Murder in the City of Liberty

by Rachel McMillan

  Vaughan placed a reassuring hand on Reggie’s wrist in private, or so he thought, before Patricia Van Buren’s bright smile drew everyone’s attention away from their assorted sweetmeats. Reggie hated sweetmeats and found little to do with them other than make an interesting pattern with her fork. Her parents wanted to hear about Vaughan’s business but nothing of her own. A lady simply did not talk about making her own bread. Reggie gave it a good shot nevertheless.

  “Hamish and I are working on a related case that might tie some underhanded property development to Dirk Foster. Not to mention a kid was murdered.”

  Patricia Van Buren drew back. “Dinner conversation, Regina.”

  “You must not speak ill of a dear family friend, Regina.” Her father swished wine as red as the blood trail from his rare steak, apparently having missed the latter part of her statement. “The Fosters are longtime acquaintances of ours. And the Vanderlaans. Whatever young Dirk is doing, I am sure it is for the betterment of the firm.”

  Reggie rolled her eyes in Vaughan’s direction. He just smiled.

  Vaughan was tugged into the archaic tradition of cigars and brandy in the next-door pub while Reggie’s mother insisted they remain with the tea service.

  “I must commend you, Regina.”

  Reggie smoothed her skirt beneath her and picked at the russet armrest of her chair. In the teapot’s reflection, she could make out bow-tied waiters scuttling about with regal trays, their posture reminding her of the waitstaff at home. Reggie didn’t miss it at all. Not the perfumed air. Not even clothes pressed and hung by a hand other than her own and awaiting her each morning. She liked changing lightbulbs and burning toast and finagling nickels into the radiator of her boardinghouse.

  “What are you commending me on?”

  “That you still have sense.” Patricia Van Buren sipped her tea gingerly then raised a hand. “Cold. Honestly, you would think the service here would be up to par considering its name and history.”

  Reggie, who fondly remembered how quickly the servant assisted her in her running away to Boston and who more than once turned a blind eye while Reggie snuck out the window at night to meet Vaughan and his friends, took the gesture with a small smile and a look of deference when her eyes met those of the waiter who overapologetically set down a new pot.

  Once he left with a slight bow, Patricia Van Buren sighed, then gave Reggie a look intersecting expectation and disappointment.

  “What sense do I still have, Mother?” Reggie blew the steam from her tea.

  “That even though you are doing heaven knows what for that Rue woman—”

  “Stenography.”

  “—and living in that odious place in Charlestown—”

  “A respectable ladies-only boardinghouse.”

  “—and keeping company with that young man, that . . .” A word was inserted here that blew steam out of Reggie’s ears.

  “Mother!” Reggie cut off the slur in her mother’s crisp voice and set her tea down so quickly it sloshed over the side. “How can it be you raised me one way and you speak in another? If you are referring to Hamish, he is my friend and colleague, and he owns half of the business we run.”

  “Owns? Regina, I know your father sank some of his hard-earned money into keeping his princess happy. Lord knows I tried to stop him.”

  “We are helping people. Hamish is a lawyer, Mother.”

  “Truly? I have never seen him associated with a firm.”

  “You know that’s because he is working with me.”

  “I don’t want to argue with you, Regina.”

  “Then don’t use words like that regarding people I care about!”

  Patricia smoothed a strand of chestnut hair—the same color as Reggie’s—away from her high forehead. “I don’t expect that you with your carefree ways and your new liberal life will understand how women in our positions, of our blood, are forced to make sacrifices.”

  Reggie ran her index finger over the stray drops of tea on her saucer. “What kind of sacrifices?”

  But with the way her mother shifted in her chair and stole a furtive glance over her shoulder as if there wasn’t a foyer and parlor separating them from where her father and Vaughan were inhaling expensive Cuban cigars, Reggie had a premonition about where the conversation was headed. And try as she might, she couldn’t swerve from its course.

  Chapter 12

  “Just because Father made bad investments doesn’t mean that I should be sold like cattle.”

  “Regina, you are being overdramatic.”

  “I have to marry to save the estate? That’s like something out of an Edith Wharton novel, where the heroine subscribes to the conformity of marriage or ends up in a millinery somewhere drinking a sleeping draught into oblivion.” She couldn’t imagine her parents without money. It was the backbone of all that they were, their value system, their golden calf. But being forced to marry? She felt ill. She had seen this play out in the pictures, but it was quite different watching it happen to a heroine she knew would end up with the love of her life by the end of the film. “I can’t marry him, Mother. I love Vaughan, but not enough to marry him. I have a new life in Boston.”

  “Do you want us to lose our home? Our fine things? Your legacy?”

  “You can’t ask me to marry a man I don’t love. And I want a different legacy than a bunch of cold money and . . .” And a man whose entire body and soul would never stir me half as much as the slight brush of a hand over my shoulder.

  “You are fond of Vaughan. That is enough. He is a good match for you. He lives in Boston now and you would be able to stay in the city. It is not so much of a sacrifice. People marry for various reasons all the time. And you would be doing this for your family. For your father.”

  Reggie blinked tears away. “But I . . . There’s . . .”

  “There’s someone else?” Patricia’s right eyebrow became a familiar comma. They both knew who she meant.

  Reggie trod carefully. “I just think there’s a possibility I could marry someone I truly love. Don’t you want that for me? To be happy?”

  “Vaughan is in total agreement.” Her mother carried on as if she hadn’t spoken. “The man loves you. How much of a burden would it be to marry a man who worships the ground you walk on while doing this slight favor for us? You would live comfortably. We could keep our house.”

  “You mean Vaughan knows?” Her voice went up with the question. “You talked to him before me? So when he proposes, I will know it is some kind of arrangement?”

  “He loves you. He asked before with no discussion. Without even asking your father! Like you—impetuous! Before you slapped him in front of all our guests.”

  Reggie felt two large walls closing in to suffocate her. Vaughan. She enjoyed his company. He was sturdy and safe and a far better shot than most of the suitors her parents might have thrown in her path. But while her brain could easily wrap around the possibility of Vaughan, her heart . . .

  “Never listen to your heart, Regina,” her mother had told her often enough when she was a girl. “The heart will wander in the woods with no inkling of security or a future. Your brain will map a certain course.” Now her brain was supposed to latch onto duty: the certain course that saw her family through any ripples in their otherwise smooth journey.

  “What type of investments?”

  “Property.”

  “Property? Father is in insurance.”

  “A trusted colleague opened him up to a new opportunity, and it seems to be failing. Everyone takes a bad turn. We need you to be our certain course. To make up for your father’s lack of judgment.”

  Reggie wasn’t someone who ever felt comfortable with a certain course. The wind picked up and her sails didn’t stay on course. Instead, they flapped and fluttered. Property. A trusted colleague. Her stomach turned. Dirk? No. She wouldn’t go down that path. She took a mental swerve back to Vaughan.

  I don’t love him. Even though she should love him. Even though he was w
orthy of love. She didn’t love him. Not in the way a woman should love the man she was to marry. Vaughan was such a part of her past. But was he part of her future?

  Of course, he would let her work for a while, she assumed. But then he would want her to be on his arm, draped like a gilded ornament to show off at cocktail parties. Then he would want an heir, and Reggie knew she would never relegate a child of hers to be foisted off to nannies and treated like another bauble or family heirloom. So she would be trapped while keeping her mother in the season’s finest and her father in brandy and cigars.

  “I don’t think you quite understand how dire our circumstances are. And what if America becomes involved in this useless war? We were lucky to make it through the last one. Your father made some bad decisions. You can make the right one. Ah!” Patricia looked up. Reggie followed her mother’s glance over the white-linen-draped tables spread with sparkling silverware to the sentry palms on either side of the restaurant’s path back to the hotel.

  Reggie didn’t want to look at Vaughan, who doubtless knew what they had been talking about. Why had she worn this dress? It was the color of claret, which Vaughan loved, and when he ushered her to the table earlier in the evening, she could sense it was taking every ounce of his considerable restraint to keep his eyes on her face.

  She might have given him the wrong idea without meaning to. Sighing, she conjured a smile. Whatever game her parents were throwing her into, Vaughan was a good friend and, what’s more, a good man. “I’ll think about it.”

  “You should do more than think about it. You could be set up for life.” Her mother reached over and fingered the glossy sleeve of Reggie’s dress. It was, Reggie supposed, an almost sign of affection. The closest she supposed she would get from her ice sculpture of a mother.

  Reggie’s father settled the bill presented on the silver tray and they walked out to the large foyer, a white-gloved attendant helping the women with their wraps.

  “You must have a lot to talk about,” Patricia said pointedly, with a lingering smile to Vaughan.

  Outside, a newsstand was closing for the night, the doors latching over headlines pulsing with ammunition and warfare, shots of a world so far away as Boston settled into its nightlife of late bands and popped champagne fountains, a city uncorked in clubs and dazzle.

  Reggie was surprised Vaughan hadn’t spoken yet. She took a deep breath, thought of speaking, and stopped.

  “It’s a nice night.” She fingered her wrap.

  “I’ll see you home, if you like. Want to get a taxi?”

  Reggie shook her head. “I can take the trolley.”

  Vaughan frowned. “I don’t like you crossing the river when it’s this dark.”

  “I’m a self-sufficient woman. I’ve crossed it off in my Journal of Independence hundreds of times.”

  “Your journal of what?”

  How did he not know? Hamish knew. “I keep this little book. Since the day I left home. Of all the things that are helping me become the woman I am supposed to be.”

  Vaughan’s kind eyes were on her profile. “What woman is that?”

  “One who boils an egg and crosses the river to Charlestown at night and changes a lightbulb . . .” Reggie brushed a comma of hair from her forehead. “I need to think.”

  Vaughan pulled her close and trailed a kiss from her ear to her chin. “Reggie, you know I love you. I would give you anything. I will help your family. This wasn’t my idea. But you know I love you. And I think you should consider what your mother talked to you about tonight.”

  “I’d far rather consider something you came out and asked me.”

  “The last time I proposed, you slapped my face and ran away from home.”

  Reggie winced. “See? Nothing to worry about. Safe as houses with me.”

  “It isn’t funny.”

  “But it is, Vaughan. My mother as good as proposed for you when you weren’t in the room.”

  “Your father has made some mistakes. Bad investments. I think he stands to lose a lot. I don’t want to frighten you, but, Reggie, I could ensure that you and your family are taken care of. I will never ask you to give up your investigations. At least until we start a family of our own, and then you might find you want to have a different priority.”

  Reggie’s head spun. “You are jumping so many steps ahead of me. A family . . .”

  Vaughan’s hand on her shoulder was gentle. “This isn’t a transaction, Reggie. No matter what your mother said. And I know . . . I know you are afraid of becoming your mother. Your parents didn’t marry for love. But I love you. We’re already ahead of the game, darling.”

  “I know that.” She could feel the pulse of his heart through his fancy suit jacket.

  “I don’t want to cage you, Reggie. Think of the freedom you would have with me. You would help your family and I would let you be you.”

  Reggie blinked a tear away. She didn’t want to hurt him. She gently pulled from him. “I just don’t like marrying for this reason.”

  “Reg, I would have kept asking you until you said yes anyway. I truly love you. I always have.”

  “You’re very persistent.” She didn’t pull away this time when he enfolded her and pressed his lips over her own. Didn’t pull back when he moved his arms over her back. She loved how he smelled, his strong varsity rower’s shoulders, how he could hold her tightly but gently at once. Protective.

  And he would save her family.

  When the need for a deep breath kept him from deepening his kiss and lightening her head even more, she closed her eyes, swallowed, and made a decision. What other choice did she have? Mooning over Hamish DeLuca in the office every day? Fielding phone calls from her mother underscored with the tragic inhales of martyrdom because her thankless daughter chose a North End investigative firm over her own parents’ happiness?

  Reggie and Vaughan crossed the street from the Parker House. She peered through the gate of the Granary Burying Ground, the headstone of Franklin towering above little tombstones crowding into each other like too many teeth in a gapping mouth.

  “And we would live in Boston?” she said.

  “And we would live in Boston.” She could feel Vaughan rise beside her as if he had grown a few inches.

  “Might as well put that ring on my finger, Vaughan Vanderlaan. I figure you have it with you.”

  Vaughan’s face broke like a dam. His happiness sparkled under streetlights and the shaft of moonlight. “I can’t properly put this ring on your finger in front of the tombstones,” he said. “Come.”

  A few strides later they were in the Common, the moon set amidst the tossed diamonds of stars scattered in the sky. He reached behind his breast pocket and extracted a small box.

  He opened it and Reggie sighed. Let him think it was a reaction of love. Really it was her resignedly staring at a cluster of diamonds she would have to turn into her palm every time she crossed into the North End.

  “If it’s too much. They reminded me of you. Strong on the outside, see”—he pointed over three diamonds in a circle—“and much more delicate within.” In the middle the most precious one: a small yellow crystal that prismed light.

  “It’s beautiful. And thoughtful.”

  “The jeweler had nothing perfect. I had it made.”

  “And . . . and how long have you walked around with this in your pocket?” Her voice was coated.

  “A long time.” He slid the ring on her finger, then interwove her fingers with his and clasped her tight. “An exceptional girl—no, an exceptional woman needs something extraordinary.”

  He kissed her then, and everything in him was in the caress on the back of her neck and the soft pressure of his lips over hers. Hovering tentatively at first before giving in. She even heard the soft intake of his breath as he deepened the kiss. She kissed him back, but her mind was elsewhere. You are playing a stupid game, Regina. You know he is not marrying you to save your father. When they disengaged, her face was wet.

  Vaugha
n misinterpreted. “I know I’ll make you happy. A bit overwhelming, isn’t it?”

  Reggie nodded. She wondered if she’d regret it: this weight on her finger, this perfect gentleman on her arm.

  Most of all when she opened the door of their office and saw someone sitting behind a desk, ebony hair falling over his forehead, brushing the tops of the frames of the black-rimmed glasses that magnified alarmingly big blue eyes. Another prospect. A preposterous suitor to her parents: one who fit in the margins of stutters and shakes, measured heartbeats and fingers crooked under braces in an endless count.

  Reggie felt her heart speed up. Dizzyingly. Her forehead sheened with sweat and she folded her fingers into a slight clutch. Oh. Was this what he felt like all the time? She held her ring finger out to the moonlight, wondering if her nerves would calm and her breath would steady the moment it was off.

  Chapter 13

  Hamish could tell when Reggie was lying. So he knew when she said that Mrs. Rue kept her for extra paperwork, she was being less than truthful. Also, he had left for Vittoria Café at noon and Mrs. Rue’s door was locked, light switched off. Reggie had been elsewhere, even as the sun crept over the rooftops and the children in line for the Revere House disappeared from the cobblestones. The music of the North End was a crescendo in certain moments—especially around noon—but sauntered legato in the middling hours between high afternoon and evening.

  But she was here now, shaking out her curls, stifling a yawn. “Long morning. Anything happen here?”

  “I made some phone calls.”

  Reggie’s eyes were on him now and he could see the dark circles under them. Her hands were tucked deeply in the pockets of her high-waisted pants, and she rocked a little on her oxfords. She hung her hat and her handbag on the stand, then sank into her chair just as the telephone rang. Hamish watched her reach for it and with the familiar gesture noticed something catch the sparkle of the sun slicing through the window. He blinked and focused, blinked and focused, then swerved in his chair. Heart sinking, breath caught. His heartbeat sped and his breath came in pulses of staccato. The prism that caught the light was a diamond.