“You can do this, Jemima!” she mumbled to herself as she ascended the steps for a sleek trolley and recalled the verbal directions the concierge had given her, accompanying her map.
When she alighted, a pungent mix of fish, garbage, and seaweed tickled her nose. Sure enough, the grand Lake Michigan lapped lazily not far from her. She kept her eyes ahead of her, imagining she was in Toronto, skipping through the Ward with Merinda, guarded from wolf whistles and appreciative glances by her male garb. She moved swiftly, breathing out her insecurity, remembering that there was no surer sign of uncertainty than a person in a strange place consulting a map in broad daylight. She would fit in as best as she could with curls threatening to fall from her cap and cascade down her back and trousers that she had little time to see tailored and that did not disguise the curves of her gender as much as she might have wished.
Any reservations she might have had regarding her wardrobe vanished, however, in the instant she made out a familiar form crossing the street a ways ahead. Shoving the map deep into her pocket, she picked up speed, first in a brisk walk and then into a jog and then into a most unladylike sprint.
While her romantic notions would have had her in a lovely violet dress with lace at the collar and wrist, her task was made simpler without the inhibitions of corset or stays. She flung her arms around Ray and kissed him with a fervor and determination that would have shocked the Jem Watts of a year ago.
It was all very scandalous, of course, yet she pressed her lips to his with such force his hat toppled off. But in that moment, she didn’t care. And as his arms enfolded her and pulled her so tightly she almost left the ground, she deduced that he, too, was far from scandalized.
When they stopped‡ and he held her at arm’s length, his mouth was a frown but his eyes were bright.
She ran her hand through her free (and quite askew curls), caring little as to the whereabouts of her cap. Her cheeks were reddened by more than the heat, her fingertips tingled, and her knees were jelly, and she wasn’t quite sure where she was. But it didn’t matter now.
“I cannot believe I found you.” She tugged at his hand. “But I did! Can you believe it! Me! In this strange, big city without even Merinda!”
Ray’s frown deepened. “This is very dangerous, and you are being very ridiculous.” But his words sounded like a recitation, for his eyes didn’t just spark… they positively shone.
“You’re crying!” she exclaimed with a delighted laugh.
“I am not crying.” He dabbed at his eye with his shirt sleeve.
“You are! You are crying! You are happy to see me!”
“I am quite… ” He squinted at the sun while searching for a word, which just made his red-rimmed eyes water even more. “I am simply flummoxed that you would take such an unnecessary risk. Indeed, Jemima, when Jasper told me… ”
But Jem was too giddy, too elated, to hear him fluster through a string of frustrations set in his endearingly broken English. So she removed his powers of speech altogether.
* * *
*A Mountie could never hope to afford the Palmer House prices.
†For indeed a woman’s shoes—or even a woman in a man’s shoes—could not hit the pavement with that weight of force.
‡There are few inconveniences more irritating than the necessity for air in the midst of a reunion.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
An investigator must attempt to feel immediately at ease no matter where the situation or surrounding. Being in one’s element is a luxury foreign to the art of deduction. Approach every new situation and acquaintance with a confident air.
M.C. Wheaton, Guide to the Criminal and Commonplace
Merinda paced the steps outside Ross’s address, leafing through the pamphlets she’d had printed, for several long minutes before giving up on Jemima altogether.
When she finally pressed her hand to the doorknocker, the face that met her was alive with the same expectation that rewarded him with such a large turnout in Toronto.
“Come in, Merinda Herringford, come in. Where is your lady friend?”
“Last-minute case of cold feet,” Merinda explained, wondering if her fib was true. She hated small talk, but she persisted. “Fancy, we met in Toronto not a full day ago, and here we are again. Might even have been on the same train.”
He offered her tea, which she declined. Then he offered her something stronger, and she declined that as well. She was too occupied looking around his small space, and he had to insist she take a seat.
While he slowly perused one of the pamphlets she handed him—commending her on its balance of Goldman’s philosophy with what were obviously her own personal convictions—she studied the paper-laden table before her. A plate with crumbs. A magnifying glass. A few tomes in Russian.
And newspapers. Spread out. Two of the same, remarkably. Merinda studied them, reading upside down. Nothing about anarchists or bombs or explosives or anything political. A few hat ads. Something about a bank on LaSalle. A review of a new nickelodeon.
David Ross set her pamphlet on the table between them. “You understand this cause so completely,” he told her. “I have been waiting for someone like you! I never would have dreamed it would be a lady detective from Canada.”
“Believe it or not, lady detectives from Canada have a very great understanding of oppression. The powers that be in Toronto would see me locked up and silenced for good.”
“Yes, you understand. You very much need to find work beyond yourself. We all do. The very mundane day to day of our existence. The way that we are impressed upon by those who would control our lives.”
Merinda studied him. His thin, refined features. The severity of his gaze. His mouth seemed stuck in a perpetual frown. “I suspect you have had a more difficult time than I,” she admitted. “My parents are wealthy. I live comfortably. But you—you wear a shirt that has been reseamed several times. And I see that you miss your home. Poland, is it?”
David nodded. “I forget you are a detective.”
“It’s a simple deduction. You have pictures of your home everywhere. And that piece over there. Cross-stitched. That is Polish.”
“You read Polish?”
Merinda shook her head. “I only know as much as I needed to solve the case of a petty theft at a bakery in Toronto.”
“Ah. But yes, I am from Poland. I was born Dawid Rosiak. It was easy to Anglicize my name when I came here to America on one of the rag ships. Destitute.”
“To Chicago?”
“Yes. I heard Mrs. Goldman speak. Suddenly everything had purpose. I could not perhaps shake off the loneliness or guilt I felt at having left my family to their poor lives back home. But I could forge a new path here.” He drank deeply from his glass. “This city is thirsty for something. This is the time. The place. This Colonel Roosevelt—this former president—he will come and perform his magic trick. Make immigrants like myself believe that there is a better horizon. But there is not. His words are just words. They do not repair the past.”
“What is my first step?” asked Merinda.
“Tonight. Ten thirty. Meet me at the warehouse entrance of Williams and Humphrey Department Store.” A smile tickled his mouth. “But only if you are not afraid of an explosive entrance into my world.”
Benny deposited his coat and rucksack at the guesthouse, but after the matron informed him that the lock on his door was broken, he kept his satchel nearby. He wasn’t sure what anyone would find of value in it—certainly not a leather-bound volume filled with his thoughts on wilderness life—but it was the most precious thing he owned. Made more so by Jonathan’s reappearance that afternoon. He found his way back to the Palmer and Merinda.
“I haven’t seen hide nor hair of Jemima,” Merinda said worriedly the moment she saw him in the foyer. “I hope she is just lost looking for frilly froufrous in the department store.”
A shadow crossed Benny’s face. “I am sorry.”
“I just can’t stop imagining a dozen ways she might have�
�� ” They stopped as a bellboy interrupted and pressed a telegram into Merinda’s hand.
Benny watched Merinda exhale and a wide smile cross her face. “The foolish girl went and found DeLuca.” Merinda was visibly relieved.
“You care a great deal for her,” he said softly.
Merinda shrugged it off and pasted on a scowl, but Benny noticed it didn’t match her eyes. “You can’t have Herringford without Watts,” she said. “It sounds all wrong.” Then she coughed. “I will see these pamphlets upstairs.”
“Might I ask a favor?”
“Sure!”
He handed her his satchel. “I don’t trust this where I am staying. Would you keep it here with you?” Merinda’s eyes flickered with excitement as she gave a solemn nod. “Of course.”
A moment later, Benny watched Merinda pass the packages of pamphlets and Benny’s satchel to a bellboy, who assured they would be transferred safely to her room. The sun had set and evening settled outside the famous revolving doors of the hotel’s front entrance. Merinda insisted on dinner, assuring him that the meal would be charged to her room and her father’s allowance.
Benny was certain this was not customary, but nothing Merinda did, he assumed, was customary, and the point became moot the longer he spent in her company.
They sat down to a dinner of small potatoes, fresh carrots, and an herbed chicken superior to anything he had tasted since his last visit to his grandmother’s farmhouse table. As they ate, she voiced her lingering concern for Jemima with a few comments as to her friend’s safety. Then she followed it up with, “I have to start trusting her more. I do! She is just as strong as anyone… ” Immediately after one of these trails of thought, she would supply him with an anecdote explaining Jem’s ability to take care of herself. After the third such example, Benny was unsure if Merinda was attempting to convince him or herself.
Midway through dinner, she unfolded one of the papers she had secured* from her earlier errand for David Ross.
“It’s more ridiculous than one of DeLuca’s articles in the Hogtown Herald.” She assessed the curt, bold font. It wasn’t unlike the pamphlet that had led her to Ross in Toronto and her fortuitous meeting with one of his followers on the streetcar.
Benny bit his lip. “No, it is authentic. It is similar to what I assumed lured Jonathan into their clutches,” he said, remembering a similar missive in the barracks in Regina at about the same time that Jonathan began attending the meetings.
“He uses such strong language when he speaks,” Merinda said as their eyes searched the leaflet together. “Explosive. Change. Earth shattering. Freedom.” She stabbed at a word on her own pamphlet as he simultaneously moved his own finger to highlight the same word and their pinkies touched. Merinda, as if touching fire, jerked her hand away as he read, his voice surprisingly steady after the whisper-touch of their fingers. “War.”
After their dinner was finished, she excused herself to change into clothing appropriate for their evening’s mission.
He waited at the table with a cup of coffee he was too distracted to touch, opting instead to fixate on a plastic plant erupting from a bronze planter directly in his line of sight, wondering why his fingertip still tingled as if deliciously burned from its fleeting touch with her.
But pleasant thoughts soon peeled back, leaving his earlier encounter with Jonathan in their stead. “It’s safer this way.” Benny heard Jonathan’s voice in his head. He reeled at his inability to spring into action even as his cousin had been standing right before him and his duty clutched at his chest. Moments later, Merinda arrived, dressed as a man—and almost convincingly so.
She chatted excitedly about finally being a part of Ross’s grand plan as they wound the dark streets. She told him everything she’d deduced about the man’s sad life in Poland and his susceptibility to Goldman’s words.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw Jonathan there tonight, Benny. He’s obviously involved in the PLM. We’re getting closer and closer.”
Benny couldn’t help but smile in the midst of his uncertainty. She was dressed in the black clothing that Ross had apparently insisted on. Her curls were tucked under a bowler positioned at a jaunty angle. The clothes suited her flat, slight figure and made her legs seem even longer as she kept pace, swinging her walking stick beside her in excited rhythm.
“Men’s clothes become you,” Benny said. He’d say anything to keep his brain from racing back to Jonathan.
“Are you teasing me, Benny?”
“Why would I tease you?”
Merinda grumbled something. It might have been “Thank you.” Benny couldn’t tell. They walked a bit farther before turning in the direction of the warehouse, sloping down toward the lake. “I like how your tie is always straight,” she said lowly. “DeLuca always has his collar open. Doesn’t bother with ties.”
“Are you teasing me, Merinda?” Benny asked with a glint in his eye.
“Cracker jacks!” she fumed. They walked a few beats in silence. Then she revisited her earlier preoccupation with Jem. “Who would have thought it, Benny? Jem just ups and goes to find DeLuca on her own. Sends me a telegram! Can you believe it? Well, I hope she doesn’t get in too much trouble. You know she needs me in these moments to be able to… especially now that… ”
“I saw my cousin Jonathan.” Benny stepped on her sentence.
Merinda stopped in her tracks. “I’m sorry?”
“I saw Jonathan. Here. Earlier today.”
“We came all this way to find him, and you have already seen him? Well, I assume then that you marched him straight to authorities!” Merinda gave a decisive nod.
“He said… he said he’ll find me again when he needs me.”
“Benny.” Merinda spat. “We’ve just spent the past hours in each other’s company and you had the audacity to expound on the fascinating winter patterns of the lynx while keeping this information to yourself!”
“I still haven’t worked it out myself.”
“But you let him go?”
“He’s not gone. I mean, he said that he will find me again, and I trust him.”
“Benny Citrone, this is the man responsible for numerous lives lost. A young officer, a friend of ours… And you trust him?”
“A man is only as good as his word, Merinda. And he as good as gave me his word. I believe him.”
Merinda fell into silence.
Benny was even more at odds with himself now that Merinda’s green eyes bored into him. If he wasn’t doing his duty by the law, he had trouble making sense of anything. It was more than unorthodox to let Jonathan go when he should have arrested him then and there. But perhaps his bending of the law would result in something good.
“It is quite dangerous to gallivant about on your own, Jemima. You know better,” Jasper chastised, intercepting her and Ray en route to the address Hedgehog had given Ray. An address very familiar to Jem once she saw it. The department store that had provided the very clothes she currently wore.
Despite Ray’s numerous attempts to put Jemima in a taxi back to her hotel, she clung to him with force, and he didn’t have the heart to send her away. Not when her eyes beamed up at him as if she saw nothing else—not the strange new city, not the stars spreading over the sky or the moon ribboning over the lake as they walked along.
Jasper was muttering about all of this being a terrible idea. Jem said little, trying to tuck her truant curls under her cap.
“She still looks pale,” Jasper chided to Ray, his tone surly. “She was unwell on the train, Ray. White as a sheet.”
“Motion sickness,” Jem said with finality in her tone. “And it has quite passed. You can’t think I mean for the two of you to have all of the fun!” She made to loop her arm into Ray’s, but he gently shoved it back.
“You forget you’re dressed as a man, my love.” He dipped his chin to her ear.
“You forgot quite quickly earlier,” she countered with a sarcastic twinkle in her tone.
Ray
wasn’t sure what had gotten into her, but he assumed it was just her heart racing as fast as his was. It hadn’t slowed since he had first caught an unbelieving glimpse of her. Hadn’t even had a moment to tell her that as she was throwing herself at him in the middle of a public street, he had been on his way to the Palmer House to plead with her to board the first train back to Toronto.
But Ray DeLuca was only human, and even in the middling light of an overhead streetlamp, he could make out her wide eyes as blue as china, her striking profile, the dimple that pricked her cheek. He had little choice but to tell Jasper she would be accompanying them. He assumed it was safer for her to be in his line of sight and near Jasper than wherever she might find herself with Merinda.
David Ross smiled when he saw Merinda and Benny. “You came.”
“I brought a friend. This is Benny.”
“Benny?” Ross waited for a last name.
Benny shook his head. “No. First names only. We are all brothers in this present cause. That is all you need.”
“A man after my own heart.” Ross smiled and extended his hand. “David.”
“Benny is as committed to the cause as I am,” Merinda said with a side glance at Benny.
“Well, we can’t make a bang without the appropriate resources,” David said with a glance at the shadows of the warehouse. “Which is where our friend comes in.” He gave a quick call, and a middle-aged man with close-set, beady eyes stepped into the lantern light. “This is Hedgehog.”
It took all Merinda had not to snicker. The name. The man who suited it so well. Instead, she nodded curtly. “Hedgehog,” she said.
“Good shipment,” he told Ross. “Just what you need. A bit sticky.” Merinda noticed him take a grimy kerchief from the pocket of his overalls and rub at his hands. He leaned into Ross. “Sloppy, though. It came with more than we bargained for.”
“Not… ” Ross hedged.
“Yes. You tell him to be more careful. I don’t know what’s going on back there, but my job is only to make sure you have what you need.”
A Lesson in Love and Murder Page 12
