Pilfered Promises

by M. Louisa Locke

  Then he stopped, thinking about the stories Annie brought home from her work with the various charities around town, like the Protestant Orphan Asylum. Stories about desperate parents giving up their children to orphanages because they couldn’t support them and then the ladies who ran these organizations looking for wealthy men and women who were childless to adopt them.

  Annie sighed, “I know. I hope that isn’t what was happening. I just don’t see Monsieur Villeneuve having an affair with Marie, much less any other woman. I really think he loves his wife. But something was going on, something that changed Marie’s mind. The last letter Phillip wrote to her was dated November 22, from Oakland, and he is furiously angry because he’d just received a letter from her saying she couldn’t marry him and that she was breaking off all further communications with him.”

  “What a blow that must have been. This was the day before she paid off her loan? With money she got from someone else besides him.”

  “And a day later she was dead and Phillip sounded angry enough in that last letter to have been the one who killed her.”

  Chapter 27

  “The week before Christmas is a season of infinite perplexity to grown-up people, who must select presents for the children.”––San Francisco Chronicle December 25, 1880

  Friday afternoon, December 17, 1880

  “Jamie, this is going to be fun,” Annie said, walking with her young boarder into the Silver Strike Bazaar. She’d picked him up at his grammar school at three so that he could buy people presents with money he’d saved from running errands during the year.

  “Yes, ma’am. I really appreciate you taking the time so I can get something for my mother that’s a surprise.”

  “Well, I am depending on you to help me pick out something for Chapman and Harvey. You spend more time with them than I do.”

  Besides buying something for these two boarders who shared the back room on the second floor, Annie only needed to get presents for the Moffets and she’d be done with her shopping.

  “Oh, ma’am, I know what to get Mr. Harvey. He said he could really use some new wool gloves. Said that his hands get really cold on the ferry ride up to Sacramento. Do you think he’s ever going to be able to bring his wife and children down here to live?”

  “See, I knew you’d be a help; that is a very thoughtful suggestion,” Annie said. “I think Mr. Harvey hopes that if his employer finally promotes him to head clerk, he’ll be able to afford to bring them here. But then his wife will have to leave behind her parents, who have been such a help to her. Sometimes there just isn’t a good choice.”

  “That’s what my mother said.” Jamie shrugged. “Seems such a shame. Maybe I could find a scarf to go along with the gloves?”

  “What a good idea. But if you don’t mind, before we start to look for anything, I need to nip up to the fourth floor first, just for a minute.”

  Jamie was perfectly amenable to the idea of taking a ride in the elevator, and when Annie saw that Emmaline was sitting in Miss Birdsoll’s office, reading a book, she was glad she’d brought him along. Leaving the two youngsters to get acquainted under Miss Birdsoll’s watchful eyes, Annie went in to see Mr. Livingston.

  Her purpose was to report some of what she’d found out the day before from reading the letters from Phillip to Mrs. Fournier. Especially now that there was a strong possibility that Emmaline did have some family––if not the author of the letters––then relatives of the man who had set her mother up in her dress shop and was more likely Emmaline’s father. As she expected, Livingston expressed his dismay over what this might mean to the Villeneuves’ plans to adopt, but he promised to tell his junior partner right away.

  What Annie didn’t tell him was that the letter writer thought that Marie had recently taken up with someone from the Silver Strike. Nor did she reveal that she and Nate feared that the letter writer might have killed Marie Fournier in a jealous rage over this rival. She knew he’d worry about whether the letters were referring to his son, and without any evidence it seemed unkind to bring the subject up. But she and Nate had agreed that they needed to tell Thompson about the letters.

  When Annie left Livingston, she was delighted to find Jamie and Emmaline engrossed in a spirited game of knucklebones. The girl apparently was quite skilled at catching the ink-dyed bones Jamie carried everywhere in his back pocket. Annie suspected the proper Madame Villeneuve would have been horrified.

  Miss Birdsoll, not at all horrified, said to Annie, “What a nice young man. He said that you were going to take him shopping. I was wondering, if it isn’t too much of an imposition, if you would mind taking Emmaline with you. Mr. Livingston told her he would give her some money to buy presents, but neither of us has had the time to accompany her. Nor do we feel comfortable letting her wander around the store on her own…not after…”

  “Of course, it will be my pleasure. I am glad they are getting along,” Annie quickly replied. More loudly, she said, “Emmaline, would you like to come shopping with Jamie and me? We both have a short list of people we desperately need to buy presents for, and we would love your help. Jamie, did Emmaline tell you she actually lives in the store…up on the fifth floor? She probably knows the place inside and out.”

  Emmaline nodded gravely but then gave Annie a sweet smile. She started asking Jamie questions about what sorts of presents he was looking for while Miss Birdsoll unlocked her desk and retrieved a purse. She gave twenty dollars to Annie, an extravagant amount, telling her to make sure Emmaline got gifts at the very least for the Villeneuves, Mr. Livingston, and the restaurant cook, who was always slipping Emmaline special snacks.

  Two hours later, Annie, Jamie, and Emmaline climbed up the stairs to the fifth floor apartments, their arms loaded with packages. As they’d crossed the landing where the girl had found her mother’s body, Annie winced, thinking how unfortunate that this was the only way the child could access her rooms. Maybe it would be better all around if Mr. Livingston became her guardian and moved her to his house.

  As Annie stood back to let Emmaline open up the door to her apartment and take Jamie inside, she noticed a raised female voice shouting in French from the Villeneuves’ apartment behind her.

  Oh dear, I wonder if Monsieur has already told his wife there might be some difficulties with the adoption. If so, Madame is not taking the news well.

  Annie quickly followed Jamie and Emmaline through the door, closing it firmly behind her, relieved that this eliminated the sounds and that Emmaline didn’t seem to have heard anything. Following Emmaline and Jamie down a short hallway, she stepped into a large parlor with southern-facing windows. To the left, a door opened into a small compact kitchen, and Emmaline indicated that a second door led to a bathroom. Jamie gratefully dumped his packages and disappeared into the facilities while Emmaline led Annie to the right into the larger of two bedrooms. Miss Birdsoll had told Annie that after the holidays, when the governess arrived, they would permanently move Emmaline into her mother’s bedroom, and the governess would take the smaller room.

  “I need to find a place to hide Miss Birdsoll’s presents,” Emmaline said. “I think she will be pleased. Thank you for suggesting the book of poetry. I know she reads a lot at night but not that she read poetry. And I think she will really like the slippers.”

  Annie was glad she had remembered the older woman mentioning her fondness for Emily Dickinson. She knew that one of Dickinson’s poems was in a recently published compilation entitled A Masque of Poets. Mr. Brown, the book department manager, assured them Miss Birdsoll didn’t have the book yet and would be delighted to get it as a gift.

  As for the slippers, when Annie started looking for cashmere shawls for the Misses Moffet, saying that she knew the attic got chilly in the winter, Emmaline chimed in that Miss Birdsoll complained that she felt a terrible draft on her ankles when the heat was turned down at night. Hence, the red velvet, fleece-lined slippers that Emmaline bought as Miss Birdsoll’s second gift. Annie had trou
ble imagining the proper Miss Birdsoll wearing them, but she knew she’d appreciate the sentiment. As would Jamie’s mother when she opened up Jamie’s present to her containing her own pair of slippers, this pair bright blue.

  Emmaline bent down to put the packages into the bottom of the room’s wardrobe, and Annie was relieved to see that it no longer held her mother’s clothes. But when she saw the girl move aside the large wooden box she’d brought to her from the dress shop, she recalled that she still hadn’t had a chance to ask her about the photographs in the box.

  But not today, not when the girl was in such good spirits.

  Chapter 28

  “PRANKS OF TELEPHONES: The use of the telephone in San Francisco has been attended by a series of ludicrous, embarrassing and startling complications.”––San Francisco Chronicle April 18, 1880

  Friday early evening, December 17, 1880

  “Come on in, Mr. Dawson, and have a seat. I want you to hear Officer McGee’s report. I think you will find it very interesting,” Sergeant Thompson said, ushering Nate into his office.

  Patrick McGee stood uneasily by the desk, looking quite disreputable out of uniform, his brown tweed suit dirty and baggy around the knees, his shoes scuffed, and his fingers grimy.

  As if he’d noticed Nate’s glance, he put his hands behind his back and stood up straighter. Nate thought the poor boy looked exhausted, his freckles standing out against his pale skin, his mustache drooping. Miss Kathleen would have something sharp to say about the state of his clothes and his health, that was for sure.

  “Take a seat, both of you. And tell Mr. Dawson what you’ve been up to,” said Thompson.

  “Well sir, starting Wednesday, I stopped by the Silver Strike first thing every morning to find out when the Hawkes Delivery Company was due to deliver something. Miss Birdsoll would have called them on the telephone and made a big to-do about how she needed them to show up early during this week before Christmas.”

  Patrick next reported how he would then take a cab over to the warehouse district south of Market where Hawkes was located. He’d already discovered that there was one particular driver who did most of the Silver Strike runs, his wagon drawn by a pair of large gray draft horses, so he chose that driver to follow. He lounged around the street across from the stables, so when he saw this wagon pull out, he just followed it by foot.

  “The first two days they filled the wagon with so much stuff that the horses couldn’t go very fast. Really criminal treatment, in my opinion, and the driver’s pretty heavy-handed with the whip. But it was dead easy to blend in with the crowds and not be noticed,” he said.

  Nate thought what Patrick hadn’t said was that it had rained the past three mornings, pretty hard. But as a beat copper, he would be used to walking for hours at a time in all weather, so Nate guessed this really wasn’t such an imposition to him.

  “Didn’t see anything shady the first two days. The driver only made a couple of stops before getting to the Silver Strike, but they were pretty straightforward, dropping off some barrels of beer at two local saloons each morning on the way. Once the man off-loaded his goods at the Silver Strike, I followed him until he got back to the Hawkes warehouse. Then I did the whole thing all over again, because with Christmas, they are making an afternoon delivery to the store as well. Again, nothing suspicious happened. Miss Birdsoll checked after each delivery to see if what the wagon was supposed to deliver had in fact shown up, and she didn’t see anything out of order either. But today was different.”

  McGee described how today, for the afternoon delivery, the Hawkes driver left the stables with a half-full wagon and made a stop at Larkson’s Woolen Mills and loaded up with bolts of cloth, and then he stopped and picked up some furs from the commission merchants, Ralston and Lancaster, the firm that Annie had mentioned as being one of the sources of missing and inferior goods.

  Nate found himself leaning forward in anticipation of what he’d hear next. He said, “And did the wagon go right to the Silver Strike?”

  “No, sir. This time the driver took the wagon and pulled up in an alley behind a store on the corner of O’Farrell and Stockton. A man came out and hurriedly helped the driver unload about half the bolts of cloth and two of the furs and took them in the back of the store. Then the driver took the wagon on to the Silver Strike and unloaded the rest.”

  “What was the name of the store where he stopped first?”

  “Sign out front said Leggett’s Bridal Shop, but the store was closed, with a notice that said grand opening January 1.”

  Nate turned to Thompson and said, “Doesn’t sound like a fence, which is what I expected. Any reason to think this wasn’t just a regular delivery?”

  Thompson’s eyes actually twinkled, and he nodded to McGee to continue.

  “Well, sir, that’s what I thought. Was a bit discouraged. But when I followed the wagon to the Silver Strike, I still noted which man met the wagon and checked in the delivery. And this was the second change from the other deliveries. Flanagan was on his break, which means he was down the street at his favorite saloon, so his nephew Sean was the one who wrote up the receipt. Which wouldn’t have been odd if he’d not made a big show about ignoring the Hawkes’ delivery wagon all the other times I’d followed it.”

  “What do you mean, ‘big show’?” Nate said.

  “This fellow, Sean, likes to think of himself as the big cheese around the store. He’s always bossing the stock boys and other receiving clerks around. And usually he makes a big deal out of welcoming the delivery men, like he owns the store. But when a Hawkes wagon would arrive, I’d noticed he’d make himself scarce, pretend to be busy. Stupid really, he’d have been smarter to just behave the same.”

  Nate interrupted, “Didn’t the men down in receiving think it was strange you showing up twice a day?”

  “Miss Birdsoll gave me keys to the door to the back stairs, so I’d stashed a satchel with one of the porters I trust on the first floor. I’d slip in and change into my uniform, then wander down to receiving to say good day in plenty of time to see who was writing up the receipt. The men back there are used to me hanging around as part of my beat, so no one said anything.”

  “Clever,” Nate said. “So this time, it was this man Sean who wrote up the receipt for the Hawkes driver?”

  “Yes, and I was curious enough to hang around to watch where the cloth and the furs were stored. Then I ran upstairs to get Miss Birdsoll.”

  Patrick swiftly recounted how Mr. Livingston’s assistant came down to the basement with the paperwork for the orders for both Larkson’s Woolen Mills and Ralston and Lancaster, checking to see if the right goods had shown up.

  “And they hadn’t!” Nate said.

  “No, sir. There were supposed to be five fur stoles and two full-length coats coming from Ralston and Lancaster, and there were only three stoles and one coat. And the receipt that Sean had written up said the full order had arrived.”

  “What about the bolts of cloth?”

  “Well, sir, at first I thought the furs were the only inventory that had gone missing, because there were the right number of bolts of wool from Larkson’s Woolen Mills, and Miss Birdsoll said the order number was correct, and the colors were also correct. I figured that the cloth the wagon off-loaded really had been destined for that other shop. But then Miss Birdsoll told me to stay by the cage where they were stored while she ran up and got some woman from the dressmaking department to come down.”

  “A Miss Triple?” Nate asked, recalling the unusual name of the woman Annie said had been so helpful about the inferior cloth being sold to the store.

  “Yes, sir, that very one. She came down and looked at the cloth. Got right upset, she did. Said that what she’d ordered was some sort of fancy wool, but three of the bolts were some second rate stuff. Big difference in cost, she said.”

  “Great job, McGee. Sounds like you’ve broken this case wide open.” Looking over at Thompson, he said, “Seems to me someone at Larkso
n’s must be involved as well.”

  “Yes, I agree. The cloth that was ordered was a specific kind of plaid, so the inferior cloth would have to match this perfectly or the problem would have been noticed right away. The driver couldn’t have known ahead of time that there would be matching bolts of cloth on his delivery, unless someone at Larkson’s arranged for this to happen.”

  “So what’s your next step?” Nate asked, thinking that he needed to consult with Livingston right away, find out what he was going to want to do. Particularly if his son was involved in some fashion, which was what Annie suspected.

  “We will bring in the delivery wagon driver. See what we can get out of him, specifically who he’s working with at Larkson’s, and if he will give up this Sean working at the Silver Strike. But what I’m thinking is that we also need to find out who owns the store that received the goods, what their angle might be.”

  Nate said, “I will be glad to go and check out the store that received the goods, after consulting with Livingston. And you might like to see if there is a man named Jack Sweeter working at Larkson’s. I believe he’s a relative of the owner’s wife. My wife had some tangential dealings with him in the past and didn’t think much of him.”

  Chapter 29

  “…the custody of the minors in both cases awarded to respective plaintiffs.”––San Francisco Chronicle August 12, 1880

  Monday morning, December 20, 1880

  “Mr. Livingston will be with you any moment. There was a minor crisis down on the first floor. Can I pour you some tea, Mrs. Dawson? Anything stronger for you, Mr. Dawson?” Miss Birdsoll pointed to the decanters on a sideboard.