What Gold Buys

by Ann Parker

  “I agree,” said Inez, “But is it true it was not the gun that killed him?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I wondered if I could ask how he was strangled. I have seen the revolver but not the ultimate instrument of his death.”

  She hoped she didn’t come across as particularly ghoulish. Oddly enough, the deputy perked up. “Hey now, I haven’t shown this to a female. Didn’t want to upset delicate sensibilities, you know. But since you ask, Mrs. Stannert, maybe you have some ideas. It’s peculiar all around.”

  He excused himself, went into a back room, and returned with a small box. He opened it and Inez glimpsed the gun. “Here we go.” He pulled out a coiled cord and let it unfurl—corset laces of silver and gold, crusted brown with dried blood. “Poor fella, strangled with a ladies’ set of laces.”

  A cold finger traced down her spine. Except for the blood, the cords were a twin set to those given to her by Woods. What had he said when he gave them to her? “Not my usual stock, only brought two this trip. Sold one, and this is for you.”

  Of course, that didn’t mean similar laces couldn’t have been purchased in another time and place, but still…She found her voice and said, “They were found on the deceased?”

  He chuckled grimly. “The deceased. Now you’re sounding like that undertaker feller. No, actually, we found ’em just inside the door. We’re thinkin’ whoever did this dropped them on the way out. Must’ve been in a hurry, I’m guessing, and didn’t realize he’d missed tucking them in a pocket.”

  “Makes sense.” Inez could not take her eyes off the gold and silver stays. The deputy was also looking at them with appreciation. “Mighty fancy. Not like something you find at Daniels and Fisher’s, eh? Wife’s are plain white. Bet she’d love something like this.” He stopped and reddened from neck to hairline, as if just realizing what he’d said out loud.

  Inez decided it was time to depart. “Thank you, Deputy.” She stood. “If I think of anything that can help you, I’ll let you know.”

  He dropped the blood-stained laces back in the box. “Good deal, Mrs. Stannert. Although, as I said, no one seems particularly interested in clearing up what happened here. Maybe because he was a toff in the wrong part of town. But I’d sure like to know, just for peace of mind, if nothing else.”

  Inez hurried back to the saloon, afire to re-examine the drummer’s receipts. Didn’t she see one that said s/g ls? Well, there was her receipt of course. But there should be another, since he said he’d sold the only other pair. And she hadn’t gone through the entire stack, just enough to interpret his notations.

  Inez swung open the Harrison Avenue door, intent upon the upcoming task. Abe and Sol were working the bar, Mark was nowhere in sight. She paused to ask Abe how Angel and Hazel were doing.

  “Doin’ better than fine,” was the answer. He pulled out a brandy snifter without her even asking, and one of the better bottles high on a backbar shelf, adding, “I know for most women, baby arrives in the morning and it’s back to washing and cooking in the evening, but I told Angel, she’s gotta rest. That’s why I decided to keep Mrs. Buford on for a while. What with the hours I work and all, it just makes sense.” Along with the brandy, he gave her one of his rare smiles. It vanished when he said, “Mark and Miss Josephine are in the gaming room, just so’s you know.”

  She saluted him with her glass and, cradling it in her hands, slipped upstairs to the office. As she approached the gaming room, she heard an intense, low-pitched discussion going on inside. She couldn’t make out the words, not that she tried to. She closed herself in the office, then pulled out the stack of receipts and dove into them again, trying to ignore the rising crescendo of voices from the gaming room, where Mark and Josephine were apparently no longer concerned about whether the tenor of their “discussion” stayed private or not.

  Shaking her head, she paged through the receipts, from first to last, without any luck. With a sigh, she started over and went through them again, slower and more carefully. She quickly discovered two receipts stuck together, apparently the victims of a sticky spill. Encouraged, she continued to look for papers that were glued together. The second such pairing yielded a lower page that was undecipherable, the pencil markings blurred and smeared from whatever liquid they’d bathed in. However, with the third such, she hit gold—or perhaps more appropriately, silver and gold. She separated the crackling thin papers with a careful hand, revealing the notation Alxndr, s/g ls, and in tiny letters under that: undertaker.

  A buzz that was almost electric shivered through her body. “Well, well. Mr. Alexander,” she said softly. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  Strangle Drina? She could see that. Perhaps. If his wife had been circling the vortex of fortunetellers, mediums, and so on, and he became desperate. Too, didn’t Tony tell her that Mrs. Alexander had paid Drina a hundred dollars for a reading, or vision, or whatever it was? That was an inordinate amount of money. Mr. Alexander seemed the cautious type, not one to toss his earnings around. But he didn’t seem capable of murder either. Inez looked down at the receipt. She couldn’t see him as the type to buy such expensive, flashy laces for his wife either. Maybe they had an argument, and these were to be a peace offering? There again, she couldn’t imagine him arguing with her. Pleading, yes. But arguing? One never knows what happens behind the closed doors of a marriage, she reminded herself. It was then she noticed that all was silent down the hall, and perhaps had been for some time.

  Tonight was the night of the séance. Inez decided she would wait and see. If Mrs. Alexander was still reaching out to “the other world,” her husband had obviously not been very effective in getting her to stop. Inez couldn’t imagine how she would work corset laces into a polite conversation, but perhaps during the séance, or before or after, she could posit additional queries about Drina and the day Drina died.

  Percy, however, was an anomaly.

  Inez could think of no connection that the undertaker might have with the Colorado Springs remittance man, nor why he’d wish him harm. Percy liked to dabble in the world of omens and fortunetelling and had apparently gone to see Drina at some point. Could that have led to his death in some way? She recalled what Madam Labasilier had said about the shack, about it being “an evil place.” Inez was not superstitious, but some primitive part of her responded and she actually shivered.

  So, what now?

  She sat, thinking. She could take the receipt to the deputy but only had the now-dead drummer’s word that he had brought two sets of silver and gold laces to Leadville. Saying so would only lead the deputy to wonder about the second set. Although Inez couldn’t imagine she would be under suspicion, she suspected that bringing her so-called “evidence” to the deputy’s attention would just muddy the waters. No, better to wait and see what could be gathered at the séance in the way of further information. Perhaps Drina and Percy will deign to appear as orbs of light from the great beyond, accuse their killer, and offer up the motive for murder as well. Now that would be a fitting resolution to this unholy mess.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  It was well after sunset on Friday when Tony finally showed up to work at Mr. Alexander’s. She had asked him if later would be okay, thinking once the sun went down she’d be more invisible when on the move. He had said that was fine, and then gave her a list of the tasks he wanted her to do. “I will be out,” he said, “but Mrs. Alexander will be around if you have any trouble.”

  The tasks were mostly sweeping, dusting, and cleaning downstairs. “Be careful around the workbench and bottles,” he’d admonished. He added she should take special care in polishing the metal case that would transport Mr. Brown’s remains back to England.

  “Will he be in there when I’m working?” she’d asked, a little nervous at the thought.

  Mr. Alexander had misinterpreted her nervousness, though, and had said reassuringly, “Absolutely. I will prepare
him Friday and by evening he will be in the case, closed and sealed tight. Air tight. She then asked if he maybe would like her to sort through the box of old clothes and fold them so they could go to the poorhouse or the mission.

  He nodded. “Good idea, Mr. Donatello. They’ve been piling up, and I should send them on.”

  That, at least, lifted her spirits. Now she had permission to be digging through the box looking for anything that had belonged to Maman, just in case anyone wandered in, which didn’t seem likely. If the box held anything Maman had been wearing—her layered blouses, her shawl, scarves, sash, stockings, shoes, even her underthings—Tony was sure she’d recognize it. Still, she felt jittery. She could almost hear Maman whisper: Listen to your voices! They are trying to tell you something.

  Tony figured it was just because she’d be working downstairs with all the stiffs. That reminded her: what had happened to the drummer? Mr. Alexander hadn’t said. The drummer disappeared and Pisspot Brown took his place. Maybe he’d been hauled off to the cemetery and dumped in a hole and buried already?

  ***

  While the sun made its slow journey across the sky on Friday, Tony, swathed in an oversized apron, “hid” in Miss Carothers’ workroom sorting plates for Miss Carothers to review later. “Take the ones that look out of focus or too light or too dark, or where the sitter’s eyes are closed or they have a strange expression, and put them to one side,” she said. “From the remainders, pick the ones you think are best, and put them to the other side. We will look at them together later, and talk about them. This will help develop your ‘eye’ for a good photograph. Being able to identify good photos from the plates saves one from wasting chemicals and materials on disappointing results.”

  Mrs. Stannert showed up later in the day, looking nervous too. That made Tony even more nervous, because Mrs. Stannert was the last person Tony’d expect to have the jitters. She came into the darkroom and shut the door so it was just the two of them with stacks of glass plates, bottles of stinky chemicals, boxes of photographic paper, and the “burnishing roller machine” that Miss Carothers used to made the prints look all nice and shiny.

  “Tony, someone set fire to the storage shed behind The Independent last night,” she began.

  Tony shot up out of her chair, but Mrs. Stannert stopped her. “No one is hurt,” she said quickly. “And actually, I misspoke. It was not fire, only smoke, but that was bad enough. It drove all the newsies out of the shed and brought the fire companies on the run.”

  “But, why?” Tony couldn’t figure it. And then she did. “Me??” She stared at Mrs. Stannert. “Someone was looking for me and they did that to my friends?”

  Mrs. Stannert tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “It seems a likely motivation and did cross my mind.”

  She looked really tired, Tony thought. Tony felt bad that maybe she was the cause of Mrs. Stannert being so upset.

  “In any case,” the saloonwoman said, “I wanted to warn you: Don’t go back there. I believe, somehow, someone found out that you regularly bunk with the newsies. So, where did you spend last night?”

  “Here,” said Tony, a little abashed. “I just thought after Pisspot, uhhhh, Mr. Brown was found dead, I should keep out of sight.”

  “Good.” She took a breath. Tony noticed her lace collar was a little crooked and she was pulling on the fingertips of one glove, almost like she was thinking of taking it off, but then kept changing her mind. “Are you working at Mr. Alexander’s, later?”

  Tony nodded. “I have a lot to do, downstairs.”

  “He will be present, I expect?”

  “No, he said he’ll be out tonight. He’s leaving me to take care of things by myself.” It made her feel proud to say that. It meant he trusted her enough to leave her with a list of tasks to do and not hover around, offering tins of polish and pointing out spots she’d missed.

  “Well, that’s good. When you go, it would be best to stay downstairs. Don’t come up to the main floor, if you can avoid it. I’ll be attending a séance Mrs. Alexander is holding at midnight, so she may be out and about on the main floor today, since they live just above. Have you seen her yet? During your times there?”

  Tony shook her head.

  “Well, that’s good too. Keep yourself small and unobtrusive. The séance isn’t until midnight, so I would guess you will be long done working and back here in the studio by then. I plan to ask questions, look around.” She stopped talking and chewed on her bottom lip, as if not sure about something, then looked Tony right in the eye, like Tony was a grownup and they were having a serious grownup talk. “I am going to tell you something I found out today. I would rather not, but I think you need to know.” And she told Tony about the laces—silver and gold, just like the one around Maman’s neck—that had been used to kill Mr. Brown. “And Mr. Alexander bought those laces shortly before your mother died,” she finished bleakly.

  “What?” Tony couldn’t believe it. “Mr. Alexander? Oh no. He couldn’t.”

  Mrs. Stannert shook her head, obviously dismayed as well. “I thought that too. But, Tony, I’ve had the…opportunity, shall we say, not just once, but many times to see a side of human nature that most keep hidden. The mildest of people, the ones you least expect, everyone carries a darkness within themselves.”

  “Everyone? Even Miss Carothers?” Tony felt as if the world was spinning like a top. Was there anyone who was as they seemed? Did everyone wear a mask?

  Mrs. Stannert’s face relaxed into a smile, and she looked much younger all of a sudden. “Again, I misspoke. I do not believe Miss Carothers has anything but light to offer the world. Come to think on it, my sister is another such, and her husband is a kind soul as well. So, yes, there are good people in the world, and then there are people who are mostly good, who mean well, but struggle, and then there are those who put on a semblance.” She stopped and frowned.

  She’d finally taken off the glove she’d been fiddling with, and Tony noticed that she was twisting the two rings on her finger: one winked silver, the other gold.

  “Never mind,” the saloonwoman continued. “I’ve strayed far from what I came to tell you. I just wanted to warn you about Mr. Alexander and the missus as well. Let’s not forget she paid your mother a lot of money to foretell the future. She doesn’t seem entirely balanced to me, one foot in the here and now, another in a different realm. I can’t help but feel you would be safer staying here.”

  More than ever, Tony felt she had to look into that box of clothes. “I’ll be careful. No one will be around. Nothing’s gonna happen. It’s just me and the stiffs.” She regretted saying that as soon as it was out, but Mrs. Stannert didn’t seem taken aback.

  “Well then. I can’t hogtie and keep you here. All I can say is be careful. And remember what I said about danger. If you think anything is wrong, if you feel in danger, run.”

  ***

  And now, Tony was here, back at Mr. Alexander’s, having fooled the little doorbell over the front door into silence once again with her sneaky ways. She tiptoed across the dark, silent front room, through the dark hallway, and started down the stairs. She was nearly at the bottom when she heard something—a rustle—and then saw something—a wavering light. Her first thought: spirit lights! But she stopped herself. That’s unkum-buncum. There are no spirits. And the dead wouldn’t be making that soft little rustling sound. It was probably Mr. Alexander, not left yet.

  But just in case, Tony pulled out Maman’s little knife with the folded blade and advanced with a light step. The light was wavering around the corner, so Tony stepped out in the room to see.

  There was an oil lamp, turned low, and a white shapeless form bent over the box of clothes.

  For a vaporous moment, Tony thought it might be a ghost in its shroud, looking for the clothes it left behind. She must’ve gasped or made some kind of sound, because the white shape whirled around, and To
ny saw it was Mrs. Alexander, all dressed in a long white loose-fitting dress. Too late to run now.

  Mrs. Alexander had the lamp in one hand and the other hand clapped to her throat, looking as guilty and shocked as Tony felt. The missus came forward quickly while Tony stood there, staring, the little folding knife forgotten in her hand. Mrs. Alexander held the lamp high. Tony squinted and looked away…too late.

  “You, you’re Drina’s child!”

  Tony heard the whisper and shook her head, but a hand gripped her chin and forced her face up.

  “The eyes! The face! Yes! Yes! You are!” Mrs. Alexander didn’t seem angry or like she wanted to hurt her. If anything, she seemed happy, triumphant even.

  Mrs. Alexander continued, “I saw you, remember? Outside your home? I was leaving.” The hand on Tony’s jaw squeezed tighter. “Where is she, your mother? Where did she go?”

  “She’s dead!” Tony burst out.

  Mrs. Alexander stepped back. She didn’t argue. She didn’t demand to know more. All of sudden, she just looked sad and then she said, “Yes, yes. I know that now.”

  Tony wanted to ask her how she knew, and did she know about Mr. Alexander, but the missus didn’t wait, rushing on with, “This is a sign, finding you here, now. You are the boy? The one my husband hired?”

  Tony nodded.

  “Then, this is meant to be. The spirits wanted me to find you. Your mother guided us, you and I, to this moment, this night.” She stared hard at Tony with those nearly colorless eyes. “Your mother. Do you know what happened to her?”

  “Someone killed her. Strangled her. Then,” Tony could hardly say the rest, “they took her away, like she vanished and never was.”

  Mrs. Alexander was nodding, nodding slowly. Then, she did something Tony didn’t expect. Not in a million years. She took Tony’s hand. “We will find out what happened to your mother,” she said gently. “And we will find out tonight. This is what we will do…”