“Holy mother of pearl, Lilly!” Cade cried before William could respond. “You can’t just run off on a lark. You have responsibilities to the agency.”
“Lark!” Lilly sprang from her seat and turned on him, her color and her voice high. “I hardly think going to help a friend who has been abducted and sold into carnal slavery can be considered a lark by anyone with an iota of common sense. Or decency!”
In her state of agitation, she failed to see the look of admiration cross William’s face.
“Please be seated, Miss Long.”
The authoritative tone halted Lilly mid-sentence. Horror filled her. Not only had she raised her voice, which was very unladylike, very unmannerly, but she had raised it in front of her boss! She felt whatever progress she might have made with the agency would slip away.
“Sit, Miss Long,” he said again.
This time, she did as she was commanded. She dared not look at him. She could only imagine what she might see on his broad face. As for McShane, she really didn’t give a fig what he thought of her outburst. Really! The man had so few sensibilities!
“You’re both right,” William said, after letting her stew in a heavy silence for a moment. “McShane is right in saying that you have responsibilities. You’re right in saying that your friend needs help and that helping will not be an adventure.”
“Will not?” Cade asked. “What exactly are you getting at?”
“As I said, Miss Nash sent me a letter, too, along with two hundred dollars she’d saved for her new home when she got there. She somehow managed to keep it hidden from Wilkins, just as she managed to get these letters to the post office.
“She’s offered the cash to me as payment to the agency to send you to find out who, if anyone, in the district they call Hell’s Half Acre, is behind Wilkins’s enterprise.”
“She wants to hire the agency?”
“Yes. But I’m telling you, Miss Long, there is absolutely no way I can take the case for that amount of money. We try our best to help people, but we are a business. There are salaries, expenses. . . .” His shrug seemed to encompass everything left unsaid.
Money. Why did it seem everything came down to money? she thought in disgust. “I understand that, sir, but—”
William held up a large hand to silence her. “Your devotion to your friend is admirable, Miss Long. Indeed, she is fortunate to have someone like you on her side. I was about to say that even though the agency is unable to take the case, I’ve talked with my father, and we are willing to give you time away to deal with the matter. Unpaid, of course.”
“Count me out.”
Lilly looked at her partner in astonishment. He shrugged. “I can appreciate your concern, and I agree that what’s happened to your friend is terrible, but with Robbie living with Meagan and Seamus, I’m responsible for part of his upkeep.”
“I understand,” she told Cade, and she did.
From their time in New Orleans, Lilly knew the boy ate as if there would be no tomorrow. Seamus had two children and one on the way, while trying to support a family on a policeman’s salary.
She drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Thank you for your understanding, Mr. Pinkerton. I promise I’ll do what I can and try to find Elijah Wilkins, or whoever it may be, as quickly as possible, and I promise not to take advantage of your generosity.”
“Surely you aren’t considering going to Texas alone, to a place called Hell’s Half Acre,” Cade said. “From what I’ve heard, the name doesn’t begin to describe it.”
She lifted her chin to its familiar, stubborn slant. “I admit that I would feel more comfortable with you along, of course, McShane,” she told him, doing her best to sound blasé about the whole thing. “And I’ll have to give my plan some careful thought. But Nora is an old friend, and I would never be able to sleep at night if I didn’t try to help her.”
William and Lilly looked at Cade. His eyes narrowed, and his lips, beneath his neatly trimmed mustache, thinned in anger. He turned to William.
“I cannot work for nothing, sir! And neither can Miss Long, truth be told!”
“My finances are none of your concern!” Lilly told Cade in a huffy tone.
“Please,” William said, once again coming between the sparring partners.
“Sorry, sir,” they said in unison.
“Surely, we can work out something,” Cade said.
Lilly chewed on her bottom lip, thinking hard. McShane was right. She did need to be paid while she worked, but if it came down to it, she would do what she could to help Nora and borrow money from Pierce and Rose to get by. If ever a woman needed justice, it was naïve Nora Nash. All those poor women deserved justice. And the children . . . ah, sweet heaven! The children deserved much more than that, those poor, innocent souls.
“What about charging Miss Nash the lowest agency rate and using the money she sent to cover the bill until it runs out?” Cade suggested. “That way we know exactly how much time we have to solve the case.” He looked at Lilly and offered her a grim smile. “There’s nothing like a deadline to make an operative work hard and fast.”
“What if you can’t solve the case by then?” William asked.
“Then we’ll shanghai Miss Nash, extricate those we can, and come home.”
Lilly gave Cade a tentative smile of thanks. Once again, her partner had considered all the angles and chosen a way that might work. It was a good plan, if only William would accept it.
He looked from one to the other. “Agreed. By my calculations, at three dollars a day, you’ll have just over two months to find out who’s behind the prostitution ring Wilkins supplies. If you don’t have an answer by then, you either come home and we’re done, or you work for no pay. Your choice.”
Cade seemed mollified, and Lilly was ecstatic. She had no doubt that she and her partner could bring about justice for those women who were being used so cruelly.
She threw off the feeling. “Tell me about this Hell’s Half Acre,” she said. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Count yourself lucky,” William said. “Basically, it’s an area at the southern part of Ft. Worth roughly between Rusk and Calhoun streets to the east and west, and Seventh and Front at the north and south. The train depot is nearby, so it’s handy for railroad workers, as well as the passengers coming into town to find entertainment. An optimal location, actually.”
“And then there are the cowboys,” Cade added. “Sitting in a saddle and eating trail dust for weeks on end is thirsty work. Ft. Worth is their last chance to indulge in a little gambling and carousing before heading north. I’ve heard a cattle drive can take anywhere from two to four months, depending on the market and the weather.”
Lilly lifted her eyebrows in surprise. “There are no towns along the way?”
William shook his head. “There’s nothing but Indian territory between there and Abilene or Dodge. To sum it up, Miss Long, the Acre is a crime-filled hellhole, chock-full of every vice known to man. Something to provide whatever pleasure and desire a man has the money to pay for.”
Depression settled over Lilly. This is where Nora was.
“It sounds as if Wilkins is nothing but a flunky, since he procures for everyone, so I expect we’re looking for someone with a little more clout.”
“How will we find Nora?”
“I’m not sure. It would have been a great help if she’d said which madam she worked for, but since she’s new and fresh it’s pretty safe to say she’s at one of the sporting houses and not in a crib.”
Lilly glanced from one man to the other. “Crib? What’s that?”
“A crib is nothing more than a pen on the streets,” William said. “It’s where the women go when they’re no longer attractive or have contracted some sort of disease.
“Boarding, or sporting houses, dance hall, or whatever you want to call them, are better-class establishments with more sophisticated settings and a higher class of girls, so they can charge more per transaction.�
��
There was an emptiness in Cade’s eyes, as if he were seeing a vision in his mind he’d rather not. Then he seemed to shake off the feeling, and his mouth twisted into something almost resembling a smile. “They even have fancy parlors where the girls and the clients can mix and mingle before a choice is made for the evening.”
“Unbelievable,” Lilly whispered. Sex for money. A transaction.
“We haven’t any time to muck around,” William told them, smoothing his mustache with a thick finger. “The first thing we need is some plausible reason for the two of you to be there. If you just show up as Pinkerton agents and start asking questions, you’ll never get any answers. Posing as a married couple isn’t the right cover in this instance.”
“Agreed,” Cade said.
Lilly was not surprised to hear William say, “I have an idea brewing.” Their boss was known for his quick thinking. “I’ll need to do some checking around and confirm a couple of legalities with Simon. We’ll meet back here first thing in the morning and see if we have a viable plan.”
“Simon?” Lilly echoed.
“Yes,” William said, smiling. “Your friend Linedecker appeared to have such an honest and practical approach to the law, I persuaded him to come work for us. It never hurts to have someone on the team who can help with legal issues.”
The announcement stunned and pleased her. Simon was struggling as an attorney. Working for the Pinkertons was just the step up he needed to attain success.
Before she could comment further, Cade said, “What’s your idea?”
“I was thinking that you could play a gambler from back East who got the dance hall from Dusty Knowles.”
“Who is Dusty Knowles?” Lilly asked.
“Just a no good gambler who let his ‘appetites’ get in the way of how he took care of his business. He wound up owing a lot of money, so he packed up and moved to California and let his dance hall go back to the bank. You can say you won it from him in a poker game or bought it from him because it was a good deal.”
“It could work,” Cade said with a nod.
“As I said, you can’t just waltz into town and start asking questions, but if Agent McShane goes in pretending to be a gambler with an eye to opening a new business, he’s free to ask all sorts of questions. Any potential owner would want to know what to expect before deciding whether or not to move ahead with his investment.”
William had a point, Lilly thought.
“After all,” he said, looking to Cade, “I’m sure you plan on putting in a pricey operation that will appeal to the bigwigs. And hopefully, when word of your arrival gets around town, it will bring your friend out of hiding.”
Lilly had listened to it all in silence. “And what would my role be?”
“I thought you could be McShane’s paramour.”
“Why can’t I be the new owner?”
McShane had the audacity to laugh. “You’re shaping up to be a good operative,” he said, “but you don’t have nearly enough experience to deal with the likes of what we’ll be mixed up in out there. To say it’s a nasty business is putting it mildly.”
“And I’ll need to check on the legalities with Simon before we move with this. It may be moot.”
Lilly decided to give in without a fight. She knew they were right, but she’d had to try. Would she ever get to be the top agent in one of their cases?
“I think it’s a good plan, but we need someone else to be the potential buyer,” she said. “Cade is more suited to being a bodyguard or a bouncer.”
“She has a point,” her partner said.
“I can’t deny that has merit,” William said with a nod. “He’s certainly got the experience at cracking heads. What about your friend, Wainwright?”
“Pierce?”
“Yes. Where is the troupe these days? He did such a bang-up job in New Orleans; he’d be ideal for this.”
“They were in Terre Haute, the last I heard, but he can’t get away from the troupe every time we need help. Too many people rely on him for their bread and butter.”
“Of course,” William said. “You’re right. Any other ideas, McShane?”
“Erin,” he said without a moment’s hesitation. “She’d be perfect.”
“Who’s Erin?”
“My sister.”
Once again, William agreed with a slow nod. “Can you speak with her and see how she feels about it?”
“If I can find her,” Cade said with a lift of his shoulders.
“Excuse me,” Lilly said, “but what am I missing here? How can your sister possibly help us with this assignment?”
The expression in his eyes grew as bleak as a winter day. “Erin is a prostitute,” he told her. “She knows a lot about how the business works.”
CHAPTER 2
After the three had agreed on a meeting time for the next morning, Cade suggested that he and Lilly go somewhere to formulate a workable strategy, a common practice when they were given a new assignment. Everything they said and did during the operation needed to be designed so that the people they connected with believed their cover. Everything from their relationships to each other, their backgrounds, and the personalities of the characters they would be portraying—the smallest details needed to be addressed if they didn’t want to ruin the chances of finding Nora and bringing justice to those who deserved it.
Lilly’s curiosity warred with her upbringing. She was eager to know more about Cade’s sister, especially how she’d come to be a lady of the evening, but good manners forbade her asking. McShane would tell her what she wanted to know—or at least part of it—when he wanted to tell her.
“What about a restaurant?” she asked instead, glancing at the pendant watch hanging around her neck and seeing that it was approaching the supper hour.
“Normally I would agree, but today I think we should go to my brother’s place. He should be home soon, and he and Meagan have been asking to meet you for months. We won’t have to worry about someone overhearing us, and they probably know how to get in touch with Erin.”
The thought of meeting Cade’s brother and his brother’s wife and his sister who was a real, honest-to-goodness soiled dove caught Lilly off guard. “I . . . I don’t know,” she said.
“They won’t mind,” he assured her, almost as if he’d read her mind. “And Robbie will be there.”
She couldn’t deny that the thought of seeing the ornery, mischievous boy brought a surge of pleasure. “Are you certain it will be all right?”
“Positive. And I know for certain that Meagan is making shepherd’s pie and brown bread for supper.”
“All right,” she said, bowing to his wishes. “It sounds delicious.”
“It will be.”
* * *
Neither of them spoke much on the way to the McShane home. Lilly imagined Cade was concocting some sort of plan to get them all assimilated into Hell’s Half Acre and back out again, unscathed. She was busy wondering how and why his sister had become a tart.
Remembering the men who had paraded through her own mother’s life and bed didn’t help. As far as Lilly knew, Kate Long had not sold her body, but neither had she been averse to sharing it with one man or another, whenever it suited her fancy.
When Lilly was old enough to understand what was going on, she’d hated her mother, but that had faded with the passage of time. No one could help loving Kate, and her daughter was no exception. To this day, Lilly could not fathom why her mother had done what she’d done, been what she’d been, and love aside, she had never condoned Kate’s behavior.
To squash any similar, errant tendencies she might have inherited, Lilly had done her best to negate her own beauty with every unappealing style of hair and dress she could imagine. More important, she had remained a virgin until she’d wed Timothy Warner. Except that she hadn’t really married him.
Memories of her sham marriage took her thoughts back to William’s announcement about Simon Linedecker’s association with the
agency. She smiled at the memory of the tall, rather untidy man with the tortoiseshell glasses. Without the advantage and influence of the wealth that most young attorneys possessed, Simon had been struggling to keep his offices open when Lilly approached him about her divorce. His association with the Pinkertons would be a good move for him in many ways. She hoped she’d have the opportunity to see him again one day.
“I don’t suppose you’d tell me about Erin before I meet her?” she asked, breaking the growing silence.
Cade slanted a sharp glance her way. “You’re right.”
She wasn’t surprised by the answer. How many times had he told her that she asked too many questions?
“Don’t pout, colleen,” he said, calling her by the name she despised. “I’m not trying to be difficult, but it’s not my story to tell.”
Lilly frowned. “You’re angry with her. Will you tell me why?”
“Beyond the obvious, you mean?” he snapped.
Lilly nodded.
“No.”
“I thought not,” she said with a sigh.
“Then why ask?”
How could she tell him that everything about him was of interest to her when it was all she could do to admit that fact to herself?
“ ‘Hope springs eternal. . . .’” she quoted with a wan smile.
“Indeed, it does.” And that was the end of the conversation.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, they arrived at the McShane residence, a small apartment in an Irish area located in the northern part of the city. The moment Cade opened the door, Lilly’s senses were awash with the wonderful aromas of freshly baked bread and some other wonderful combination of ingredients.
Hearing the door open, the woman working at the small metal basin turned with a smile on her pretty, freckled face. The smile faded a bit when she noticed Lilly standing next to Cade. Rallying, Meagan McShane dried her hands on the apron tied around her protruding belly. He had failed to mention that his brother’s wife was expecting a child. And soon. She crossed the room and gave Cade a hug. “What brings you here, deartháir beag?”
Lilly loved hearing their native language, though she had no idea what they were saying. Cade flashed his rare grin. “She called me younger brother, though I’m older than she is.”
Murder Will Speak Page 2
