He looked at her, from the brim of her bowler down to the scuffed toe of her brogans. “Merinda,” he sighed, “I can track a moose; I can hunt a lynx. I can label every star in the sky. I cannot map my way through a maze of city streets.”
The next morning, en route to the communal sink, Ray noticed that Jasper Forth’s pillow was still over his head. Ray rolled his shirtsleeves up, adjusted his suspenders, and splashed cold water over his face before raking his fingers through his hair. The cracked mirror and the morning light striping through the window betrayed tired eyes and worry lines he was certain hadn’t been there before. He had several years on Jem to begin with, but was he finally starting to look his age? Soon gray would speckle his hair and his mouth would secure itself into a constant frown. He was certain the majority of this burden would be smoothed away when he finally was at ease about his sister.
He laced his shoes and returned a few grunts from fellow lodgers with a small smile. He scrawled the address of a coffee shop on a piece of paper and placed it at the edge of Jasper’s pillow and then walked out of the lodging house and almost directly into Viola.
His heart tugged at her attempts to look presentable despite the threadbare cotton of her dress and her sunken hat.
“Vi!”
“I’ve spent the better part of this morning visiting almost every boardinghouse in this end of the city,” she explained as he took her elbow and guided her off of the yard and to the main street. “When Tony said he saw you, well… ” She smiled. “You should be proud.” She bopped her head in a confirming nod. “I am not unlike one of your girl detectives.”
This coaxed a slight smile from Ray. “Indeed. Come, you can help us find somewhere to eat breakfast.”
It was a beautiful morning, made more so by Viola’s proximity and the feather weight of her hand in the crook of his arm. She had left Luca with the neighbor. She was in the kind of bright mood that allowed her to expound on her son’s progress and how comfortable he was at being with other children. Ray said very little, cherishing instead the rather endearing hybrid of English and Italian in Viola’s soft sentences.
When they reached the restaurant, he opened his mouth to order coffee, but Viola was adamant that they drink lemonade. Ray advised her that lemonade with the sticky buns she was also adamant about ordering were an odd pairing, but she cared little. A girl at the town fair for an afternoon with a few pennies to recklessly spend. Ray was thankful for the wad of sweaty bills Hedgehog had pressed into his hand the evening before.
The waiter set down two lemonades. Ray smiled as Viola wrinkled her nose at the first taste.
“Should I ask for more sugar?” he asked.
Viola shook her head. “What is the English word—aspro?”
“Sour.”
She nodded. “Sour. It’s good, though. Cold.”
Ray stirred his straw around his glass. His eyes drifted from her to the cold drink to an open newspaper at the next table with a picture of Theodore Roosevelt’s sunny face and portly form. Ray glanced at it quickly while Viola bit into her pastry. It summarized what was to happen at the convention. Roosevelt was not to step into it like a prelude but rather give a speech on the second day of the proceedings.
He looked at Viola again, and with her face a trunk of memories was unlocked. “We tried to make lemonade—do you remember?”
Viola laughed. Like a slight trill of unexpected music. Ray was so unused to this laugh. “It wasn’t pleasant.”
“We should have taken the seeds out first,” Ray said with a deciding nod.
“I like this much better.”
“And I like seeing you smile.” He reached out and took her hand.
“There hasn’t been a lot to smile about. I pawned the pocket watch—a place on Michigan Avenue. And I feel like I am being dishonest with Tony by even talking to you.” Her face darkened. “But there is something that is unsettling. Tony is determined to do whatever they want him to do. He won’t tell me who ‘they’ are, but he tells me it will make things better. This… Ray, Tony thinks that all of our problems will be over. Once and for all. If he only goes through with this one last job. He calls it a score.”
“You remember Jasper Forth from the police? He is here, and we can stop him.”
“I don’t want him to get hurt.”
“I don’t either.”
“And I don’t want him to hurt anyone else.” Viola reached into her ratty handbag and extracted a piece of paper and pencil. Her handwriting was poor. Their father had found little need for an educated female in the house when there were chores to be done on the farm and in the kitchen, but Ray made out a time and an address, not letting Vi know both were familiar to him already. Tony was to meet Hedgehog for the same shipment to which Ray and Jasper were assigned.
They finished their lemonade, and Ray pressed a few bills he had earned from Hedgehog into her palm. “I’ll get more.”
“You found work here?” Viola’s eyes widened.
Ray nodded. “Lifting things for this fellow down at the docks. It’s some kind of criminal activity though, Viola, so it pains me that all I have to give you is what I have made from dishonest work.”
“But look, you’re smiling.”
Ray nodded, and as he spoke his hands picked up movement and his words came out faster before she asked him to slow down. “I know that what this man is doing is connected to Toronto. It’s going to make a wonderful story, Vi.” He reached out and squeezed her arm. “I have you to thank for it!”
Viola leaned across the table and kissed him on the cheek. “You make me so proud, you know. With your stories! Your name in print. You’ll be at the Globe and Mail someday.” She nodded. “I am sure of it.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Everything can be perceived as a trail of bread crumbs. Sometimes you would be surprised what you found at the end. Sometimes you waded into a mystery half solved, sometimes into the middle of a problem you didn’t know was in need of a solution.
Benfield Citrone and Jonathan Arnasson, Guide to the Canadian Wilderness
We’re playing with gunpowder and bombs.” Merinda tried to keep a warning and chastising tone in her voice, but it was all excitement instead. Ross wanted Benny and Merinda to meet and go over preliminary instruction for Tuesday.
“You sound indecently excited,” Jem said, wiggling into black pants in preparation for Silent Jim’s meeting with Ray and Jasper. “I wonder if that has something to do with Benny.”
Merinda huffed and flounced her curls. “Bombs, Jemima.”
“Humph. Besides, I forgot, I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”
“Don’t be so childish.”
“You can’t just go to blows with my husband, Merinda.”
“I didn’t plan on it!” Merinda whined. “I just saw him and I… Well, I felt bad that he left you that note and that he was off running into danger when you are… well… in your condition.”
Jem rolled her eyes. “What would Sherlock Holmes say to this? Letting something—someone—other than the facts of the case cram into your little mind-attic!”
“Clearly a romantic rendezvous has muddled your brain, Jemima.”
“You think you’re something special, guarding your heart, Merinda. Stop tugging that poor man along.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about, you silly girl.”
She walked to her case, picked up Merinda’s best bowler before she could plop it on her head for the day’s adventures, and then calmly walked in the direction of the open window, which she creaked open wide. “How many stories down, do you think? Quite a breeze. Nice hat. Someone could easily swoop it up off the street.”
Merinda dashed at her, but Jem held her back. “You can’t wrestle a woman in my condition,” she said.
“Give it back.”
“What bothers me most is that you won’t tell me about it.” Jem held the bowler a little farther out, watching the droves of traffic below. “That you won’t say i
t out loud. Just tell me. Let’s stay up half the night giggling over his smile or his broad shoulders. Or are you too logical for romance? For love? You think there’s some sort of virtue in keeping a brick wall around your softer emotions. Well, you have them! Even as we keep playing detective and tripping into solutions, you have the same capacity to love and have your heart broken as any other woman.” Jem blew a strand of hair from her face. “Why can’t you just let yourself grab at some happiness?”
“Like your happiness?” Merinda attempted to tug Jem’s arm back. “How happy are you right now? You put all your stock in a fairy tale and hoist up a man to be a prince when he is just a man.”
“It’s better to place someone above yourself than to treat them abysmally,” Jem countered, though her strong tone wobbled somewhat, the fun in her game deflated. Nonetheless, she leaned out the window a little more.
“I treat no one abysmally,” Merinda said, fire in her eyes.
“You hurt Jasper with that interview you gave in the Hog.”
“I didn’t mean to. I believe in what Goldman said. We live in a city that would see immigrants and women silenced forever while the authorities abuse their power to keep the money flowing in. Besides, we were talking about fairy tales and… and… love.”
“Yes.” Jem sliced through Merinda with a look. “We are.”
“You think that because I don’t jump into Jasper Forth’s arms I am cruel. Or that because I don’t moon over Benny’s hair and eyes that I am incapable of loving like you do. Maybe I am capable but choose not to. Can you see me pitching a tent in the Yukon? Or baking cookies with Mrs. Forth for a parlor tea?”
“You would want to bake cookies or follow Benny to the ends of the earth if you truly… if you… ”
“Not all love fits into a little box!” Merinda lunged at Jem and the bowler. Jem stood her ground. “I don’t like being angry at you.” She exhaled.
“And I don’t like being angry at you. But I want you to talk to me. Clearly something is happening between you and Benny. And I worry about your heart, and I worry about Jasper!”
“Don’t you have enough to worry about without adding what you think you see to the list?”
Jem pushed the bowler hat on Merinda’s head.
“Your concern is touching.” Merinda readjusted the hat and picked up her pistol. “Just in case,” she told a wide-eyed Jem.
“I expect you to apologize to Ray, Merinda. He got not a word from you when you nearly broke his nose!”
But Merinda was already out the door.
“Where’s your sidearm?” Merinda asked Benny en route to meeting Ross.
“My what?”
“You’re a Northwest Mounted Police officer. You cannot honestly tell me you don’t carry a weapon.” Merinda’s voice was a frantic gallop. “We’re on our way to a shady lean-to near the docks to learn the peculiarities of explosives and brush shoulders with who knows what kind of vermin and… ”
“I don’t carry a weapon,” Benny said easily, with a shrug.
“Why ever not? All of the dangerous situations you put yourself in… ”
“Samuel Benfield Steele didn’t need a firearm. He merely waltzed into a situation and rectified it with his sterling reputation.”
“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?”
“He tamed the Yukon, Merinda, with no weapon other than the threat of his good name.”
“I didn’t grow up with those fairy tales.” She rapped her walking stick on her open palm.
“They’re not fairy tales. He’s a legend.”
Merinda had little time for legends. They could be steps from death, and here was Benfield Citrone without a weapon of any sort.
“How are you supposed to save me if we are accosted by criminals?” she groaned. “We’re meeting dangerous anarchists who have a ton of gunpowder on hand and even more arriving.”
Benny hooted. “I thought you would be the last woman in the world that needed saving!”
Merinda blew out a string of hair from under her tweed cap. “The closer we get to danger, the more we need to ensure we are equipped to turn the tables in our favor!” She reached into her waistband to ensure her pearl-handled pistol was at the ready. “I have a gun.”
“That goes against everything I believe in.” Benny shook his head.
Several moments later, after fruitless attempts to wave away the overpowering smell of fish and sewage mingling at her nostrils, they arrived at the address. Merinda knocked, and a tall, handsome man with bleary eyes and matted hair answered.
“Jonathan!” Benny said.
“I told you I would find you.” Jonathan said easily.
Merinda had several choice things to say. Had practiced them.* But as Benny made the introduction, Merinda merely looked around and tapped her foot and rapped her stick and kept from meeting the man’s eyes.
“Well,” Jonathan said with a smile, turning into a stranger the moment they entered the warehouse and treating Benny as he would a stranger, “I’m here to show you the ropes. Ross said you were invaluable in unloading our equipment last night, and now we can show you what to do with it.”
Ross appeared then. Fashioning a broad smile for Merinda.
A curtain of rotting garbage mixed with the syrupy slats of crates forced Merinda’s handkerchief to her nostrils.
Benny sniffed a few times and was clearly as uncomfortable as Merinda, but he didn’t sway.
“Down to the wire!” Ross bellowed. “We’re near our day, and Jonathan is the most adept at explosives.”
Jonathan instructed them on tying knots and flicking a match to kiss the end of a string. Every explosive was carefully and gingerly constructed with the best powder and dynamite.
“But how will we get the explosives on the streetcars without detection?” Merinda asked.
“Streetcars?” Jonathan raised an eyebrow at Ross.
“Never you worry.” Ross covered quickly. “Everything will become crystal clear on the second day of the convention.”
“Why now?” Merinda asked as Benny and Jonathan worked carefully with a mess of wires. “Why Roosevelt? This fellow and President Taft just held conventions not two months ago. Of course, Roosevelt lost, but you had twice as many people at your disposal. Why this convention?”
“There’s nothing more dangerous than a new idea.” David smiled. “It gets people to hope. It makes them complacent. This Roosevelt calls his party progressive. He is trying again. He was knocked down. His support dwindled, but he picked himself up. People love a story like that. But we know the truth. There is nothing progressive in leadership. There is only disdain in leadership. The rich will get fatter. Roosevelt promises equality, but he can never truly know what it means because he has everything at his disposal—money, power.”
“So all of those streetcar explosions? Was it just to lead to more trolley explosions?”
“It was to lead to this moment. I don’t want to be remembered as the man who set off a few trolley explosives. But I needed the backup and support to rally people to this great cause. Building blocks. They were building blocks. We are almost there! All of America will be watching!”
Ross reached into his pocket and extracted a small volume. The book jacket had almost all fallen away and the broken spine had been glued together. “This is my bible.” He held it out to her. “This. Marx. Engels. Men who couldn’t make change happen in my own country.”
Merinda fingered the red leather of the battered tome. “You mean to make what they stand for ripple through America?”
“I saw poverty and injustice enough to last a lifetime. Then I found this land of promise. But it was all a fairy tale. There is no promise. There is no hope.”
Merinda said. “It won’t change as you want it to.”
“Your city has the right to arrest you for walking. You have the opportunity to do something larger than yourself. You do it daily by standing up to that Morality Squad. By proving you have so much to offer
. I have read this paper. This Hogtown Herald. You are a symbol of hope.”
Merinda’s tolerance for hyperbole was dwindling. “Then let’s stop with the platitudes and get to the plan.”
Ross unfolded a large map of the Coliseum’s interior. He had memorized its circumference during the June convention, or so he explained. “I’ve bribed two security guards here and here… ” He stabbed the map with his finger.
“Why would you bribe guards at the Coliseum if you mean to blow up a trolley car outside?”
“Trolley car?” he asked.
“Certainly. In Toronto you set a series of trolley cars ablaze, ushering in Goldman’s appearance. I assumed.”
Ross laughed. “Oh, Miss Herringford. You are so naive. We are not blowing up a trolley car. We are blowing up the Coliseum and killing the leader.”
* * *
*Many of these choice things had less to do with the man’s explosive talents and more to do with the worry so telling on his cousin’s face at distracted moments.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As it comes to one’s paycheck, our grandfather always said, “Give some to Regina, give some to yourself, give some to the Lord, give the rest to your mother.”
Benfield Citrone and Jonathan Arnasson, Guide to the Canadian Wilderness
Benny and Merinda should have been taking Michigan Avenue at a speedier pace. With news that they were integral to an assassination plot, they should have been flurried and flummoxed.
But even as she realized how daft she was in not seeing Ross’s grand plan sooner, in this particular instant Merinda was more focused on her earlier argument with Jem. Benny. Here he was walking beside her, his mind and voice galloping with a thousand different scenarios about the outcome of their association with Ross.
Merinda wasn’t listening. Opting instead to iron out whatever made her heart flutter with his proximity. Merinda Herringford has no time for silly heart flutters. Merinda Herringford is going to almost single-handedly stop a vicious assassination attempt. She didn’t need this Benny-sized distraction. She needed to stand her ground. Stiffen her shoulders and beat him at whatever game they were playing. She wanted to have the upper hand. If she let him, he could overtake her, and she would rather shield herself even if she risked his turning and walking away.
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