THE DEVILS DIME Read online

  “Oh!” she said, startled out of her distraction. “Thank you.” She selected the cup of cherry ice and began to poke at it with its little flat wooden scoop.

  “I’d forgotten so much about him.”

  Jess sucked the tart lime juice out of a mouthful of ice.

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, like his rumbly voice that sounds like a favorite old grandpa teddy bear. And his eyes. They always crinkle at the corners like he’s about to tell a funny story.” Addie slipped another chip of ice into her mouth. “And his crooked finger! How could I have forgotten that?”

  “How did it get broken?”

  “Oh, lands, I don’t know. I never thought about it. But it was the one I always held whenever we walked out on the street or went anywhere at all. He called it his compass finger.”

  “His compass finger?”

  Addie smiled and turned to explain. “Mm hm. He said it always pointed to the North Pole. His little joke on me, I guess.”

  “You seem surprised to remember good things about him.”

  “Not surprised, really, but we never spoke of him over the years. And I got over the feeling of missing him. Until Mother died. Then I had this incredible urge to be papa’s little girl again.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Miss Magee,” Jess said as he took the wilting paper cup from Addie and tossed it into the trash bin, “but at twenty-four you’re hardly daddy’s little darlin’ anymore.”

  “What did you say?” Addie took the hand Jess offered and rose from the bench.

  “Sorry to disappoint you?”

  “No, no. Darlin’. You said darlin’.”

  “Darlin’. Yes, I guess I did. But what—”

  “You said it just like he does. When he left today, I asked if next Sunday was soon enough for us to get together again and he said ‘fear not, darlin’. Just like you said ‘darlin’ just now.” Her spreading smile pushed the last vestiges of the tears from her face as she beamed up at Jess.

  His movements stilled and Jess turned his head sharply to watch her expression. “Fear not? You’re positive that’s what he said?”

  Addie sighed. “That’s precisely what he said. It made me feel so certain. So safe. ‘Fear not, darlin’”.

  “Well, I’ll be.”

  Chapter Ten

  Jess strolled around the small parlor that sat to one side of the lobby of the Grayburn Arms. He studied the ancient portraits of New York’s founding fathers while he waited for Addie to return from stowing her violin in her room.

  The afternoon’s events had taken an emotional toll on her, but she wanted to fill in pieces of her story for Jess. Pieces she felt could best be demonstrated by showing him notations her mother had made in an old diary.

  Jess wondered if she knew how strongly the afternoon’s events had impacted him as well. Those three words she’d spoken, attributed to her father, had sent him into all kinds of speculation.

  Fear not, darlin’.

  It was the very phrase he’d read in a twenty-year-old newspaper article. The exact three words spoken to each of twenty victims by their rescuer.

  “Here we are. Sorry to keep you waiting, Jess.” Addie carried a small wooden tray painted in bright Bohemian colors to the tea table that sat between two worn leather chairs.

  In the brief moments she’d been gone, she’d managed to prepare the tray and, astonishing as it seemed, find ice for the tea glasses. They settled themselves on the leather chairs and Addie proceeded to pour.

  Jess watched her lift the heavy pitcher easily. The shoulder seemed completely back to normal. And stronger than those of most of the females he’d encountered in other parlors. His gaze moved up her sleeve, remembering the firm, defined muscle beneath.

  “I’ve brought Mama’s diary,” she began, then halted. She sat running her fingers over the binding and gave a self-conscious laugh. “She was so happy here.”

  Jess picked up his tea glass and the napkin she’d placed on the edge of the table for him. Ice chimed against glass as he swirled his tea and considered her words. “Well, then. I guess I don’t understand.”

  “Hm? Oh. Why she took us to Chicago?”

  “If she was so happy, why would she leave?”

  Addie fidgeted in the chair. “It seems she...she came to believe that my father was...well, was seeing other women.”

  Addie coughed, and Jess couldn’t miss her profound embarrassment at this admission. “But I don’t believe it. Not for a minute.”

  She opened the book and thumbed randomly through it, nodding absently as she recognized familiar passages.

  “It’s all peaches and cream until the last three entries, and they are very out of character with the others. Like this one.” Addie flipped easily to the page to which she’d just made reference.

  “You see, before this page, she’d always referred to my father as ‘my sweet F.M.’. But on these last three pages, it becomes simply ‘F.M.’ Listen to this. ‘April 10, 1876. F.M. home late again. He insists a breakdown on the roundhouse track kept him at the station. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, explain rouge marks on his shirt. Sat up half the night by the window while I lay awake in bed. His open heart is guarded tonight.’”

  Jess watched as Addie silently re-read the page. “She sounds hurt,” he said. “As though she’d suspected something before this, but this is the first time she’s let herself contemplate it.” Quietness settled in the room as Jess waited for Addie to speak. When at last she did, her voice carried a fragile tremble.

  “Yes.” Addie turned her face to Jess and he watched her struggle to draw her expression out of its brooding mask. “Then a few days lapse, and she enters this.”

  Addie turned the page slowly and began to read. “‘April 16, 1876. Was on my way with my sewing basket to make emergency repairs to Miss Winthrop’s wedding trousseau. Saw F.M. on the opposite street heading home from his shift. Decided to wait at the corner and let him know the nature of my errand. But at the opposite corner he turned and went toward Channing Street. F.M. never saw me. I don’t know how I got through the fitting with Miss Winthrop. All I could think of was him heading toward that infamous street.’”

  Addie gave a nervous laugh and folded her hands atop the open book. “I thought Channing Street would turn out to be lined with saloons or something. But it was worse. It...”

  Addie ducked her chin and squeezed her hands.

  “Everyone knows of the famous Madame of Channing House,” Jess said quietly. “But Addie, just turning the corner toward that street doesn’t incriminate him. He may have been headed to a favorite tobacconist, or picking up a newspaper, or any number of things. Just turning that corner doesn’t imply that he was headed to the bordello.”

  “I know that.” Addie flicked her eyes up at him and took a long breath as she straightened her sagging shoulders. “Really, I do. But I think Mama was convinced otherwise.”

  Addie turned the page, and Jess saw for the first time a blank page facing it. This was the last entry.

  “‘April 24, 1876. F.M. has come home directly from the station every night since Thursday last. Until tonight. I watched from Addie’s bedroom window where I could see both street corners. When at last he appeared, it was from the corner furthest from the station. He had been somewhere else. I hurried into the parlor and sat with my sewing basket, as if I were working. But my hands couldn’t move. I heard the door open but couldn’t look. F.M. came to my rocker and bent to kiss my forehead. I turned my head slightly toward him and saw it. Long strands of chestnut hair caught on the button of his coat. What followed was a horrid scene. I thought F.M. might cry. But he had no explanation. Addie and I will leave for Aunt Lucille’s in Chicago at dawn.’”

  Jess suddenly straightened in his chair. Something had nagged at him as Addie read the three passages, but he hadn’t known until this moment what it was. Now the dates of her mother’s entries marched past his mind’s eye like miniature regiments of hot metal type. It could not possib
ly be coincidence that he’d heard these exact dates recently, could it?

  Addie suddenly closed the book with a loud clap.

  “So. There you have it. Feeble evidence, at best. I think Mama jumped to a conclusion she should never have made. And changed all of our lives.” She rose and moved behind her chair, the diary clutched to her bosom like a favorite book. “But I can make it up to him.”

  Jess had risen when she stood, and now he put his tea glass on the tray and moved to join her in back of the chairs. He raked his mind for a humorous quip to ease the tension he saw on her face.

  “It is a shame, isn’t it? Why, if you’d stayed in New York you could be happily married by now to some young dandy who plays the tuba. Or perhaps you’d be teaching the fiddle in a squalid studio in the Italian Quarter. Why—”

  Addie laughed. “Heaven forbid!”

  “However you got here, I for one am grateful for it.”

  “Are you?” Crinkles of uncertainty still rimmed her upturned face. Her afternoon confession following the unexpected visit from her father had turned the edges of her independent confidence to mush.

  Jess looked a long moment into Addie’s gold-flecked chocolate eyes and knew if there were a way to wash away her uncertainty he would pay a fool’s ransom to know it.

  “I think you know that.”

  Her slow smile tickled the corners of his own grin.

  “And if you’ll give me a few days, I think I may have some answers that will help you sort this all out.”

  Addie charmed him with a quizzical look. “What could you possibly—“

  “Ah-ah. Let me check out some things first. I could be whistling up the wrong tree.”

  “Is that so.” Addie cocked her head in mock disbelief. “Given your dislike of all things musical I’m surprised to hear you can whistle at all.”

  “Miss Magee, I’ll have you know I can whistle up a coon dog faster than you can grease that fiddling stick of yours.”

  Addie chuckled and began to shed more of the tautness that had built up in her over the afternoon. “Violin bow, dear boy. It’s not a stick, it’s a bow. And we use resin, not grease.”

  “Yes. Well. I stand corrected.” Jess suddenly wanted to step into her space and take her in his arms. But instead he cleared his throat rather sharply and began to turn away. “I’d best be on my way. Lovely afternoon. I—oh! I was going to ask if you’d mind if I pay your father a visit. Us living in the same building and all?”

  “Mind? Not at all. But please don’t say anything about—“ she held the diary between them.

  “You have my promise.”

  “Thank you.”

  Addie’s relief washed over her face, and Jess hitched his breath at the beauty that settled upon her in its place. He stepped toward her and tenderly gripped both her forearms.

  The muscle he’d imagined earlier trembled now beneath his touch. Jess stepped closer, attempting to fill his eyes with her and push the dreary parlor to the periphery where it belonged. She seemed as out of place here as a priceless gem stored in a cobbler’s box.

  Somewhere down the block a church’s carillon began its six o’clock medley. Each beat encouraged him to leave. But he found he couldn’t move.

  Addie’s trusting eyes held his, and there was nothing he could do but bend to find her lips.

  She met him with a softness that sent his unpracticed mouth into a long, languid search, and Jess pushed aside any impulse that he should pull away. Her hand moved slowly up his chest as he drew her closer.

  “You were beautiful today,” he whispered between kisses. And when she responded with a little sigh, her trembling took on a new rhythm.

  The drumbeat in his own temple warned him that distance was the only thing that was safe for her, and sane for him, and so he drew away. Her hand trailed down his shirt and caught his arm as he turned to retrieve his Stetson from the chair’s corner post.

  “Do you have to go?”

  A lusty leer threatened to overtake the gentlemanly grin that Jess had planted on his face, and all he could do was nod.

  “Will you...miss me?” she asked, and her eyes glittered with a need Jess knew he wanted to answer.

  Damn. Could she make this any harder?

  “How could I not?” He backed toward the door, unwilling to take his eyes off her, but she remained behind the chair. “Thank you for the pleasure of your company this afternoon, Miss Magee,” he said, drawing out the words in teasing flirtation.

  Addie’s lips moved, but her reply was lost in a sudden, self-conscious, delicate cough. When he reached the parlor door he simply stood for a long moment. And when her face broke into a wide, joyful smile and she turned away in an attempt to hide it, Jess turned and strode out of Grayburn Arms and into the late afternoon sun.

  Chapter Eleven

  Chief Deacon Trumbull tossed a spent toothpick into the street and bellowed to his driver to slow up, hardly believing his good fortune. Talk about the devil, he thought. He’d just seen Jess Pepper leaving an apartment building where he knew he didn’t live. He wanted to dump the blonde chatterbox into the street and follow Pepper, but an even better idea began to form.

  “—so now he’s locked it all—“

  “Shhhhttt!” Trumbull waved an angry hand at Birdie Tabor. But in his attempt to shut her up, his large ring caught her ear. She yelped and he turned from the window and saw her dabbing at her ear with a gaudy handkerchief.

  “You bastard!” Birdie continued to dab at the trickle of blood coming from the jagged hole where her earring pierced her ear. He watched a small drop escape and land on the pleats that stretched about her ample bosom. His eyes followed the pattern as it soaked into the fabric and sent spidery red fingers across the summer white.

  It wasn’t much of a drop, but he imagined it sliding through the gauzy layers to stain the peaches and cream beneath. And he certainly knew first hand that it was peaches and cream. The first time he’d seen her soft Georgia flesh, it had taken his breath away. It was nothing at all like the leathery skin of the whores who frequented his private quarters.

  Occasionally he’d take a fat one to bed. Fat had a way of softening up the flesh. Even on the old broads. But the resulting frolic was always disappointing.

  This creature, however, had it all. The plump softness of a pampered upbringing and the savagery of a seasoned harlot. The fact that she worked just yards from a particular newspaperman he wanted to keep an eye on was frosting on the cake.

  He grabbed her chin with his large, fleshy palm and crushed her lips to his wet mouth, holding her captive with his other hand behind her head. He held her there as she struggled, until her hand grabbed his lapel and she began moaning as he knew she would.

  “Pull around to the ally at the Grayburn Arms,” he yelled to his driver, and leered as Birdie flinched from the impact of his voice just inches from her face. “Then take Miss Tabor to that little French dressmaker she likes so well.”

  He lowered his voice as he continued. “I seem to have...” his fingers wandered over the red stain on her bosom, “...ruined her dress.”

  Birdie’s sensuous lips spread into a delighted smile. “Oh, Sugar, you needn’t bother.” She planted a lingering kiss on the Chief.

  “And perhaps a hat,” he smiled, remembering the wild night she’d given him the first time he bought her a whole ensemble.

  She sighed and nipped his lips again.

  “And shoes. Definitely shoes.”

  But as she leaned across his belly for another peck, the carriage came to a halt behind the Grayburn Arms and he shoved her rudely to the corner of the seat. “Don’t get greedy, my little pigeon.”

  He slid out of the carriage that had been modified so that he could step down and straighten up before taking a final step out of the carriage. It made his exits more dramatic. Birdie Tabor leaned from the window and blew a kiss as the carriage rolled away, then dropped her fingers to wander lightly across her bosom. His loins sent an impatient
signal, but he turned his thoughts toward his present mission.

  The back of the property was ill kept, and Chief Trumbull kicked at an old bucket that stood beside an ancient pennyfarthing that blocked the rude path to the back door.

  He easily found the manager’s apartment and brought the old man running to answer his pounding at the door. The man’s face swirled from irritation to alarm as he recognized who it was that filled his doorway.

  “You’re the manager here?”

  The old fellow gulped and nodded. “Singleterry. Jacob Singleterry. Can I help you with something?”

  Trumbull watched his face quiver and decided to go easy.

  “Why, yes, I believe you can, Mr. Singleterry. If you’d be so kind.”

  The Chief’s pleasant voice reassured the shriveled man, who grew nearly three inches as he squared his stooped shoulders.

  “I merely need a list of your tenants, if that wouldn’t be too much trouble?”

  “Trouble? Not at all, sir, er, Chief, er, Chief Trumbull. Not at all. Just one moment!”

  The old fellow disappeared into his dusty confines and reappeared minutes later with a carefully copied list of tenants. “Anything else, sir?”

  The fellow seemed so anxious to oblige that Deacon Trumbull pursued the question he was most eager to have answered. “Oh, just one small thing. Do you happen to know who it is that Jess Pepper might know in this building?”

  The old man was crestfallen. He had no idea who Jess Pepper was, and no idea if the man had even been in his building.

  Trumbull left the man standing in his hallway, blabbering offers to help, and made his way to the front of the building. Jess Pepper had been here, all right. He’d seen him stroll out the door just minutes earlier. And he wanted to know who the nosy reporter had visited.

  The lobby was as dismal as the rest of the building, and the only human he saw before passing through the front door was a woman who stood at the far end of the parlor with her hand on the window pane.