman, he started around the tall desk he’d been using to buttress his authority. He must’ve been standing on a box, because when he stepped down and faced me, he was only a few inches taller than I. Not so very intimidating, if it hadn’t been for his rather protrudent blue eyes.
I stood my ground. After all, I had justice on my side.
“What did you tell him?” I asked.
“Tell who?”
“Mr. Anderson. What did you tell him about the person who delivered the message?”
He looked me over. Paused. Squinted. “What’s it to you?”
“Don’t you mean, what’s it worth to me?”
He stared at me, silent. Then, “Maybe.”
I could’ve used some of Grat’s advice right now. For instance, how much did he consider an acceptable amount to bribe to a hotel clerk?
Opening my pocketbook, I made a show of looking through it, finally withdrawing two silver dollars. It probably amounted to a day’s wages for a clerk. I gave him one of the dollars, dropping it into his rather grubby palm. “You can earn the other by telling me about that messenger. Deal?”
“Chicken feed,” he said, even as the dollar disappeared into his own pocket. “But you look like a nice lady. What do you want to know?”
Oh, so now I’d become the nice lady. Progress. Relieved, I took a deep breath. “You referred to the person who did leave a note under Mr. Anderson’s door as he. So, a man. Did he give a name? Had you noticed him hanging around the hotel?”
The clerk shrugged. “Never seen him before. He didn’t introduce himself and I didn’t ask.”
“What did he look like?”
Another of those care-nothing shrugs. “Can’t remember. Just some feller off the street.”
It was an effort to contain the scathing remarks that formed on my tongue. “Young or old? Short or tall? Ethnicity? Color of hair or eyes? Crippled or well?” A thought occurred to me. “A smoker or chewer? What was he wearing?”
“Don’t want much, do you?”
“I want my money’s worth.”
“Huh. Well, he was young. But not too young. Medium tall. Couldn’t see his hair or eyes. Had a hat pulled down low.”
“What kind of hat?”
He started to shrug again before his memory kicked in. “Derby. Gray. Not crippled. Talked like he came from back east somewhere. Might’ve smoked.” He paused to correct himself. “Yeah, he smoked. Had a Bull Durham tag hanging out his vest pocket.”
“Vest? Was he wearing a suit?”
“Nah. Just a vest over shirtsleeves. Kept smiling as friendly as a snake-oil salesman.”
I froze. Then, “Come over to the window with me, if you please.” I grabbed his sleeve to make certain he did. He moved as slowly as an iceberg, but eventually I pointed out the man I wanted him to see. “Is that him?”
“How ... That’s him, all right.” He glared. “I got a notion to go over there and give him what for, getting me in trouble the way he did.”
I considered. “I wouldn’t, if I were you. He may be dangerous.”
The clerk’s close-set eyes bugged. “Dangerous?”
“Yes.” I loved throwing a bit o
f a scare into him. “So, did you tell Mr. Anderson any of this?”
The clerk’s face grew hard. “No. I told him nothing. Why should I? He was yellin’ at me ...” Oh, Porter, I thought, bad mistake. “... and had obviously been drunk last night. So drunk he’d been in a fight and was all bandaged up. I didn’t tell him anything.” He seemed rather proud of himself for this as he repeated it. “I don’t know anything else. Give me my dollar. We’re done.”
I tossed the coin on the desk where it spun and rang. “We are done. In the interest of fair play, be warned that you may be called to testify about the man outside. Mr. Anderson was attacked, probably by him, while attempting to save a young girl from kidnappers. Hence his bandaged head and short temper. It would be best if you didn’t try to obstruct those of us who are trying to help find the missing child.”
Neva, I thought, would certainly protest that “child” part.
His eyes bugged even larger. “Testify? Child?”
“Yes.” I looked around. “Is there a back way out of here?”
He pointed. “Kitchen at the rear.”
I nodded and was already halfway down a narrow back hall when he called out, “Hey, I thought you was a Brit!”
Five minutes later, I’d not only escaped the hotel without being seen, but was well on my way to the river. More specifically, to the meadow on the riverbank where Porter had followed Neva. He said he’d gone back, only to find the tent and the people had moved on. Even so, someone at the campground must know who those people were and where they’d gone. Perhaps they’d be more open to speaking to a lone, fairly innocuous female like me than a tough, angry logger like Porter Anderson.
24
Morning fires crackled in front of a scattering of tents at the campground down by the river. Wisps of fog rose off the water flowing nearby. Smoke smelling of tamarack wood drifted into the air, surrounding the eight or ten tents grouped among the sheltering trees in a blue haze. Canvas tarps protected backsides from dew-damp ground as people lounged about lingering over late breakfasts. Bacon sizzled in cast-iron pans, coffee boiled, women and children did their chores bundled in sweaters against the early morning chill. A surprisingly large herd of horses spread a significant odor all around. Some of the horses were attached to a picket line, some wore hobbles.
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