What Gold Buys

by Ann Parker

  “Ah!” Doc sounded relieved to catch up to Reverend Sands and the policeman. “We must be near?”

  The reverend pointed. “Just to the left, here.”

  They rounded another corner and Inez saw the shadowed shape of the fortuneteller’s sign.

  The reverend entered first, followed by the policeman, Doc, and Inez. Jed brought up the rear. A snick of a match, and the room was momentarily illuminated. Inez caught a glimpse of a neat table, stub of candle still centered. Cupboard doors hung open, but otherwise, the front part of the one-room shack looked much as she left it. She could see the curtain pulled back from the sleeping area as before. The reverend and the officer blocked any view of the bed beyond. However, their faces held the same grim, tight-lipped expression. The lucifer’s tiny flame guttered and died, and the reverend’s voice pierced the dark: “She’s gone.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Inez broke the cold, dark silence. “That’s impossible!”

  Officer Kilkenny grumbled, “I knew I shouldn’t’ve left my lantern in the Odeon.” Some quiet scuffling about, the skritch and pop of a match, and another tiny pool of illumination burst into being. The matchlight, appearing disembodied in the crowded dimness of the shack, moved ghostlike to the candle stub. The wick sputtered and burst into flame. The officer shook out the match as he held the short taper aloft. “Let’s take a look around,” he said. The words were reasonable, but the tone said fat lot of good this’ll do.

  “She was here!” blurted out Inez. “On the bed. She was garroted. The cord was tight around her neck. Reverend Sands and I, we saw her.”

  “Mrs. Stannert speaks true,” said Sands. “She was lying over there,” he indicated the area behind the curtain, “on the bed.”

  The officer glanced at Reverend Sands, then Inez. She knew exactly what was racing through his mind: Reverend Sands and Mrs. Stannert? What were they doing here, together, in French Row?

  Kilkenny’s calculating expression vanished, leaving only a bored, professional demeanor. He moved to the stained mattress on the minimal iron bedstead and held the candle higher, causing shadows and light, deep and bright, to bounce around the cramped quarters.

  “Well, no one’s here now. Reverend, if I may say, you’re a minister, not a medical man, and probably not as familiar with these quarters as I am. We find women all the time who seem to have expired, cold, stiff, sure as we’re standing here. Between the laudanum, the liquor, and what-all they take, we come across these, uh, ladies, who seem completely corpselike. Next thing you know, they’re sitting up and wanting to know what the hell—pardon, Mrs. Stannert—what the blazes they’re doing in the undertaker’s basement. I suspect that might be the case here. Was she warm to the touch?”

  Inez said, “Yes, but that simply means she had been killed shortly before being found.” said Inez.

  Kilkenny shook his head. “Well, there you go. I’ll bet you a dollar to a dime that after you left, she came around and took off to sober up or get more of whatever it was she’d been drinking. She’ll probably turn up in a day or two.”

  “Officer. She. Was. Dead,” said Inez through gritted teeth.

  Kilkenny gave his muffler a tug. “It’s colder ’n a witch’s, uh, it’s cold. No fire’s been kindled in here for a while. Could send anyone into a stupor. Now, Mr. Elliston and Mrs. Stannert, please step outside for a moment so I can confer with Doc and the reverend.”

  “I’m a member of the press,” blustered Jed. “I’m here on behalf of the public. They deserve to know.”

  Inez wound her hand through Jed’s arm and pulled him toward the door. “Mr. Elliston, come.” Once outside she said in an undertone, “If you put your ear to the door I daresay you will hear discussion that will be much freer and more open than if we’d stayed inside as unwelcome interlopers.”

  “Good idea, Mrs. Stannert!” He removed his hat and pressed one side of his face to the gap in the door, pencil and pad poised. “Dang it,” he grumbled. “I think they moved away from the door. Can’t hear a thing.” She suspected he was sorely tempted to move around to the backside of the small hut, but hesitated to leave her alone outside.

  “Go ahead,” urged Inez in a whisper. “I appreciate your chivalric impulses, but they are not necessary. No one will dare bother me here with members of the press, law enforcement, medical fraternity, and clergy in such close proximity.”

  With a grateful grin, Jed moved around the corner of the building.

  Inez waited a few seconds to be sure he wouldn’t pop back out. Inside, the muffled back-and-forth between Doc, Sands, and Kilkenny sounded ongoing with no tonal hints of an imminent conclusion. Satisfied, she stepped to the far side of the door where, earlier that evening, she had seen Madam Labasilier smash and bury something beneath a rock.

  Inez knelt, using the hem of her cloak to cushion her finery from the ground. As she fumbled in the blackness by the intersection of exterior wall and cold ground, she wondered: could Labasilier have had something to do with Drina’s death? Maybe even pulled the cords tight around the fortuneteller’s neck? Both were small women, but obviously Labasilier had strength in those arms, the way she’d slung that iron kettle around at the Jacksons’ house.

  Inez’s gloved knuckles knocked against a good-sized stone. She shifted it aside. Holding her breath and needlessly scrunching her eyes against the night, she reached into the depression left beneath. Her hand brushed against a soft object. An exploratory touch revealed what felt like a clump of threads, seemingly secured to one end of the object. Inez gripped the threads and rose, moving closer to the faint light leaking from the curtained window of the fortuneteller’s shack. She raised the dangling shape high to see what it was. The object, flattened by the rock, revealing itself to be a small fabric doll, complete with stubby arms and legs and tiny button eyes that captured the barest hint of reflection. With a chill, Inez saw several gold threads glinting around the waist, and that the dark strands pinched gingerly between her gloved fingertips formed a long, miniature braid of hair.

  ***

  The voices inside rose on a sudden note of resolve and stopped. Inez hastily shoved the doll into her cloak pocket, where it bumped gently against her hip. Its sinister similarities to Mrs. Gizzi and the circumstances of its placement caused her stomach to twist in a decidedly unpleasant knot. She stepped away from the window just as the ghostly shape of Jed Elliston appeared around the corner of the shack and moved next to her. “What did you hear?” she whispered. Before he could answer, the door swung open. Reverend Sands, Doc Cramer, and the officer spilled out into the dark.

  “Any clues as to the perpetrator?” asked Inez. “I would hope that, even though this murder occurred in an area where crimes are more commonplace than not, that the death of an innocent woman and mother would merit immediate attention and investigation from those who took a vow to uphold the law.”

  The officer shifted on his feet. “Ma’am, it’s like I explained to the reverend and Doc. There’s nothing to investigate. You and Reverend Sands here say you saw the fortuneteller, apparently deceased. However, there is no deceased here now, in fact no one at all. No body, no sign of a struggle, nothing to point to foul play of any kind. It’s like whoever lives here just decided to step out for a while.”

  “But that’s not possible! I know she was dead!” protested Inez.

  “In any case, I can’t do anything about it. She’s got a boy, you said?” He turned to Reverend Sands for confirmation.

  Inez bit her tongue.

  At the reverend’s nod, Kilkenny continued, “If the boy decides to come around and tell someone that his mother’s missing, well, maybe then we can take a look around a little. In the meanwhile, there’s accommodations, if the boy finds hisself in a fix. The reverend’s mission, for instance, or the Sisters of Mercy at the hospital, both take in orphans. But as for an investigation,” his shrug was clear in his voice
, “there’s nothing to investigate.”

  Inez crossed her arms, as much against the cold as from frustration. “This makes no sense,” she said. “Reverend, you saw her. She was dead.”

  “She was,” said Sands. “Much as we talk about ‘the dead will rise and walk on Judgment Day,’ that day is not here yet. I don’t see how she could have vanished into thin air like this, or why.”

  “Corpse-snatcher!” exclaimed Jed.

  Inez heard the rustle of his notebook, the scratching of pencil on paper. She tried to imagine what sort of illegible scrawl he was composing in the dark.

  He continued, “The illegal anatomists have become bolder than even Orth Stein surmised, and are now snatching the dead from their beds as they breathe their last, before the blood even cools in their veins. Perhaps they have even taken to murdering those weak and unable to defend themselves in order to have fresh specimens for their devious and evil-inspired examinations!”

  “Now hold on, Mr. Elliston.” Doc sounded alarmed. “You will do nothing but incite panic amongst the populace with such unverified and untrue statements. We’ll have the grievously ill, who are most in need of a proper physician’s attention, afraid to call on such, for fear of being robbed of life before their time, or unearthed from their final resting places once their time comes.”

  “Great quote, Doc!” The scribbling intensified. “And Rev, I like the bit you said about the dead rising even though it’s not Judgment Day. Could you repeat that for me?”

  “Jed, I don’t think it’s a good idea to go down this road,” said the reverend. “Doc is right. You’ll only terrify those most in need of aid.”

  “Mr. Elliston, I wouldn’t put it past the judge or the marshal to clap you behind bars for printing inflammatory material, if such leads to widespread panic,” said Kilkenny darkly.

  The scratching of pencil stopped. Inez sensed that Jed’s declarations of “freedom of the press” were about to intensify, leading to perhaps endless discussion and argument in the cold and icy mud of French Row, or, even worse, that the sulking would begin.

  Jed, in a sulk, was well nigh unbearable to be around, and his sulks tended to make him even more obstinate and determined to proceed despite all reason to the contrary.

  He may be a valuable ally in helping to untangle this knot, but not if he’s in jail.

  Inez abandoned all fantasies of engaging in further intimacies with the Reverend Justice Sands in what was left of the night and interjected, “Gentlemen, I hardly know what to say. Reverend Sands and I saw what we saw. Drina Gizzi had been strangled, that was clear. She was not moving nor breathing, but dead. Absolutely and completely. The child led us to her. Now, both have vanished. I suspect nothing more can be done tonight. I doubt the child will show up again while we are hovering about in such numbers. Perhaps he will return after sunrise. I would like to suggest that we all repair to the Silver Queen where I can offer hot toddies to those who imbibe, and coffee to those who would prefer a warm, but less potent libation. But we must go now. I believe ‘last call’ is fast approaching.”

  Kilkenny said in a much improved frame of mind, “Well, now, that sounds like a sensible course of action.”

  Doc began stumping away from the hovel. Reverend Sands said, “Wrong way, Doc.”

  Doc Cramer reversed direction. “Nighttime makes this entire area absolutely unnavigable. One can’t believe anything one sees or thinks. It’s a nightmare.”

  With the lump of the doll pressing through her pocket as a cold reminder of death and the shadows beyond death itself, Inez could only silently agree with Doc’s assessment.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tony stirred, drifting in and out of an unformed dream, as her mother’s voice floated through the gray mist. “Tony, wake up.”

  Maman shook her arm urgently. “Sun’s up. Elliston will be here soon.”

  Elliston?

  The floating warm sleepiness faded as Ace said close to her ear,“Hey, Tony!”

  A rude poke to the ribs shocked her to wakefulness. Reality closed in, and Tony crashed to earth with a thud. Maman is dead. I’m with the newsies. She thrashed around in the burlap, finally sitting up and rubbing her eyes with the palms of her hands. “Sun’s up?”

  “Take a look,” said Ace.

  Even behind her hands she could sense the shed was no longer pitch dark.

  Ace continued, “You said you wanted to be out of here before Elliston showed up, so you’d better get moving.”

  Tony groaned, dropped her hands to her lap, and looked around. Ace was crouching by her, but the lump that was Freddy wasn’t stirring yet.

  “The other newsies’ll be here soon. When it comes to a free breakfast, no one’s ever late. Hey, I had an idea.” He shed his checked jacket without a break in his patter. “Give me your coat and I’ll give you mine.”

  Tony stared at him, befuddled.

  “You don’t want those swells to recognize you on the streets, right? You can stay low, but if you run into one of them, it’d be better if you looked different. So, you wear my coat and I’ll wear yours. Yours is extra big, so’s it oughta fit me. C’mon, there’s not much time.”

  Tony shed the gray wool jacket, gave it to Ace, and put on his distinctive checkered worsted.

  “This is really fine,” said Ace as he slid an arm into the sleeve. “Even lined! I could get used to this.”

  “Well, don’t. It’s only a trade ’til the swells leave town,” said Tony.

  “Just kidding. Oh, one more thing.” Ace stood and rummaged in a nearby sack, finally extracting a rust-colored bowler hat and a none-the-worse-for-wear black muffler. He sailed the hat toward Tony. “A flannel mouth got hisself in a pickle in the wrong part of town. He took off running and his hat couldn’t keep up, so I grabbed it. Put it on.”

  Tony gingerly set the bowler on her head. It settled low on her ears.

  Ace stepped forward and looped the anonymous length of fabric around the lower half of her face. Scratchy, it reeked of cheap tobacco and stables. He stepped back and gave her the once-over. “Perfect,” said Ace. “Hides your eyes and everything. The swells won’t recognize you, I guarantee.”

  Tony tugged the muffler down from her mouth so she could breathe and talk. “Thanks.” She stood and shook the cold out of her bones. “Sorry about being so testy.”

  Ace shrugged. “Thanks for letting Freddy and me take over for you ’til you get things sorted. And I was thinkin’,” he looked out of the corner of his eyes at Tony, unsure, “maybe I could fill in for you at the Silver Queen, until you can go back. No sense letting someone else grab the job.”

  She cast her eyes down, working the buttons closed on the jacket. “Sure. I usually show up right after I’m done with the papers. After suppertime, thereabouts. Just talk to the Stannerts or Mr. Jackson, tell ’em I sent you, but don’t let them know I sleep here.” Then she looked up. “Ace, what do you know about Mrs. Stannert?”

  At the name, Ace puffed out his cheeks and blew out a quick whoosh of breath, which formed a visible cloud in the early light. His eyes darted from side to side, as if he was checking that no one else was around to hear what he was going to say. Or maybe trying to decide what to say and what to stay mum about.

  “Mrs. Stannert, she’s a queer one. I mean, she dresses to the nines and all, when you see her walking around, you’d think she was one of the proper society ladies from Capitol Hill. But, she’s not. But she’s not like the whores and madams and such either. Maybe you don’t know this, ’cause you showed up a couple months ago when she wasn’t around, but she runs the Silver Queen and, no mistake, she’s the boss. At least, she was afore Mr. Stannert came back. He was gone a long time.” Ace’s shifting gaze finally came to rest, and he looked Tony straight in the eyes. “I’ve heard stories about her, though.”

  Tony thought of the previous night, of catching M
rs. Stannert in a clinch with the preacher. “What kind of stories?”

  “She’s not someone to cross. Folks say,” Ace actually bit his lip, and Tony realized that all usual bravado he brought to his “folks say” tall tales was absent. “I’ve heard folks say she killed a man. Killed him stone cold dead. Some say she plugged him from a mile away with a sharpshooter’s rifle. Others say she used a knife to cut out his eye and then she shot him up close and personal with this pocket pistol she carries everywhere. Whichever which way it was, she sent the gent to Old Mr. Grim. Everyone’s afeared of her, so no one dares do a thing about it.”

  “Yeah?” An idea began to form in Tony’s mind.

  “Yeah.” Ace drew out the one syllable until it became two. “You asked, so I told ya. I guess the only thing I’d add is, should you run crosswise of her, best to mind your p’s and q’s.” He added, “Remember what I said about Mr. Alexander. His coffin-shop is up on Harrison, and I’ll bet he’ll take you on, at least part-time. See you tonight?”

  Tony nodded and crawled out the back of the newsie shed. Ace’s jacket wasn’t as warm as the one she’d pulled from Brown’s carpetbag and traded to Ace, but, along with the hat and stinky but warm neck-warmer, it’d do. Especially if she could get inside work. Tony hurried through a gray dawn on the main streets, not bothering with the alleys. It was the time of morning when those who had caroused all night were asleep on sawdust floors of saloons that rented out floor space for a dime or in feather beds in the high-class hotels. Others bunked down on straw-stuffed mattresses in boardinghouses or, if unlucky, slumped against a wall in one of the alleys or under the boardwalks. Saturday’s day shifts in the smelters and the mines were yet to clock in. Leadville was as silent as it would ever get.

  Grateful for the lingering shadows and the comparative emptiness of the streets, Tony made her way home. She still thought of the shack as such, even though, without Maman, no place would ever be home again.