by Liz Freeland
“That’s your telephone,” I said.
“I fear it’s to do with the fire.” He remained in his chair.
“Would you like me to answer it?”
“If you wish.”
I was already on my feet. Going to the trouble and expense of installing phone service only to let it ring unanswered struck me as absurd. Plus, the call might be from the police, perhaps even Muldoon. I was curious to find out if there were any new developments in the case.
In the hallway I snatched up the receiver of the candlestick phone. “McChesney residence,” I said, a little breathless.
“Good heavens, Louise—don’t tell me you’ve taken up domestic service, too. Aren’t two jobs keeping you busy enough?”
Aunt Irene’s voice made me smile. “I came by to talk to Mr. McChesney about something, and Mrs. Carey isn’t here. I don’t think he’s feeling well. He’s taking it all very hard.”
“Poor man. I’ll have him to supper tonight. That usually cheers him up.”
“He could use a meal. Would you like to speak to him?”
“Yes, but first I have a message for you.” Her laugh sounded tinny over the line. “I feel like an exchange operator. A man telephoned here for you. A Mr. Jackson?”
“Jackson Beasley?” I guessed.
“That’s it. A very nice-sounding man—his voice had a Southern lilt. He seemed like a proper gentleman, like Mr. Beauregard in Violet in the Shade. He asked me to tell you that he would be at the Horn & Hardart on Broadway and Forty-sixth between three and four thirty, and that you could meet him there.”
I pivoted to check the hall clock behind me. It was close to three already. “I’d better scoot.”
She lowered her voice. “Is this part of the investigation, or should I scold you for being an automat floozy?”
“Jackson is a coworker,” I assured her. “I need to speak to him about Guy Van Hooten and Leonard Cain.”
“Be careful, sugar bun.”
“I doubt much harm can come to me in an automat.”
“I’m not so sure. The only time I went there I bit into a Kaiser roll so stale it nearly cracked my tooth.”
“I’ll just have coffee,” I promised.
I called Mr. McChesney to the telephone and hurried out to meet Jackson.
* * *
At noontime, the Broadway Horn & Hardart, that mechanized food palace for the proletariat, could resemble a reenactment of the sacking of Rome. At this time, later in the afternoon, there was relative calm among the smattering of tired shoppers, loners, and discouraged actors bucking up their spirits after a long day warming the benches in producers’ outer offices.
Jackson was already seated at a two-person table when I arrived. An empty plate and a cup of coffee lay in front of him. I paid my nickel and watched the brass dolphin spout chicory brew into my cup.
Immediately after I sat opposite him, I could tell that coffee wasn’t all Jackson had been drinking this afternoon. Dark stubble ran along his jaw. His eyes were red, and cigarette butts piled in the ashtray at his elbow.
I settled myself across from him. “Thank you for telephoning my aunt.”
“I assumed it must be urgent if you hunted me down to my lair,” he drawled. “Seems I’ve had a few visitors today.”
“I saw Ford at your apartment. I guess your housekeeper told you about that, too.”
For a moment he didn’t speak.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
His lips flattened. “I can’t imagine what Ford wants.”
“He wants to know what’s become of his novel.”
“Another casualty of the fire, I imagine.”
“So you didn’t have a copy at home?”
“If I kept copies of everyone’s books at home I’d soon run out of room to sleep—unless I made a mattress of manuscripts.” The idea amused him. “Is that what you came here for? To find out what became of young Fitzsimmons’s magnum opus? I didn’t think you cared for the man.”
“I don’t. Actually, I wanted to ask about Guy. Specifically, what you know about Guy and Leonard Cain?”
He grunted and lit another cigarette. “What’s the point of talking about it now? Guy’s gone. Ashes to ashes . . .”
I shouldn’t have been surprised that Guy’s death had hit him hard. When Callie’s cousin Ethel had been murdered in our apartment, it felt as if my world had been upended—and there had been no love lost between Ethel and me. Seeing someone cut down in the prime of life was profoundly disturbing. Guy’s death hadn’t affected me as strongly as Ethel’s, but I’d been immediately plunged into the why of it, which helped. Also, I hadn’t seen Guy’s body, as poor Jackson had.
“What’s the use of any of it? A damn waste,” he said on an exhaled cloud of smoke.
“Mr. McChesney wants me to find out if Guy was involved in anything that led to the fire and his death.”
“You? Why?”
The incredulity in his voice annoyed me. “I helped solve the murder of my roommate’s cousin.”
“Did you?” His big dome of a forehead lined in thought. “All I remember is that you accused Ford Fitzsimmons of trying to kill you.” He shook his head. “Madness.”
“The police wouldn’t have found the real killer without my help.” How Muldoon would have howled at my arrogance. I added, as if the detective were actually listening, “At least, it would have taken them much longer.”
“Hmm.” Jackson’s expression conveyed more than a dollop of skepticism. “And so Mr. McChesney wants you to find out who committed the arson.”
“And also to find out if it was intended to be murder.”
He drew back. “You mean the fire was set deliberately to kill Guy?”
“That seemed to be what the police were thinking yesterday.”
“Well, then, why not just let the police handle it? Better all around—and safer for you.”
“I’m not worried about my safety.” Not as much as everyone else seemed to be. “And the police are going to have a hard time with this one. The Van Hootens don’t want an investigation at all.”
“Afraid of what’ll come crawling out once the log’s kicked over,” he drawled.
“What did Guy have to hide?” I asked.
“All the vices of the rich and young. Gambling, drinking, women . . .”
I stopped him. “Women? What women?”
“He didn’t confide in me much. If I were you, I’d concentrate on the gambling.”
I sat up straighter. “That’s why I wanted to ask you about Leonard Cain. He was still at the office when I left Wednesday night.”
Jackson thought for a moment. “Guy did tell me that he’d been going regularly to one of Cain’s clubs—the Omnium, I think it was—and getting into a bit of a fix there.”
“What kind of a fix?”
He laughed. “I worry about this investigation of yours, Louise. What kind do you think? Gambling debts. The Omnium has an infamous back room, although it might actually be upstairs or in the basement, for all I know. I’ve never been there. Wherever it’s hidden, it’s got a roulette wheel with Guy’s name on it. He mentioned playing roulette more than once.”
I thought about Wednesday night, when I was covering my typewriter and preparing to leave work. Guy and Cain were shut up in his office and I had no idea when either would leave. I didn’t particularly want to barge in to tell Guy I had a dentist appointment the next morning, so I wrote the note about my next morning’s absence and went to slip it under the door. As I bent down, I heard Cain say, “I’m here to settle up, Van Hooten.” At the time, his tone hadn’t struck me as threatening, but now that expression, settle up, sounded more sinister.
“Do you know anything about Leonard Cain himself?”
Jackson leveled a stare at me. “The first thing you should know is that Mr. Cain isn’t a man you should tangle with, or accuse without proof. In the South we call them big dogs. A big dog’s jaws are always dangerous, even if he seems
tame and friendly.”
“But if Cain had a debt to collect, that might be a motive for murder. And he was the last one to see Guy.” I told him about “settling up.”
“That’s worrying, but if I had a nickel for every person I’d heard Guy have words with I could empty out this entire automat,” Jackson said.
“Who else argued with him?”
“Well, I did from time to time.”
“At work,” I said dismissively. “Colleagues have differences. That’s normal.”
“True.” He scratched his stubbly chin. “What about that brother of his? The younger, smarter, yet less-favored Hugh. He came to the office a few weeks ago.”
“I didn’t see him.”
“It was late. They were holed up in Guy’s office, going at each other like two tomcats.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t have my ear to the keyhole,” he said.
“But you said they were going at each other. Arguing, not actually fighting, I assume.”
“Oh yes. Shouting, not hitting.”
“Then you must have heard something.”
Jackson hesitated. I could read the conflict he was having over repeating what he’d heard. Telling tales out of school. He swallowed down the dregs of his cup. “I didn’t listen on purpose. But Hugh had looked livid before he went into Guy’s office, and their voices sounded angry, even though the door muffled their words. I remember one thing clearly, though, and that was something Guy said. He shouted, ‘Would you kill our mother?’ ”
I frowned. “I assume it wasn’t meant literally.”
“At the time, I took it to mean that Hugh was threatening to do something that would make their mother unhappy to the point of apoplexy.”
Such as killing Guy? No, surely not. They wouldn’t have been discussing that. But maybe Hugh had threatened to do something that would hurt Guy.
“The argument might have meant nothing, for all its ferocity,” Jackson said. “Siblings squabble, and the intensity of it can sometimes seem fiercer to outsiders than it does to the participants themselves.”
Would you kill our mother?
That Guy had spoken those words made Jackson’s telling seem more credible to me. Mrs. Van Hooten had doted on Guy. Hugh was second in birth order and second in her heart. And whatever Mr. McChesney said, Hugh’s not receiving any stake in the family publishing business had to have stung a little. It had been a slight. He certainly hadn’t spoken of Guy with any great love, just hours after his brother’s death.
What did Hugh know about Guy that would have killed their mother if she had found out about it? Something about the gambling debt he owed to Leonard Cain?
“When did you overhear this?” I asked.
“Three weeks ago?” He shrugged. “I couldn’t say for sure.”
“Recently, then.” I tapped my fingers against my coffee cup. Could anything about that sibling argument have led to Guy’s death? It still seemed more likely that Leonard Cain was behind the fire. Perhaps because I’d seen Cain talking to Guy with my own eyes.
I pushed my coffee away. Every guess was a wild guess at this point, but talking to Jackson had confirmed my hunches. “Thank you for calling me back so quickly,” I said.
“I got back to the house not too long after you left. Miriam said that your business sounded urgent.”
“Miriam, your housekeeper?”
He flinched. After checking that no other automat patrons were within earshot, he said, “Miriam’s my wife.”
Heat flushed my cheeks. I stared at him for several seconds before I could speak. “Your wife? I didn’t know you were married. You never mentioned . . .”
“My colored wife?” His lips turned down. “No, not to many, I don’t.”
The memory of how I’d spoken to her, how I’d assumed she was the maid, filled me with shame. “I’m so sorry. She must have thought me very rude. I treated her like a housekeeper.”
“She’s used to it.”
Yes, with a husband who claimed her only under duress, I could see how she might be. Was she the reason we were meeting here, not at his home?
“Miriam’s kind, and intelligent,” he said defensively. “Maybe the smartest woman I’ve ever known. Yet my family will have nothing to do with her. Or me, now. That’s why we moved here. We lost everything. We’ve learned to be careful.”
“Surely, now that you’re here . . .”
His lips twisted into a sneer. “Do you really think here is so different?” He stubbed out his cigarette. “Well, you’re young. I used to think the best of people, too. People I’d known all my life, whose hearts I would have sworn were no different than mine. During one summer break during my college years I tutored children in my hometown in Latin. Miriam was one of my students.” He shook his head. “Do you know, I had friends criticize me for accepting her as a pupil? Said I was wasting my time, as if I were teaching a dog tricks. But Miriam was my best student—it was a pleasure to talk to her about Ovid and Virgil.”
“You fell in love over the classics.”
He smiled, and for a moment he seemed less like Jackson and more like a man a woman might actually find appealing. “Not just at first. My hopes really were those of a teacher for a promising student. But then after I graduated from Harvard and came home, I discovered her mother had died and she’d been forced to take work laundering to help support her younger brothers and sisters. But she still carried her Ovid with her. I think that’s what made me love her first.”
His smile was short-lived. “When it all came out, I learned very quickly who my friends were. They fell away like autumn leaves against the first brisk wind. From my family I received nothing but ultimatums and even threats to turn us in to the authorities. But by then there was a baby on the way and my back was up. Of course there was no question of our marrying in Alabama. We might both have ended up in jail, but I wasn’t going to abandon Miriam.”
I detected something in his voice—a hint of regret. Did he wish now he had capitulated to his family’s demands?
“Because of rumors, I’d already lost my job at a paper down there. The owner was part of the white-hooded crowd. So we came north, and set up house together for the first time. But not long after, our baby, the sweetest baby girl you ever saw, was born with a bad heart. She died after three days.”
I felt sick. “I’m so sorry.”
“We were heartbroken, and alone in our heartbreak. My father wrote me that the baby’s death was a blessing—a blessing. Miriam’s people told her that it was a punishment. Everybody had God tugging our tragedy from both directions.”
“How awful. I’m so sorry for all you both went through. But you mustn’t think Mr. McChesney would have fired you if he’d known about Miriam. Guy, either.”
“Maybe not. But being cast out by your own people can make you lose faith in the goodness of your fellow man.”
I stared down at my hands, remembering my uncles putting me on a train fifteen months ago. Aunt Sonja hadn’t come to the station. I’d spied tears in my uncles’ eyes, but neither of them had argued that I shouldn’t leave Altoona. And none of them had written me since that day.
I’d felt shaken. Abandoned. When I’d come here, I’d created a new family—my aunt Irene, Callie, and Otto. Yet not one of them had I told about the boy I’d given birth to. I was no more trusting of people than Jackson.
“You’ve gone silent, Louise.”
I gave myself a shake. “I was only thinking.”
His lips flattened. “I’ve seen other people ‘thinking’ after I’ve told them about Miriam.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, “we were never friends, were we? I won’t think the worse of you if we never speak again.”
I drew up, torn between compassion and anger. “You don’t know me, and I’m fairly certain you’re selling some others short, as well. You didn’t need to keep Miriam a secret from anyone at Van Hooten and McChesney.”
/>
He sighed. “Yes, well, there’s no point in worrying about any of this now, is there? There is no more Van Hooten and McChesney.”
“There might be.”
“Don’t be naïve. You think Ogden McChesney is the type to rally after a setback like this one? He was barely muddling along the way things were. It was the Van Hooten money that started the firm and kept it going. I’m sure that Hugh and his mother are thrilled to be done with the publishing business now.”
I feared he was correct.
“I’m happy to be done with it, too,” he said.
“With what?”
“The business, my job, Van Hootens—all of it. I’m looking forward to starting fresh. Why not?” He breathed out wearily. “I’ve done it before.”
Despite his words, his defiance, depression clung to him. I didn’t want to leave him on such a defeatist note. “I hope you’re not going to cut all ties to Van Hooten and McChesney. I’ll be curious where you go next, and I hope we can be friends. I’d like to know Miriam, too.”
“Time will tell,” was all he said, unconvinced.
I stood, said goodbye, and left. Jackson half rose, but he didn’t make a move to leave. When I crossed the street, he was sitting there still, watching me through the window with that long stare of his. I’d meant what I said about wanting to know Miriam, but I could tell he didn’t believe me. He’d heard those words before.
CHAPTER 6
A door slammed and I sat up, bleary-eyed, as quick, light footsteps came from the doorway.
“Guess what I found out, Louise.”
Callie had been gone when I’d arrived home exhausted from an afternoon spent running around midtown. I’d lain down on the sofa and listened to an impromptu concert given downstairs by a few of the Bleecker Blowers, back from their upstate trip. I must have nodded off somewhere in the middle of “Fascination.”
Callie took no notice that she was addressing a half-asleep person. She tossed herself into the chair and hugged a fringed pillow. “I finally managed to get Teddy talking about something other than airplanes. Well, almost. It was still all about Hugh Van Hooten.”
Hugh’s name set off my mental alarm clock. “What about Hugh?”
