Devil by the Tail

by Jeanne Matthews

“The Kadinger murders,” said Garnick. “That bubble with enough storm and strife to suggest a reason?”

  Megarian’s eyes sparkled. “Take a load off, detectives. Let’s talk turkey.” He boosted himself into a chair that was too high for him. His legs dangled.

  Garnick dragged over two chairs. He offered Quinn one, but she was too wound up to sit. She said, “You’re the reporter who’s been writing that tripe about Elfie Jackson, aren’t you? Painting her as some kind of sorceress. Comparing her to Medea.”

  “It’s called giving the public what it wants, missy, fodder for moral outrage. I covered the production of Médée at the Opera House, even wangled an interview with the dame who played Medea.” He placed his hand over his heart and declaimed. “Her wonderful expression of the eyes and pathos of voice imparted to Medea a womanly nobility. She evoked gasps of pity for a Medea who braved all things for her husband, faltered at no crime he required her to commit, gave all for his love, and so intertwined herself with him that to be thrust away and supplanted by a rival was an affront not to be borne.” He lolled back in the chair and latched his hands behind his head. “Tripe? Tripe, you say? That’s romantic poetry.”

  “Medea is a myth,” said Quinn. “An imaginary character with supernatural powers. Her broken heart, her vengeance, they’re imaginary. Elfie is a real person. You can’t meld them into one love-warped being just because it sounds romantic.”

  “I had a confab with Bayer and the story he told has a lot of parallels between Elfie and Medea.”

  “You sought him out?”

  “Other way round. He’d read my critique of the play. Very flattering he was. He’d seen the performance last January and my insights lingered in his mind. After his wife and father-in-law were murdered and the police arrested Elfie, he felt a need to talk. He swears there was nothing between him and Elfie. She was his ‘domestic’ as he called her, but the girl became enamored. The man’s beset by worry he might’ve done something unintentionally to lead her on to imitate Medea.”

  “How would she know what to imitate?” asked Quinn. “Are you telling me he took his ‘domestic’ to the theater with him?”

  “That’s right. There’s no side to him. Thinks of himself as a man of the people. He worked his way up from peddling cordwood, hobnobs with lumbermen of every stripe and color. He paid Elfie’s way for as long as she lived in his house, bought her whatever she needed. Maybe that’s what confused her. He even paid for a room for Delphine’s maid after the fire.”

  Quinn recalled Bayer saying that Rhetta Slaney had come to him weeping. In spite of his heartless treatment of Elfie, he sounded like a man with no class bias. She resisted the temptation to like him for it. “Do you know where the maid lives now?”

  “Sure I do. I interviewed her, or tried to. Flighty as a feather. On the night of the fire she heard angels chanting. Says that’s what saved her.”

  Like an infernal Greek chorus, thought Quinn. “What’s her address?”

  “Twelve Rush Street, but you won’t get anything out of her but gibberish.”

  Garnick said, “We met with Elfie in her cell last night.”

  Megarian dropped his conceited pose and sat up straight. “How much did that cost you? The coppers wouldn’t let me near her.”

  “We’ve got our ways. We could help you perk up your poeticizing if’n you was to work with us, give over that misleading image of Mrs. Paschal and shine a kindlier light on poor little Elfie.”

  “What’s in the deal for Fen Megarian?”

  Quinn saw a way to use the man’s smugness and conceit to her purposes. “Imagine the story you’d have if you inject a hint of doubt about Elfie’s guilt. There are other suspects, other motives. If our investigation uncovers anything of significance, we would share the results with you. You could create a sensation in the city.”

  “Hmm.” Megarian pursed his lips and appeared to weigh the merits.

  “I’ve got no gift for telling,” said Garnick, “but your readers might enjoy a build-up of speculation and suspense before you gratify their taste for blood and mayhem with the tragic outcome. Was the beauteous Delphine the villain’s true quarry or did her father short-weight some Wisconsin timber pirate who went loco on him? Who started the fire at the Bayers’ wedding party? Did the coppers nab the real killer or is a mad-dog pyro-maniac still on the loose? And so on like that.”

  “You underestimate your flair for telling, Mr. Garnick. Who are these ‘other suspects’ you claim to have?”

  Quinn baited the hook. “Did you know Delphine Kadinger had a suitor before Burk Bayer? He wasn’t very happy being supplanted by a rival. Indeed it may have been an affront not to be borne.”

  “Who is he? What’s his name? Where’s he from?”

  She smiled. It occurred to her that a dose of Megarian’s grandiloquent rhetoric on the front page of the Tribune just might draw out the mystery man and lead him to reveal himself. “Do we have a deal?” she asked.

  “You’re going to feed me the facts as soon as you ferret them out?”

  “Promptly. Without fail.”

  “I won’t slant things Elfie’s way if I don’t think your information’s reliable.”

  “Understood.”

  “Then you’re on, missy.” Megarian reached inside the big desk for the plate with the compromising image. “But you’d better come up with something good.”

  “You leave it to us, sir,” said Garnick. “We’ll give you a gripper and that’s a bottom fact.”

  Chapter 11

  Quinn’s spirits soared as she and Garnick walked out of the Tribune building. She hadn’t realized how much she’d dreaded the repercussions from that photograph. Detective Paschal, self-styled heroine and daring non-conformist, afraid to lose her respectable, cozy niche at the boardinghouse breakfast table, afraid of the opinion of a bunch of prissy old hens. It was an unbecoming truth to acknowledge, but she put these contradictions out of her mind. A problem that seemed unsolvable as she tossed and turned last night had vanished in the morning sunshine. She felt almost giddy. “Did you see the way Megarian’s eyes glittered when you reeled off that litany of possible story lines? You were masterful, Garnick.”

  “Just following your lead.”

  She climbed onto the driver’s bench beside him and adjusted the brim of her bonnet to shield her eyes from the sun. “What do you make of the man, Garnick?”

  “You mean besides being the bow-leggedest banty rooster in Cook County?”

  She laughed. “Besides that. Is he an unscrupulous hack or a gullible hack? He acts as if he swallowed Burk Bayer’s story hook, line, and sinker.”

  “Megarian’s too cynical to believe anybody’s story flat-out. He’s like a bloodhound when it comes to nosing out skullduggery and rumors of skullduggery. We’ve put him onto a new scent. He won’t wait to hear back from us. He’ll go sniffing out folks with ties to the case same as us.”

  “Let him. We now know where Rhetta Slaney lives. As soon as we’ve talked to Jemelle, we’ll go to Rush Street and interview her. She can’t be as muddle-headed as everyone says. We’ll get the facts out of her.”

  “Me waving the carrot and you the stick.”

  “Is that what I do? Well be that as it may, we make a grand team. We’re going to solve the Kadinger case and soon. I just know it.” Quinn toyed with her wedding ring. “What do you suppose possessed Bayer to feed Megarian that rigmarole about Elfie? Does he hate her so much he wants the entire city of Chicago to hate her? And she talks as if she adores him no matter what.”

  “I can’t say. The embranglement between those two is a head-scratcher.”

  “Embranglement. Is that a Southernism?”

  “You Yankees got a better word for two people with stories as crisscrossed as a Chinese knot?”

  “I can’t think of a single one.” She laughed. Life would be boring without Garnick’s zany turns of phrase and keen observations. Impulsively, she turned to kiss him on the cheek. At just that moment,
he turned toward her. The kiss landed on his mouth.

  The instant of surprise gave way to fervent affirmation, a torrent of sensations, and a laying on of hands that took her breath. Their lips remained engaged for a long time.

  ***

  Garnick pulled up in front of Madam Lou Harper’s Mansion and set the brake. “What happened back there wants airing, Quinn. You can’t cut and run and act like nothing’s changed.”

  She was still disoriented, unable to translate feelings into words. Every nerve in her body was throbbing. A line had been crossed, boundaries blurred. They could never again be the same way with each other. She didn’t know what to say, how to be. In her imaginings, she had pushed this contingency into a clear-eyed and convenient future, but the future had sneaked up on her.

  He said, “I know things went farther than you expected.”

  “A little.” It was her fault. She’d been the instigator, played the wanton and blatantly enjoyed the experience. In the middle of a public street in broad daylight. What must he think?

  “I think that lets you know how I feel about you. How I’ve been feeling. I need to be clear if the way you answered me back, I mean, do you feel the same way?”

  She looked across Monroe toward the brothel. It had a fresh coat of blue paint, geraniums bloomed in the window boxes, and a pair of snow-white rabbits grazed on the lawn behind the wrought-iron gate. There wasn’t a “Why Not” sign to be seen, but in her mind’s eye they beckoned from every window. “Not here for mercy’s sake.”

  Garnick gave a sigh of impatience, but the unseemliness of the venue appeared to register. “Before the day’s out then. You go on in and talk to Jemelle. I’ll wait for you out here. No sense ganging up on the poor girl and her beat up, nursing a broke tooth.”

  “No. It’s important that we both hear everything she has to say.”

  “You’ll pull more out of her on your own, woman-to-woman.”

  “I didn’t get enough sleep last night. I’m flurried and out of focus and I don’t want to miss anything because my mind’s on, on kissing. Besides, she may be more disposed to answer a man’s questions.”

  “I doubt that, but I reckon we’ll find out.” He secured Leonidas to an ornamental bronze hitching post and followed her across the street.

  They entered the house through a red door into a handsomely furnished salon. A young woman wearing lip rouge, Rimmeled eyelashes, and a low-cut indigo dress met them with a gracious welcome, as if they were a married couple checking into a respectable hotel.

  Garnick handed her a card. “We’re here to see Miss Jemelle Clary.”

  “Regarding a personal matter,” Quinn added.

  She scrutinized the card and handed it back. “It’s early. Jemelle may not be awake.”

  “Please tell her we’re detectives and it’s vital that we ask her some questions. We’ll wait.”

  “I’ll see.” The woman rolled her hips and glided out of the room trailing a cloud of lavender.

  “She was holding that card upside down,” said Quinn.

  “She’s prob’ly got other talents besides reading.”

  Heat scalded Quinn’s neck and cheeks. I’ve been spending too much time in sex dens, she thought, and buried her embarrassment in a copy of Harper’s Weekly magazine. It seemed a rather lofty publication for a brothel, especially if the hostesses couldn’t read, but Madam Lou had a reputation for catering to the gentry. The ambience of the place was definitely a cut above Annie’s. The salon where they waited was tastefully appointed with chairs in muted colors. It could have been modeled on Miss Josabeth Allbright’s drawing room.

  After a few minutes, the woman in blue returned. “Jemelle says to go out in the back garden and make yourselves at home. She’ll come out soon as she’s dressed.”

  They followed the hostess into a small, private plot with a gazebo surrounded by tall, flowering hedges. A clematis vine climbed up the gazebo’s pillars and gingham cushions embellished the bench encircling a table.

  “Would you care for a glass of tea?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” answered Garnick. “That would be real nice.”

  Quinn scooted around to the far side of the bench, careful not to meet Garnick’s eyes. Thoughts in disarray, she removed her bonnet, brushed at imaginary smudges on the brim, and rummaged for an excuse to postpone this impending declaration of feelings.

  A grandmotherly woman in a conservative dress served them tea and cookies. The sun rose higher and intensified its heat on the back of Quinn’s neck. She lifted her braid and touched her neck with drops of cool water that condensed on her tea glass. “How long have we been sitting here? Maybe Jemelle asked her friend to entice us out here with a pitcher of tea so she could make her getaway out the front.”

  “Why would I do that?” She was tall and slender, older than Elfie by at least a decade. The bruises were still visible, but her striking red lip salve had the effect of making the rest of her face seem like empty terrain.

  Garnick said, “Thanks for coming down to talk to us, Miz Clary. If you could help us hunt down Mr. Jack Stram, I’d be pleased to give him a licking in payback for what he did to you.”

  “I ask no odds.” She bared her upper lip over the broken tooth and sidled onto the bench next to Quinn. “You didn’t come here to cry over my lumps. What do you want?”

  “All you know about Jack Stram and Elfie Jackson,” said Quinn. “Start with the money Stram offered you to lie about Elfie.”

  “You go to hell.” Jemelle jumped to her feet.

  “You first.” Quinn pulled her back down. “Bearing false witness will buy you an express ticket. Have you no sense of decency?”

  “Let’s hear Miz Clary’s side,” said Garnick. “We can see for ourselves what Stram did to this lady. Did he threaten you with more of the same if you crossed him?”

  Quinn could see she’d alienated Jemelle and Garnick was trying to back and fill. She added her amends. “Yes, I’m sure that’s what happened. But we can protect her, can’t we, Garnick? We can keep Stram from hurting you, Jemelle, if only you’ll tell us where he is and why he asked you to make up that lie about Elfie.”

  “Who do you think you are, calling me a liar? Who says?”

  “Annie Stafford,” lied Garnick. “She was listening at the keyhole.”

  Jemelle’s bruised cheek twitched.

  Quinn said, “Annie didn’t like the fact that one of her best earners let a friend interfere with business and she didn’t like one of her girls wasting valuable time with a man she didn’t bed. Is that why you didn’t offer her a cut of what Stram paid you?”

  Jemelle plucked a rolled cigarette from behind her ear and hung it in the corner of her mouth. She reached for the bowl of Lucifers on the table, but Garnick reached it first. He struck the match on his thumbnail. She leaned in for the light and sucked until the end of the cigarette glowed red. She held it between her thumb and forefinger with her pinkie pointed up and blew a mare’s tail of smoke out the side of her mouth. “What Annie thinks is neither here nor there. The old sow don’t give a toss what happens to Elfie Jackson.”

  “She will if she’s called to give testimony at Elfie’s trial,” said Quinn. “She’ll be forced to swear to what she heard.”

  “So what? It’s her word against mine.”

  “You don’t want to get athwart of Annie,” said Garnick. “You saw what she did to Stram, whipped to a pulp. Why don’t you air up and give us the story?”

  She kinked her lip. “If you’re so interested, what’ll you pay for a different story?”

  “Nothing,” said Quinn, “but I’ll do everything in my power to make your life as difficult as possible. I’ll tell the police it was you who killed that man in the alley.”

  “Hey, now!”

  “No need for things to come to such a pass,” said Garnick. “We’re agreeable people. What if I was to put in a word for you with a dentist fella I know? Get him to give you a reduction rate on a new chopper?”
r />   “I ask no odds. All I want’s to be left alone. I don’t know nothing about a shooting.”

  “I believe you,” said Garnick. “Stram prob’ly did it. The dead man had been looking for him. If Stram’s got anything besides bone between his ears, he’s on a beeline for the territories by now. He won’t be back to dun you for a refund of that fifty.”

  She stubbed out the cigarette on the table. “A man named Handry or Handsy gave Stram the fifty he paid me to say Elfie set the fire. The burnt shawl, too. He told me to make sure the police found it in her trunk if they was to show up.”

  Quinn started and sloshed tea on her hat. “Ned Handish?”

  “Could be. Yeah, that sounds right.”

  “Did Stram say why Handish wanted Elfie blamed for the fire? Was Handish the one who set it?”

  “Jack never said, but why else would he pay to pin it on Elfie?”

  “Did you meet Handish?”

  “I never seen him. Stram said he killed a woman down in Cairo. If Stram done him, I guess he got what he deserved.”

  The specter of the body on the morgue table skirred through Quinn’s mind. She blinked it away. “Tell me how you came to befriend Elfie. Annie said you both lived in Rock Island.”

  “Her family moved to town about the time the war started. Her pa worked for the railroad. Him and his wife traded at the dry goods store my folks ran. Elfie was always underfoot, cadging licorice and making a nuisance. Always watching me and asking about the boys waiting outside for me to finish my chores and go walking.”

  “When did she meet Burk Bayer?”

  “Sometime after I got married and left Rock Island. I’d seen Burk around. He was a good-looker and you could tell he was hungry. He was gonna make it big or die trying. Little Elfie musta picked up a few of my tricks to rope in a goer like him. She shouldn’t have been surprised when he chanced on a rich girl and cut her loose.”

  “Did you ever see Bayer at Annie’s?”

  “If I had, I’d have myself another fifty. Him turning up in a whorehouse would’ve stuck in his fiancée’s craw.”