The Devil's Dime (The Samaritan Files)

by Bailey Bristol

  “Don’t you go anywhere near Wil—”

  He stopped himself and cursed, and fell off Jess to lean winded in the corner.

  “Don’t go anywhere near what?” Jess turned slowly toward Ford, but the old man kept his face turned away.

  “Guard!”

  “Don’t do it, Jess. For pity’s sake, don’t do it,” Ford whispered.

  Jess pulled the scrap up to the opening in the door and looked again at the printing.

  “Wil-bridge? Is that it, Ford? Wil-something-bridge?” Suddenly the name formed itself clearly behind his eyes. A village on the outskirts of the city.

  “Williamsbridge. That’s it, isn’t it.”

  The footsteps of the guard stopped in front of the door and they both heard the key turning in the heavy lock.

  Jess put his hand on Ford’s shoulder and gave a reassuring squeeze. But it was Ford’s turn now to issue the orders.

  “Get out.”

  . . .

  Jess paced his office waiting for Birdie Tabor to come back to her desk. The newspaper’s morgue had offered little information about the village of Williamsbridge. While he was anxious to find out more, he wanted to quiz Birdie before he left the building again.

  When a half hour passed and she still hadn’t shown up, Jess gave up on her and decided to ride to Williamsbridge yet this afternoon. It was a small enough place that he imagined he could probably get at least some tidbit of information from the local barber. He was overdue for a haircut anyway. And a good ride.

  He took the shortcut toward the stairs and was halfway up the row of typists when the bell sounded and a hundred chairs scraped back from the desks almost in unison. Jess weaved his way through the noisy end-of-the-day chaos, excusing himself here and there.

  He was nearly at the end of the row before the young woman who worked next to Birdie Tabor stood to leave. Not seeing him, she swung around to say goodnight to a girlfriend behind her and knocked into Jess. Embarrassed, she swung back around and apologized all over herself, blushing furiously at having practically run him over.

  Jess helped her out of the aisle and was about to excuse himself when he saw that her steno pad had tumbled onto the floor. He picked it up and offered it to her with a slight bow. She recoiled, holding her hands in front of her as if he’d offered her his pet cockroach.

  “Oh, no, no, no Mr. Pepper, good gracious no. Upon my soul, I would never be seen with a red notebook. Heavens. Why, that belongs to, a-hem, Miss Tabor, I do believe. Who-o-o-o, by the way, did not bother to show up for work today.”

  She’d rolled her r’s on the word ‘red’ as if the color itself were poison. Heaven forbid that he could have insulted her so gravely.

  Jess chuckled and turned to put the steno pad on Birdie’s desk. But his fingers wouldn’t let go of it. This was Birdie’s steno pad. He tapped the side of the pad on the desk top as if to jostle the loose papers that were stuffed in the back of the pad into place, all the while nodding his “Good evenings” and “Take care, nows” to the passing ladies. If the page he was looking for was in here, then it wasn’t really stealing. It had been meant for him in the first place. Jess waited thirty seconds for the exodus to clear, then walked back to his office.

  He shut the door, too impatient to sit. He opened both ends of the pad and let the loose papers drop onto his desk, and he did not even have to sort through them. There were only a half dozen papers, and the one on top was yellowed, dated 1878, and had a piece torn off the corner.

  He dropped the notebook to the side and let out a low whistle. As his hands smoothed out the folds, his breathing stilled, and he knew without seeing it that the scrap would fit. But indulging his need to see each clue in its proper place, Jess retrieved the scrap from his pocket and slid it slowly into place.

  The completed line along the bottom of the page read: Hostel for the Mentally Infirm – 211 Red Hill Road – Williamsbridge.

  Higher on the page were two columns of names. On the left seemed to be names of patients. And on the right, the names of doctors assigned to their care.

  “What does this mean to us, Ollie?”

  Jess read the list three times and kept coming back to one name. Jeremiah Leviticus Carnello. Like tumblers on a safe, the name suddenly fell in line with a name on the other list. Jess grabbed his file and pulled out the names of the union dockworkers who’d been scheduled to work in the four hours preceding or following each attack. And on every one, there it was. Big as life.

  Jemmy Carnello.

  His hands shook as he returned the pages to his pocket and grabbed his Stetson. He had a name. My God, he had a name. It was too soon to know what it meant, but it was a piece of the puzzle. He knew it was.

  Just as he knew it was past time to get home to that meal Addie had promised him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Addie slid the biscuits into the oven and turned down the flame. Cooking a meal had heated up the small apartment, but she’d been grateful for the distraction.

  She’d been over and over the details she’d gleaned from the five women she’d interviewed and knew that everything they said confirmed her father’s innocence. Now she was impatient for Jess to reveal his plan, to tell her how he intended to go about clearing her father’s good name.

  And most important, bring him home.

  Addie brushed the flour from her hands and looked around the pleasant room. It was far from feminine, but not nearly the tatty clutter one might expect from a long-time bachelor.

  It was somehow soothing to get acquainted with her father’s things, and she roamed the room, fingering odd knickknacks and running her hands across the pitted woods of his simple furniture. She came back again and again to a picture on the mantel.

  The stiff husband and wife stared expressionless, and the small boy on the right glowered, one hand planted stiffly behind his back like a territorial judge. The little girl smiled, her big brown eyes drawing the focal point of the picture to her sweet face.

  The mother’s hand lay to the side, resting on the edge of an infant’s cradle. The baby inside was obviously a newborn, nearly invisible beneath the blankets.

  A family of five.

  Perhaps she’d take it with her when she visited her father next. He would tell her who they were.

  The tintype that sat opposite this family portrait was clearly her father, impossibly handsome in his Yankee uniform. He stood stiffly beside a woman she supposed to have been his mother, one hand on her shoulder, the other resting on his sabre.

  Addie put the picture gently back into place and wandered to the sideboard where she’d taken to leaving her violin case open and ready. She plucked the strings to check the tune and began to stroll the small living room.

  Jess would be here shortly, but she could make use of the time. If she could just work out a troublesome passage in the new piece she’d been working on, she might try it out at the hotel tomorrow night.

  Section by section, Addie broke the passage down until she’d exercised it in its most elemental form. Then, measure by measure, she layered the complexities of harmonics and double-stops back in.

  Again and again she repeated the passage, increasing the tempo a bit each time. It was going far better than she’d expected when a cough interrupted her concentration. The moment her focus was off the violin, she realized that her throat was burning, because the apartment was filling with smoke.

  She’d burned the biscuits!

  Addie stowed her violin safely on the sideboard and rushed to the kitchen. She grabbed a towel and folded it over and over, then threw the oven door open and grabbed at the tin tray.

  Smoke that had filled the oven billowed past her into the small galley, and she could hardly see the trash bin to dump the charred lumps of petrified biscuit.

  Addie fled to the balcony doors and threw them wide open. And then in turn she opened each of the windows on the two outside walls of the apartment. The smoke dissipated quickly, but she was mortified that Jess m
ight walk in on the disaster.

  Or perhaps he was coming down the street right now and would see the smoke and bring the fire department up here with him. Oh, glory, she’d made a fine mess of things.

  Addie glanced at the corner clock to see how much time she had to repair things before Jess arrived.

  Seven fifteen.

  That couldn’t be right. Jess was due home at half after five. Almost two hours ago.

  . . .

  When Jess stepped out of his office, he expected to be home in fifteen minutes, spilling his story to Addie in twenty, and plotting her father’s release before the hour was up.

  And on a full stomach, to boot.

  But having been told that Birdie Tabor hadn’t come to work at all that day, he was startled to see her at the end of the row of deserted typewriters, staring blankly at her workstation as he came out of his office. He walked slowly toward her, but she was unaware. Her hand suddenly flew to her mouth and Jess heard a stifled sob.

  “Good evening, Miss Tabor.”

  The usually snappy blonde seemed unable to speak and fumbled in her handbag for a hanky. Her glove had smeared her lipstick to places other than her mouth, and she looked completely pitiful.

  “Are we starting a night shift here at the Times?”

  She shook her head and worked furiously with a small hand mirror to correct the damage.

  “Forgive me, Miss Tabor, but you...seem upset.”

  Birdie sniffed loudly and dabbed again at her nose.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Jess had worked his way beyond her, and sat on the edge of the table. He took a clean handkerchief from his pocket, careful not to dislodge her red steno pad from inside his vest, and pulled her hands away from her face.

  “Let me.”

  He began to work on the worst of the smear, then held the hanky just in front of her mouth and instructed her as he would a small child.

  “Now lick.”

  Tears rolled down her cheeks as she moistened the hanky with her tongue. The damp cloth made better headway on the damage, but he pretended to continue working as he chatted.

  “Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed, does it?”

  Birdie sniffed and whined, “Mm-hm.”

  “Everything’s going just perfectly, and then some idiot comes along and messes things up. Right?”

  Another sniff. “Mm-hm.”

  “It seems a crime that something could upset a pretty little thing like you so badly.”

  He stopped working on her face and grimaced at the deep bruise he’d revealed beneath the layers of powder and rouge.

  “Birdie.” He tipped her face up and forced her to look at him. “Is this why you didn’t come to work today?”

  Birdie just rolled her eyes. Her lips trembled too much to speak, and she handed him the small compact she’d been holding.

  Jess dropped the smeared hanky into her hand and used her compact powder to cover the bruise as best he could. “I’m wondering, Birdie, if you’re upset because something’s gone missing.”

  Her eyes widened and she blinked nervously.

  “Perhaps, something that belonged to someone else.”

  Her blinking stopped and Jess was almost convinced her breathing had, too.

  “Have you by any chance...been a bad girl, Miss Tabor?”

  She watched as he pulled her red steno pad from inside his vest and tapped an idle finger on the cover. Her shoulders collapsed further and she hiccupped through a long, shuddering breath.

  “Maybe,” she squeaked.

  “Look, Birdie. You probably thought it was just a piece of paper. How could it be that important, and all.”

  “Yeah.” This one came out on a small whining sigh.

  “The important thing is, it was meant for me, and now I have it back.”

  Her eyelids had drooped, and now they flew wide and she turned a shocked face toward Jess.

  “The tragedy is that it got a good man killed.”

  Her gasp was the most genuine thing Jess had ever heard come from the little minx.

  “You didn’t know, did you?”

  She hadn’t even breathed yet, and shook her head in slow, confused denial.

  “After you left with the paper, the paper Ollie wanted me to have, that’s when they — when someone — killed Ollie Twickenham.”

  Birdie Tabor came unglued.

  “Oh, Mistuh Peppuh, I’m in big trouble.” The dam had finally broken. “If D— if this person finds out you’ve got that papuh, why I don’t know what he might do! I was just goin’ t’ give it to ’im and head outta town on the first train. But now—”

  She threw her hands wide and Jess caught them and told her to breathe just to keep her from passing out.

  “Birdie, Birdie, Birdie. You know, I think that’s a very smart thing to do.”

  “Y-you do?” She looked at him as if no one had ever called her smart before. And that was probably true. But if she’d already figured out that she needed to skip town before some bastard found out she’d let him down, perhaps she wasn’t so dumb after all.

  “Yes, I do. And I think it’s my duty to escort you to the train myself. How quickly can you be ready?”

  He dropped her arms and stepped to her side, a hand on her elbow for encouragement.

  “Well, um, it takes a girl a while to pack, y’know.” Birdie was stalling, taken aback by his offer.

  “I can wait.” Jess donned his Stetson and offered her his arm.

  Birdie blew a long blubbery breath and came to a decision. “Oh, hell, I already sent m’ things to the station. I ain’t nobody’s fool,” she said as she hooked her arm through his.

  “Attagirl.” He screwed his face into a look of reassurance. “I have to ask you one question, though, Birdie.”

  She looked up at him from beneath her glistening lashes. Nothing on her face told him she would tell the truth. The whole truth, anyway. But he still had to try.

  “Would you prefer to go to Chief Trumbull? To get his protection? That way you wouldn’t have to leave—”

  “No!” She grabbed the front of his jacket, her panic stricken response all he needed to hear. “

  He lifted her hands from their death grip on his lapels. “So it was him.”

  She looked away.

  “Birdie? It was Trumbull who did this to you?”

  She was still as a statue, neither confirming or denying.

  “And you were to take this paper to him?”

  Nothing.

  “And when you didn’t have it, he had to teach you a little lesson.”

  Her only response was to square her shoulders a bit, relieved, perhaps, at the unburdening. And he had his answers.

  Jess had little sympathy for a two-timing trollop whose misguided conniving had gotten her caught between a rock and a hard place, but he wasn’t about to throw Birdie to the wolves. She may have done all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons, but nobody deserved bruises like that. And he knew now just who had delivered those purple beauties.

  The best solution was to help this woman get out of town and out of the mess she’d managed to land square in the middle of. Jess hurried her along and kept her talking, all the while keeping an eye out for trouble. But it was the supper hour, and they left the building virtually unnoticed.

  He signalled for an enclosed hansom cab just to be on the safe side, and had her wait a few minutes while he checked out the train station when they arrived. But Birdie had for once in her life managed to remain anonymous, and soon Jess had her on a train to Cincinnati in a private car with the curtains drawn.

  He watched until the train left, and no unsavory sorts boarded after Birdie. Perhaps she was going to make it to her new start after all.

  One thing was certain, though. He’d already missed his new start with Addie. How was he going to explain this one?

  . . .

  Addie stood fanning the last of the smoke toward the window and didn’t hear the door open behind he
r.

  “What in God’s name happened here?”

  She whirled and felt the painful rush of relief and guilt and failure all at once.

  “Well, where in bloody hell were you? It’s your fault the biscuits burned, I’ll have you know.”

  Addie commenced slamming dishes onto the table, then plopped into a chair and glared at him until he joined her. She served up the shepherd’s pie and nearly spit out her first bite. She’d forgotten to reheat it, and it had been cooling on the counter for over two hours.

  Addie fumed silently through the entire meal and swore to herself if he said a word, she’d kill him on the spot.

  But he didn’t.

  The dreadful meal didn’t last long, fortunately, and Addie reached for his plate.

  “Ah, ah, ah. You cooked, I’ll clear.”

  “But—”

  “No buts, young lady.”

  Addie watched as Jess cleared the table, scraped the scraps into an old newspaper — and the remains of the shepherd’s pie, she noticed — and washed up the dishes by the time Addie had finished a second cup of coffee.

  “Better?” Jess lifted Addie’s chin with his forefinger and looked her closely in the eye.

  “Better.” She darted up and kissed him on the nose before he drew away. “But you scared me to death, Jess Pepper. What on earth kept you so late?”

  “Late? Addie, I was only two hours late.” There were times he’d been missing in action for weeks at a time and no one had made a fuss like this.

  “Only two hours? I was frantic!”

  “Now, c’mon, Addie, you can’t go getting hysterical every time I come ’round a little late.”

  “But I thought you were in trouble.” Now she was pouting.

  “I promise if I’m ever in trouble I’ll find a way to get a message to you. How’s that?”

  “Well, what if you can’t?”

  “Jess Pepper never breaks a promise, Addie girl.”

  “Well, what if you’re dead!”