Murder in the City of Liberty

by Rachel McMillan

  Hamish laughed away Nate’s compliment. “I suppose this means we can go back to playing chess.” But Hamish accepted the notebook and the pen and began drawing the familiar grid. Ten numbers across, ten letters down. A million possibilities intersecting. “Each letter formula is an address. So it’s not just x’s.”

  Nate beamed. “Circumnavigating the globe.”

  “Exactly.” Hamish concentrated, flexed his fingers, and put what he had deciphered to good use. “And I knew the names because I had all of your papers around. Not only that, this is our neighborhood.” He lingered on the latter part of the sentence with a fond look. “The numbers became a code for the services they do for each other . . .”

  “Hamish . . .” Nate’s eyes shimmered. “Really . . . I knew . . .”

  “I was right.” A half-moon smile crested Hamish’s cheek. “It was easy enough to find your clients’ names.”

  “How long did it take you to figure it out?” Pride undercut Nate’s voice. Pride in Hamish, he assumed, but also pride in himself for taking a course of action that worked.

  “Two days. I was so angry, Nate. And I was about to throw the cocoa tin across the kitchen when my eye caught the side of one of our unfinished games. And then I was even angrier with you. Irrationally, I guess. For always playing the same scheme. I looked through the games you made me keep, and then I figured it out. You always used the same moves and you taught Reggie too. Made her keep the games. Then I wondered why as soon as you finished with the files for the night you always wanted to head to the kitchen. Even if I was in the middle of a book. And . . . then I thought about how careful you are. That, sure, you keep paperwork all filed and neat. But how you would need another system. You would always need another system.” He smiled despite himself. “Battleship.”

  “You can’t tell anyone.”

  Hamish rolled his eyes with mock exaggeration. “Cross my heart.”

  Nate adjusted his kippah and took back the pen Hamish extended to him. “I know what you did, Hamish. About Bricker.”

  Something drained out of the room and settled between the two of them. “How did you know?”

  “You came and blabbed it to me at the hospital.”

  “You were asleep!”

  “Not that asleep. I could still hear you. You meant it well. I know that. But, Hamish, I don’t seek revenge or vengeance. Every year I celebrate Yom Kippur. It is a day of forgiveness. The only way I can see through the bleakness of this world is to forgive.”

  “That man who . . . who crippled you. He . . .” Hamish immediately regretted the intensity of his tone. He promised himself Nate would never hear him say the word, and here he was the one who uttered it.

  “I do, Hamish. Because I have to. I believe that forgiveness is the only thing that unfetters us. I am just grateful to be here.”

  “You even forgive Luca who wanted you to work with him. Without him this never would have happened.”

  “Yes.”

  “You knew he wouldn’t break into your house when he would risk my seeing him.”

  “That man’s only redeeming quality seems to be sitting across from me.”

  “You should have told me. I would have gotten him to stop. It makes my calling him—”

  “Ironic? Isn’t it just?” Nate smiled sadly. “You don’t need him in your life, Hamish. I could handle him.”

  “You should have told me.” Hamish was bowled over, and not for the first time, at Nate’s act of grace. He plucked at the fabric on his trousers to keep his hand from shaking so fiercely as to coax concern from his friend.

  “I didn’t want that part of your past in your life anymore,” Nate said brightly. “I stayed late at the office. I knew when you would be gone. I agreed to meet him only because he was your family. But I don’t know why he thought I would do anything for him. Other than his idea that it would be profitable. For my residents. And they wouldn’t be deeply enough involved in his scheme to be held legally accountable.” He stopped. Shrugged. “Well. Seems Mr. Kent wasn’t too fond of my declining. Even though Luca for his part did stay away. Mrs. Leoni was around. She had a rabbi in to bless her kitchen. She says she will make it completely kosher. I even got flowers from the Advocate. I . . .” Nate stopped. Took a beat. Took in the office with his eyes. “I love this neighborhood, Hamish.”

  Something crossed Nate’s face. Hamish, unused to this shadow, felt his heartbeat speed up and his fingers tremble a little. He tucked his hand under his brace. “I love this neighborhood,” Nate continued, “and I will do everything I can to protect it. The biggest mistake that someone can make is assuming that I can be played. I will protect my North End with everything I have.”

  Hamish nodded at the challenge in Nate’s eyes. “I know. I respect you for it.”

  “Let’s leave your past in your past,” Nate repeated with a strong look. “Because I have renewed determination. Your cousin drew a line in the sand, and I am on the other side. I listened to him out of my affection for you, but the North End is my first love and I will not shy away from fighting back. And not just with battleship games.”

  “I know.”

  Nate nodded, his face somber. “Sooner or later, Hamish DeLuca, you’re going to have to take a side. And it might mean never seeing your cousin again. It might mean surrendering him.”

  Hamish flinched. “I know.”

  “Do you?”

  “I met Aaron Leibowitz,” Hamish said calmly, the name lightening him and, he hoped, the conversation. “When Reggie and I were trying to figure out who hurt you.”

  Nate’s walking stick clanged on the ground. He didn’t pick it up, giving Hamish his rapt attention. “That is the first truly interesting thing you have said,” he said. “What was he like?”

  Hamish shrugged. “I think you’ll have to see for yourself. Come ’round the office in about half an hour? Reggie has gone shopping for sandwiches and tea. We’ll have a little party.”

  “I confess I am excited. I never thought I would actually meet the fellow face-to-face. But it’s a new perspective now, isn’t it? I might actually be able to sit and have a cordial tea with the man. New leaf! Or will it be? Maybe he’ll say something and I’ll have to—”

  “Nate.” Hamish held up a hand.

  “No, no. You are right. I am grateful for my chance at life. I am even grateful for this Leibowitz fiend.” He rubbed his hands together. “I can’t wait to see what he’s like. What he looks like. What does he look like, Hamish?”

  “You’ll see for yourself.”

  “I wonder if he’s devastatingly handsome. That would annoy me, maybe. But only a little.”

  “I can tell you”—Hamish chose his phrase carefully—“Leibowitz has always wondered the same about you.”

  * * *

  Reggie was still beside herself with excitement at the revelation that Aaron Leibowitz was actually a she. Sarah showed up at the given time and looked softly pretty. Her bobbed hair was fastened with a ribbon and her gingham dress was modest but still flowed and flounced in feminine places. Reggie reached into her handbag and extracted a Max Factor tube. “Lipstick.”

  “I never!”

  “Just a bit of color. This lovely peach,” Reggie said. “It will bring out your complexion.”

  Sarah accepted the tube reluctantly and pressed it to her lips. Reggie loaned her a compact. “Do I look okay?”

  “You look beautiful.” Reggie delighted in the young woman’s soft glow.

  “Knock, knock,” said Nate with his customary habit, leaning on his walking stick. Reggie took the office in two quick strides and gave him a gentle hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Sight for sore eyes, Nate. I missed you something fierce.”

  Nate disengaged from Reggie, squeezing her shoulder with the hand not balancing his cane. There was a lifetime of friendship in his eyes. “Oh, my apologies.” He noticed Sarah. “I didn’t know you had company, Reg. Might not have stood on ceremony anyway, but would have tried.”

 
; Sarah rose slowly, a flush of pink spreading across her cheeks as she saw Nate for the first time. Reggie reveled in Sarah’s obvious attraction to what she saw.

  “Nathaniel,” Hamish said from the doorway. “This is Sarah Abrams.”

  “A pleasure.” Nate used his good hand to take Sarah’s. Reggie kept her eyes on Nate’s face and surmised the lipstick was working. Everything was working. Her heart clutched seeing the immediate rapport between them. She just hoped it lasted through Sarah’s revelation.

  “I am Aaron Leibowitz,” Sarah blurted.

  “Pardon?”

  “A woman should not study the Torah. A woman should not write to newspapers. My family is very conservative, but the first time I read one of your editorials, I knew I had found a mind like my own. So I baited you. And . . . and . . . debated with you.”

  Nate blinked. Reggie was sure he was reconciling the million and one names he’d used to describe his epistolary nemesis with the pretty girl before him. “You’re a woman.”

  “I must have shocked you. I—”

  “You’re a woman!” Nate repeated, Reggie unable to read the tone—just that it was loud and he was obviously surprised. “Is this a joke?” He looked to Reggie and Hamish in turn.

  Sarah responded, “I know, and I am sure you think the worst of me, but when I heard that you were ill . . . I just . . . I always wanted to meet you. I always looked at you as sort of a friend and . . . I suppose you must hate me.” Sarah reached for her handbag. “Your beliefs are very valuable to you and you must think I am a disgrace and . . .” She broke off.

  Nate blinked over her a few times. Then looked over his shoulder again to Hamish and then to Reggie, who did nothing but smile at him. “You’re a beautiful girl! You’re a smart and frustrating and beautiful girl!”

  Reggie was delighted at the anticipated reaction. Her eyes glistened. Sarah laughed uncertainly, then it evened out to a line of music.

  “I feel like I’ve known you for years,” Sarah was saying.

  “You’re a beautiful girl! See, Hamish! See! She’s a beautiful, smart, and strong girl. Sarah, is it? Sarah, I am Nathaniel Reis, though heaven knows no one calls me that. It’s Nate. Only Nate. And that handsome fellow over there who looks like a bit of a blue-eyed puppy dog is my flatmate, Hamish DeLuca, and . . . oh. So used to connecting people. But you have already met? I’m rambling. Nervous, perhaps, because you are a smart and beautiful girl. I would like to know what you are doing for Shabbat dinner. And then for the rest of your life.” Nate stopped, looked at Hamish, then at Reggie, then out the window where the bells and steeples and roofs collided and everything in his life lined up and made sense. He took a long breath, and even though Reggie could see his eyes were tired, the familiar twinkle was there. He looked out with love to his city and it loved him back. “Welcome to my neighborhood.”

  * * *

  “That had the desired effect.” Hamish watched Nate and Sarah disappear, leaving Reggie and Hamish with lemonade glasses to wash and crumb-laden plates to brush off.

  He was sorry to see them go. He knew they needed time to talk—to truly get to know each other beyond Hamish and Reggie—but Hamish wasn’t sure how much longer he could sidestep the elephant in the room. Reggie had kissed him. And it wasn’t just any kiss. Not a kiss born of a moment of reckless gratitude. Not a magnanimous Scarlett and Rhett kiss like she told him. He tasted a future in that kiss. Dreams and ideas and passion wrapped with a tight bow. She loved him. He knew it when her lips shuddered against his. She loved him. Maybe not to the same exponential extent that he loved her. That would be an almost impossibility. But she loved him nonetheless.

  Reggie wrapped the leftover cannoli, twisting the ring on her finger. She was thinking about it too.

  “Reg, we have to talk.” He fingered his brace. His fingers were shaking slightly. Shaking with the ripples of doubt: he didn’t deserve her. Quasimodo waiting through the toll of the bells.

  “Hamish . . . I can’t—”

  “What do you mean you can’t!” Hamish crossed and shut the office door. “What do you mean you can’t?” he repeated in a lower voice. “Reggie, you love me. I tasted it. You tasted it! That sounds like a line from a film. But I felt it. I felt it. And you did too.”

  “I am engaged.”

  “Reggie, please. You don’t truly love Vaughan Vanderlaan. He is the last thing binding you to your parents’ expectation.”

  “My father has poured so much money into our office, Hamish.”

  Hamish dashed to her and gripped her arms. “And we will pay him back. I will pay him back. I would do anything . . . Reggie. I have loved you since the moment I saw you. At Mrs. Leoni’s. I loved you. Immediately. I loved you. I love you. More now than even then. You’re all I think about. Day and night. You make me more than I thought possible. I can do anything if I am with you.”

  Reggie blinked tears. “I can’t . . .”

  Hamish swallowed. “Look me in the eye, Regina, and tell me you don’t love me.”

  Reggie shook her head and tugged her arms from Hamish’s grip. “I can’t.”

  “You don’t love me?”

  “I don’t know!” She threw up her hands. “I mean, I know that—”

  “Reggie.” Hamish’s voice was just above a whisper. “If you break my heart, I will never pick up the pieces again.”

  “Hamish, my parents will lose everything. They need me to marry Vaughan so they can keep their estate!”

  Hamish stopped in his tracks. “What?”

  “I promised because it will save my family. I know it sounds horrible—especially to someone like you. But my mother doesn’t know how to live without her parties and her friends. My father made a few bad investments.”

  “And this . . . This is why you said yes?” His heart turned over.

  Reggie nodded, her eyes a film of tears. “You must have a dozen words for me on the tip of your tongue. Hamish DeLuca! So straitlaced. From a good family.” She tried a smile. “What is it about you that makes me cry so? Myrna Loy never would. And I didn’t before I met you. No. You can’t look at me like that.” She sniffed. “Hamish, your eyes. They’re so big. I am only human! I am shattered thinking I’ve hurt you, Hamish, but we are products of our environment. And the three years I have known you have been the best of my life. Maybe I am weak, but I cannot completely shut my past from my life. Vaughan is my past.”

  “But you don’t love him.” There wasn’t a ripple or tremor in his hand or his voice. It startled Reggie, this certainty.

  “In a way I do, Hamish. That’s something you have never quite understood, I think.”

  “He’ll keep you from everything you love. You’ve put it off for so long. Polishing silver and hosting teas. Please, Reggie. You’re not going to go through with it.”

  * * *

  Reggie was at a crossroads. She twisted the ring on her finger so hard she broke skin. If she didn’t marry Vaughan, then Luca had the desired effect. But if she did, it would now be not to save her family but to spite Luca Valari.

  Well, it might have ended up here all along. Love in Reggie’s upbringing was synonymous with transaction: a bartering price, a chip to be played with the right hand. But really love was the taste of lemon on someone’s lips or the feel of their finger pads over the back of your neck, just as the tendrils whispered over your cotton collar. It was the silly things you remembered to fill a room they had left. Love dazzled away the money and contracts, softened the corners and blighted the business voices. Love made your right shoe rise slowly in the middle of a world-ending kiss and made you cry for no reason and ink-spotted the pages of your journal.

  She twirled her ring. Vaughan had rung over to take a stroll and she agreed to meet him at the cusp of the Common. She arrived as the sun hovered directly over the Massachusetts State House, setting its gold dome on fire.

  She looked behind and saw the friendly steeple of the Park Street Church. Her eyes flickered to her ring. It was around here that
he put it on her.

  She would tell him tonight, she decided. Tell him she had kissed Hamish. And see what he said.

  When Vaughan arrived, his hair was somewhat out of order from his combing his fingers through it, and his top two buttons were undone, tie loose. This was not a Vaughan she recognized.

  “Anything wrong?”

  “Your father was in some pretty dire straits,” he said. “As you know.”

  Reggie turned. Vaughan was embarrassed. “Yes.”

  “And so Dirk Foster offered him an opportunity to invest in some properties he was working on as an alongside to his usual business with Hyatt and Price.”

  “Oh.”

  “I think you know the rest. I’m sorry, Reggie. I have myself to blame. I wasn’t paying attention. From the start.”

  “You have nothing to reproach yourself for, Vaughan. You are not Dirk’s keeper.” Reggie picked at a scab on her elbow. Tattooed from her night at the burning warehouse. Her mother would scold her for ruining her perfect skin. She found a faraway star to fix her eye on for a moment. But my skin has never been perfect. I’ve always had these freckles.

  “You’re wrinkling your nose,” Vaughan said.

  “Thinking. Scabbing my elbow. Getting into one scrape after another. What man would want to marry me?” she said lightly.

  Silence fell like a curtain. Vaughan started to say something then stopped. Reggie wished the ground would open up and choke her through. It didn’t.

  “I’ll make sure your father is advised wisely from here on in. A lawyer friend is going to help him sort this out.” Vaughan chuckled darkly. “I suppose you have your own lawyer friend.” Something shifted. Reggie felt something hop in her heart. There was a chance. There was . . .

  “It’s very kind of you, Vaughan. Very much appreciated.” She stopped a moment. “I kissed Hamish.”

  Vaughan’s face was shadowed, unreadable. “That can’t have been an easy secret to keep.” His voice gruffly diplomatic.

  “No. And I apologize. It was one of those ‘I thought you were dead’ moments. That doesn’t excuse it, but it was a momentous moment.”