Pilfered Promises

by M. Louisa Locke

  “Of course not. I know you can’t always get away right on time. Although there were quite a few young men who suggested they could fill your place.”

  “Quite a few young men asking for a bloody nose, you mean.” Patrick grabbed her by the waist and sat her on his lap as she came back to the table.

  But instead of kissing her, he took one of her curls and wound it around his finger. “You know this means I won’t be able to see much of you. Maybe Sunday mornings. But I said I would work every night until I could find someone else on the force who’s willing to take a few of the shifts. Got to be someone I trust to do the job well.”

  “It won’t be forever. I mean Mrs. Dawson will figure things out soon enough.”

  “Sure will. Just…”

  Patrick stopped and Kathleen could tell there was something important he needed to say. Poor boy…couldn’t hide a thing…it was always writ right there on his face.

  She stroked his cheek and said, “What is it?”

  “I was thinking that even after Mrs. Dawson figures everything out…I might see if I could get a permanent job working security with the Silver Strike. Just part time. Then I could really start to save up enough for a place of our own…so’s we could get married.”

  Kathleen jumped up off his lap and said, “We’ve talked about this. I’m not even thinking about marriage until Ian’s through school.”

  “But he could come live with us…” Patrick stood up and reached out toward her.

  “And how am I supposed to work here and take care of him and you and the babies that would come?”

  “But…”

  “No buts.” Kathleen saw the hurt in his eyes. How to tell him it was fear…not anger. Fear she’d give in and say yes to his plans. Fear that if she didn’t, she’d regret it if something happened to him.

  She went and slid her arms around his neck, saying softly, “Patrick, love…I’m not saying I don’t want everything you want…marriage, home, family. Just not now.” When his eyes stayed troubled, she pretended to pout, saying, “And I especially don’t want to spend the next few years only seeing you on Sundays while you work yourself to death. Or is there some pretty sales girl you have your eye on…that’s why you want to hang around the Silver Strike?”

  When he sputtered out his protestations, she laughed and once again stopped his mouth with a kiss.

  Chapter 8

  “Wool Hats, Cassimere Hats, Felt Hats, Soft Hats, Stiff-Hats, Every Variety HATS and CAPS Lowest prices”––San Francisco Chronicle September 29, 1880

  Wednesday noon, November 24, 1880

  Annie left her coat, hat, and umbrella in Miss Birdsoll’s office. After a nearly perfect November with clear blue skies and not even a wisp of fog in the evenings, a storm had rolled in from the Pacific Northwest, leaving her decidedly damp and wind-blown by the time she walked to the Silver Strike from the boarding house.

  Yesterday, she had a brief but difficult interview with Mr. Jenkins. First of all, they kept being interrupted by sales clerks and floorwalkers who came up to ask questions or request help with a customer. There was no doubt that the man, who appeared to be in his seventies, was the kind of manager who preferred to be the ultimate arbiter in all affairs, big and small.

  Annie could see, however, that this could be a problem in an operation of this size. He was running his department, which included all the dress goods and notions that made up the core of any dry goods store, as if it were the same size as the first small store Livingston opened on Kearney thirty years earlier. But now, instead of serving no more than forty customers a day, he was responsible for all the purchases in the department, the supervision of over thirty staff members and serving three hundred or more customers. The man needed to learn how to delegate.

  In addition, he bristled at the merest suggestion that any of “my boys,” as he referred to the primarily male clerks who worked under him, could be responsible for the thefts in the department. Admirable to see his loyalty––but not useful under the circumstances. Reinforcing what Livingston had said about Jenkins not being quite up to the current job. She had a meeting scheduled with Villeneuve at the beginning of next week to see what he had come up with for reorganizing the first floor management system.

  However, she did want to meet again with Jenkins soon, and in private, to ask if he had noticed a drop in the quality of the materials he ordered from any particular manufacturers. She was curious to see if the problem of inferior goods was specific to the orders that Robbie Livingston made or were store-wide.

  Today, however, she had appointments with Madam Villeneuve and Mrs. Fournier. They’d both responded to her request, conveyed through the ever-helpful Miss Birdsoll, by saying they could meet with her briefly over their lunch hour. So she scheduled a half hour with each, starting with Madam Villeneuve. Since she’d found no particular problems of shortages in the millinery department, she was mostly interested in getting the French woman’s general impression of the Silver Strike staff and her specific opinion of the dress designer before Annie interviewed Mrs. Fournier.

  Madam Villeneuve had requested she meet at the Villeneuve’s apartment on the fifth floor. Miss Birdsoll explained that none of the elevators went all the way to the top floor…something about the mechanism being housed in the attic…so Annie took a set of private stairs that went all the way from the basement to the fifth floor. The small windows on the landings only let in a grey watery light, so she clung tightly to the bannister with one hand and held up her skirts with the other.

  When she got to the top, she turned down a long, well-lit corridor, stopping at the first door on the left to push a bell. She should have asked to visit the women’s facilities before coming…she probably looked a fright. The door opened suddenly, catching her trying to tuck away a stray curl that had come unmoored when she’d unpinned her hat.

  Hortense Villeneuve stood before her, dressed today in a striking cashmere dress of dark brown…perfectly matching the color of her hair.

  “Bonjour, Madam. Entrez…come in.”

  Madam Villeneuve ushered Annie into a small foyer and then into a long narrow parlor, furnished with antiques that were definitely not from the Silver Strike home furnishings department. One long wall had two bay windows whose curtains were pulled back to reveal a stunning view looking north over the city with Telegraph Hill on the skyline. The other wall was crowded with paintings that Annie recognized from her art classes as part of a French school of painting from a generation ago, with overwrought women and battle scenes in lush glowing colors.

  Taking a seat on a silk upholstered chair with ornately carved back and legs, she was transported to the suite of rooms in Paris where she’d spent the first stage of her honeymoon with John…and his domineering parents. Not happy memories. She wondered if the attempt to recreate a Paris home was to satisfy the husband or wife…or both.

  “Madam Villeneuve, what a lovely room,” she said, hoping a little flattery might help break the ice. “Reminds me of Paris…I believe your husband said that is where you were born?”

  “Mais oui. You have been there?”

  Annie heard the first note of genuine interest in the hat designer’s voice. She replied, “Yes, for too short a time, the autumn of 1871. And you, when did you leave?”

  “Three years earlier.”

  “I would imagine you miss it.”

  “But of course. I was the premier designer for Madame Victorine. You have heard of her, have you not? The most exclusive millinery designer in Paris. She was tres désolé to lose me.” Madame Villeneuve looked out the window for a long time, sighed, and then shrugged, saying, “I could not refuse to follow Monsieur, and his work was here. Family must always come first. Please, may I offer you some café au lait?”

  Turning, she spoke French to a young girl who’d just entered the room. Annie’s own French, learned at the New York Female Academy, was rusty, and Madame Villeneuve was speaking rapidly, but she did pick up the name “Emmaline
” several times.

  This must be the girl who’d come to get Monsieur Villeneuve from the millinery work room last week, and Annie thought she might also be the girl she fleetingly encountered the day when she and Nate came to rescue Violet and her mother. A young relative of the Villeneuves? Not a daughter, because Miss Birdsoll had specifically mentioned that the couple was childless.

  She looked to be about the age of Annie’s boarder, Jamie, which would make her about nine or ten. A servant? If so, a very well-dressed one, since she was wearing a royal blue silk plaid, with a matching velvet ribbon at her neck, wrist bands, and waist. All in all, a remarkably handsome young girl, with clear dark blue eyes that stared solemnly out from under perfectly arched brows, a small determined chin beneath a composed mouth, and the most gorgeous hair Annie believed she’d ever seen. Pulled off the face and falling in thick ringlets to her waist, it was dark blond.

  Apparently in reaction to Madame Villeneuve’s instructions, the girl moved to a table where a silver pot sat on a spirit stove. She poured out a dark stream into a cup, followed by two spoonfuls of sugar and a generous dollop of cream. She brought a cup over to Annie and handed it to her with the slightest of curtseys, then followed the same procedure with Madam Villeneuve, who smiled benignly at her.

  Emmaline then said, in French, what Annie interpreted as a request to leave, and Madame Villeneuve replied, “Mais oui, ma chère petite.” The girl stopped briefly in front of Annie to give her a quick curtsey and a shy smile before disappearing from the room. The smile reminded Annie suddenly of Evie May, a young girl she’d met during her second case investigating a trance medium, and she grew even more curious about Emmaline and her relationship with Madame Villeneuve.

  Perhaps Biddy O’Malley’s negative assessment of the head of the millinery department was wrong. Kathleen’s friend had stopped by the boarding house again on Sunday. Annie had asked her to keep her ears open for any rumors among Silver Strike workers that would suggest any one could be involved with any professional gangs of thieves. Annie told her the police said that one common tactic by a professional was to recruit employees with grievances.

  That was when Biddy had said, “The only person I hear complaints about is Madame Villeneuve. I mean, everyone grumbles now and then about their manager. Mr. Jenkins from dress goods can be an old hen, and sometimes Miss Bischoff is hard to find because she is in the lunchroom flirting with Mr. Livingston’s son. Even good-natured Mr. Gower can get in a tizzy if he finds a clerk sitting on one of the sofas. And Mrs. Fournier, who I work for, gets out of sorts now and then, but Madame is a tyrant. She demands a brutal pace of work, and she expects perfection from even the newest hires. I heard she gets downright nasty if one of her workers doesn’t follow her instructions to her satisfaction.”

  Annie had expressed surprise, saying, “But Monsieur Villeneuve made it sound like his wife encouraged a good degree of artistic freedom among her workers. And she seemed quite charming to me.”

  “The freedom to follow Madame’s artistic vision, you mean,” Biddy snapped. “At least according to my friends. She is beautiful and talented, but she reserves her charm for the clients…and men. She quite fawns over Mr. Livingston and his son.”

  Annie now wondered how much of Biddy’s disdain was simply that she’d fallen for Monsieur Villeneuve’s abundant charm and any wife who didn’t seem appropriately devoted to him wouldn’t be good enough.

  Madame Villeneuve interrupted these thoughts, saying, “Madame Dawson, my time is limited. I understood you wished to put to me certain questions?”

  Annie hastily put down her coffee, which she’d found cloyingly sweet, and brought herself back to the task at hand. “I am sorry, I know your time is valuable. I assume your husband has spoken to you about the evidence that there has been an increase of theft in the store. I was wondering if you had heard anything that seemed suspicious, even if just idle gossip, from among your workers…or other Silver Strike employees?”

  “I do not permit what you call ‘idle gossip’ among the women who work for me, and I do not have the time or inclination to engage in any such activity with other staff.” Madame Villeneuve gave a small shrug.

  “Perhaps in the lunch room, I understand that…”

  “Bah! Mediocre swill pretending to be continental cuisine. No, Madame Dawson, we have our own kitchen as part of our apartment.” Madame Villeneuve then smiled and said, “Of course, a person such as yourself or Monsieur Robbie, who have been to Paris, understands what I mean.”

  Regrouping, Annie tried a different tack. “I see. I understand that this lovely apartment was one of the conditions your husband insisted on as part of the contract governing his investment in the firm. Very convenient for both of you, given his responsibilities as Superintendent and the long hours both of you must work. And of course, housing in this part of town is so expensive. I, myself, own a house on O’Farrell and Taylor. If I hadn’t inherited the property, I would never have been able to afford to live there.”

  “Monsieur Livingston understood that a sensitive artiste such as myself needs to live in surroundings that will feed my soul. And of course I had to have some compensation for agreeing to close my shop and spend my days designing for women who know little of real fashion.”

  Miss Birdsoll had mentioned that when the Villeneuves first came to San Francisco, he’d set his wife up in her own millinery shop but that it had not weathered the economic depression of the 1870s. Annie thinking that Madame’s version of what happened seemed slightly different, said, “You would have preferred to continue as you were, running your own shop?”

  “Mais oui, but of course. There are a few women in this city with the superior taste…and they all shopped at Chez Hortense. Thanks be, most of my clients followed me here…and for them I make the special appointments.”

  Wondering if the Silver Strike dress designer felt in a similar fashion about having to make clothing for the hoi polloi, Annie said, “I believe that Mrs. Fournier also had her own shop before coming to work here. Do you know if she also found that the women who bought dresses from her there have transferred their business to the Silver Strike?”

  All she got in reply was an exaggerated shrug and the reply, “You will need to ask her.” Looking pointedly at the small gilded clock on the table beside her, Madam Villeneuve rose and said, “As you can see, our time is up. I must now finish preparing déjeuner for my husband.”

  Moments later, Annie stood back outside in the corridor, sure of one thing. Madam Villeneuve did not like Mrs. Fournier very much. Not that it was relevant to her investigations, but she wondered if she would discover the feeling was mutual.

  “I am sorry, but Mrs. Fournier was called away unexpectedly this morning, and she asked me to convey her apologies.” Mr. Livingston’s son, Robbie, came up to where Annie had been knocking on Mrs. Fournier’s door, which was across the corridor from the Villeneuve apartment.

  “Oh dear. Do you know when she planned on returning?” Annie had faithfully promised Beatrice that she would return to the boarding house as quickly as possible this afternoon. Not that either Kathleen or Beatrice would let Annie actually participate in the massive preparations for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving feast. But they insisted that Annie be there to make any important decisions…like whether they should have an equal number of mince and pumpkin pies.

  “She wasn’t sure, so she asked if you would be amenable to rescheduling for the same time on Friday?”

  Annie sighed and said, “I guess that will be fine. I will tell Miss Birdsoll of the new arrangements when I leave.”

  “Certainly, but, Mrs. Dawson, I confess I am feeling ever so slighted that you haven’t yet interviewed me,” Robbie Livingston said, the twinkle in his light blue eyes and the humorous twist of his mouth revealing the strong affinity to his father, despite the fact that he was shorter, considerably more slender, and without a trace of grey in his light brown hair and beard.

  Annie had hoped to postpo
ne talking to Robbie Livingston until she’d had a longer session with Jenkins about the question of inferior goods. However, since she certainly didn’t want him to think she was avoiding him, she responded, “I’d asked Miss Birdsoll to find a convenient time to see you next week, perhaps one morning before the store opened.”

  “Yes, that would probably be a better time, although the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are so busy that I can’t guarantee we won’t be interrupted.”

  Robbie turned and bowed slightly, indicating that Annie should lead the way down the hallway toward the stairs. As she passed him, she caught the pleasant smell of pine…and wondered if it was from one of the scents for men that were sold in his men’s furnishings department. Despite the number of small items, like ties, suspenders, and handkerchiefs you could buy in this department––the very kind of articles that went missing from the downstairs notions counter––she hadn’t noticed any particular problem with an increase in thefts in this department. She had also noticed that, unlike the first floor, where the majority of the clerks in the dress goods and notions department were male, Robbie’s employees were primarily female clerks. She wondered if that was something that indicated a preference on the part of the two managers…or if there was a general policy that determined what goods were best sold by which sex. Something more to ask Villeneuve when she met with him next week.

  The scent grew stronger as Robbie followed her into the stairwell, reminding her of a former client, Mr. Voss, who’d run a furniture company and often smelled of wood resin. This, in turn, reminded her that she’d planned on visiting his sister, who now ran the company, to see if there were any rumors about Mr. Gower and the Silver Strike furniture department that she should know about.

  So much to do.

  She looked back at Robbie and said, “Mr. Livingston, I gathered from your father that some furs you had recently ordered had gone missing.”