Isabel Feeney, Star Reporter

by Beth Fantaskey

  “You a reporter too?” I asked, suddenly wondering if being a female journalist wasn’t so special after all. There were a lot of women in that building.

  “No,” she said quietly, so I got that an elevator was one of those places where you should whisper. Like a church. “I take orders for advertisements—over the telephone,” she explained proudly. “Men like Walter go out to businesses and sell advertising, while girls like me answer telephones when people call in to place a classified.”

  I knew what she meant. The main pages of the newspaper featured big, picture-filled advertisements for department stores like Marshall Field’s, where Miss Giddings worked. Then there was a separate part of the paper for regular people who wanted to sell things, such as a rug they didn’t want anymore. Those “classified” advertisements were small and not as important.

  I looked up at Miss Dalton, puzzled. “How come men get to go out all over the city and women get stuck answering telephones?”

  She frowned. “It’s just . . . the way it’s done,” she said as the elevator stopped, the doors opened, and two men exited. Apparently we hadn’t arrived yet, though, because Miss Dalton didn’t move. “It’s not respectable—or safe—for women to run around the city knocking on doors,” she added. “Men are just better suited for that kind of work.”

  She could probably tell that I wasn’t certain about that. It seemed to me that women were getting a bad deal. Maude Collier, at least, “ran around” the city at all hours. But I didn’t want to hurt Miss Dalton’s feelings, so I nodded. “Sure.”

  Just then the elevator stopped again, and the operator opened the door. “This is your floor, Isabel,” Miss Dalton told me. “Just go on in and ask for Miss Collier. Everybody knows her.” Right before the door closed, she called, “And keep your ears covered when you walk through, Isabel! It’s not couth in there!”

  I barely heard Miss Dalton, or felt the push of her hand on my back, which sent me into a space that was even more amazing than the Tribune Tower’s deluxe grand entrance. Not because this place was fancy. It was actually a mess.

  In my opinion, though, the “city room” looked and smelled and sounded . . . incredible.

  Chapter 19

  THE TRIBUNE’S FIRST FLOOR HAD BEEN BUSY, BUT THE CITY room was chaos, a tornado of motion and noise, filled with important people doing the important work of getting and telling the stories about the characters who made Chicago such a dangerous, thrilling, funny, scary place to live. The diamond-studded gangsters and cold-hearted gun girls and greedy speakeasy operators and ruthless rumrunners . . .

  I really want to work here!

  My heart pounding, I stood for a moment, just taking it all in. The large room was filled with men shouting into telephones, smoking cigars and cigarettes, saying words that would’ve made my mother wash out my mouth with soap, and jumping out of their chairs to hurry . . . who knew where?

  Men . . . They really are almost all men . . .

  And then I found her. The woman I’d come to see. She stood surrounded by male reporters, holding court, and in spite of her skirt, her sleek bobbed hair, and her lipstick, she was laughing with them like one of the boys.

  Well, she wouldn’t be laughing long.

  When I saw Maude Collier, my anger came rushing back, and I strode right up to her, pushing through that circle of men. Jabbing my finger at her, I snapped, “You have a lot of nerve!”

  Chapter 20

  “ISABEL, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” MAUDE ASKED WHILE the men around her all guffawed. Apparently, my being angry was amusing to them. I never quite knew why adults found me so funny. At least Maude wasn’t laughing. “Quiet, boys,” she told them with a warning look. She made a shooing motion with her hand. “Go on, now.”

  That city room might’ve been boys’ territory, but they all listened to Maude and drifted off, although they were still grinning and saying things like “Good luck with that one, Maudie!”

  She ignored them and turned to me with concern in her dark eyes. “Is everything all right, Isabel? What’s going on?”

  I didn’t exactly answer her questions, because she was the one who needed to explain herself. “How could you make Miss Giddings look so terrible in the paper?” I demanded, pretty loudly. “We had an agreement!”

  “No, Isabel,” Maude said softly. She knitted her brows, as if she were confused, and guided me into a chair next to her desk. Then she sat down too. Her chair had wheels, which made it better than mine. And her desk was a mess, filled with papers, so you could hardly find the telephone. It all looked like heaven to me. “I never promised you that I’d cast your Miss Giddings in any sort of light.”

  I supposed that was technically true. But we’d had hot cocoa, and pie, and such a nice time, and I thought she’d listened to me and taken me seriously . . .

  “My job is to write stories as I see them,” Maude continued. “And everything I wrote was true.”

  “Even about Miss Giddings’s fingerprints being on the gun?” I challenged her. “Because I didn’t hear anything about that at the police station!”

  “I didn’t make that up,” Maude assured me. “That report came in late, after you left.”

  “But—”

  “I promise you, Isabel,” she interrupted. “My story was accurate.”

  I thought back to the article, and how Maude had included stuff about Miss Giddings’s bloodstained coat, and the diamond Charles Bessemer had given her, and the way she’d acted innocent about the gun, and I had to admit that it had all been true. But I’d seen things another way.

  “When I have your job, I’ll do it different,” I muttered. “I’ll be fair to people!”

  Maude didn’t respond for a moment. “Perhaps you will be a different kind of reporter, Isabel,” she finally said, seriously. “Perhaps this business will be different for all women by the time you are a journalist. And maybe this city will be different, too.”

  She seemed almost sad, and I wasn’t sure why. It softened me toward her just a little. But I still told her, “It wasn’t nice of you to make fun of me, either.” I’d started twisting my cap in my hands, and when I looked up, Maude was offering me candy from a bowl she’d dug out from under those papers. I was angry, but I didn’t get sweets very often, and I took some. Maybe five pieces. Or six. I wouldn’t let her bribe me again, though, and I asked, “How could you do that to me?”

  Maude frowned. “But Isabel . . . that anecdote about your neighbor was charming! I didn’t mean to embarrass you!”

  Yeah, right. Cramming the butterscotches into my coat—and taking a few more, since the bowl was still within reach—I stood up, trying to act indignant. “You have a lot of power in this city, Maude.” Using her first name still felt a little strange, but I forged ahead. “People are going to read that article and think Miss Giddings killed Charles Bessemer.”

  “The evidence points that way—”

  What “evidence” was there, really? Besides a gun, some blood, fingerprints, a lie on Miss Giddings’s part . . . Okay, maybe there was some evidence.

  “—and Detective Culhane seems convinced,” Maude continued, smiling in a funny way, given that we were talking about murder. “He’s an excellent judge of these things, and his first instincts are usually correct.”

  Good grief. Was she sweet on him?

  It sure seemed possible. Her cheeks were a little flushed when she concluded, “My own experience leads me to agree with James.”

  Did she just call old stone face “James”?

  Yes, she did!

  I wasn’t concerned about a potential romance between a detective and a reporter right then, though. I was scared for an innocent department store clerk and her son.

  “If Miss Giddings ends up hanging,” I told Maude, “and poor, crippled Robert is left alone—that will be on your conscience.”

  Maude didn’t seem worried. Just intrigued. The reporter part of her was gleaming in her eyes again. “Who is Robert?”

&n
bsp; As usual, I’d said too much. “Nobody.”

  Maude’s eyes softened. She’d no doubt figure out who Robert was later. It wouldn’t be that hard. “Come have lunch with me, Isabel,” she offered. “I would like to apologize for embarrassing you in the paper, although that was never my intent.”

  My stomach was growling, but I had my pride too. I wouldn’t take more than candy, that day. “No, thanks,” I said, standing up. “I have someplace to go.”

  Maude rose too. “Where, Isabel?”

  I wasn’t sure if she was asking as a friend—or a journalist.

  Either way, given my destination, I didn’t plan to tell her.

  Chapter 21

  I WASN’T SURE WHAT I EXPECTED TO FIND IN THE ALLEY WHERE Charles Bessemer got shot. I mean, the police had looked over every single inch. I knew that because I’d had to stand in the freezing cold while they did it. But they had searched at night, and I was there in broad daylight.

  And boy, did things look different.

  Well, kind of different.

  There was still some blood on the snow, and it seemed to me that somebody should’ve cleaned it up. And there were a lot of footprints around where the body had been, most of them coming from the same direction, where the police had all parked their cars.

  But . . .

  I looked farther down the alley, which obviously didn’t get used a lot. There were hardly any tire marks or footprints beyond the big mess made by the police.

  Miss Giddings said she heard a noise, like a rat, then a gunshot.

  And the coroner said Mr. Bessemer was shot at close range . . .

  Stepping around the blood, I ignored the footprints in the middle of the alley and headed for a bunch of garbage cans right next to the rear entrance to one of the buildings, about five feet from the stain. The door was set back a little, so there was a shadowy alcove that would’ve been perfect for hiding if you wanted to shoot somebody.

  The police must’ve noticed this.

  I thought that, but I also knew that they—meaning Detective Culhane—had pretty much already convicted Miss Giddings. I couldn’t recall him poking around the place where I was crouching down now, crawling around next to the trash cans.

  It didn’t seem that whoever owned them made much garbage, because there was snow on top of the metal lids, and the drifts near the alcove weren’t disturbed either.

  I edged a little closer and peeked into the shadowy spot, only to discover that the snow just outside the door was tramped down. And I also saw a very small object smushed into what looked like a footprint.

  Although what I’d discovered may or may not have been a clue—or clues—my heart started racing like crazy, which is probably why I nearly jumped out of my skin when somebody asked me, in a bossy, snooty tone, “Why in the world are you crawling around in garbage, kid?”

  Chapter 22

  I DIDN’T APPRECIATE BEING CALLED “KID” BY ANOTHER CHILD—although at least the girl in the blue velvet coat and fancy beret didn’t call me “son” or “boy,” like had happened too often lately.

  “Are you pretending you’re an alley cat or something?” she asked me, her hands on her hips. “Because that is a terrible game.”

  “I’m . . .” I started to inform Miss High-and-Mighty that I was on a practically official detective mission, to help a woman in prison, when all of a sudden I realized who she was. “Hey!” I cried, standing up and brushing snow off my knees. “You’re Flora!”

  She narrowed her blue eyes at me. “How do you know my name?”

  “You’re the Bakery Pride Bread girl,” I said, only to realize that didn’t explain why I knew her real name. “Plus, I saw you in the Tribune today. With your . . .”

  I stopped myself before I said “father,” because it finally struck me that this alley was the last place Flora Bessemer should be. We were standing right next to a bloodstain left by her dad.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to move in front of that mark and block her view. But it was too late. She was staring at it. For a second, I didn’t know what to do, and I prepared myself for when she would burst into big sobs, which is what I would’ve done.

  And so I was very surprised when Flora Bessemer raised those blue eyes to meet mine again and I saw that she wasn’t about to cry. Her lips were pursed, and her chin was jutting out, and her little mittened hands were balled into fists, but she wasn’t fighting back tears. No . . . she looked like she was ready to fight a person. Punch somebody’s lights out. Her blond corkscrew curls, peeking out from under her French-style hat, were quivering with rage.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, hoping that the person about to get pounded wasn’t me. I took a step back. “You look really mad!”

  “My father just got murdered in cold blood,” Flora informed me through gritted teeth. “You bet I’m mad!”

  “I know.” I raised my hands. “I was there.”

  That was probably the wrong thing to say. Flora balled her fists harder and lurched forward, like I was the killer. “What?”

  “I was the first person there—after it all happened,” I clarified. Then, although I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, I added, “Except for Miss Giddings, of course.”

  Flora simmered down a little and gave me a curious look. “You know her?”

  “Yeah. She’s a nice lady.” I started defending Miss Giddings, although I honestly couldn’t tell how Flora felt about her. I glanced down at the blood. “She didn’t do this, you know.”

  Flora gave me a level stare. Jeez, she was a tough kid, in spite of those curls. How did she look so sweet in those bread advertisements? “No, I don’t know that,” she said. “All I know is, she was the last person seen with my father.”

  I was going to point out that Flora’s dad was a gangster, but if she didn’t know that, it wasn’t the right time to tell her. And if she did know it . . . Well, she probably knew all about how gangsters had enemies and killed each other all the time. She might even have her own suspicions about who’d gunned down her father—which I would be very interested in hearing sometime. For now, I just asked, “Well . . . do you like her? Miss Giddings?”

  I could tell that Flora Bessemer and I weren’t meant to be good friends. I didn’t like the way she kept looking me up and down and wrinkling her pert, upturned nose, as if my secondhand clothes weren’t good enough for her. But I did kind of admire the way she said, honestly and with less anger, “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “She seems okay.” Her cheeks got red, as if she was getting mad again. “Sometimes I think she just wanted my father’s money, though. He bought her a lot of things.”

  “Well, she certainly wouldn’t have killed him then, right?” I reasoned. “If he was giving her presents?”

  Flora crossed her arms and cocked her head. “I didn’t say Miss Giddings . . . did it, did I?”

  Now that she wasn’t outright furious, she couldn’t seem to bring herself to say “killed.”

  “Why are you here?” I asked again.

  Flora could’ve asked me the same thing, but she probably didn’t care who I was or what I did. She hadn’t even asked my name. But she did answer the question, in a cold voice that scared me more than her anger. “I want to find out who murdered my father. And I want that person to pay. I came here to see where it happened, and to vow revenge.”

  Wow. She was definitely a gangster’s daughter.

  “Umm . . . have you vowed yet?” I asked, thinking maybe I should leave. Maybe “vowing” was something you needed to do alone.

  Apparently she was already done. “My uncle is waiting,” she said. Her gaze drifted to the bloodstain, and her cheeks got a little pale. I was pretty sure that she wasn’t just angry. She was grieving, too. Maybe anger was how she mourned. Sometimes I got mad at my father, which wasn’t fair at all. She met my gaze again. “I’m going now.”

  “See ya . . .”

  Flora wasn’t listening. She turned on her patent-leather heel and strode down the a
lley, head held high and curls bouncing.

  I noticed, finally, an automobile at the end of the street. A sleek black sedan, against which a man was leaning. A huge guy in an overcoat, his arms crossed over his chest. When Flora reached the car, he straightened up and opened the back door.

  She disappeared inside, and Flora’s uncle made a point of staring at me for what felt like twenty minutes.

  I got the sense I was getting a warning, but I didn’t know why.

  Then he got into the front seat and the sedan drove away, leaving me alone in the alley, trying to figure out what I should do with the might-be-clues I’d found—and how I could get a snippy, rich, but very tough girl on my side, fighting to keep Miss Giddings from the noose.

  Because I sure didn’t want Flora working against me, Miss Giddings, and Robert.

  Then I thought about Flora’s vow, and the large man who’d stared at me, and the fact that murder seemed like a way of life for her—not a big surprise, or anything to cry about—and wondered what I’d be getting myself into if we really did team up.

  A world of trouble, probably.

  Chapter 23

  I SAT AT MY KITCHEN TABLE, GNAWING ON A PENCIL INSTEAD of eating the Wonder Bread with grape jelly I’d made for supper. Then I wrote down my first observation in an old composition book I’d kept from second grade.

  Doorway in alley—snow tramped down right outside door. Would person have been near enough to Mr. Bessemer to shoot him “at close range”?

  Taking a moment to picture the scene again, I made another note.

  No footprints leading from doorway!