“What do you know about him?”
Tony had hoped to be a Pinkerton when he came to America, only to find that his stature would keep him from joining the elite detectives. His investigative prowess, however, had served him well as a journalist. In fact, it was Tony who’d broken the news to her that Charlie had a wife in a modest three-bedroom home and that his small string of automobile repair shops generated enough income to keep her quite content there.
“Ed was his father’s uncle. Family in Philadelphia at least two generations before him, so good American stock.”
“He does look a little like a farm boy.”
“And you was wrong to flirt like that, circumstances being what they are.”
“I flirt with everybody.”
“The man’s in mourning for his last living relative, God rest his soul.”
Monica wasn’t in the mood for a lecture, so she conceded the point with a sigh. “What else?”
“Well, you’re wrong about the farm boy, anyway. Grandfather a professor, father a lawyer. Both parents died in a house fire—God rest their souls—seven years ago. No brothers, no sisters.”
“So he really is all alone,” she mused. So rare to find another who shared her fate. “What do you think he’s going to do with all of us?”
She felt Tony shrug against her. “I’m your man for diggin’ around in the past. Leave the soothsayin’ to someone else, you know what I mean?”
“Yeah. I know what you mean.”
By now they’d left the little churchyard far behind and were walking along a busy street thick with afternoon traffic. Sleek, expensive automobiles jockeyed for position alongside older models, making it impossible to imagine that little more than a decade had passed since the same streets teemed with horses and buggies and wagons. On the sidewalk pedestrians fought a similar battle, not having the benefit of a designated direction. Luckily, when it came time to cross the street, a police officer stationed in the middle of the intersection blew a shrill whistle, bringing the traffic to a stop for safe passage.
Max and Harper led the way, followed by Trevor, who—quite the gentleman—took Mrs. Ovenoff’s arm. Monica and Tony followed and were nearly to the opposite side when the ah-oogah sound of a honking horn startled her so, she dropped his arm, stopping dead in her tracks. The hearty sound of a man’s laughter came from the car nearest the curb.
“I thought that would get you to drop the geezer’s arm!”
Monica stared down the shining blue hood of the car to where a rakishly handsome face smiled at her through the windshield. The top was down despite the cold, and the driver leaned out to get a better look at her.
“Give a girl a heart attack, why don’t you?” But she smiled wide so he’d know there weren’t any hard feelings, really.
“Baby, I’d give your heart anything it needs. Ditch your daddy and come play with me for a while.”
“Hey, come on, fella,” Tony said, bristling beside her. “Leave her alone.”
“And if I don’t?” the man shot back.
Before Tony could say another word, the impressive figure of Max Moore appeared. He stood in front of her, blocking the entire view of the automobile, and said, “The lady is not welcoming your attentions, sir.” Then, without another word, he turned and draped a shepherding arm across her shoulders.
“You heard the man,” Tony said. “G’on.”
If the driver had any reply, it was lost in the rev of his engine. Monica hurried for the last few steps until she was safely on the sidewalk.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” she said, ducking herself out from under his arm.
“I’m sorry?”
“Beefing on that fellow like that.”
“Oh.” Max looked over to the intersection, as if expecting to see the fellow still waiting. “I thought he might be bothering you.”
“Just some harmless flirting. Right, Tony?”
“You kids. Nothin’ but sex, sex, sex. It’s broad daylight, for pete’s sake.”
Monica felt her cheeks flush despite the cold and found a rush of words to defend her honor.
“Why are you making such a federal case out of it? A little honk, a little wink. No harm done.”
“I think perhaps you might want to be more cautious in your response to a man who is so publicly brazen in his behavior,” Max said. They’d arrived at the deli, where he opened the door and held it for her.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Monica said, her voice thick with sarcasm. “I mean, here you are so brazenly holding that door for me. What kind of a girl would I be if I just walked right inside? I mean, we’ve barely been introduced. Right, Tony?”
“Six-dash-six-four-seven,” Tony said, glancing at his ever-present little notebook. “That’s the license number of the fella’s car if you want I should track him down for you. In case it’s a matter of true love or something.”
He took the responsibility of holding the door, and Monica scooted past, returning a scowl for his smirk. Once inside, the din of conversation made further discussion impossible, at least for as long as it would take to shoulder through the crowd of regulars to the assembly of small tables at the back of the room. Three open seats remained—one in the center by the window, and two crammed into the corner at the head. Tony’s determined step from behind knocked her flat into Max’s back, and before she could ask what all the rush was about, he’d claimed the center seat, leaving her to be squished in the corner at Max’s right hand.
Clearly their arrival had been greatly anticipated, for they’d barely settled in before Harper lifted his hand in a signal, and a trio of red-moustachioed deli men, each wearing a meat-stained apron, descended on their table. They were led by Peter MacDougal, as famous for his unpredictable Irish temperament as he was for the generous portions of delicious food. With them came a steaming platter of corned beef along with a pyramid of sliced rolls, a bowl of warm cooked cabbage, another of potato salad, and finally a double-decker cake iced white and festooned with garlands and blue roses.
“To honor Edward Moore,” MacDougal said. “Three, four, maybe five times a week did he come here. Always the same thing, corned beef on a white roll, cake, and coffee. Sat on that stool right there, he did.” He pointed to a raised seat along the counter that sat empty, draped in black wool. “When I told him that my mother, God rest her soul, was longin’ to come here from the old country, he asked me flat out, ‘Peter?’ he said. ‘Is it your mother that taught you to make such a fine corned beef?’
“I told him, yes, sir, ’twas indeed, and the good man came back the next day with a check. Bought her a first-class passage on the next ship out of Dublin.”
MacDougal wiped an unchecked tear with the back of his wrist. “I tell you, there’s nothing I’d like better than to raise a glass to the man. Cursed law it is that a friend can’t have a drink to honor the life of another. But I trust you’ll eat hearty, the way he’d want you to, God bless him.”
“We will,” Max said, standing to offer his hand.
“You’re the family?”
“I am. His nephew—” But the final syllable came out as little more than a puff of air as Max was crushed in the embrace of a man who spent his days working a meat slicer.
“I always told your uncle,” MacDougal said once he’d released Max to an arm’s-length grip, “he was more of a man than anybody knew. Get it? Moore of a man?”
Everyone around the table laughed at the cue, including Monica, though she was more amused by the dazed look on Max’s face than by MacDougal’s pun.
“I look for you to be the same, young man. The very same.” By now tears flowed freely down MacDougal’s red face, disappearing into his generous moustache. He wished them all a good lunch as a start to a long life of good health, then took his men back behind the counter to meet the needs of the growing line of customers.
“Everybody, please,” Max said, holding his hands out toward the tableful of food. “Enjoy.”
They imme
diately tucked in to obey, passing platters and bowls and filling their plates. In the midst of the activity, Max leaned in close, the timbre of his voice low enough to be heard under the chatter around them. “Did you know that? About the check and the old country?”
“Nope,” Monica said, buttering her roll. “I was half expecting the man to come up with a bill for a lifelong tab. I always figured Edward to be the guy to take a sack of pennies to the five-and-dime.”
She immediately wished she’d had a bit more tact than to insult the memory of this newly discovered generosity, but Max’s smile eased her conscience.
“It was good to hear. And by the way, I think we can all rest assured that Mr. MacDougal has had plenty of opportunity to raise a glass to his friend.”
“Really?” As if such a thing were unheard of.
She piled her roll high with corned beef and added the warm, peppery cabbage before pressing the top of the roll down on the overflowing sandwich. In retrospect, she should have given more thought to her lipstick than her appetite, as there was no way to continue without making a complete mess of her makeup. Still, she opened her mouth wide to take a bite and felt completely vindicated by the deliciousness of the combination.
“And about all that business with that fellow in the car.” Max was talking to her again. “I do apologize if I insulted you, Miss . . . Miss—”
“Bisbaine,” she said, or something like that.
“Bisbaine,” he said, as if tasting the sound of it along with the warm potato salad. “Bisbaine. You know, I looked through several issues of Capitol Chatter this morning, but I don’t recall your name in a byline. Are you an editor? Copy editor?”
“No,” she said, swallowing.
“Secretary?”
“Ha!” A crumb of something flew past her lips, but she caught it in time with the back of her hand. “Fine day it’ll be when I’m a secretary. No, Mr. Moore, I’m a writer. I simply choose to publish anonymously.”
Tony made a monkey sound from down the table. Max’s eyebrows rose at its shrieking apex.
“That’s you? Monkey girl?”
“Monkey Business. And yes, that’s me.” She leaned forward, elbow planted on the table, her sandwich dangling over his plate. “Are you scandalized?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Should I be?”
“It’s a very popular column, you know. People write letters, wanting to know where I’m going next and where I buy my clothes. Even though they can’t see them. I write about what I’m wearing, and they want to know where they can buy the same thing. They love me.”
“Imagine that.” Max sliced his corned beef and stabbed it along with a forkful of cabbage. “People who don’t even know you love you. All those readers who don’t know your name. That fellow in the car.”
Monica sat back, angling her body and tilting her chin in the way that hours of study in the mirror confirmed to be the most enticing. “What are you implying? That I might only be lovable to those who don’t know me?”
“Not at all. Just making an observation.”
She waited for something to crack—a smile, a humorous glint from behind his spectacles—anything that would belie the inscrutable seriousness of his expression, but there was nothing.
“Well, I should hope not,” Zelda said from the opposite side of the table. “You are a lovely girl. Mr. Moore was quite fond of you.”
“Really?” The news—and indeed, it was news—warmed her as much as the food. “With him you could never tell.” She tore off a piece of her roll and wedged it in the corner of her mouth like Edward’s ever-present stump of cigar and twisted her face to match his scowl. “‘Monkey!’” she said, matching his gravelly voice to near perfection. “‘You call this writing? I can knock a kid down in the street and steal his copybook and get better stuff than this. Ever hear of a verb?’”
The table burst out in laughter, Max among them, though his chuckle seemed to stem more from curiosity than amusement.
“Oh,” Zelda said, wiping her eyes with the corner of her napkin, “you have captured him completely.”
Monica received the compliment with a small bow as she chewed and swallowed the bit of bread. Max stood beside her and lifted his water glass.
“To Edward Moore,” he said, “who apparently will live on in the hearts of us all.”
“To Edward,” they echoed, touching their glasses to one another’s. Monica’s eyes met Max’s over the clink, and there she saw the humor that had been hiding before.
Do you see? Someone we both knew loved me.
She kept the victorious truth to herself as she sipped her water and confidently imagined Max conceding the point as he did the same. It was a first, if silent, truce.
After that, the floodgates of conversation opened, and until the last crumb of cake was gone, stories of Edward Moore’s secret generosity and blatant orneriness flowed from one end of the table to the other. Max mostly listened, taking in his uncle’s most recent history while contributing very little about the man Edward had been before.
“What?” Monica said during a lull. “No childhood traumas to share?”
“We weren’t close,” Max said with a finality she dared not breach.
She shrugged. “That’s family.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” He scooted his chair back as far as the confines of the corner would allow and stood. “Thank you, everybody, once again for taking the time to share your memories with me. I can see that my uncle has left me quite a void to fill, and I’ll be taking a few days to look over his affairs before I decide what the future of the paper will be.”
“Wait a minute,” Tony said. “There’s a chance you might shut us down?”
Max held up a reassuring hand. “I haven’t made up my mind. I’ll be meeting with Mr. Harper to see how viable the business is. There are a lot of factors to consider. This was my uncle’s vision, not mine. But we will continue on the publication schedule for the next issue, at least.”
It was as if a pitcher of cold water had been dashed across the table, dousing every bit of the crackling camaraderie. In the midst of the wash, Max thanked them once again for their time and their memories before taking his leave.
They watched him, some turning in their chairs to do so, as he once again wrapped himself against the cold and walked past the windows that ran the length of the store.
“So what if he does shut us down?” Tony said at last. “Not like any of us’s gettin’ rich from writin’ for this rag.”
“You’re right,” Monica said, voicing the others’ downcast agreement. If she were indeed dependent on the pittance she earned from her column, she’d be begging for scraps in the street.
“Still,” Zelda said, “we are rather like a family, are we not?”
“Yeah,” Monica said, “and you see how much family means to him. His own uncle, and he’s got nothing to say.”
“Do not be so harsh.” Zelda turned to Harper. “You, Mr. Harper, you know better than any of us. What do the books say?”
Thomas Harper Jr. straightened his tie and cleared his throat. “That, I’m afraid, is information I’m not at liberty to share at will. Suffice it to say that to take the helm of this publication would be a matter of affection, not business acuity.”
“You’re saying Edward kept on with the paper because he loved us?” Monica asked.
Harper bristled at the thought. “Because he loved the industry, I would say.”
“Well, Mr. Maximilian Moore is inheriting both,” Monica said. “He seems like kind of a big, cold cod, but let’s hope he warms up to one of the two.”
The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose.
H. G. WELL
S, THE INVISIBLE MAN
HE’D GONE STRAIGHT TO THE FUNERAL from the train station, and then, with his belly full of corned beef and cake, not to mention a head full of visions, met with a junior associate of Bolling, Bolling, and Smith—the law firm handling Uncle Edward’s estate. Nelson Bolling, at least a generation removed from the men who’d earned the name on the door, thumbed nervously through a thin portfolio of papers, clicking his tongue in time with the office clock.
“It’s a fairly . . . simple . . . affair. . . .” He spoke slowly, no doubt an attempt to stretch the billable hour. “Your uncle, Mr. Moore? Which would you prefer, that I refer to him as your uncle? Or Mr. Moore? The latter could be confusing, as you are also Mr. Moore. I suppose I could go with Mr. Moore Sr., although that isn’t entirely accurate, given that he was not your father—”
“Why don’t we go with Edward?” Max sat forward in his chair, elbows resting on his knees. The train ride had been long, the lunch delicious, and the office now overly warm, and he fought back a yawn while the young lawyer made a fastidious note on his blotter.
“Ed-ward. Got it. Now, there is a will—” he removed a single sheet of paper—“in which you are named as sole beneficiary of Mr. Moore’s—Mr. Edward Moore’s—estate. I will read this to you now.”
Thirty ticks later, Bolling had located a leather case from which he withdrew a pair of thin spectacles, and when they were perfectly balanced on his equally thin nose and the case replaced in the top drawer, he cleared his throat, adjusted the paper to the correct distance, and read, “‘My nephew, Maximilian Edward Moore, gets everything currently held in my name.’”
Bolling looked at Max over the rim of his glasses. “Would you like me to repeat the reading?”
“He was a newspaperman. Brevity and precision.”
All for a Story Page 4
