Grim Shadows (Roaring Twenties)

by Jenn Bennett

  Fifteen minutes after Hadley returned to her office, Miss Tilly’s pretty face popped inside the doorway. “Oh, you’re done meeting with your father. I wasn’t sure how long it would take—he said no interruptions, so I told your visitor you weren’t available.”

  Her heart leapt. “What visitor?”

  “Mr. Ginn.”

  Oh. Oliver. After their parting at the Flood Mansion, she wasn’t sure he’d call on her so soon. And it made her a little nervous that he did, because pieces of their conversation about her specters came back. “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “No,” she said, handing Hadley a small parcel. “But he was terribly disappointed that he couldn’t see you. Wish I had someone pining over me like that. He asked me to give you this.”

  When the secretary left, Hadley opened a hastily scribbled folded note slipped under the parcel’s string. I hope you find chapter four enlightening. I have more information whenever you’re ready to talk.

  Inside the brown wrapping was a small leather book. Not printed, but written in longhand. Beliefs of the Arabian and Egyptian People. A date—1895—but no author. A quick flip through the pages revealed the content of the chapter in question: Ifrit Spirits of the Djinn.

  Thick pencil underlined several passages.

  In Arabia, a rebellious class of infernal spirits said to be made of smoke and ash . . . some think they live underground, but others believe they are summoned from a netherworld.

  Underworld. She turned the page.

  They bear a striking resemblance to a kind of spirit feared by Egyptians, the Sheut, or “shadow” . . . one of five parts of the human soul. Magical folklore explains the origins of the creatures as being created by Set, who separated Sheuts from 1,000 dead souls as they navigated the Egyptian underworld, Duat, realm of Osiris, and later loosed them in the Egyptian desert. Now considered an Egyptian version of the Grim Reaper myth, these spirits’ purpose is to harvest intact living souls and drag them into the underworld.

  Grim Reapers. Where did Oliver get this? Who wrote it? Hadley had never heard of the shadow being separated from the other parts of the soul in Egyptian lore. Though, she had to admit that it sounded a bit like the Mori specters. But how did Oliver associate the two things after seeing her specters for a few seconds? Part of her wanted to ask him, and another part—a part reinforced by her father’s admonitions over the years to keep the Mori secret—wanted to return the book and cut off all contact with the man.

  Voices in the hall and a familiar booted gait dragged her out of her thoughts.

  “If you don’t mind, I’m just going to say a brief word to Miss Bacall while you let her father know I’ve arrived.” Lowe’s blond head appeared in the doorway, soon followed by his long body. He was back to his smart leather jacket and held a herringbone flatcap in his maimed hand.

  Good lord, he was dashing. Just looking at him made her heart cartwheel madly. Was he this handsome on Saturday? Surely not.

  “Miss Bacall,” he said with a curling smile.

  “Mr. Magnusson. What a nice surprise.”

  He glanced over his shoulder into the hall then strode to her desk as she stood. “Is it?” he said in a lower voice, eyes glinting with a half-hidden infectious kind of teasing cheerfulness.

  “Is it what?”

  “A nice surprise to see me.”

  She felt herself smiling and had to work to stop. “Perhaps it is.”

  His own smile widened into a stunning grin. Her stomach fluttered so violently, she pressed a palm to her middle, as if she could physically calm it.

  “Why are you here?” she whispered.

  “Your father left a message. I have some errands to run, so I thought I’d drop by and speak to him in person while I . . .” His gaze strayed over her top and skirt. “Well, while I saw you,” he said with a wicked slant of one brow.

  Desire leapt up inside her, hot and sudden. She shifted uncomfortably and struggled to keep her breath steady.

  He glanced over his shoulder again and leaned closer. “My contact should have the list tomorrow. Would you like to meet somewhere for lunch and review it against our canopic jar paintings?”

  “Yes,” she said, far too eagerly. She cleared her throat and tried again, more softly. “Yes, that would be agreeable. Fine. Good. Sure. I probably can.” Oh, God. She sounded like an idiot.

  A loud whap! flew from the door, courtesy of her coworker, George. His irritating morning greeting consisted of smacking the doorframe with his briefcase—something that never failed to make her jump in her chair and tempted her to send the Mori down the hall to wallop him on the head with the damned briefcase.

  “Who the hell was that?” Lowe asked.

  “My biggest mistake,” she answered as Miss Tilly’s heels clicked toward her office.

  • • •

  During his brief visit with Dr. Bacall, Lowe gave him a pack-of-lies tale concerning the hunt for the crossbar pieces. Not only did he leave Hadley out of it, but he also concocted a completely different path for his search. No books of poetry, no canopic jars, no Columbarium, and no Gloom Manor. Lowe was simply deciphering a set of symbols and following where they led. Bacall was overjoyed just to have Lowe working on it. And Lowe would be overjoyed to take the man’s money.

  But at the moment, he was more interested in the younger man who’d passed by Hadley’s office. A “mistake,” she’d called him. Lowe intended to find out exactly what she meant by that. So after telling Dr. Bacall he’d show himself out, he strolled the maze of hallways until, in a quiet corner, he found a connecting corridor that led into the museum proper. A small office faced it, and the nameplate next to the open door said George Houston. Lowe ambled inside.

  The man in question leaned against a file cabinet, looking into a small mirror as he ran a comb through dark hair. A cigarette dangled from his lips. He was tall—not as tall as Lowe, but probably a couple of inches over six feet—and his body looked as if it sat behind a desk all day doing nothing.

  “You must be Mr. Houston,” Lowe said.

  “That’s right.” The man set his comb down and looked up. “Oh, yes. Dr. Bacall’s golden boy,” he said, giving “boy” extra emphasis before blowing out a cone of smoke. “Suppose it could be worse. At least I won’t be working for a woman.”

  “Miss Bacall mentioned you.”

  Houston’s eyes narrowed. “Did she? In what context?”

  Lowe loosened his posture and gave a causal shrug, attempting to lure the man into dropping his guard. “Just mentioned you worked for her.”

  “For her?”

  “With her,” Lowe corrected with a causal shrug. “I can’t remember. Didn’t say much, but she’s hard to read. Not exactly bubbly.”

  Houston chuckled. “No, B.L.B. isn’t a charmer.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Bad Luck Bacall. That’s what we call her. You’ll understand if you end up working here. She’s a walking tornado of destruction. Wherever she goes, chairs break, books fall, light bulbs pop, and people end up in the hospital. You’d do well to stay out of her way, because if there’s a chance for something unlucky happening, you can bet she’ll be in the room.”

  He hadn’t expected to hear all this, but if the idiot was leaking information like a busted tire, Lowe might as well help him along. “Is that right?”

  “You were at the dinner party—could you believe that chandelier?”

  “Yeah, that was something, all right.” Would’ve been nice if Houston had been sitting under it instead of him.

  Houston shook his head and ashed his cigarette on the floor, ignoring the ashtray sitting on top of the file cabinet. “I swear to God, as soon as it fell, I thought of her. We used to have one of those Safety First signs that said ‘This department has worked blank days without an accident’—you know the ones with the black box where you chalk
in the number? We painted B.L.B. over the top of it and used it every time something busted around here.”

  Lowe pretended to laugh. Goddamn arrogant little pissant. No wonder Hadley kept to herself. If the office was filled with pigs like this, he hoped she broke every chair in the building.

  “I went to college with her. She wasn’t as bad back then, but she was still a walking beacon for chaos.”

  “Stanford?” Lowe asked.

  “Yep.”

  Lowe joined Hadley’s comment to Houston’s story, taking a guess. “She said someone in college was a ‘mistake.’ That you?”

  “Mistake?” Houston chuckled and opened the top drawer of the file cabinet. “She liked it well enough.” He made a dismissive noise. “And if you want to know the truth, she came to me. Offered to pay me to screw her.”

  Lowe’s false front momentarily dropped.

  “No kidding,” Houston said, as if they were best buddies. “She said a man could pay a prostitute for sex, so why couldn’t a woman pay a man? See, that’s her fixation—she always has to have control over a situation. Once she loses that control? Forget it. She goes cuckoo. Terrible temper.”

  Lowe grunted vaguely as anger rolled over him in waves.

  Houston thumbed through files with one hand as he stubbed his cigarette out with the other. “Anyway, if she said it was a mistake, that’s her problem for lifting her skirt. I enjoyed myself. I mean, come on. Have you gotten a look at the ass on her? Now that’s something to—”

  Fury blotted out good sense, and Lowe finally snapped. He shot forward on a growl and savagely slammed the file cabinet drawer shut on the man’s hand. Bone cracked. Houston cried out. Lowe released the drawer, and the curator fell back, holding out his injured hand in horror.

  “My fingers!”

  Indeed. At least three were broken, judging from the grotesque way they bent back at the knuckles. Bright red blood pooled in his palm. Tears of pain flowed as he grimaced and hollered again. “I’ll have you arrested, you lunatic!” he bit out between sobs.

  “What’s my last name?” Lowe said. “Heard of my family? Go on, have me arrested. I dare you. In fact, I dare you to tell the entire museum that this wasn’t a self-inflicted accident.”

  Realization flooded the man’s face. He said nothing in response, just stumbled backward and shuddered violently while cradling his hand.

  Lowe tugged on his cap and headed toward the door as people stampeded toward Houston’s office. He reckoned he should be able to slip into the museum corridor before anyone saw him. “And if you say another crude word about Hadley—one fucking word—I’ll break more than your fingers.”

  SIXTEEN

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, HADLEY boarded a streetcar a little before noon. Because it was usually faster than calling a cab, she often took public transportation during lunch, so she knew her father wouldn’t suspect anything amiss. Lowe had called to suggest a meeting place; he had the list of names.

  After changing cars that climbed in and out of thickening fog, she ended up at Fisherman’s Wharf and immediately spotted Lowe on the sidewalk, standing heads above hurried pedestrians flanking Jefferson Street.

  They strode toward each other and met near a newsstand. She was breathing far too hard for ten paces—could she look any more eager to see him? Good heavens.

  “You managed to sneak out,” he said, looking terribly pleased and terribly handsome in his long blue gray coat and matching fedora.

  “I wouldn’t call it sneaking, exactly. I told Miss Tilly I’d be gone a couple of hours.”

  “The best lies are half truths,” he quipped. “Hungry?”

  “Famished.”

  “Me, too. I’m taking you to one of the best places to eat in the city.”

  She glanced around the wharf’s warehouses, lumberyard, and boats. “I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it. Do they serve lemon pie?”

  He laughed. “No, but it’s on my list of favorites. Trust me. Come on.”

  The scent of sharp ocean brine filled her nostrils as they made their way down the promenade. A row of Tin Lizzies and delivery trucks lined the curb to their left while fog-wreathed trawlers and seiners bobbed in the Bay on their right. “Did you take Lulu?”

  He shook his head. “Bo dropped me off.”

  “You know, I did wonder what would happen if you’d driven the motorcycle and it rained.”

  “I’d get wet.”

  She squinted at him and smiled.

  “How’s the office?” he asked.

  “It’s calmed down since yesterday.”

  “Oh?” he said, the personification of innocence. “What happened yesterday?”

  She lifted her mink coat collar to shield her neck from the nippy breeze. “Mr. Houston was rushed to the hospital. Word today is that he’s resting at home with four broken fingers.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  “This is the first I’m hearing of it,” he said cheerfully.

  “So that wasn’t you I saw racing through the back door into the museum.”

  “You know I never run out the back door, Hadley.”

  “Of course.” She glanced at a trawler chugging closer to shore. “George didn’t say anything about me, did he?”

  “A jackass like that? Who would bother listening?” He straightened his hat brim. “But I’ll tell you what, when you get your father’s position? The first thing I’d do if I were you is fire dear old George Houston.”

  Hadley didn’t respond, just lifted her collar higher to hide the smile she couldn’t repress.

  At the foot of Taylor Street, they strolled by wholesale fish stalls. Here, on the sidewalk over wood-burning stoves, peddlers stirred bubbling cauldrons of crab fresh off the boats and sold them to passersby for twenty cents each. But Lowe was headed to stall number eight, where an Italian couple was serving clam chowder. Dockworkers and a few middle-class businessmen sat at plain wooden tables with benches under a covered area. Lowe gave one of the diners a friendly wave and marched up to the counter.

  “Lowe!” the pretty dark-haired woman said, coming around the counter to embrace him, kissing both his cheeks. “We saw your photograph in the newspaper. Struck it rich in Egypt, didya?”

  “Not yet, but I’m trying,” he said, shaking the man’s hand across the counter.

  “Famous archaeologist,” the man said with a grin. “Be careful—you might give your family a good name.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  The couple laughed, then Lowe introduced her to Rose and Nunzio Alioto. “They make the best chowder on the wharf,” he praised. “And they catch the second-best crab. Magnusson may not run as many crabbers as we used to before Volstead, but we still catch the sweetest Dungeness.” He winked at Mrs. Alioto.

  “Glad to see your fame hasn’t gone to your head,” she said. “But as long as Winter keeps us wet, you can talk all the bull you want. You two want lunch?”

  Lowe rubbed his hands together. “Chowder and beer. Extra sourdough on the side.” He glanced at Hadley. “Sound okay?”

  “Sounds terrific,” she said to Lowe, then to Mrs. Alioto, “Thank you.”

  Under the curious gaze of the lunching dockworkers, Mrs. Alioto pointed them to a lone table at the back and soon followed with steaming bowls of clam chowder, two paper cups of beer—supplied by Lowe’s brother, Hadley guessed—and a plate piled with sourdough rolls. “Monk’s boys have been putting the word out that he’s looking to talk to you,” Mrs. Alioto said in a quiet voice. “Somebody’s liable to tell him they saw you here today.”

  “Just a little misunderstanding,” Lowe said as he set his fedora on the table and swept a hand over his hair. “If anyone asks, feel free to mention that you overhead me saying I was planning to call on him this w
eek.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” She patted Lowe on the back. “Buon appetito.”

  “What was that about?” Hadley asked once the woman had left.

  He gave her a sheepish smile and repeated her words from yesterday. “A mistake.”

  “Don’t tell me he’s planning to chop off your other pinky for stealing his wife.”

  He chuckled. “No women involved, cross my heart. Now dig in.”

  The creamy chowder was heavenly, the bread tangy and fresh. Lowe had been right to put the meal on his list of favorites—it might’ve been the most comforting food she’d had in years. And while they sat side by side on the weather-roughened bench and ate, Lowe pulled out a folded packet of paper, the top sheet of which was covered in typed columns.

  “These are the names and addresses they could find. Over three hundred.”

  “Dear lord. How are we going to whittle it down?”

  He reached in his coat to retrieve a small black notebook. Tucked inside were his two canopic jar paintings. He placed the jackal-headed one on top. “Because I’ve cracked your mother’s code.”

  “You have?”

  “Don’t get too excited. Recognizing how she did it is only half the solution. Look here—each of her pictograms represents a letter. Since this was Mrs. Rosewood’s jar, I worked backward from that: this hash mark is a railroad track. Railroad equals ‘R.’ This circle that looks like a golf ball? It’s an orange—‘O.’” He pointed to the other pictograms, naming words whose first letters spelled out Rosewood. “She used three different pictograms for ‘O,’ which makes it more difficult.”

  “But ‘Rosewood’ is only eight letters, and each jar has twenty symbols.”

  “Placeholders. Those are the reversed pictograms, and the only ones repeated. See this one that looks like a stick with a lump on the side? The mirror-image version is on the other painting I have. I’m guessing some of the other placeholders are on your paintings.”

  Hadley retrieved her share of the watercolors from her handbag and spread them out next to his. They studied the symbols together and identified all the reversed ones.