francesmcnamara

deathat the

FairAn Emily Cabot Mystery

DEATH

AT

THE FAIR

Frances McNamara

Allium press of Chicago

Allium Press of Chicago www.alliumpress.com

This is a work of fiction. Descriptions and portrayals of real people, events, organizations, or

establishments are intended to provide background for the story and are used fictitiously. Other

characters and situations are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not intended to be real.

© 2008 by Frances McNamara All rights reserved

Revised edition by Allium Press, 2009 Originally published via BookSurge, 2008

Book and cover design by E. C. Victorson

Front cover image (bottom) from The World’s Fair in Water Colors by Charles S. Graham, 1893

ISBN-13: 978-0-9840676-1-9

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ONE

The Fair was a great undertaking. Forgotten now, I am amazed to remember how quickly traces of it were dispersed, carted away, burnt to the ground or overgrown by plants in the park that remained. By the end, only the Palace of Fine Arts stood, as if struggling to maintain some vestige of a ruined civilization, providing only an echo of what had been. The lone relic, it finally became the Museum of Science and Industry in one of those many transformations that we have experienced in the twentieth century.

Despite that so rapid disappearance, like some fairy city that had existence only at twilight, I find when I remember it now, the White City of the World’s Columbian Exposition exists in my mind whole and complete as it looked in the early summer days of 1893 when you could still look down on the Court of Honor from the roof of the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building. The graceful white structures with their long colonnades and statues surrounded a basin of water where gondolas floated peacefully. At one end, the great Columbian Fountain with its flowing figures celebrated the deeds of its namesake as they paddled a fantastic ark.

That summer we felt we were at the heart of the universe as people from all over the world traveled to Chicago to visit the Fair. And I think we were all proud and a little overwhelmed by the scope of human accomplishments represented in the huge buildings, which contained exhibits of everything from electricity,

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machinery and mines to agriculture and the fine arts. But, in the end, it was the events that overtook me in the final days of the Fair that came to tinge the memory of that display with a kind of wistful melancholy. It was as if the potential greatness was so near to our grasp but at the last minute slipped away, like a match sheltered in cupped hands that goes out in a draft.

I remained in Chicago over the summer to recover from an illness and to complete the research I began in my first year of graduate study at the University of Chicago. That work required the tedious compilation of statistics from thousands of identity cards provided by the Chicago Police Department. The result was something less than it might have been without the loss of some of the cards and of the original draft, which happened during my illness, but my professor, Mr. Reed, was well satisfied. And perhaps more importantly, I was confident that it was a piece of research good enough to bolster Dean Talbot’s arguments that the fellowship support for my work should continue, although only six of these honors had been granted to women. While all the world had come to visit the great Exposition at our doorstep, I had been bent over my desk taking time only to tend to the duties that paid for my room and board.

By late August my work was done and I was free to explore the Fair as I had not been able to do earlier. My mother and brother traveled from Boston and I found them rooms in university dormitories that had been appropriated for the use of Fair visitors. Only that made the trip affordable for them. I was myself still employed in managing the women’s housing and spent mornings at the desk in one of the alcoves of the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building where I assisted members of the Women’s Collegiate Association in booking rooms.

It was on one such day that I completed my shift and threaded my way, through the crowds viewing the magnificent wrought iron

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gateways of the German exhibit, to the southwestern portico, where I had left my mother sitting on a bench.

The day was hot, but inside the high ceilings and vast spaces retained a coolness. Outside, the portico provided shade and a slight zephyr of breeze that gave some relief. My mother was a tiny figure in her black widow’s weeds. It was five years now since my father’s tragic and unexpected death, yet she had never felt the need to leave her mourning clothes behind. It was not that she was unable to resign herself to her situation or that she was unduly morose about his absence, but I think she felt the lack of his presence beside her everyday. I had given up trying to encourage her to change her wardrobe. She just felt no need to do that.

“Mother, here I am. But where is Alden? Surely he should have been here by now?”

My younger brother was demonstrating his usual fecklessness. Never an ardent student, at nineteen he had discontinued his studies at Harvard and taken a job at our uncle’s bank. He had been given time off to accompany my mother on this trip only by virtue of her wealthy brother’s favor. This day, he was supposed to have escorted my mother to meet me but she had arrived alone saying he had stopped somewhere on the Midway and would be along shortly. Her tolerance for his undependable nature always exasperated me.

“I’m sure he will be here soon, Emily. You mustn’t worry. Is this perhaps the doctor coming now?” She nodded and I turned around to see Dr. Stephen Chapman coming up the steps. Hatless, he mounted without haste, looking around him as if to take in the expanse of buildings and people. With a clean-shaven square face, warm brown eyes and dark hair always in need of a trim, the doctor seemed old to me at that time, although he was only in his mid-thirties. A physician who had given up his practice to do research at the new university, he had quickly gained a

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reputation for brilliance in his laboratory studies. He had been quite helpful in the early days when construction delays had us all scrambling to make do in temporary quarters at the Hotel Beatrice. Unlike most of the impatient male professors he had been grateful for the household tasks we women took on to compensate at the beginning. Once we were all settled into our real housing and studies, my friend Clara and I had put out some efforts to try to pry the doctor from his microscope to join us at social functions. Today I saw he wore the same brown suit that had sufficed for all the classes and university functions during the preceding year. The thought of that wool made me feel itchy on such a sultry day but he was the same as always, quiet, thoughtful and just a little aloof. Reaching the top step, he made a slight bow to my mother as I introduced him and she held out her hand.

“Dear Dr. Chapman, we are greatly in your debt. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you for saving my daughter. She told me you would not wish to be thanked but you would not blame me if you knew how often I have shuddered to imagine what might have happened if you had not been there.”

I felt the blood rise to the tips of my ears. I had fallen ill of a fever during the spring quarter but I thought my mother exaggerated my danger. At the time, I had been much more concerned that the weakness would prevent me from continuing at the university than that it would be mortal.

“I am grateful to have been able to spare you such pain. Luckily, Miss Cabot has a healthy constitution and her recovery has been complete, so you have nothing to worry about.”

“Yes, Mother, I am completely recovered. Please don’t doubt that. It was only with the help of Dr. Chapman that I was allowed to extend my course work through the summer to complete it. At one point Professor Lukas and some of the others were insisting

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that my illness proved women could not sustain the rigors of advanced work. I very nearly lost my fellowship.”

“Dean Talbot would not have allowed that,” he told my mother. “She and Dean Palmer are themselves the strongest evidence that such carping is unjustified.”

“The dean told me how Dr. Chapman put down the critics, Mother. He embarrassed them by recounting their own past illnesses as evidence that male scholars are every bit as apt to suffer as the women. He was our champion.”

“Foolishness. I merely told them the truth. But, in any case, Mrs. Cabot, your daughter is fully recovered. We all of us have to suffer from sickness at one time or another. In some ways it can be said to strengthen us. There are certainly cases where having once experienced an illness we are afterwards protected from it.”

It was kind of him to reassure her and we spent some minutes discussing my mother’s journey from Boston. My illness had resulted in a sudden intimacy with the doctor and when I was fully recovered and busy with the task of completing my research I soon found I missed his daily visits. I had come to know him only a very little during that time. He never spoke of family and seemed quite alone in the world. Despite the fact that he, too, had remained at the university to pursue his studies over the summer, I was seldom able to lure him from the beakers and microscopes of his laboratory. But I was determined he would not miss a tour of the great sights of the Fair for lack of company.

Yet, it was only by appealing to his kindness and pity for my widowed mother that I had finally persuaded him to join us on our expeditions during her visit. He seemed at once grateful and somewhat reluctant to be included in our party yet I knew him to be an intelligent man who could not help but be stimulated by the great variety of ideas and novelties we would find in the exhibits. The truth was that I hoped my mother’s warmth would draw him out and I was looking forward to days spent touring the Fair

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followed by lively discussions of what we had seen over dinners and suppers. I felt I had earned the respite after a tedious summer, and so had the doctor. Now I looked around, exasperated by my brother’s failure to arrive on time. It was so like him.

“I’m sorry my brother is late. I told him we would meet here at one o’clock to begin our tour. I can’t imagine what is keeping him.”

“I’m afraid my son, Alden, is easily distracted by the amusements of the Midway, Dr. Chapman. He stopped there on our way over but I am sure he will join us shortly, and if he does not, we can begin without him.”

“With all the wonders of art and industry to be seen, my brother thinks only of amusements. It is a shame,” I complained. I was vexed. It had been difficult enough to persuade the doctor to join us and now Alden was making us wait.

“Quite a few people are finding the exhibits on the Midway every bit as attractive as the more formal exhibitions,” he said dryly. “They say it is far more profitable than the Fair itself.”

“Emily, I believe someone is trying to get your attention,” my mother gestured towards the sunlight.

The shaded portico overlooked the promenade along the Basin. As I turned, I saw a group of elegant women with parasols strolling towards us.

“Clara!” I raced down the steps and we embraced. I had missed Clara Shea ever since she returned home to

Kentucky in June, and I had not expected to see her again until the fall quarter began. Like me, she came to the university when it opened the previous fall as one of the first women graduate students and we became good friends and allies. Today Clara made a striking figure with her piles of dark hair pinned up under a straw boater. She looked magnificent in a summer frock of

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frothy white with black dots and black velvet trim. I knew I must appear dowdy beside my tall friend in my shirtwaist and brown skirt but I had become used to her impressive beauty and I was delighted to see her when I had never expected it. I immediately knew that her company would make the excursions to the Fair perfect from my point of view.

“My gram finally decided we should come to view the Fair after all,” she confided in a low voice and her breathy Southern drawl. “I do believe she got tired of having to listen to everyone else tell her stories about their trips.” She turned back to the others who were slowly coming up behind her. “Gram, here is Emily Cabot. I told you all about her.”

She was a small woman with bright eyes who wore an elegant suit of lavender and held a silver walking stick. Clara frequently quoted her grandmother and I was curious to meet this woman who had been so important in her support for her granddaughter’s education. From what my friend had told me, it was her grandmother who had responded to Clara’s broken engagement by handing her a prospectus for the new university and it was she who had insisted on the feasibility of the plan despite the objections of other family members. It seemed a great deal of warm charm sheathed an adamant resolution of will in this small woman. So different physically, I suspected she and Clara were very similar underneath.

Beyond her two more women in the party appeared to waft rather than walk. They wore pastel dresses with matching parasols. One was middle-aged and by her resemblance to Clara, as if she were a slightly more attenuated and delicate version, I guessed she must be my friend’s mother.

The other woman was younger, although not as young as Clara and myself, displaying none of the awkwardness of youth but rather a languid elegance. She had an abstracted, faraway look in her blue eyes and only wisps of pale hair escaped along her

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cheekbones under a hat adorned with ostrich feathers. A web of white lace touched her throat and wrists. I sensed an air of sadness that was like a fine mist hanging around her.

Remembering my own companions, I turned back and saw my mother descending the small flight of steps on Dr. Chapman’s arm. I caught him looking up from his care of guiding her to glance at the newcomers, and I thought I saw a sign of recognition. But the next moment he was attending to my mother’s progress again and I thought it must have been my imagination.

Clara handled the round of introductions. The woman who so resembled her was indeed her mother and the other woman was introduced as Mrs. Larrimer, another Kentuckian come to view the Fair with her husband and father. As I turned to look at her again I saw that the woman’s blue eyes were fixed on Dr. Chapman’s face. She did not respond to Clara’s words and her air of elegance had suddenly deserted her. I was close enough to hear her whisper his name, “Stephen.”

Dr. Chapman acknowledged the acquaintance reluctantly, I thought. “I was a student of Mrs. Larrimer’s father,” he told the rest of us. Then turning back to her, “I trust he is in good health?”

She tore her eyes from his face and bowed her head. “He has traveled with us to attend the medical congress here. He would be happy to see you again.” She had a low voice and spoke slowly. He bowed.

“I am sure we will meet in that case, as I also attend the congress.” “Her father and her husband were too busy attending to their

own affairs to accompany Marguerite today, Doctor,” Clara’s grandmother told him. “But we are not ones to wait on the gentlemen, so we carried her off with us to see the sights.” She leaned on her cane and looked around at the bustling fair grounds. “Although, I must say, I am quite liable to be overwhelmed by the number and size of these buildings. I think

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we must consult on how best to start on them, ladies, as we will not be allowed to miss any seriously important thing. Not with two such ardent scholars to guide us.”

“Don’t worry, Gram,” Clara told her. “I have the map and I see that Emily brought a guidebook. Together we will guarantee you will not escape a single truly important exhibit. I’d thought to see the Woman’s Building—I know it will interest Gram, don’t you think, Emily?”

As I held out the guidebook to her I could see, from the corner of my eye, that Mrs. Larrimer had once again lifted her eyes and was staring at Dr. Chapman.

“You have come from Baltimore?” she asked him softly. He grimaced. “I reside here in Chicago. I have been here

since last year studying at the university.” “You gave up your practice then?” He nodded curtly and shifted as if the wool suit, that looked

so scratchy to me, was finally wearing on him. They were on the edge of our group and had spoken softly, almost as if continuing a conversation from some time in the past, while Clara and her mother argued about our proposed route. Somehow I was curious enough to be straining to hear them. Suddenly the doctor interrupted Clara.

“And now, if you ladies will excuse me, I must return to my laboratory.”

“But, Dr. Chapman, I thought you would join us for the tour,” I told him. His eyes shifted to mine and I thought a slight bit of color tinged his cheeks.

“You must excuse me, Miss Cabot. I did not have a chance to explain my change of plans. There is an experiment I must attend to in the laboratory. I came myself, so that I might at least meet your mother and brother, but I cannot stay. Please accept my apologies. I am sure you have found much better companions for your tour.”

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He bade us farewell with a slight bow and began to stride away. As the others returned to their discussion I hurried after him, calling, “Doctor!” He could not fail to hear me so he had to respond. He stopped. His neck was red as he turned back to me.

“You will join us for supper later, won’t you?” We had planned to go to a hotel in Hyde Park.

He glanced back over my head. “Please, convey my apologies to your mother and brother,” he said. “I will be unable to join you.”

“But, Dr. Chapman, what is it? Is something wrong? I hope we have not offended you? I wanted so much for you to join us. My mother has wanted to meet you and you will enjoy my brother even if he is unreliable and I thought we would have such an interesting and instructive time, discussing what we had seen. All together.”

“Oh, I think you will have plenty of company with Miss Shea and her party.” He was looking over my shoulder.

“But so much of the world is on display here, Doctor. Surely you don’t want to miss it? You told me you wanted to visit the Fine Arts Building. And you said you had heard much about the German exhibit in the Manufactures Building. You can spare the time for that, can’t you? We can be sure to put those first on the tour and you could join us later at the hotel . . .”

“No, I cannot. I am sorry.” He pulled his gaze away from the group behind me to look me in the eye. “Your friends are waiting. By all means begin your tour. You do not need me. Now, I must return to my laboratory.”

When he turned away that time I had no choice but to let him go. He would not be moved. Trying to persuade him when he had made up his mind was like stubbing your toe on what seemed to be a loose pebble and was really a substantial rock embedded in the ground.

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I couldn’t help frowning as I looked back at the elegant Mrs. Larrimer whose eyes were following the figure of Dr. Chapman as he disappeared into the crowd. Who was this woman and what was she to my friend? I was sure that it had been the unexpected meeting that caused him to return to his research, thereby ruining all my plans. Naively I assumed their past association must have ended in some disagreement or unpleasantness. I shook myself. The sun shone brightly as hundreds of figures strolled through the wide boulevards lined by the massive buildings of the White City. Whatever was bothering the two of them it was no business of mine and no reason for me to waste an afternoon that was meant to be spent viewing the many new and important things on display at the exposition. Only it irked me that both the doctor and Alden had managed to foil my plan. At least Clara’s arrival was an improvement.

Frances McNamara grew up in Boston, where her father served as Police Commissioner for ten years. She has degrees from Mount Holyoke and Simmons Colleges, and is now a librarian at the University of Chicago. She is working on the third book in the Emily Cabot mystery series, which will be set in Pullman, at the time of the 1894 railroad strike. When not working or writing she can be found sailing on Lake Michigan.

After Emily Cabot is expelled from the University of Chicago, she fi nds work at Hull House, the famous settlement established by Jane Addams.

There she quickly becomes involved in the political and social problems of the immigrant community. But when a man who works for a sweatshop owner is

murdered in the Hull House parlor, Emily must determine whether one of her colleagues is responsible, or whether the real reason for the murder is revenge for a past tragedy in her own family. As a smallpox epidemic spreads through the

impoverished west side of Chicago, the very existence of the settlement is threatened and Emily fi nds herself in jeopardy from both the deadly disease and a killer.

Praise for Death at the Fair, the fi rst book in the Emily Cabot series:

“McNamara has a keen eye for zeroing in on how a metropolis can fuel and deplete the human spirit.” Chicago Sun-Times

“A compelling tale of the Chicago World’s Fair, complete with history, mystery, and a likeable heroine.” Kirkus Discoveries

“As in The Devil in the White City, this yarn takes place in Chicago during the 1893 World’s Fair, and like in that nonfi ction bestseller,

murder intrudes on the city’s cultural uplift with surprising consequences. The novel is well written.” Publisher’s Weekly

“McNamara leads us on a colorful tour of the White City, as the fair was called. Not ignored is its seamy side, the illegal traveling card games,

police graft, midway toughs, and the assassination of Chicago’s mayorin the fair’s fi nal days.” www.womeninhistory.com

francesmcnamara

deathat

hull houseAn Emily Cabot Mystery

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DEATH

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Frances McNamara

Allium press of Chicago

Allium Press of Chicago www.alliumpress.com

This is a work of fiction. Descriptions and portrayals of real people, events, organizations, or

establishments are intended to provide background for the story and are used fictitiously. Other

characters and situations are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not intended to be real.

© 2009 by Frances McNamara All rights reserved

Book and cover design by E. C. Victorson

Front cover image (bottom) of Hull House courtesy of University of Illinois at Chicago Library,

Special Collections

ISBN-13: 978-0-9840676-0-4

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ONE

“As I have warned President Harper on many occasions, the weaker sex simply is not able to cope with the stress of rigorous academic activity. The female brain is not designed for such things. This incident is a disgrace. I only hope this will bring the faculty to their senses and result in a change of policy.”

He had gone on like this for twenty minutes now. I hated the sheen on his high forehead. The white and gray prickly hairs of his moustache and the full beard that outlined his square jaw were despicable. I gritted my teeth as the full pink lips mouthed the words. I loathed the man. Worst of all was the deep authoritative ring of his impressive voice. I do believe Professor Lukas carried more arguments by the tone of his voice than the strength of his logic.

Through the window behind him I could see figures in black academic gowns flocking to what would be convocation for the second year of the University of Chicago. It was a convocation I would not attend.

“Thank you, Professor Lukas. I think that is sufficient. We must all get along to the ceremony this morning.” Professor Albion Small was shorter than the tall, overbearing Lukas who frowned, pursing his lips with displeasure. But the dapper little man with a bald dome and a smudge of dark moustache under his nose was Chairman of the Department of Sociology. As such, he was Lukas’s superior. It was the department to which I had belonged the previous year, and the department from

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which I was being expelled as I was being expelled from the university.

The other participants in this sorry meeting to pronounce my final disgrace were Jonathan Reed and Marion Talbot. The young, ungainly Professor Reed had sponsored my work collecting police statistics the previous year and Dean of Women, Marion Talbot, was a petite little bird of a woman whose presence was equal to anyone, even a Professor Lukas.

“It is unfortunate,” she snapped. “Unfortunate for all of us. However, since Miss Cabot must go, I am glad to be able to report she will be joining Miss Jane Addams at Hull House in the city.”

This was a calculated and well timed shot across Lukas’s bows. His large face turned red. “A settlement, that settlement house,” he sputtered. “Oh, yes, that is just the sort of place for someone like this regrettable young woman.”

But Professor Small’s eyebrows rose. He did not share Lukas’s skepticism and disdain when it came to the settlement movement. “Well, well, Miss Cabot, we must all wish you the best in these endeavors.”

Lukas looked outraged. He did it so well. Hull House, the settlement that Jane Addams and some others had begun several years earlier was a phenomenon that attracted international attention in the area of sociology. Professor Lukas deeply resented that so much attention was lavished on efforts by those he considered ignorant amateurs. Lukas himself specialized in labor relations and was a consultant to many businessmen in Chicago. He was well known to have a low opinion of the immigrant masses swarming into the cities and filling the lowest paid jobs. The activities of settlements in such communities were to be scoffed at in his often published opinion. “A gaggle of well meaning women with nothing better

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to do with their time. Ridiculous. Setting up housekeeping in the midst of the tenements. Absurd.”

But there was a gleam in Professor Small’s eye. “I understand the settlement has compiled a survey of households in the ward. There is some anticipation that they will publish the data from that. It could be most useful.” The accumulation of data was an important activity in the opinion of the department chairman. It was already an emphasis of the school of sociologists who had come to Chicago.

I could see the smallest glimmer of a satisfied smile on Marion Talbot’s heart shaped face. She was trying hard to suppress it. “Yes, I have suggested to Miss Addams that Emily may be able to help complete the preparation of that study for publication.”

“Splendid, Miss Cabot. We will look forward to the publication of that work.” Professor Lukas had puffed up his chest as if ready to launch into yet another harangue on the follies of including women in higher education but Professor Small forestalled him. “Now, I’m afraid we must say goodbye and prepare for convocation.”

Dean Talbot marched out the door with a signal for me to follow. I nodded goodbye to Professor Reed. I wanted to thank him for his attempts to defend me but this was not the time. As we walked the corridor of Cobb Hall to Dean Talbot’s office, I felt a weight drop on to me, bending my shoulders. How could this have happened? Here it was the first day of the new university term and I would be leaving. The fact of it hit me then and took my breath away. Stairs to my right led up to the classrooms, like the one where I had studied the Bible in the Hebrew original under the tutelage of the young President William Rainey Harper. I remembered how proud I had been to be one of the first women fellows at the new university. But

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I took myself in hand and turned down the corridor stopping to grit my teeth before following the Dean into her office.

The office was a book-lined room with wooden file cabinets, a large desk for the dean and a smaller writing desk to one side. I glanced at it. As the dean’s assistant, it had been mine the year before. Now, I took the straight-backed chair opposite the large desk as she indicated I should. But Marion Talbot did not sit down. The pacing she did, swinging her black academic gown as she turned did not bode well for me. She frowned and the tassel on her mortarboard shook when she came to a stop. “Convocation will begin promptly in thirty minutes, so there is not much time. I am sorry to say your expulsion will stand.” She grimaced. “For now, at least. Professor Reed and I did all that we could, but you can see the opposition we met.” She paced again, stopping this time to look out the high window behind her desk. She was shaking her head. Then she swung around to face me again, like a little bird perched on a twig. “You will go to Jane Addams at Hull House. The arrangements are made?”

I nodded. “Good. Emily, I must impress upon you how important it

is that you use this opportunity to redeem yourself. Your disgrace and expulsion reflect on all of the women here. You owe it to them to make things right.”

“I am very sorry to have caused so much trouble. And I am grateful to you and Professor Reed for your efforts on my behalf.”

“That’s not enough, you know. You must go to Hull House and demonstrate by your work there that you belong back here doing serious research. Emily, I know you were trying to help someone but the fact that you, a woman scholar at this university, could be found in a gambling tent on the

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Midway is just something the university authorities cannot ignore. Your actions make it appear that women enrolled here are so loose and undisciplined as to make this acceptable. Of course it is not. It is against every university regulation. You know that and you should have thought of it before you acted.

“Surely you must understand how important it is that we, the women of the university, remain beyond reproach. You saw all the fuss that was caused last year by the mere suggestion of unchaperoned dances. How could you think you could go to a gambling hall without destroying your reputation as a serious scholar here?” She stamped her foot and I felt a rush of blood turning my face red. I said nothing. We had been over all of this before. Many times.

“Never mind, never mind. What is done is done. What is important now is to repair the damage. You know how unusual it is that this university was organized with the intention to admit women scholars to every level of study.”

It was true. Many women, like me, had been educated in colleges like Wellesley only to find on graduation that the only avenues open to them were marriage or teaching. It was considered unsuitable for a woman to pursue study beyond that degree. But when the businessmen of Chicago had approached William Rainey Harper to establish a world class university in their city, he had planned for an institution devoted to advanced research on the model of the German universities. And he had insisted from the very first that women, as well as men, would be enrolled. When he raided the East Coast educational establishment for the best of their professors, he had also convinced Alice Freeman Palmer and Marion Talbot to come from Wellesley College to shepherd the women. And they had recruited other female students, like me, hungry for the opportunity to be part of this plan. Participation of women had not been without opponents, so there was a

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struggle that first year to ward off criticism. And I had damaged our case by my actions. Of course, I regretted that.

“It is the future you must attend to now,” she continued. “Your expulsion will stand. You will go to Hull House. As I have told you, Professor Small has a great admiration for Miss Addams and her co-workers at the settlement. He has often attempted to recruit them to your department but they are too busy with their own activities. The study he mentioned is of particular importance. That survey of the West Side neighborhood is expected to be a landmark document when it is published.” She fastened her small dark eyes on me. “You will bring that study to press, Miss Cabot. And in the process you will redeem yourself and the reputation of the women here. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Miss Talbot.” She sighed. “Don’t be so downcast, Emily. You will find

the inhabitants of Hull House a most interesting and unusual set of companions.” The way she said this I could only assume that she herself did not necessarily consider “interesting” or “unusual” to be good qualities. But she had a certain openness of mind not shared by the likes of Professor Lukas. “And Dr. Chapman will be there as well. He, too, has a reputation to live down.”

“But he was released, the charges were dropped. He is innocent,” I protested. Our friend, the doctor, had been charged with the murder of a man he had known in the past. But when the real murderer was revealed, the doctor was released. During his imprisonment the university had distanced itself from him in a manner I found disappointing.

“Emily, the university abhors any kind of sensationalism. We cannot afford it. Dr. Chapman understands that. This university is dependent on the contributions of the eminent

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people in Chicago. They are the ones who have matched the generosity of Mr. Rockefeller. It is only through their contributions that this institution can continue to exist. Although the charges are dropped, the scandal persists. Dr. Chapman understands the memory of that must die down before he can be readmitted to the university.”

“But he can continue to work in Dr. Jamieson’s laboratory while I am completely exiled,” I pointed out. It was not fair and, much as I liked the doctor, I had to protest the lack of fairness.

“The doctor was unjustly accused, Emily. You, on the other hand, are guilty of a foolish disregard for university regulations. When you accepted the fellowship that Mrs. Palmer and I obtained for you last year, you agreed to abide by the rules of the university. It is your impulsive disregard for those rules that has damaged not only your own career but that of every other woman here. Men like Professor Lukas are only too willing to point to you, Emily, as an example of why women are not fit for rigorous academic work. They have even proposed a separate course of study for female students. It is not for such an arrangement that we have come here and worked so hard.”

She was right, of course, but how many times did I have to say so? Marion Talbot was not one to spare anyone’s feelings, especially not a self confessed miscreant like me. But she was right. I did agree with her totally. “I will go to Hull House tomorrow, Dean Talbot, and I promise you that I will do everything I can to succeed there.”

“It will be a good place for you, Emily. You are impatient of rules and regulations. In Miss Addams and her followers you will find people who manage to defy the constraints of society and still to maintain the respect of all who know them. If you cannot exhibit the self-discipline necessary to succeed at the

Frances McNamara

8

university, I hope you will be able to learn from the women of that settlement how to gain the respect of society. Now, I must go. I wish you luck and I expect great achievements from you despite your disgrace.”

With that, she shooed me out the door, closing it behind us with a click, and hurried off to join the academic procession. Convocation would be held in Cobb Hall but I would not participate. As I glumly left the building to return to my rented rooms and prepare for my exile, I wondered when I would ever be back.

“Emily. Are you forgiven?” It was my good friend of the previous year, Clara Shea. She was a tall, strikingly beautiful girl, who left behind the life of a belle in Kentucky when she came to the university. In the course of that first year Clara had come to find her place among the beakers of the laboratories and the numerical calculations of the chemistry department. Over the summer the bond of friendship we formed that first year had been sorely tried, but we had managed to mend it again, so it was stronger than ever. Now she was ready to plunge into the round of lectures and experiments while I was leaving. Seeing Clara really rubbed gall into the soreness I felt.

“No. It’s Hull House for me.” “Oh, Emily. When do you leave?” “Tomorrow.” “It seems so unfair. And now we finally have a real home.

You should be with us, Emily.” She was talking about the new women’s dormitories that

had been completed for this fall quarter. We had endured makeshift accommodations and moves that first year, hardships that had only brought us all closer together.

“Dean Talbot thinks I can redeem myself. Perhaps I’ll be back next year.”

death at hull house

9

“I hope so. You can come and visit.” I think she saw from my face that would only be a punishment. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Emily.” She reached out to put a hand on my arm. “Is your family still here with you?”

“My mother has gone home to Boston.” “But your brother remains? Alden, is he still here?” I stiffened. My younger brother was another problem and I

did not wish to discuss him. “He is fine. You’d better go, Clara.”

People in academic gowns were sweeping past us on both sides but she held my hands a moment longer. “I’m so sorry, Emily, I must go.”

“Yes, go. It’s convocation, I know. Goodbye, Clara. Be careful. Don’t go spilling those chemicals over a new frock.” She smiled at the joke but shook her head with regret as she turned away.

Snow was beginning to fall as I trudged back to the rooms I had shared with my mother and brother during their visit from Boston. There was a brisk wind as I walked across the campus of the University of Chicago that November morning in 1893. The scent of burning leaves was left hanging in the air when the breeze dropped. Under a sky of heavy gray clouds things were stirring. There was a sense of anticipation in the air, the sense of starting on new journeys I had always felt with the start of a new academic year. It was painful and exasperating to realize it would all go on here but without me. I had made such a mistake in getting myself expelled. It made me realize the only thing I really cared for was succeeding here in the academic world where I had always been able to shine.

When I entered our lodgings I realized my brother Alden had packed up all of his things and left without a word—or without an additional word. We had had all too many words to

Frances McNamara

10

say to each other in an argument at the train station after seeing my mother off.

Alden, four years my junior, was quick witted and lithe. He had a mop of dark brown curls and bright blue eyes, but most importantly he had an engaging manner and an unquenchable curiosity about people. Somehow he always managed to charm his way into any company and he scorned the book study that I had always excelled in. He was fearless in a way I found reckless and he was undependable and irresponsible in the extreme.

After our father’s death, Alden accepted a job in a bank managed by my mother’s brother. He was given leave from his job to bring my mother to visit me and to see the World’s Columbian Exposition this summer. It was only at the end of the trip when my mother was preparing to return that he announced his intention to give up his job and stay in Chicago. Coming on top of my own troubles it had been too much to bear but I waited until my mother’s train left to tell him what I thought. I accused him of being irresponsible and he countered that I was worse, as I had deserted them all by coming to Chicago.

As for my own life, I knew my father would have wanted me to continue my studies. In fact, I would have been even more devastated by my expulsion if I had had to face him to explain it. Yet any embarrassment would have been a small price to pay to have him back with us again. Perhaps what was really bothering Alden was that the excursion to the gambling tent that had brought my downfall had been a plan jointly concocted by both of us. It was true that I bitterly regretted it now and, it was true that, although I had never voiced the thought, in my heart I blamed my brother.

DEATH AT

PULLMANFrances McNamara

ALLIUM PRESS OF cHICAGO

Allium Press of Chicagowww.alliumpress.com

This is a work of fi ction. Descriptions and portrayals of real people, events, organizations, or establishments are intended to provide background

for the story and are used fi ctitiously. Other characters and situations are drawn from the

author’s imagination and are not intended to be real.

© 2011 by Frances McNamaraAll rights reserved

Book/cover design and map by E. C. Victorson

Front cover image (bottom): adapted from“The Chicago Strikes” by Frederic Remington

Harper’s Weekly Magazine, July 21, 1894Title page image: “The Strikers’ Relief Headquarters

in Kensington” from The Pullman Strike by Rev. William H. Carwardine, 1894

ISBN: 978-0-9840676-9-5

death at Pullman

1

PROLOGUE

The mind tries to refuse such a sight, tries to deny it. A young man, tall and thin in frayed overalls and undershirt, shouldn’t be so still, with his feet swaying an arm’s length

away and at the level of your face like that. I could see the worn soles and broken laces of his scuffed work boots, and above them, his bony hands with dirt ground into their creases and around his broken fi ngernails. Freckles stood out on his white face and his eyes were closed. One side of his head was encrusted with dried blood matted into his thick brown hair. Surely, he was too young to die—he was no older than me! Was this what we would all come to in such violent times? Was this how it ended—with the body of a poor young man swinging at the end of a rope?

death at Pullman

3

ONE

I once heard a lecture given by a well-known naturalist at the University of Chicago. He described how a species of snake sheds its skin, slithering out and leaving behind a cracked

and drying carcass of itself. How liberating it must feel to be free of that. I imagine the reptile emerges scratched and sore but is soon healed by the touch of the wet grass and mud. I think when we are young—as I was at the time of these events—the growth we experience is just this sort of harsh shedding. But, like the reptile, we are destined to repeat the experience—always thinking we have at last grown into our fi nal transformation when, in fact, we are only beginning another cycle.

I came to Chicago from Boston in 1892, to be a graduate student in sociology—the year the University of Chicago opened its doors. I had exposed a murderer—albeit too late to save two victims. I had been expelled from the university, was exiled to a settlement house, and worked among the tenements of the city. There I learned the truth about my own father’s death and some other truths about myself. I was at my mother’s bedside when she died, and I had rejected both a fellowship and a marriage proposal. I was scheduled to return to the university in the fall, but on my own terms. Meanwhile, I had found a new home at Hull House, the famous settlement house on the west side of Chicago.

So it was on that fi ne spring morning in 1894 that I found myself in the town of Pullman, south of Chicago. There was the small matter of a disagreement between the owner of the Pullman Palace Car Company and the workers. The Civic Federation, a group of reformers who regularly supported progressive solutions to problems in the city, had decided to investigate the situation.

Frances McNamara

4

They invited my mentor, Jane Addams, to assist and she brought me along. It was exactly the type of action that made work at Hull House so much more satisfactory than the mere study of urban problems that was undertaken at the university. We did not plan to write a report. On the contrary, we wanted to recommend a fair and equitable solution. We wanted to reopen the doors of the factory and put the people back to work. But there was a rather good-looking young man who wanted to stop us. I didn’t think much of his chances.

“Really, Miss Addams, I cannot consent to this deviation from the plan. A very fi ne luncheon has been prepared for the committee and it is waiting. Please, join us inside.” Mr. William Jennings, a representative of the Pullman Company, stood ramrod straight in his dark suit with an enamel American fl ag pinned to the lapel. He had already taken us on a thorough tour of the Pullman factory that morning. We saw shops where they built the cars, repaired any problems, and decorated the interiors, down to the curtains in the windows. Our guide explained that once a Pullman car was completed, it was delivered to one of the country’s railroad lines, where it was hooked up to their existing stock. The palace cars were all passenger vehicles, and luxurious ones at that. They were owned and maintained by the Pullman Company and only leased to the various railroads.

Mr. Jennings was tall, with a military bearing, and I thought his height and broad shoulders must have given him an advantage over most adversaries. But the opponent he faced now was not impressed by his air of authority.

Jane Addams was petite beside him, looking up into his face. She was probably only a few years older than Mr. Jennings, but she was as immovable as a block of granite and as imperturbable as a brick wall. She had established her settlement house in the belief that “we can do no good cut off from the more than half of mankind that must struggle to survive” and I sometimes thought that Joan of Arc must have been very like her. She was

death at Pullman

5

determined to follow her path no matter what obstacles the world put in her way. Poor Mr. Jennings was really no match for her, but he didn’t know that yet.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Jennings, but Miss Cabot and I have an appointment with a Mr. MacGregor from the strike committee. We are very grateful for your information concerning the position of the company with regard to the strike. Now we would like to hear from the other side.”

The man’s face reddened perceptibly. “Miss Addams, I really cannot permit this. It is much too dangerous. I cannot ensure your safety in the circumstances and Mr. Pullman would never forgive me if you were to come to any harm. I really must insist.”

It was a standoff. Jane Addams completely ignored the man’s protests. She sailed through the low gate towards the street and I followed. The poor man appeared somewhat exasperated. After all, what could he do? Despite the fact that nearby there was a crowd of other men in suits, also wearing fl ags on their lapels, milling about, Mr. Jennings could hardly call on them to restrain us. He was at a distinct disadvantage. But, before the confl ict came to a head, Mr. Louis Safer, a prominent banker who was also from the Civic Federation, followed us out through the fence and turned back to the Pullman assistant manager.

“If that is your concern, I will accompany the ladies and see that they come to no harm.” He was a stout man in his sixties with a full white beard.

Jennings hesitated. I could see an angry red line on his neck above the stiff white collar but I doubted he would try to order the older man to stay. Instead, he tried to persuade him. “We have a very fi ne cook at the Florence, Mr. Safer. I’m sure you will regret missing her soup. You won’t get anything nearly as good from them, you know.”

The banker considered the young man from under bushy white eyebrows. “From what I hear, we will get very little, Mr. Jennings. The state of the food supply down here is one of the

Frances McNamara

6

situations we were sent to investigate. According to the papers, your people are near starvation. No, sir, I can afford to pass on your fi ne soup today.” He patted his bulging stomach. “Thank you kindly. We will rejoin you later. We know where the offi ce is.” He turned to us. “Come, ladies, let us fi nd our friends the workers.”

Mr. Jennings had no choice but to turn away smartly and lead the rest of the group up the stairs, across the wide veranda, and into the Florence Hotel, named for George Pullman’s favorite daughter. They followed him, a dozen or so other members of the Civic Federation, like sheep, I thought. But I got a whiff of roasted meat then and my empty stomach almost made me regret our parting.

When I volunteered to help Miss Addams with the investiga-tion, I had never before visited the famous factory town. When George Pullman erected his factory to build and service his railway cars, he had also constructed a whole town where his workers could live away from the dirt and crime of the working neighbor-hoods of the city. During the World’s Columbian Exposition the previous year, visitors from all over the world had taken a day from their sightseeing to travel to the model town and admire the many improvements in living conditions it offered. As we walked through the well-tended lawns and neat brick buildings I couldn’t help but be impressed with how favorably it all compared to the rickety wooden tenements of Chicago’s West Side. How much better off the children of our neighborhood would have been in such a well-kept place, I thought. Pullman was such an improve-ment over the living conditions in the slums and tenements that its failure was unthinkable. Yet conditions had led the workers to strike. It was hard to imagine how such good intentions could culminate in such a catastrophe. I wanted to know why they had. I was sure there was a way to correct the situation. Walking through the model town only made me more determined, for I admired the idea behind it even more after seeing it.

The three of us turned back to the view of the carefully tended

death at Pullman

7

greens and gardens facing the hotel. To our north the massive buildings of the factory stood empty. While we had toured there in the morning, the works were shuttered by the workers’ strike and management’s immediate response in the form of a lockout. In front of the works we could see the small artifi cial Lake Vista surrounded by a park. Now we turned to the east to head into the town itself. When we reached the main street, we were met by a smallish middle-aged man who swept off a woolen cap to greet us solemnly.

“Miss Addams? I am Ian MacGregor and I chair the griev-ance committee for the local chapters of the American Railway Union. I am also president of Local 210. There are nineteen locals represented in Pullman. And on behalf of all of them I want to thank you for agreeing to meet with us.”

I was very curious to meet this man since he was the fi rst person from the railroad union who had ever contacted us. He was a very solid little man who seemed planted wherever he stood. Balding, with a lined face and dark, leathery skin, he had stringy muscles that stood out well defi ned in his neck and forearms. I knew he was a skilled metalworker responsible for a team of men who worked on building the structures of the Pullman cars. He spoke slowly with frequent halts, as if to meditate before committing his thoughts to complete sentences. A cautious and conscientious man, he was as far from the popular image of a fi ery union agitator as could be imagined.

Miss Addams introduced me and Mr. Safer, then Mr. MacGregor gravely asked us to follow him to his home. He walked slowly, answering questions from Miss Addams about the town. Mr. Safer and I walked behind, as Mr. MacGregor explained that the larger houses facing the tree-lined street were rented to the company offi cers and that the very large building to our right, beyond a little park, was the Arcade containing shops, a bank, and the library. It was a very stratifi ed society, with the managers in the north and the houses becoming smaller and meaner as you

Frances McNamara

8

travelled south. Still, the lawns and buildings were trim and well maintained. It refl ected an ordered society where people could live in very pleasant surroundings even if only the wealthier members could afford the fees to use the library or attend the little theater. At least they would have something to aspire to. I admired the physical beauty of the place. How could people not do better than in the dirty city by living in this place? I could see how—with a little moderation and compromise—this could be the best place in the world. The very attractiveness of the town made me determined, right there and then, that the problem of this strike must be resolved quickly. I knew from experience that this was just the sort of thing that Hull House reformers could help to accomplish. And, with the hubris of the inexperienced, I convinced myself that our object would be easily accomplished. It seemed so obvious.

Mr. MacGregor was responding to our admiration of a fi ne big church constructed of a curious green stone as we turned a corner to head east. “Aye, it’s a fi ne building, but it went unused for some years as the rent was too high.”

“Good lord, Pullman charges high rents for the Lord’s house?” Mr. Safer was scandalized.

Mr. MacGregor stopped, as was his way, and considered the structure across the street as he prepared a further statement. “The Presbyterians eventually rented it. For I believe they bargained down the price. But it’s closed now for the time being.”

“Closed?” Jane Addams was surprised. “Surely in times of trouble the congregation seeks solace in prayer?”

Mr. MacGregor spent a further moment preparing his response. “The Reverend Oggel spoke against the strike from the pulpit. People were not favorably impressed. Soon after that, the Reverend left on vacation. There’s no news on when he plans to return.” We stopped for a moment, Miss Addams shaking her head and Mr. Safer raising a hairy eyebrow at this information. But MacGregor merely turned and led us on to the next corner. I knew

death at Pullman

9

Miss Addams would be appalled by the clergyman’s desertion of his fl ock in their time of need, so I expected her to comment on that, but she was the one who turned the conversation down an entirely different route with her next question.

“The company provides a hospital, doesn’t it?”This caused Mr. MacGregor to halt again to consider his

response. Finally, it came. “Aye. But it’s not easy to get to see the doctor. It’s there for the company. So when a man is hurt he goes, and before the doctor will see him he must talk to the lawyer. The lawyer has a paper with a design of the human body and he notes on it where the man is injured and then the man must sign a paper, you see, before the doctor will see him. But it is closed now because of the lockout, you see. And we’ve no medical care for the moment.”

I heard Miss Addams cluck with annoyance at that, but she walked along, listening as our guide led us down the street, point-ing out the Market Hall where all of the meat and vegetables—raised on the Pullman Company farm three miles south—were sold. It was called “Sewage Farm” because waste collected from the homes was turned into fertilizer at a company plant and used to fertilize the fi elds. Mr. MacGregor reported that prices were higher than in the neighboring town of Kensington. But I was impressed that the market was such a very clean and attractive place. Modern dwellings with open arches over the sidewalks formed a circle around the hall. North, to our left, we could look up a tree-lined street to the main gate and clock tower of the factory. It was a great improvement over the views we had left behind in the neighborhood of Hull House. It made me wonder why in the world would workers lucky enough to live here ever want to strike. I kept my thoughts to myself, however. Presumably that was the question we were here to investigate.

After we all had admired the view, Mr. MacGregor led us south again, to an area where the housing was less impressive, but still well kept. They were small row houses in yellow brick.

Frances McNamara

10

Two blocks down, a quiet crowd of men stood in front of what turned out to be Mr. MacGregor’s doorstep. They were quiet because they were being harangued by an Amazon of a woman with red hair, who was wearing a dress of midnight blue taffeta. Her back was to us.

FRancesMcNamara

Praise for Frances McNamara’s previous novel, Death at Pullman

“McNamara’s suspenseful third Emily Cabot mystery…convincingly recreates a pivotal moment in American labor history. . . Laurie King and Rhys Bowen fans will be delighted.” —Publishers Weekly

In this novel a “little romance [and] a lot of labor history are artfully combined. . . Creating a believable mix of historical and fi ctional characters …is another of the author’s prime strengths as a writer…[she] clearly knows, and loves, her setting.” —Julie Eakin, ForeWord Reviews

“The combination of labor unrest, rivalries among local families, and past romantic intrigues is a combustible mix, an edgy scenario that is laid out convincingly…A suspenseful recreation of a critical moment in American social history, as seen from the viewpoint of a strong-willed, engaging fi ctional heroine.” —Reading the Past

Frances McNamara grew up in Boston, where her father served as Police Commissioner for ten years. She has degrees from Mount Holyoke and Simmons Colleges, and is now a librarian at the University of Chicago. She is working on the fi fth book in the Emily Cabot Mysteries series, Death at Chinatown. When not working or writing she can be found sailing on Lake Michigan.

FICTIONMystery & Detective

Historical

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Exhausted after the tumult of the Pullman Strike of 1894, Emily Cabot is looking forward to a restful summer visit to Cape Cod. She has plans to collect “beasties” for the Marine Biological Laboratory, alongside other visiting scientists from the University of Chicago. She also hopes to enjoy romantic clambakes with Dr. Stephen Chapman, although they must keep an important secret from their friends. But her summer takes a dramatic turn when she fi nds a dead man fl oating in a fi sh tank. In order to solve his murder she must fi rst deal with dueling scientists, a testy local sheriff, the theft of a fortune, and uncooperative weather. This fourth book in the Emily Cabot Mysteries series will continue to delight history buffs and mystery lovers alike.

death atwoods HoleAn Emily Cabot Mystery

DEATHAT

Woods hole

Frances McNamara

ALLIUM PRESS OF cHICAGO

Allium Press of ChicagoForest Park, IL

www.alliumpress.com

This is a work of fi ction. Descriptions and portrayals of real people, events, organizations, or establishments are intended to provide background for the story and are used fi ctitiously. Other characters and situations are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not intended to be real.

© 2012 by Frances McNamaraAll rights reserved

Book/cover design and maps by E. C. VictorsonFront cover images:

(top) Diagram of sea urchin, Popular Science Monthly, August 1881(bottom) Marine Biological Laboratory class collecting specimens, 1895

Photographer: Baldwin Coolidgecourtesy of The Marine Biological Laboratory Archives

Title page image: Clam shell, Popular Science Monthly, November 1896

Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data(Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

McNamara, Frances. Death at Woods Hole / Frances McNamara.

p. : ill., map ; cm. -- (An Emily Cabot mystery)

ISBN: 978-0-9831938-3-8 (trade paperback)

1. Marine Biological Laboratory (Woods Hole, Mass.)--History--19th century--Fiction. 2. Women scientists--Massachusetts--Woods Hole--19th century--Fiction. 3. University of Chicago--Graduate students--19th century--Fiction. 4. Woods Hole (Mass.)--History--19th century--Fiction. 5. Mystery fi ction. 6. Historical fi ction. I. Title. II. Series: McNamara, Frances. Emily Cabot mysteries.

PS3613.C58583 D438 2012813/.6 2012938968

death at woods hole

1

ONE

I couldn’t leave that man in the stone tank with all those squid—even if it spoiled everything. And it did spoil everything. It was the start of what should have been a beautiful day. The

sky over the harbor at Woods Hole was just beginning to lighten. It made me remember the fi sherman who glided up to the dock the night before, while Stephen and I sat holding hands and watching a fi ery sunset. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” he told us with a grin as he slid by.

I sighed at the memory. Through the wide open door to the tank room I could see the moored boats fl oating on the harbor. I could just hear the lapping of the water against stones down the hill from the laboratory. The tangy smell of salt barely tainted the air here. Just enough so that you knew you were at the seashore, not inland. It was not the strong smell of fi sh you breathed down on the rocks. But it was damp and chilly here among the stone tanks. There were six of them, large tanks, eight by ten feet each. The man was in the fi rst one nearest the door. He was white and bloated, eyes open, bulging even. Small minnows swam by his face without stopping. He was no more than a coral reef to them. The line from Shakespeare, “those are pearls that were his eyes,” ran through my mind. There was no question of helping him. He was dead, very dead.

I had to force myself to look again. A squid crawled onto his chest and into the breast pocket of his gray suit. He was dressed in the same gray suit, white shirt, and tie that he always wore. I knew him. He was Lincoln McElroy. Perhaps if he had been a

Frances McNamara

2

better, more sympathetic person in life I would have felt more for him now, seeing his puffy face and thinning yellow hair fl oating in the tank. But he hadn’t been a good person in life and, in death, he was just as obnoxious and unpleasant as he had been before.

“Emily, what are you doing here?”I jumped at the voice. “Clara, you scared me.”She was tall, stately, a handsome young woman with dark hair

swept up and away from her face. I couldn’t help but envy that, as I was smaller and paler with mousy brown hair that frizzled up in the humidity of Cape Cod. Seen beside my best friend and classmate’s high cheekbones and delicate nose, my oval face was plain. I thought of that now as I saw my features refl ected in the water of the tank. Putting up a hand to button my blouse, I wondered what she was doing here. What were either of us doing here, when we should have still been asleep in the Snow Goose Inn, along with the other women scholars? When I left her there hours before, she was asleep, I thought, in her room on the second fl oor. Now she was stepping up to the tank. She looked down. I heard a sharp intake of breath. “It’s Mr. McElroy. Oh, no.”

I shook myself. Pulling away from my refl ection in the water, which hovered like glass over the corpse, I hurried to her side. She stared down with horror and I felt her tremble as I put an arm around her. I shivered myself, but there was no time for sentiment. Taking her by the shoulders, I forced her to look at me.

“Clara, listen. He’s dead. There’s nothing we can do for him now, but we need to get someone to help us get him out of there.” She looked at me with a troubled expression. I shook her. “Listen to me. You and I just got up…early, and we were going for a walk. We came through here and we found him. All right? Clara, do you hear me? Do you understand?”

She pulled her gaze away from the body and looked at me again. “Yes. I was…I was just…” I realized she wanted to explain where she had been, but there was no time for that.

“Not now. We can discuss it later. It’s irrelevant. We should

death at woods hole

3

just say we were going for a walk. I need to go and get Professor Whitman or maybe Sinclair Bickford. You stay here.” Charles Otis Whitman was the head of the Marine Biological Laboratory. He was an eminent professor from the University of Chicago, which made me hesitant about approaching him. Sinclair Bickford, his graduate assistant, was more of a contemporary. Besides, he was courting our friend Louisa Reynolds back in Chicago, and Clara was working in his laboratory that summer.

I started to move away, but Clara grasped my arm. “No. I’ll go. I’ll fi nd him.” She seemed just a little panicked. It was not like her, but then this was the fi rst time we’d found a corpse together. I thought perhaps she didn’t want to be left alone with him.

“All right, I’ll stay here. But, Clara, do what I said. Just tell him we were out for a walk. An early walk.”

“Yes, yes.” She hurried away with one fi nal worried look over her shoulder.

The water of the harbor was serene with just a light early morning wind. I heard sea gulls crying. What a horrible way to die. The large building had been part of a guano factory that produced fertilizer until it went bankrupt. Ships brought cargo to the dock just down the hill and the large stone tanks had been part of the manufacturing process. The harbor was quiet now, with only the tinkling of metal halyards from the masts of several pleasure sloops and the two schooners used for hunting specimens for the laboratory. I remembered there was an outing planned for the afternoon, which I’d been looking forward to. Stephen had promised me that he would leave his laboratory and join me.

The crunch of footsteps on the gravel path told me I would no longer be alone with the poor departed Mr. McElroy.

“Miss Cabot, dear me. Miss Shea found me on the way to the Mess. I cannot believe such an unfortunate thing could occur. Where? Oh, my yes, I see. Doctor, if you would help me, we cannot leave him there. How can this have happened? Luckily we ran into Dr. Chapman as we came up the hill.”

Frances McNamara

4

There was a messy struggle to get poor Mr. McElroy out of the tank. Stephen carefully felt the man’s head and tipped him up. Obviously the body was stiff and did not want to bend. The short Professor Whitman, with his carefully groomed white hair and pointed white beard, attempted to grab the dead man’s feet but had trouble getting ahold of them. I rushed to help him. We made a comical group trying to lever up the sodden corpse and barely held on to the slippery body as we transferred him to the canvas sheet Clara had sensibly spread out on the cold cement fl oor.

“How unfortunate.” The professor wheezed a bit, bending over to get his breath. “He is quite dead, Dr. Chapman?”

Stephen knelt by the body, shaking his head with regret. “For quite some time. That’s why he’s so stiff.”

“Most unfortunate.” The professor straightened up. “I cannot imagine how it happened.” He looked around. The tanks were laid out in regular rows down the length of the large, cool room. They came to just above the knees. How could someone stumble into one? And if he did, why wouldn’t he just sit up? There were only a couple of feet of water in the tank. “Did he drown, Doctor?”

Stephen was examining the man’s face. “I can’t tell without dissection. Emily, come here, just help me turn him.” His shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and his shirt unbuttoned at the top. I helped him turn the man onto his side and felt Stephen’s hand reassuringly over mine. My heart was beating fast, but that calmed me. He looked up at the professor. “Not as much water coming out of his mouth as I might expect. There are other anomalies…” He contemplated the body, poking it here and there. Then we set McElroy on his back again. I was dripping as Stephen helped me to my feet. He squeezed my shoulder before letting me go and I felt his breath on my cheek, tempting me.

“Doctor, if I might ask you to remain, I will take the ladies to the Mess and telephone for the local authorities. This is most unfortunate.” Despite his learning, the eminent scientist was at a loss for adjectives to describe this disturbing event. No one had

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5

found a dead body in a specimen tank before and it was at odds with all of the work done here.

The professor squired us down the hill to the wooden structure that housed the common dining room used by all the scholars and staff of the Marine Biological Laboratory. A few early risers were inside and I could smell bacon frying. My stomach was not ready for it, so I dropped down on one of the painted wooden rocking chairs that sat on the deep veranda overlooking the harbor. Clara took the one beside me. The professor hurried inside and I turned to my friend, only to fi nd her trembling, as if overtaken by great emotion. She gripped the arms of her chair and rocked convulsively. Her shoulders shook silently, as if she were fi ghting to keep back sobs.

“Good lord, Clara,” I burst out. “Whatever was Lincoln McElroy to you?”

Chicago in 1900 is bursting with opportunity, and Kitty Coakley is determined to make the most of it. The youngest of seven children born to Irish immigrants, she has little interest in becoming simply a housewife. Inspired by her entrepreneurial Aunt Mabel, who runs a millinery boutique at Marshall Field’s, Kitty aspires to become an independent, modern woman. After her music teacher dashes her hopes of becoming a professional singer, she refuses to give up her dreams of a career. But when she is courted by not one, but two young men, her resolve is tested. Irish-Catholic Brian is familiar and has the approval of her traditional, working-class family. But wealthy, Protestant Henry, who is a young architect in Daniel Burnham’s offi ce, provides an entrée for Kitty into another, more exciting world. Will she sacrifi ce her ambitions and choose a life with one of these men?

Beautiful Dreamer was a semi-fi nalist in the 2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest and received the following review from Publishers Weekly:

“A delightful coming-of-age story about a young Irish woman fi nding her way in Chicago in 1900. . . . Wonderfully descriptive settings fi rmly place the book in turn-of-the-century Chicago and New Orleans, where Kitty must choose between a comfortable, pre-approved path, or what her heart really desires.”

Joan Naper is a proud fi fth-generation Chicagoan who is endlessly fascinated by the history and possibility that can be found in her beloved hometown. After years working as a speechwriter and editor, today she is the research communications director at a major university. This is her fi rst novel.

Photo: K. Mandell

$14.99 USFICTION/HISTORICAL

Allium Press of Chicago www.alliumpress.com

This is a work of fiction. Descriptions and portrayals of real people, events, organizations, or establishments are intended to provide background for the story and are used fictitiously. Other characters and situations are drawn from the author’s

imagination and are not intended to be real.

© 2009 by Joan Naper All rights reserved

Revised edition by Allium Press, 2010 Originally published via Booksurge, 2009

Book and cover design by E. C. Victorson

Cover image: from author’s private collection Cover background: detail of Rookery Building façade

Title page image: women shoppers in front of Marshall Field’s, Chicago, circa 1905; DN-0002553;

Courtesy of Chicago History Museum

ISBN: 978-0-9840676-4-0

Beautiful Dreamer

1

Christmas Day, 1899

hristmas morning, Kitty pulled back the plaid curtain and rubbed her hand against the kitchen window to clear a spot to view the steady fall of snow. All was white: the sky, the streets,

even the cottages across the street could hardly be seen, covered as they were in deep, fluffy snow that erased all the dirt, soot, and smoke that usually spoiled the view. She shivered in the steamy heat of the kitchen that misted the window again immediately after she had cleared it. The air was filled with the scent of roast turkey, potatoes and cabbage, cooking in preparation for the Christmas dinner she and her mother would serve at two. She wondered if the snow would prevent her aunt and uncle from joining the rest of the family for Christmas.

The warm kitchen was quiet except for the bubble of the saucepan on the stove and occasional crackling from the oven. Her father and the boys must still be asleep upstairs, it was never this quiet when the boys were up and about. Her mother, sitting in her own world in a corner of the parlor, was folding napkins as carefully as if they were to be offered to nobility, not her own boisterous family members. Kitty’s sister Margaret, who lived down the street with baby Sean and husband Kevin O’Connor, would arrive just before the meal was served, as usual, so Margaret could sit at the table like a guest and not be running in and out of the kitchen with her face red from the heat and her hair all falling down with the hustling. That role fell to Kitty, the dutiful younger daughter, not yet married with a husband and child of her own. Kitty picked up her cup of tea from the table and sat down in front of the open hearth, placing her slippered feet on the fireguard in

C

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her favorite position. She stared at the flames, wondering if she were destined to be an old maid, living in her parents’ house forever, taking care of them in their old age, being aunt to Margaret’s children and any children her brothers might have, should they ever get off their arses and actually marry the neighborhood girls they pretended not to see while they watched them so wishfully. Or maybe she would marry one of the neighborhood boys and settle down to live near her parents, as Margaret had. She picked up the poker from beside the fireplace and stabbed at the logs, creating a rising shower of sparks.

Kitty’s reverie was broken by her mother’s return into the kitchen, her face reddened with the heat of the house. The two of them worked together pulling plates and cutlery out of the cabinets and piling them in their arms and aprons to bring them into the parlor. The parlor itself wore a festive air, with boughs of ivy draped across the mantelpiece and pinned up around the doorways. A thick bunch of mistletoe wrapped with red ribbon hung from the central gas fixture in the middle of the parlor ceiling. Their voices must have awakened Mr. Coakley, because he came down the narrow stairway in his stocking feet, looping a suspender over one shoulder.

Michael Coakley stretched and yawned and then beamed at his wife and daughter. “Christmas Day it ’tis, my dears and here you are slaving away to make a feast for the rest of us. And just where are those lazy layabouts, not yet out of their warm beds?” He turned and called up the stairs: “Michael, Patrick, John, William, Daniel. Up and about, you lazy lumps. It’s a merry Christmas we’re planning to have, with you or without you. So move your sorry carcasses down here straightaway.”

Silence above, and then the slap of bare feet on the wooden floorboards, dresser drawers pulled out, a shout or two, and then one by one the boys appeared, tumbling down the stairs. Such a rousing call from their father was not to be ignored, even though all five of them were adults, in age anyway, ranging from Michael, the oldest boy, at twenty-eight, to Daniel, the youngest at twenty-two. Margaret, aged thirty, and Kitty at age twenty were the engine and the caboose, Mr. Coakley liked to say, the oldest and the youngest with the train of boys

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in between. To those who didn’t know them, the five Coakley boys were variations on the same Irish theme: freckled, red-haired and willing to fight. But Kitty had lived her whole life with them, and couldn’t imagine how someone could mistake one for another.

Daniel, the brother she was closest to, was quiet and thoughtful, sneaky too, sometimes. She thought he was the best-looking of them all, his occasional freckles more like beauty marks on his smooth, warm-looking skin.

William, next up in age, was the scholar, the only one she might see with his nose in a book, even though, like the others, he had barely finished at the parish high school and used his back more than his brain in the work he did.

John was the smallest of the five and the one with the most freckles and the least hair. He had a temper and a smart mouth, and would fight a man twice his size.

Long and lanky Patrick lacked the temper, but was always willing to help John take on any man who bothered him.

Michael, usually called Mick or Mickey to differentiate him from his father, was the biggest of the brothers and had the worst temper of them all. His little sister Kitty, though, had learned early on just how to get his attention and he had adored her since she was born, which annoyed their older sister Margaret. Kitty sometimes thought his love for her had been born out of his need to put his big sister Margaret in her place, but she never complained about his obvious devotion.

The five brothers all worked the warmer months on the ore boats that sailed the Great Lakes. It paid well and didn’t require any education or connections, like so many jobs in the city did.

Daniel came over and hugged his mother. “Merry Christmas, Ma. It smells like a feast in here.” The other boys followed his example, mumbling and running their fingers through the red curly hair they all sported, and then flopping down on the sofa in front of the parlor fire. Other than Daniel, whose cheeks blazed as if reflecting the flames, the boys looked much the worse for wear, as Mr. Coakley asked, “And what time was it that you boys tumbled in? The crack of dawn?”

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“Is that what cracked?” John muttered. Mick dug his elbow into John’s side.

Mr. Coakley looked stern and said, “I asked you what time you came in.”

Daniel replied, “We were all there at the five o’clock Mass this morning. All five of us.”

“Bah, the drunkard’s Mass,” Mr. Coakley said. “And I suppose you can remember the sermon?”

Daniel looked at the others before he answered his father. “It was the birth of Jesus, of course it was. And what else would you expect on Christmas morning?” His four brothers nodded seriously, as if to say they supported Daniel’s interpretation.

Mickey rubbed his face with his hand and said to his sister, “We could have used your lovely voice last night, little Kitty. Who knows how much more money we could have pulled in if our caroling had actually pleased the crowd.”

“And here I thought we were making even more money with the gentry paying us to go away,” said John.

“So it was out caroling, you boys were?” Mrs. Coakley asked, a worried look on her face. “With all that snow coming down so fiercely?

John said proudly, “We made a pot of money last night. Might have been the snow that made our voices sound reasonable.”

“And we warmed up from time to time in a comfortable place,” Patrick added.

Mr. Coakley said, “I hope it wasn’t the bars you were frequenting last night on Christmas Eve.” He had taken the pledge as a youth back in County Cork, after his own father had fallen off a roof he was patching because he was drunk, and died in the yard in front of him. He hadn’t had an alcoholic drink since then, more than thirty years before.

“A lad has to come in out of the snow,” said John. Mrs. Coakley asked the boys to move the chairs into the parlor and

set up the table where they would eat. The boys, joking and pushing one another, put together a large table from four sawhorses and a long

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5

wide board that were kept in the shed out back. When it was covered with Mrs. Coakley’s best Irish linen tablecloth that she had stayed up late to iron, the makeshift table could hardly be distinguished from ready made. Except, as Kitty found when she came to set the plates upon it, it wobbled dangerously when she knocked against it.

After setting the table, Kitty retreated to the small room behind the kitchen that was her very own, and pulled out the red dress she had worn at Midnight Mass the night before. She loved wearing it—the bright red showed off her dark hair and the glow of her blue eyes and red lips against her white skin. She checked herself in the mirror that rested on top of her dresser, lifting her hair up to see how that would look and then letting it fall. Why bother putting it up if I’ll be in the kitchen all afternoon? she thought. And besides, it’s just family. She roughly tugged her hair back and tied a red ribbon around her head to keep it off her face.

“Katherine,” her mother called from the kitchen. “Come help me with the potatoes.”

When her mother called her Katherine, Kitty knew there was no stalling or arguing. She gave the mirror one last look, bit her lips to redden them even more, and joined her mother in the kitchen. She pulled an apron from the drying rack beside the fireplace and tied it around her red dress. Then she and her mother together drained the heavy pots that held the cabbage and the potatoes that they would mix together for colcannon, the family favorite.

“And we mustn’t forget the trinkets,” said Mrs. Coakley, opening a drawer in the kitchen sideboard and pulling out a small cloth bag. She poured them out on the table: a small gold ring, a silver dime, a thimble, and a button.

“Oh, Mama, really, that silly superstition,” Kitty said. “And besides, I thought we did that at Halloween.”

“Shush, girl. Remember the boys were off on the boats in Lake Superior then and we didn’t have a proper colcannon. What’s it to you, miss, if you don’t believe in it anyway?”

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Kitty shook her head and turned away. How could she admit to her mother that she feared getting the tiny thimble that would predict spinsterhood for her? Or even the gold ring, which foretold marriage within the year, what with no beaux lining up for her at the front door. She didn’t want the others to laugh at her. Besides, nothing she ever said had ever deflected her mother’s behavior, once she had gotten it into her head to do something.

“Come along, Kitty. It’s a harmless thing, it is,” her mother said, her nimble fingers dusting off each token. “And we can make sure you don’t get one at all, at all, if that’s what you want.”

“That’s all right, Mama,” Kitty said. “I’d prefer to find nothing in my colcannon. Except my fork, of course.”

“Of course. Now why don’t you go and light the candles for the Baby Jesus? ’Tis probably as dark as it will be getting, with all that snow falling down.”

“Actually, the snow seems to have stopped itself, I do believe,” Mr. Coakley called in from the parlor, where he had stationed himself near the window to watch the weather. “Is that the sun itself that’s coming out?”

Kitty rushed to her father’s side to peer out the front window. The snow had stopped falling and the way the sun hit the heaps of snow made them glow as if a magic spell had been cast upon them. “You’d never see snow like this in County Cork,” Mr. Coakley said. “No, not ever. Just a mean cold rain, that’s all we’d get for Christmas.”

“Ah well, then,” Kitty said. “You know they always say that the streets of America are paved with gold.”

Her father laughed. “We’ll be sending the boys out to shovel soon. Perhaps for them the gold will be forthcoming. Once they put their strong backs into it.”

Kitty lit the white candles she and her mother had set in the windows to light the Baby Jesus on His way. And just as she was blowing out the taper, she could hear the kitchen door opening and Margaret, Kevin, and Sean O’Connor trooping in, boisterous and

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happy. Kitty’s parents immediately began to fuss and coo over their only grandson.

Margaret entered the parlor, fluffing out her hair, and leaned over to give her sister a kiss. “Happy Christmas, our Kitty. And what a pretty dress! Is that the same one you wore last Christmas?”

Kitty laughed. Margaret was so predictable—she never offered a compliment that wasn’t wrapped around a little dig. “No, it’s new for this Christmas, it is. And didn’t you see me wearing it—singing at Father Egan’s Mass at midnight?” she asked, knowing full well that Margaret and her family had not appeared, even though she had said they would try.

“Well, that explains the bit of incense I smelled when I came into the room,” Margaret said, hanging her long dark blue cloak on the stand next to the front door. She ran her hand over the cloak, smoothing it. “And did you see the fine wool cloak my Kevin bought me for Christmas, Kitty? He bought it at Marshall Field’s, he did, although it cost a packet.” Kevin O’Connor had started as a junior bank clerk when he was not yet twenty and had risen slowly to more authority in the fifteen years since. Kitty believed that money was all he and Margaret ever talked about, so keen he seemed on it and what it could buy. Kevin gave Kitty an affectionate kiss on the cheek when he entered the parlor. And he was by far the best-dressed man in the room, in his sleek black suit, white shirt and bright red tie, no contest with Kitty’s brothers who appeared one by one, wearing collarless shirts with no ties and corduroy trousers. Only Mr. Coakley himself sported a dark green tie, but he remained in his shirtsleeves, his red suspenders adding a note of holiday cheer to his outfit.

Mrs. Coakley entered the parlor, removing her apron and folding it carefully. “All right, my dears, I do believe we’re ready to serve. Kitty, come into the kitchen and help me now. And Margaret . . .”

“That’s all right, Mama. I must see to our Sean,” Margaret said, seated already in the chair to the right of the head of the table, her three-year-old son wriggling on her lap.

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Mrs. Coakley hesitated, then shrugged her shoulders and accompanied Kitty into the kitchen.

“But what about Aunt Mabel and Uncle Patrick?” Kitty asked anxiously. “Shouldn’t we wait for them before we serve?”

“No sense in waiting for them when the food is hot,” Mrs. Coakley said. “Mabel said not to wait, anyways, she was concerned that they might not be able to make it on time, so she said not to delay our dinner. Implying of course that civilized people have their Christmas dinner much later in the day, God save them, and don’t sit down at the table until the sun goes down. Hmmph. Them with servants don’t give a care about what time the servants are finished for the day. When you’re doing it all yourself, of course, that’s a different matter. Not that your Aunt Mabel would understand that.”

Kitty didn’t quite understand it herself. Why did her mother get up so early to start cooking on Christmas Day, when she’d been out so late at Midnight Mass? And stayed up even later to iron the tablecloth? Why not sleep in and take it easy on Christmas morning, and save the big meal for late in the day, when everyone was awake and hungry? But her mother had always done it this way, as her own mother probably had done back in Ireland, and there was no changing her mind now.

Kitty was disappointed. Without Mabel and Patrick the meal would be no more than a family dinner, not a festive occasion. With the same squabbling between the brothers, their rude table manners and half-hearted rebukes from their parents, and Margaret’s posturing about their rising status and wealth. It always seemed that her aunt and uncle—especially her aunt—added a touch of civility when they joined the wild pig-in-the-parlor Coakleys. Kitty sometimes wished that she were an only child, the only child of Aunt Mabel and Uncle Patrick. Their lace-curtain life would be much more pleasant, or at least much quieter. And she wouldn’t have the Coakley reputation to live down.

Finally, they were all seated at the table, with Mr. Coakley at its head, carving the roast turkey, the hungry eyes of all upon him. As soon as he put down the carving knife, Mrs. Coakley called out, “Grace now, before we serve.” And she made the sign of the cross and

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bowed her head. “Thank you, Lord, for that which we are about to receive. And bless all of us gathered here, as well as those who are not able to join us.”

Kitty thought she saw a satisfied smile quickly cross her mother’s lips as she spoke the last sentence, or she could have just been imagining it.

Just as everyone chimed in, “Amen,” and made the sign of the cross to end the prayer, the front door opened and in came Aunt Mabel and Uncle Patrick, blown in on a rushing gust of cold air. “Merry Christmas, everyone,” Aunt Mabel said, her arms filled with gifts, wearing an amazing hat structured of velvet and feathers firmly tethered to her pompadour.

“Happy Christmas to all of yez,” said Uncle Patrick, tall, broad and big-shouldered, his face as red as a roast ham, looking like the policeman he was, even dressed in his Sunday best.

“Sit, sit,” said Mr. Coakley, rising to take their heavy wraps. “Here, Kitty, lay these across the bed in your room.”

When all were settled at the table, with Aunt Mabel next to Kitty on the side nearest to the kitchen, and her husband next to her, Mr. Coakley began piling slices of turkey on the plates stacked next to him. He passed these to his wife on his left, who spooned out great steaming piles of colcannon. Kitty watched her mother portioning the fried potato and cabbage dish, looking for telltale signs of the fortune-telling trinkets, but could see no indication, either in the lumps of potatoes or in her mother’s eyes, of what was hidden inside.

While the plates were passed around, Mr. Coakley asked his brother about the world outside—how much snow had fallen and whether he thought it would paralyze Chicago in the days to come. Uncle Patrick regaled them with stories of how the snowfall had affected the citizenry he had seen that morning, with overturned carriages, bones broken in falls, and small boys pelting their neighbors with snowballs. He had them all laughing so that when Kitty put a forkful of colcannon in her mouth and bit down on something, she didn’t immediately recognize what it was, thinking instead that

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somehow one of her teeth had fallen out. Then she realized what it was and looked accusingly at her mother, whose rapt attention was fixed on the face of her grandson across the table.

Then Daniel whooped, “I’ve got the dime, I’ve got the dime. It’s the life of wealth for me!” His brothers cheered and slapped him on the back. Of all the five brothers, Daniel was the most likely to hold onto his money. The others said he’d pinch a penny until it squealed like a pig being butchered in the Chicago stockyards.

“So you’ll be the one we’ll be borrowing from,” said John. “Just you try and get it, brother,” said Daniel. “You don’t get

wealthy by giving it away.” “What’s this in my mouth?” said Mickey, spitting it out onto the

table. “It’s that blasted ring.” “Now, Mickey, watch your language at the table,” his mother

chided. She might have also mentioned how rude it was to spit out food,

especially at the table, Kitty thought, wiping her mouth with her napkin in such a way as to move the trinket from her mouth to her hand.

“Somebody call Peggy O’Neill,” cried John. “She’d best be planning the wedding.”

Mickey grinned and rubbed his face with his hand. “Aw, get off my back about the girl. She’d never be looking at the likes of me.”

“Time you made an honest woman of her, Mick,” said Patrick. “And haven’t you been after her since you walked up the aisle behind her at your first holy communion?”

Mickey blushed, but said no more. With all the attention focused on Mickey, Kitty opened her hand

underneath the table and examined the trinket she had found in her mouth—the thimble, sure sign of spinsterhood. She clenched it in her fist, wondering if she could just drop it on the floor or into her shoe and pretend she never received it, when she heard her aunt’s soft voice.

“Here, give it to me,” Aunt Mabel whispered, placing her hand on Kitty’s beneath the table. Kitty gladly relinquished the thimble and sat

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back while her aunt cried out, “The thimble, the thimble. So it’s to be spinsterhood for me.” She held up the thimble for all to see.

Her husband put his arm around her and kissed her. “I do believe I saved you from that,” he said.

“Yes, but there’s no shame to it,” Mabel said, patting his big red hand contentedly. “A woman doesn’t have to be married to have a good life.”

Kitty happened to glance at her mother’s face when Mabel made this proclamation. Mrs. Coakley curled her lip in contempt, whether for Mabel or for what she said, Kitty wasn’t sure.

Then little Sean cried out, “The b’on, the b’on,” and pulled from his mouth the small round button that signified a life of bachelorhood ahead. Everyone laughed and applauded the small boy, congratulating him on his good fortune.

“Perhaps by the time he’s thirty, he’ll have changed his mind,” his grandfather said knowingly.

“Or maybe he’ll be a priest,” said his grandmother, her eyes shining. “A man of the cloth in our very own family.” Groans came from the boys, but no one claimed a different future for the youngest member of the family, especially not Margaret, who had taken Sean onto her lap, cuddling him. She seemed to be taken with the idea herself.

“So Margaret, you ready to send your boy off to the service of the Lord?” asked Mickey.

“It’s a bit early, isn’t it?” said Margaret, brushing Sean’s hair softly and kissing his head. “He’s only three years old.”

John, sitting next to Kitty at the far end of the table, turned halfway to her and whispered, “I saw you get that trinket, Kitty. What’s the matter, too proud are you? So you let Aunt Mabel take the rap for you, didn’t you? Hiding behind her skirts again?”

“What’s it to you, Johnny?” Kitty answered. “It’s a stupid tradition anyhow.” And she turned her attention back to her plate.

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“Feel how hot these potatoes are, Kitty,” John said, looming over her. He put his freckled hand with its broken nails over the steaming mound of colcannon on her plate.

Fork in hand as if she were about to stab him, Kitty said, “As if I’m about to fall for that one, John Coakley.”

John’s hand darted out and grabbed Kitty’s free hand, turning it so it landed in the pile of potatoes. She struggled in his grasp as he smashed her hand in the food to cover it fully with the mixture of cabbage and potatoes.

Her lips pressed firmly together, Kitty wriggled and wrenched her hand from her brother’s grip, collecting a handful of potatoes as she did. “Let’s see what you think about the temperature of these potatoes, boyo,” she said, swiping the steaming white mass across John’s face.

John pulled back, gasping at his little sister’s audacity. “Miss Katherine Coakley,” said her mother from the other end of

the table. “You apologize to your brother right now, you little minx. Such behavior. And on Christmas Day, the birthday of our Baby Jesus himself. You can just clean up the mess you’ve made, miss.”

“I will not,” said Kitty, standing up and stamping her foot. “Johnny started it.” She turned, pushing against the table, which began to tip to one side and slide off the sawhorses. Sean’s glass of milk spilled into his lap and onto his mother’s skirt. Margaret dabbed at it with a linen napkin. Mickey and Uncle Patrick jumped up and seized the board beneath the tablecloth, steadying it to quiet the rattling of the dishes. Mr. Coakley stood, his mouth open to scold his children as Kitty ran past him through the steamy kitchen and out the back door into the snow.

Although it was just mid-afternoon, it was dark outside and the air was still. The gas lamps hadn’t yet been lit, and snow clouds crowded the sky, their dark undersides promising more snow to come. There was no traffic on Adams Street, an unusual sight, its thin coverlet of snow still white and fresh and inviting, unstained as yet by the encroachment of manure and mud. Kitty walked down the block to the corner of Desplaines and sat on the cold stone steps of St. Patrick’s,

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looking east. The lyrics of one of the carols she had sung the night before came into her head, “How still we see thee lie.”

So unlike the little town of Bethlehem, Chicago’s downtown lay spread before her, encircled by the iron band of the Loop, the rails of the elevated train. Although much stiller than usual because of the holiday, the tiny trains ran, shorter and slower than on a weekday, and the ever-present roar of traffic muffled by the west wind still rang out. Kitty breathed in the clean air that had overcome the usual miasma of smoke and coal dust, blowing it away from the city and over the lake. She tasted its purity on her lips and inhaled its energy, so different from the close and chaotic atmosphere inside the house. It gave the scene a clarity that it usually lacked, sharpening the cityscape that appeared on the horizon just a mile or so away across the railroad tracks and the river and block after block of falling-down houses.

Kitty remembered how her brother Mickey, who had worked on some of the skyscrapers as they began to pierce the sky, taught her their names: the Fisher Building and the Monadnock, as mountainous as the New Hampshire peak for which it was named, over on Dearborn. The Women’s Temple, once the tallest building in Chicago, and the Reliance Building, its white terra cotta and broad glass windows pink with the reflection of the setting sun behind her, across from each other on State Street. She felt the city’s energy and hope flowing through her own veins. She stared straight ahead of her, breathing in deeply several times, before she turned, head held high, to face what awaited her back home.

SET THE NIGHT

ON FIRE

Libby Fischer Hellmann

Allium press of Chicago

Allium Press of Chicago www.alliumpress.com

This is a work of fiction. Descriptions and portrayals of real

people, events, organizations, or establishments are intended to provide background for the story and are used fictitiously.

Other characters and situations are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not intended to be real.

© 2010 by Libby Fischer Hellmann

All rights reserved

Book design by E. C. Victorson Cover design by Miguel Ortuno

Front cover image courtesy of Chicago Park District

Light My Fire

Words and music by The Doors Copyright © 1967 Doors Music Co.

Copyright Renewed All Rights Reserved, Used by Permission

Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation

ISBN: 978-0-9840676-5-7 (Paperback)

978-0-9840676-6-4 (Hardcover)

Set the Night on Fire

1

One

November

ar Gantner was surprised when Rain showed up at the restaurant. He hadn’t counted on her to return his call. After a while he wondered why he’d even tried. His life had been a

series of failures. Grandiose plans but flawed execution. No follow-through, no “closure,” as they called it now. It wasn’t for want of trying. God, or fate, or whatever you called the monkey upstairs, obviously had a plan for him. It just wasn’t the same plan he had.

She wasn’t the first person he called when he got out. That honor went to Teddy. He hadn’t gotten through, of course. He left a message and gave them the number of the cell he’d bought with his first paycheck. Good for a month, they said. Then you threw it away. He remembered exiting the big box store, appalled at how disposable capitalism had become. At the same time, he was fascinated by phones smaller than a pack of cigarettes. Dick Tracy’s wrist-phone come to life.

Rain hadn’t been hard to find, once he remembered her real name. She’d returned his call a day later and after a shocked silence asked where he was. He’d come first to Old Town, the only part of Chicago he knew well, but the prices were too steep so he ended up in Rogers Park. He heard the pity in her voice when he said he was washing dishes. But he might be promoted to waiter or even bartender, he said, hoping he sounded cheery. Then he asked for a favor.

“Can you track someone down for me?” “Depends who it is,” she’d replied.

D

Libby Fischer Hellmann

2

Four days later she appeared at the restaurant just before closing. He’d been scouring a large pot, thinking about the instantaneous global connections Thomas Friedman described in The World is Flat. He’d always been a voracious reader, and while reading was a poor man’s substitute for experience, he had a hole of four decades to fill. He glanced up as she pushed through the swinging door.

She immediately picked him out. “You look exactly the same, Dar.” Dar had never been vain, but he knew she was flattering him. Tall but

stooped from years of inactivity, he had a paunch, no matter how many sit-ups he did. His dark hair, now salted with gray, had thinned, and age spots freckled his skin. Only his eyes looked the same, he’d been told. Deep-set and so smoky you couldn’t tell where his iris ended and his pupil began. Eyes with such a piercing expression that people figured he was as crazy as a loon and crossed the street rather than walk past him. They had helped him inside, those eyes. People generally left him alone.

Now, he and Rain exchanged one of those half-hearted hugs you give when you don’t know what else to do. Rain was smaller than he remembered, but in blue jeans and a sweater she still cut a trim figure. Her ashy hair was still long and straight. But her face was lined, and her glasses, which she’d worn back then, too, seemed thicker.

She glanced around the kitchen. Disappointed, he figured. She had a point. Paint was peeling off the walls, the floors were chipped linoleum, and most of the equipment was circa 1950. “How ‘bout I wait for you in the Golden Nugget on Lawrence? It’s open twenty-four-hours.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’m off in twenty minutes.” “You won’t disappear again?” He flashed what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Wild horses . . . ” She smiled weakly and went back out. Half an hour later, he passed underneath the yellow sign outside the

Golden Nugget restaurant. A video camera tilted down toward the sidewalk. He’d noticed them in stores, office buildings, parking lots, street corners. Big Brother was now ubiquitous.

Inside, the staff outnumbered the customers. Two waitresses chatted up the short order cook at the pass-through behind the counter. Rain, in a

Set the Night on Fire

3

booth at the back, waved him over. As he sat down, one of the waitresses shuffled over and asked tiredly what he wanted.

Rain peered at him over her glasses. “It’s on me.” He nodded his thanks, not even bothering to muster a show of pride.

He was short on cash, and she knew it. Then again, that was nothing new. He ordered a BLT with fries and coffee. Rain shook her head when the waitress turned to her, “Nothing.”

Rain waited till the waitress poured his coffee and went away. Then she announced, “Alix’s brother lives in Michigan. In their old summer home. A big ass house on the lake. Near Grand Haven.”

“Thank you.” He put down his cup. “I guess I’m not surprised.” Rain shrugged. “The house is on a private road. There’s a gatehouse,

and they won’t let you in unless you’ve been cleared in advance.” Dar thought about it. Then, “How’d you find out?” “It wasn’t hard. I Googled him.” He sank back. He’d only just discovered Google, at the library, but he

was fascinated by its reach. The waitress brought his sandwich. “Why do you want to know about her brother?” Dar explained. “Have you called Casey?” she asked. Rain had always been blunt, he

remembered. Dar chewed his food. “I didn’t think he’d want to see me.” “Casey isn’t a bitter man.” “Have you been in touch with him?” “Only once. When Payton . . . ” She cut herself off. “I hear about

him, though. Casey, that is. He’s very successful.” She paused. “What about Teddy? I don’t expect you’d want to hear from him.”

“Actually, I put in a call to him the other day.” Rain set down her cup so hard that it clattered on the saucer.

“Why . . . I don’t . . . why did you do that?” she sputtered. Dar speared his pickle with his fork. “Teddy and I have unfinished

business.”

Libby Fischer Hellmann

4

Rain had been a woman who’d shown no fear, even when she was arrested during the Convention in ’68. But now she looked small and vulnerable and scared. “Dar, does he know where you are?”

Dar thought back to the message he’d left. Did he mention he was in Chicago? He had. “Why?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “What’s the problem?” She opened her eyes. “You need to watch your back, okay? You

remember what we used to think about Teddy?” “What you used to think.” “Listen to me. About fifteen years ago I got a package in the mail.” Dar looked over, interested. “Small. Carefully wrapped. No return address. Just a note with it that

said, ‘You were right.’” She paused. “Took me a while to figure out who sent it and what it meant.”

“And?” “It was from Payton. And it contains something that . . . well, it has to

do with Teddy.” “What?” She shook her head. “Not here. Not now. But it’s important, and

it’s in a safe place. If anything—ever—happens to me, you need to know that.”

“Still the theatrical one.” He smiled. “The Sixties are over, Rain.” Her gaze hardened. “You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it

over the years.” “I’ve had forty years to think about everything.” “Yeah, well, a month or so after I got the package, Payton had that

fatal car ‘accident.’” Dar laid his fork down. “Like I said, watch your back.”

Award-winning author of Set the Night on Fire

It all began with a line of Persian poetry . . .

FICTION/Literary

A novel of Iran

Anna and Nouri, both studying in Chicago, fall in love despite their very different backgrounds. Anna, who has never been close to her parents, is more than happy to return with Nouri to his native Iran, to be embraced by his wealthy family. Beginning their married life together in 1978, their world is abruptly turned upside down by the overthrow of the Shah, and the rise of the Islamic Republic.

Under the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Republican Guard, life becomes increasingly restricted and Anna must learn to exist in a transformed world, where none of the familiar Western rules apply. Random arrests and torture become the norm, women are required to wear hijab, and Anna discovers that she is no longer free to leave the country.

As events reach a fevered pitch, Anna realizes that nothing is as she thought, and no one can be trusted…not even her husband.

Advance praise for A Bitter Veil

“The Iranian revolution provides the backdrop for this meticulously researched, fast-paced stand-alone from Hellmann…this political thriller will please established fans and newcomers alike.” —Publishers Weekly

“Hellmann crafts a tragically beautiful story around a message that is both subtle and vibrant. The author does an amazing job of delivering her point but never by sacrifi cing the quality of her storytelling. Instead, the message drives the psychological and emotional confl ict painting a bleak and heart wrenching tale that will stick with the reader long after they fi nish the book.”—Bryan VanMeter, Crimespree Magazine

Libby Fischer Hellmann is the award-winning author of the Ellie Foreman and Georgia Davis mystery series, and the stand-alone novel, Set the Night on Fire. She has lived in the Chicago area over thirty years.

www.libbyhellmann.com

libby fi sch

er h

ellma

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A bit

ter

veil

A Bitter Veil

libby fi scher hellmann

allium press of chicago

A

Bitter

Veil

Libby Fischer Hellmann

Allium Press of ChicagoForest Park, Illinois

www.alliumpress.com

This is a work of fi ction. Descriptions and portrayals of real people, events, organizations, or establishments are intended to provide background for

the story and are used fi ctitiously. Other characters and situations are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not intended to be real.

© 2012 by Libby Fischer HellmannAll rights reserved

Book and cover design by E. C. VictorsonFront cover images:

Woman by Daniel M. Nagy/Shutterstock.comBackgrounds by ilolab and pavila, both Shutterstock.com

Tile border by kasia_ka/iStockphoto.com

Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data(Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

Hellmann, Libby Fischer. A bitter veil / Libby Fischer Hellmann.

p. ; cm.

ISBN: 978-0-9831938-1-4

1. Iran--History--Revolution, 1979--Fiction. 2. Political prisoners--Iran--Tehran--Fiction. 3. Americans--Iran--Tehran--Fiction. 4. Iranians--Illinois--Chicago--Fiction. 5. Intercountry marriage--Fiction. 6. Historical fi ction. 7. Love stories. I. Title.

PS3608.E46 B58 2012813/.6 2012932763

A bitter veil

1

One

Summer, 1980

Anna was deeply asleep, which was unusual for her. She generally tossed and turned until the desperate hours of the night passed. But tonight she’d succumbed almost immediately.

The fi rst knock seemed like part of a dream, and her brain started constructing a story around it. As she swam up to consciousness there was another knock. The sound left a residual imprint in her ears, and for an instant she tried to fi gure out its intent. Was it an angry thump? A frightened plea? A perfunctory tap? She checked the clock and grew immediately wary.

She threw the covers aside, grabbed her chador, and draped it over her baby doll pajamas. Nouri was not home. After what had happened earlier she wasn’t surprised, but it meant she had to answer the door. Still, she hesitated. Whoever was there would see her sharp features, pale green eyes, and blonde eyebrows. They would know she wasn’t Iranian. They might even suspect she was from the decadent West, perhaps the Great Satan itself. And if that happened, whatever mission brought them would be tainted with that knowledge.

She carefully pushed the curtain aside and looked out. It was sum-mer in Tehran, a hot, arid time that reminded her of the dog days of August in Chicago. She and Nouri lived on an upscale street in Shemiran with walled-off houses set back from the road. At this hour the street

Libby Fischer Hellmann

2

was quiet and dark, save for a black Mercedes parked by the gate. The engine was off, but its headlamps were still on, and two precise beams of light illuminated tree trunks and overgrown bushes.

Three uniformed men, all bearded, crowded the door. One had his hands planted on his hips. The other two stood hunched over, arms folded around machine guns. Somehow they’d been able to break through the gate. Fear pumped through her veins. Revolutionary Guards. She had no choice. She had to open the door. If she didn’t, they would break in, claiming knowledge of crimes she’d committed against Islam and the Republic. They might confi scate her books, her makeup, and Nouri’s stereo, for starters. She didn’t need that. Not now. Not with all the other troubles.

She padded out of the bedroom in her bare feet. Clasping the folds of the chador under her chin, she took the steps down, cursing inwardly at the garment’s awkwardness. How could any woman manipulate the yards of heavy black material without feeling clumsy? When she reached the fi rst fl oor, she slipped into a pair of black ballet slippers she kept by the door. If the Guards saw her toenail polish, they could report her.

She held the chador with one hand and opened the door with the other. One of the men’s hands was high in the air, as if he was just about to knock again. He stepped back, looking startled.

“As-Salâmo ‘Alaikom, Sister,” he said stiffl y, lowering his arm.She gave him a curt nod.

“You are the wife of Nouri Samedi?” he asked in Farsi.Her heart caromed around her chest. She and Nouri had argued

viciously, and he’d threatened to have her arrested. Is that why they’d come? She nodded again, more uncertainly this time.

The men appraised her. Women were supposed to keep their eyes down in the presence of men, to be submissive and quiet. But men had no such limitations, especially Guards. They were free to ogle. Make demands. And if those demands were not met…she shivered, recalling the stories she had heard.

One of the other men stepped up to the door. His lips curved in a predatory smile. She tightened her grip on the chador, for once

A bitter veil

3

thankful it covered her body. If she was back home, she would call the police, report them as intruders. But here these intruders were the police. Or what passed as security.

“Your husband…” he said, his voice dripping with scorn. “Do you know where he is?”

She shook her head and looked at the fl oor. Oh god, were they going to beat her up? She knew people who claimed they were beaten during nighttime visits by the Guards.

“You are certain you do not know his whereabouts, Sister?”She stole a look at him. His smile had disappeared, replaced now

with a scowl. “You have been home all night?”She nodded. She never went out much, certainly not alone.His eyes narrowed in disbelief.

“What is it? Has something happened?”“You already know.”Always the charades. The brinkmanship. Anger roiled her gut, but

she could not show it. “No.” “Your husband is dead. His body was found in an alley nearby. He

was stabbed.” She gasped. A steel gate plunged down the center of her brain,

separating her emotions from her thoughts. She wished she was wear-ing a burqa to hide her face as well as her body. Her jaw dropped open. Through her fi ngers she heard herself cry out, “No!”

Despite the Supreme Leader’s admonition to limit eye contact between the sexes, the men stared hard at her. If she were Iranian, she would cry out, collapse, even faint. But she was an American, and Americans were not demonstrative. Odd to be thinking of cultural differences at such a moment.

She drew a ragged breath. “That cannot be,” she lied. “He was with his friend Hassan tonight. Hassan is a Guard,” she added, as if that gave her legitimacy. “He said he would be home late, because—”

“We have notifi ed his family. They are coming to identify the body.”What game were they playing? She was Nouri’s family. But she said

nothing. At least they do not call her on her lie.

Libby Fischer Hellmann

4

The man who’d been talking suddenly shoved the door open wider and barged in.

Panic tickled Anna’s spine. “What are—where are you going?”He and another Guard pushed past her and went into the kitchen.

She started to follow them, but the third man aimed his machine gun at her. “Stop,” he barked. “Don’t move.”

She froze.She heard murmurs from the kitchen. Then a cry of triumph. The fi rst man returned from the kitchen, brandishing a steak knife.

She and Nouri didn’t eat much red meat, except lamb—in kababs and meatballs, but she’d brought the wooden block of knives from the States with her when she came. It reminded her of home.

“There are only fi ve knives,” he said. “Where is the sixth?”She stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He nodded and the man with the machine gun shoved her into

the kitchen. “Six slots. Five knives. You see?” He was right. She turned to him. “It’s been missing for a while. I

don’t know where it is.” She bit her lip. A weak excuse. They could tell.A victorious smile curled his lips, as if he knew he’d won. “Ah,

but we do. We have it. It was the murder weapon. You murdered your husband. Killed him so you could escape Iran and return to America. Now you will never leave. You will die in Iran, just like your husband.”

For more information visitwww.davidjwalker.comwww.alliumpress.com

FICTION/Thrillers

David J. Walker’s journey has been a circuitous one: from parish priest, to investigator with the Chicago Police Department, to attorney in private practice, to full-time author of twelve crime novels, to…who knows? Born in Chicago, David has lived in and around that city ever since.

David is the Edgar-nominated author of two critically acclaimed private eye mystery series. Company Orders is his second stand-alone thriller and, while lawyers, priests, and police offi cers are scattered throughout all of his novels, this is his fi rst book with a priest as the protagonist.

Praise for the novels of David J. Walker:

“Walker has a gift for atmosphere—his Chicago…is vividly rendered without being painted solely in ‘private eye noir.’ He also has a gift for action that takes sudden, startling, but eminently credible turns.” —Booklist

Saving Paulo is “that rare genre novel, a complex thriller with a compassionate heart. David J. Walker never neglects the elements that make us love novels of suspense, but his eye is also fi nely tuned to those nuances of human nature that allow us to care deeply about the characters he creates.” —William Kent Krueger, New York Times Bestselling Author

Even a good man may feel driven to sign on with the devil.

Paul Clark is a Catholic priest who’s been on the fast track to becoming a bishop. But he suddenly faces a heart-wrenching problem, when choices he made as a young man come roaring back into his life. A mysterious woman, who claims to be with “an agency of the federal government,” offers to solve his problem. But there’s a price to pay. Father Clark must undertake some very un-priestly actions. An attack in a Chicago alley...a daring escape from a Mexican jail...and a fi ght to the death in a Guyanese jungle...all these, and more, must be survived in order to protect someone he loves. This priest is about to learn how much easier it is to preach love than to live it.

companyordersdavid j. walkerw

alker

co

mpan

y or

der

s

allium press of chicago

companyorders

david j. walker

Allium Press of ChicagoForest Park, Illinois

www.alliumpress.com

This is a work of fi ction. Descriptions and portrayals of real people, events, organizations, or establishments are intended to provide background for

the story and are used fi ctitiously. Other characters and situations are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not intended to be real.

© 2012 David J. WalkerAll rights reserved

Book and cover design by E. C. VictorsonFront cover images:

“Cobblestone Alley, Chicago” by Christian Legan“Apache Helicopters at Sunset” by aquatic creature/Shutterstock

ISBN 978-0-9831938-5-2

Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data(Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

Walker, David J., 1939- Company orders / David J. Walker.

p. ; cm.

ISBN: 978-0-9831938-5-2 (trade paperback)

1. Catholic Church--Clergy--Fiction. 2. United States. Central Intelligence Agency--Fiction. 3. Priests--Illinois--Chicago--Fiction. 4. Guardian and ward--Fiction. 5. Chicago (Ill.)--Fiction. 6. Guyana--Fiction. 7. Detective and mystery stories. I. Title.

PS3573.A4253313 C66 2012813/.54 2012941434

company orders

1

ONE

Mid-July. Only four in the morning and already eighty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, humidity maybe ninety. The man they called Otoe—he was one-quarter Native American—cut

the lights on the ancient Ford Bronco and turned where the sign said Avenida del Convento.

“‘Avenue,’ my ass,” he said, easing the stolen, mud-caked Bronco forward through near-total darkness. The A/C was out and his clothes—5.11 tactical pants and loose-fi tting sport shirt—were soaked through. “More like a goddamn alley. We meet some vehicle coming the other way, Tree, we’re screwed.”

“I fi gure the door to be twenty yards up,” his buddy said, “on the right.” He was tall and lean and hard—thus the name ‘Tree’ he’d picked up in the SEALs—with skin the color of black coffee. “And there won’t be any vehicles. It’s all taken care of. A pre-paid package.”

“I know. I’m just saying…”“Just fl appin’ your lips, like usual, ’fore the fun starts.”“Shouldn’t be any fun,” Otoe said. “Not if it’s ‘all taken care of.’” He

leaned forward, peering through the windshield. “Jesus, gimme some light here.”

Tree slipped the night ops torch from a low pocket in his cargo pants and held it out the window, throwing a thin beam of light ahead of them along the wall that lined the street on their right. “There!” he said.

They parked and walked to the door of what everyone still called “the Convent,” though no nun had stepped inside for over a hundred years. They were each packing maybe fi fteen pounds of weaponry

David J. Walker

2

and gear, but they were large men and their clothing hid it well. Tree knocked, using a pre-arranged pattern, and the wood plank door was pulled open by a short, skinny, dark-skinned man in a blue uniform. They stepped inside.

The uniform was too big for the little man, and the old .357 Magnum on his hip seemed oversized, too. He looked up at the two gringos towering over him and said nothing, just handed Tree a ring with two keys on it and pointed to their left.

“Pasaporte,” Otoe said, and the guard gave it to him. He glanced at it, then showed it to Tree. “Gracias, little amigo,” Otoe said, and he and Tree turned and headed down the hallway.

The fl oor was unvarnished wood and the walls concrete, painted a faded green and blotched with dark stains here and there on both sides, mostly around head level. Blood. Or brains, maybe. The only light came from one low-watt bulb behind a wire screen in the twelve-foot ceiling. Enough to see the big dark cockroaches that darted around on the walls and the fl oor.

About fi fteen feet down, the corridor ended at a locked, windowless door. Tree looked at the lock, then the keys. He tried the smaller of the two keys. It worked.

“Genius,” Otoe said, and then squashed a two-inch-long centipede against the wall with his palm and wiped the gooey remains off on his pants.

Tree pulled open the door and they stepped through. The stench was overpowering—sweat, urine, feces; vomit, too, and dead animal, maybe a rat. The wall on their left, the one running along the street, continued on, with two small windows up near the ceiling. On the right, though, the walkway was lined with iron bars. Behind the bars the space opened up into a single concrete-fl oored cell, maybe twenty-by-twenty, with cots bolted to the walls and a stainless steel toilet smack in the middle of the fl oor. A pit toilet—no plumbing in this cell.

Again the only light came from a dim, bare bulb in the ceiling above the walkway, and the closely set bars kept much of the cell in shadows. There was enough light, though, to see lots more roaches, and to see

company orders

3

maybe fi fteen men crammed in there, all in dirty white pants and shirts. Most were lying down, about half on the cots and half on the shiny, damp fl oor. Heads turned and dark eyes stared at the intruders, but no one said anything.

“Jesus!” Otoe murmured. “You can taste shit in here, like it’s fl oatin’ in the air. This where they keep the guy?”

“This here’s a holding tank. I understand he’s usually deeper inside.” Tree held up the larger of the keys. “Let’s get to it,” he said, and unlocked the barred gate and pulled it open.

Both men stepped into the wide opening to the cell.“Hey! Listen up!” Otoe yelled. “Atienda, atienda!”Some of the prisoners sat up, and a few even got to their feet. Many

growled protests in Spanish. No one, however, moved any closer to Tree and Otoe, because Otoe, crouched in a shooter’s stance, was sweeping the area in front of them with a .45 caliber semiautomatic, a Heckler & Koch MK23, looking all the more threatening with a suppressor attached.

“We want the American!” he yelled. “El Americano!”Several heads turned toward the right rear corner of the cell. When

whoever was back there in the shadows didn’t move, Tree took the torch from his pocket, widened the beam, and shone it on two men. One sat on his rear, his head slumped between his knees, his long greasy hair hanging down. The other, a much larger man, crouched beside him. The larger man was Mexican, with thick black hair slicked back from his forehead. He had his hand on the smaller man’s shoulder, and wore on his face the ugly scowl of a professional prisoner—made even more threatening because his left eye was just a slit looking out from a lump of swollen, purple-and-red-mottled skin.

“So whatcha think, Tree? See anyone else in this sty that looks like our man?”

“Nope.”“You!” Otoe called. “Sitting in the corner. Look up!”The head started to rise, but the larger man quickly pushed it back

down. “You don’t do nothing with this one, gringo,” he said. “This one, he is under my protection.”

David J. Walker

4

“Really?” Otoe fi red just one shot, the suppressor keeping the pop to about that of a .22 caliber pistol, and splinters of stone fl ew out of the wall near the big Mexican’s head. “That change your mind, amigo?”

The Mexican stared back, showing no fear, but then smiled and took his hand off the other’s head.

The sitting man looked up, and wiped his hair out of his eyes. His pale, thin face showed no sign of a beard. He was very young. Upper teens, maybe.

“That’s him,” Otoe said.“C’mon up here, son,” Tree drawled. “We’re goin’ for a walk.”“No, I…I can’t.” The boy’s voice was thin and weak, and he was

obviously terrifi ed. “When I come back he’ll…he’ll be mad.” He nodded sideways, toward the man beside him.

“Well, then, y’all both come up here. We’ll all go for a walk together.”“Good idea,” Otoe said. “You come up here too, amigo.”The man made no move to comply and Otoe fi red again, almost

as though without meaning to. More chips fl ew out from the wall beside the Mexican, but closer this time. He stood up. He was about the same height as the two Americans, but stockier than either of them. Fat, actually.

No one else moved, but the young American stood up and then he and the Mexican came slowly forward. When Otoe fi nally raised his hand to stop them they were maybe a yard away. The young man in front of Otoe, the Mexican in front of Tree.

“Who is this gentleman, son?” Tree asked. “He really your protector?”The boy was trembling. “He…that’s what he said.”“Well, now…that ain’t what I asked, is it? What’s he done…to

protect you?”“He…I guess…he kept the other men away from me. I mean…

earlier tonight.”“You know him before you were put in this here cell tonight?”“No. He was already here. They all were. Most of them are being

transferred here from some other prison, I think.”“But the two of you got to be friends?”

company orders

5

“No.” That came out louder. “No, he’s not my friend. He…he…” his voice trailed off.

“This dude ain’t really been protecting you, has he, son?” Tree’s voice was very gentle.

“No, he…I fought…tried to stop him, but he…” The young man was shaking so hard now that even his head was moving.

The Mexican leaned forward then, as though to do or say something, but a slight wave of Otoe’s HK stopped him cold.

“Tell me, son. You tell ol’ Tree what this sumbitch done to you.”“He…he raped me.”“Well, damn,” Tree said. “That ain’t the kinda thing a ‘protector’

does, is it? A ‘protector’ should—”“We got business here,” Otoe interrupted. “What’s done is done.”

He stepped to his left and gestured with his head, and the young man went past him and stood just outside the cell.

The Mexican shrugged and gave a sly grin. “You two, you are professionals, yes? You understand, I think.” He pointed to his swollen eye. “This muchacho, he is a fi ghter. I like that. You know how it is.”

“Yeah, we know,” Otoe said. “These things happen.”“They do happen,” Tree agreed, and he suddenly shot his left hand

up high in the air over his head.The Mexican couldn’t help but look up, which is when the knife in

Tree’s right hand—how it got there, who could say?—slashed through the air…from right to left…across the man’s throat.

Just one cut, and then Tree leaned in and wiped the blade—one side serrated, the other razor sharp—on the man’s own shirt, and folded the knife and put it away again.

Otoe and Tree backed out of the cell as the dying man dropped slowly to his knees, his mouth wide open, clutching his throat as though he could hold the blood inside.

Tree locked the cell closed behind them. “You see, son?” he said, taking the young American by the arm and guiding him away. “That’s the kinda thing a ‘protector’ does.”

Owner

Typewritten Text

her mother’s

secret

Barbara Garland Polikoff

ALLIUM PRESS OF cHICAGO

Allium Press of ChicagoForest Park, IL

www.alliumpress.com

This is a work of fi ction. Descriptions and portrayals of real people, events, organizations, or establishments are intended to provide background for the story and are used fi ctitiously. Other characters and situations are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not intended to be real.

© 2012 by Barbara Garland PolikoffAll rights reserved

Book/cover design by E. C. VictorsonFront cover images:

(top) “Two Girls...Looking at an Exhibit” by Frances Benjamin Johnston, Library of Congress

(bottom) Chicago street scene from “Tenement Conditions in Chicago,” 1901

Publisher's Cataloging-In-Publication Data(Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

Polikoff, Barbara Garland. Her mother's secret / Barbara Garland Polikoff.

p. ; cm.

ISBN: 978-0-9831938-7-6

1. Jewish teenagers--Illinois--Chicago--19th century--Juvenile fi ction. 2. Jewish families--Illinois--Chicago--19th century--Juvenile fi ction. 3. Art students--Illinois--Chicago--19th century--Juvenile fi ction. 4. Family secrets--Juvenile fi ction. 5. Hull-House (Chicago, Ill.)--Juvenile fi ction. 6. World's Columbian Exposition (1893 : Chicago, Ill.)--Juvenile fi ction. 7. Chicago (Ill.)--Juvenile fi ction. 8. Jewish teenagers --Fiction. 9. Jewish families--Fiction. 10. Art students--Fiction. 11. Family secrets--Fiction. 12. Hull-House (Chicago, Ill.)--Fiction. 13. World's Columbian Exposition (1893 : Chicago, Ill.)--Fiction. 14. Chicago (Ill.)--Fiction. I. Title.

PZ7.P75284 He 2012[Fic]

her mother’s secret

1

Prologue

When Sarah Goldman was fi rst put into her mother’s arms she weighed four pounds, was red and wrinkled, and had a thatch of black hair. Her young cousin

Bluma, tiptoeing into the bedroom to see the newborn, rushed out screaming, “A devil baby! A devil baby!”

Sarah’s mother, Rifke, never breathed a word to Sarah about Bluma’s terror at seeing her infant cousin. Nor did her father, Jacob. It was Fanny, Sarah’s older sister by two years, who let the secret out. Sarah was eight years old when she knocked over a bottle of ink, splattering black splotches all over Fanny’s new blue dress. Fanny chased her out into the street screaming, “A devil baby, that’s what you are! Just like Bluma said!”

Fanny, fair-haired and blue-eyed, was her mother’s princess. And hazel-eyed Sammy with the blond curls, born when Sarah was ten years old, was her little prince. Sarah, thin and dusky, with straight black hair and dark brooding eyes, felt left out of her mother’s circle of love. Fanny’s scream, “devil baby,” never ceased echoing in the secret chambers of her memory.

Barbara Garland Polikoff

2

one

Winter 1892

Sarah Goldman blew a disgusted “Pee-yew!” as the stench from the city garbage box slapped her in the face. Chained to the sidewalk outside the Goldmans’ butcher shop, the

overfl owing box was a daily insult.Fanny pinched her nose and they both bolted past the box

and ran until they had out-distanced the stink.Fanny’s eyes blazed. “Old Mendel dumped his horse’s plops

in the box again. Papa should report him to the police!”“Papa’s too softhearted.”“Then Mama should do it.”Sarah giggled.

“What’s so funny?” Fanny demanded.“Mama? Complaining to the police about horse plops!” Sarah

lifted her chin and looked down her nose. “Offi cer, I have come about the stink from the horse residue deposited illegally in our…” She erupted into giggles again.

Fanny frowned. “I don’t like you making fun of Mama.”“As if you never do!”The sunless January morning was cold. Not that the sun

cheered up the neighborhood much, Sarah thought ruefully. All it did was show how dilapidated the dreary parade of houses really was and melt the snow, turning the dirt street to mud.

Her mind skipped to the buggy ride they had taken last spring to celebrate her mother’s thirty-ninth birthday. It was if they had entered a different world as they rolled down Astor Street. Stone

her mother’s secret

3

houses looking like small castles were bordered by grass as green and smooth as the velvet lining in her father’s cello case. Wide stairways were fl anked by urns of red and yellow tulips. Lilacs billowed behind iron grill gates.

Color! That was it. The rich had color.And the poor have gray. Not even a pale weed pushed through

the cracks in the plank sidewalks she walked every day. In my paintings, Sarah vowed, I will never use gray. Color. Only color.

Two blocks from school Fanny made her customary dash to catch up with her friends. The fi rst time Fanny had sprinted ahead and left her behind, Sarah had been startled and hurt. It didn’t take long to fi gure out that Fanny was ashamed of her dark, ugly sister and didn’t want to be seen with her. Even after a year and a half, the abandonment still stung.

“Hi, Black-eyed Sarah,” a voice called.Charley Weinstein. He had been calling her that since Miss

W. had them paint the vase of black-eyed Susans on her desk. She didn’t quite admit to herself that she was pleased that Charley had noticed the color of her eyes. His were striking—light green with a ring of yellow circling the pupil, fringed with long, dark lashes. In the school bathroom she had overheard two girls giggle over Charley Weinstein’s “bedroom eyes.”

He caught up to her, matching her quick stride. Charley was the only one in class taller than she. Big boned and stocky, he had an easy smile and thick brown hair falling over his forehead.

“We’re going to have a sub today. Miss W. broke her ankle.”“Bad,” Sarah said. “If Miss W. can learn to walk with crutches,

she’ll be back next week.”Sarah imagined plump, pink-faced Miss W. trying to swing

her round body between crutches. “We’re going to be stuck with a sub for a while,” she said ominously.

Once they reached the classroom, Sarah’s dismal opinion of substitute teachers was confi rmed. Mrs. Plusker was gaunt, with tightly waved gray hair and a balloon of pink rouge fl ying high

Barbara Garland Polikoff

4

on each cheek. She watched coolly as the class took their seats, then wordlessly turned and wrote her name on the blackboard in large, square letters, MRS. PLUSKER. As she moved her hand up and down, the white handkerchief tucked beneath her watchband fl uttered like a dying bird.

Expect the worst from this one, Sarah thought.When Mrs. Plusker spoke, her voice was unexpectedly throaty.

“I will be your teacher this week. I expect you to listen well. I do not repeat myself.” She paused. “We will start by writing an essay on the Chicago Fire of 1871, which I understand you have been studying, and its effects on the city’s inhabitants.” She glanced at her watch. “You have thirty minutes to write. Are there any questions?”

A hand shot up. Dominic Scala. “Can I write about someone who burned up in the fi re?”

Mrs. Plusker’s frown failed to dampen Dominic’s enthusiasm.“The Chicago fi re really affected this person,” he added

earnestly.“Yeah,” Charley Weinstein blurted, “he’s never been the same

since.”Laughter exploded. Sarah knew without looking that Charley

had an innocent expression on his face.Mrs. Plusker rapped the desk with a ruler. “You are wasting

precious minutes.”Sifting through her mind for a subject to write about, Sarah

recalled a photograph she had seen in a newspaper that had fallen out of her father’s hand as he dozed in his chair. An old, sad-faced woman, black babushka tied under her chin, was pulling a charred picture frame from a pile of rubble. Sarah had felt a dull ache in her chest. The woman reminded her of her grandmother, Dora, who had refused to join them on their fl ight from the shtetl to America. Who would keep the weeds from choking the marker on her husband’s grave? No amount of pleading could change her mind. Six months after they left, her house was burned to

her mother’s secret

5

the ground by the czar’s drunken soldiers, and she went to live with her sister. Three weeks later, the sister wrote that Dora had collapsed carrying a bucket of water from the well and never regained consciousness. It was the fi rst time Sarah had seen her father cry. He paced the living room like someone caged, raking his hand through his hair, reading the letter over and over.

Sarah began to write, imagining that the old woman pulling the charred frame from the rubble was her grandmother. The frame had held her wedding photograph.

Mrs. Plusker’s voice startled her as she was writing the last sentence of her essay.

“Time is up. I’m asking for volunteers to read aloud.”Sarah shrank in her seat. Whenever she had to read aloud her

heart raced, her brain clogged, and her voice stuck in her throat.When Dominic the Undaunted raised his hand, her heart

slowed to a trot. Isabelle Santi volunteered next. No surprise. Isabelle took elocution lessons and liked showing off her perfect enunciation. Mrs. Plusker complimented her on her delivery, then scanned the room. “There’s time to read one more paper before we turn to art.”

Unexpectedly, Stanley Arvey raised his hand. Safe! But along with relief came anger at herself for being such a stupid ninny. Next time I’ll surprise everyone and volunteer, she vowed. But she knew she wouldn’t.

Stanley fi nished to a spatter of applause. He grinned, bowed slightly, and sat down.

Next, art—which had been Sarah’s favorite class until Mr. Bellmeyer left and Miss W. took over. Charley, already in an art class at Hull House, confi rmed Sarah’s feeling that Miss W. was a poor art teacher.

“She has no more imagination than a cow,” he said.Sarah had no lack of imagination. She imagined a cow on

crutches and repressed a smile as Mrs. Plusker gave them their assignment.

Barbara Garland Polikoff

6

“As a complement to your study of mammals in biology class you are to choose an animal and paint it in its native habitat. I will select the two best to send to Miss Warkowski.”

Animals. Native habitat. As if they’d all been to Africa. The only live animals she saw were horses, dogs, and cats. Forget the mice skittering around rubbish heaps. She loved to give Tillie, the pot-and-pan peddler’s horse, a handful of hay. A tingle would run up her spine as its black, rubbery lips engulfed her hand. Tillie would stare at her and she would stare back, Tillie’s dark, liquid eyes taking her to a nameless, far-off place.

Halsted Street was far from a horse’s natural habitat, but she remembered the horses at her cousin’s farm from their visit there last summer. The horses had stopped grazing and suddenly galloped across the fi eld, their hooves pounding, manes fl ying. She could almost feel the wind as they passed by.

Time to take the leap. She sketched a galloping horse, concentrating so intently that her muscles stiffened and she had to sit back and relax before continuing. Getting the legs right was the hardest. She drew them and redrew them. The head looked fi ne. She liked the way the mane fl ew like a banner in the wind.

What color? She wanted to give that exciting feeling of wildness that she had felt as the horses pounded by. Brown? Gray?

No. Red! Racing against a clear blue sky.She had painted the horse and was about to color the sky

when she caught the scent of face powder as Mrs. Plusker bent over her, swept the painting off her desk, and held it up as if it were a soiled rag. Her thick voice was cold with contempt. “If any of you are as irresponsible as the painter of this absurd red horse, you’d better destroy your work and begin again.”

The sound of paper ripping. The two halves landed on her desk. Sarah sat motionless, hands heavy as lead in her lap. She felt the hot pinprick of everyone’s eyes. Never, she vowed, will I paint in school again.

her mother’s secret

7

“Get a fresh sheet of paper,” Mrs. Plusker commanded. “I expect a suitable painting from you.”

Sarah didn’t move as Mrs. Plusker returned to the front of the room. Charley turned and put a blank sheet on her desk.

When the recess bell rang Sarah put the still empty sheet back on the supply table and walked out of the room.

Bright and Yellow Hard and Cold

The search for elusive goals consumes three men…

McKinney, a forensic scientist, struggles with his deep, personal need to fi nd the truth behind the evidence he investigates, even while the system shuts him out. Can he get justice for a wrongfully accused man while juggling life with a new girlfriend and a precocious teenage daughter?

Delroy gives up the hard-scrabble life on his family’s Kentucky farm and ventures to the rough-and-tumble world of 1930s Chicago. Unable to fi nd work, he reluctantly throws his hat in with the bank-robbing gangsters Alvin Karpis and Freddie Barker. Can he provide for his fi ery young wife without risking his own life?

Gilbert is obsessed with the search for a cache of gold, hidden for nearly eighty years. As his hunt escalates he fi nds himself willing to use ever more extreme measures to attain his goal…including kidnapping, torture and murder. Can he fi nd the one person still left who will lead him to the glittering treasure? And will the trail of corpses he leaves behind include McKinney?

Part contemporary thriller, part historical novel, and part love story, Bright and Yellow, Hard and Cold masterfully weaves a tale of confl icted scientifi c ethics, economic hardship, and criminal frenzy, tempered with the redemption of family love.

Advance Praise for Bright and Yellow, Hard and Cold

“Chapman…blends his expertise in analyzing evidence with a cunning plot. [He] obviously knows his stuff, from what happens at the bench in the lab through what happens in court, a stark contrast to many mystery writers who just skirt along the edges of forensics…[He] also knows his history and vividly brings to life the old Karpis/Barker bank-robbing gang of the 1930s…McKinney is a complicated hero, absolutely at home fi ghting the system. An intriguing and enlightening read.” —Connie Fletcher, Booklist

“Combining historical fi ction with an investigative whodunit, and yielding surprisingly satisfying results…There’s a real heart behind the building mayhem…Bright and Yellow, Hard and Cold has a unique crime story to tell, keeps it gripping, and makes one wonder what Mr. Chapman has up his sleeve for the next novel.” —James Burt, ForeWord Reviews

FICTION/ Thrillers

Tim Chapman

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Bright and Yellow,Hard and Cold

Tim Chapman

ALLIUM PRESS OF cHICAGO

Allium Press of ChicagoForest Park, IL

www.alliumpress.com

This is a work of fiction. Descriptions and portrayals of real people, events, organizations, or establishments are intended to provide

background for the story and are used fictitiously. Other characters and situations are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not

intended to be real.

© 2013 by Tim ChapmanAll rights reserved

Book design by E. C. VictorsonCover design by Tim Chapman and E. C. Victorson

Front cover image: “Chicago’s wonders at night” (1930) Library of Congress

ISBN: 978-0-9831938-9-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chapman, Tim, 1953- Bright and yellow, hard and cold / Tim Chapman. pages cm ISBN 978-0-9831938-9-0 (pbk.) 1. Forensic scientists--Fiction. 2. Serial murder investigation--Fiction. 3. Chicago (Ill.)--Fiction. I. Title. PS3603.H37435B75 2013 813’.6--dc23

2013012173

1

He would never have guessed that a man in his eighties could hold out that long. He had beaten the old guy senseless and revived him three times and he finally

had to concede that he didn’t know any more than when he started, which was squat. He hadn’t been sure he could torture an old man, let alone kill one. The old guy’s stooped frame and white hair kind of reminded him of his grandfather, or at least what he imagined his grandfather would have been like had he known him. Anyway, it was too late for second thoughts. It was stiflingly hot in the house and hard to breathe with all the dog hair floating around, so he’d taken off his mask. The old guy’d be able to identify him now and he knew he couldn’t make a deal with him. Not after killing his dogs. If anything could have made him talk it would have been that. The man wailed through the tape over his mouth when he shot them. In a way he’d be better off dead. If he left him alive the old guy would spend the rest of his life grieving over a couple of mutts.

The old man was still unconscious, which made it easier. He walked around behind him, pressed the little automatic against the back of his head and pulled the trigger, twice. The man jerked a little and slumped forward, straining the extension cord that held him to the kitchen chair. He wasn’t sure whether he’d be able to feel a pulse through the latex gloves he wore, so he put his ear next to the man’s open mouth and listened for breathing. He was startled by a low, raspy sound as the old man’s weight against the cord forced air from his lungs.

He took his beer with him into the bathroom and set it on the back of the toilet while he pissed. He’d brought a duffel bag filled with supplies and he wanted to make certain he didn’t leave anything behind, especially a beer can with

Tim Chapman

2

his DNA on it. He swore when the latex gloves made it hard to zip up his pants. After flushing the toilet twice he went back to the kitchen. He tossed the beer can and gun into his bag. The last thing he did was cut the extension cord that held the old man in his seat. Gravity slowly pulled the body out of the chair. The old man rolled onto his back and stopped, staring up at him from the green and white tiles. He turned the head to one side with his foot while he coiled the cord and tossed it into his bag. That way the old guy could look at his dogs until someone found them. The blood stood out dark on the linoleum, and he avoided the puddles as he stepped over the body. He checked to see that the back door was locked before walking down the steps, out the gate, and into the night.

3

ONE

It was a muggy day and Sean McKinney was conscious of the perspiration on his back as he walked up the steps of the criminal courts building at 26th and California Streets

on Chicago’s near south side. He had rehearsed his speech several times in the car on the short drive from the crime lab, but his stomach still tightened as he entered Courtroom 207. The courtroom was a monument to tradition in oak and stone and it smelled musty, with a hint of disinfectant. The smell of law, McKinney thought. He leaned against the cool surface of a marble wall and fiddled with the wedding ring in his pocket, slipping it on and off his finger as he surveyed the room. The judge hadn’t yet entered, but the attorneys were at their respective tables. McKinney wasn’t quite six feet tall and thin, his unkempt, sand-colored hair and crooked nose making him look more like a middle-aged beach bum than a forensic scientist with the Illinois State Police. He wiped his palms on his chinos as he approached the state’s attorney’s table. Earlier that week the lead prosecutor, Brian Jameson, had let him know that McKinney’s report and bench notes, detailing his examination of the evidence, were not important to the case and would not be shared with the defense.

McKinney caught a look of disdain as Jameson spotted him. Jameson was well known for his six hundred dollar suits and his no-nonsense demeanor. In the three years McKinney had known Jameson he had never seen him smile. Back at the crime lab, they joked that the guy had a notch on his briefcase for every trial he’d won.

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“McKinney,” Jameson said. “What are you doing here?”“I’ve brought copies of my report and notes for you and

the defense,” McKinney said. “Here’s your copy.” He held out a manila folder. When the attorney didn’t take it he laid it on the table.

“I told you last week,” Jameson said, “I’m not using your report. Phillips confessed and your examination of the hair evidence doesn’t impact our case.”

“It doesn’t help your case, you mean.” He pointed to the manila folder. “I found dog hair all over the victim’s clothing but there wasn’t one dog hair on Phillips’s clothes. The killer wrestled with old Mr. Drenon. He touched his clothes. He probably sat on his furniture. Some dog hair would likely have been transferred to the killer’s clothing.”

“Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, McKinney. You know that.”

“That’s true, and it’s up to you to make that case to the jury, but they deserve to hear all the relevant facts. Don’t you have a duty to turn my findings over to the defense as part of discovery?”

“Not if we don’t use your report in preparing our case. You couldn’t get a match, so we’re not using your report. End of discussion.”

“Be reasonable, Jameson. Why doesn’t any of the physical evidence point to this guy? There was blood all over the kitchen but not one drop was found on your suspect. There was a partial footprint on the victim’s cheek but it doesn’t match any of the suspect’s shoes. Arnold Drenon and his dogs were shot, but there was no gunshot residue on Phillips’s hands. The medical examiner estimates the time of death right before he was picked up. When did he have time to change his clothes and clean up?”

Jameson glared at McKinney. His voice, when he spoke, was low and tightly controlled. “He confessed. We have a confession.”

“See, that’s what I don’t understand. He’s obviously pleading not guilty or you wouldn’t be here today. So, why did he confess?”

BRIGHT AND YELLOW, HARD AND COLD

5

McKinney’s blue eyes bored into Jameson, trying to read the other man. There were plenty of reasons why someone would confess to a murder he didn’t commit. Maybe the police were a little overzealous in the interrogation room. Maybe the guy was one of those publicity-hungry nutcases, the kind that think lonely women will write to them in prison. McKinney looked across to the defense table. The twenty-something-year-old man sitting there rocked slowly back and forth while his eyes darted around the courtroom. His movements made McKinney think of a cornered cat. He looked back at Jameson.

Jameson glanced away.“Is he mentally challenged in some way? What was his motive?

The cops don’t think it was burglary. There was plenty of money and jewelry still in the house.”

“I don’t know, maybe he doesn’t like dogs. Go back to the lab, McKinney. You’re not a lawyer and you’re not a cop. You look at little bits of garbage under a microscope all day and that’s where your job ends. Get out of here before I call Director Roberts and flush your career down the toilet.”

McKinney smiled. “Did you know that some species of aphid are able to reproduce without the benefit of a mate? It’s called parthenogenesis.”

“So what?” Jameson asked.“I suggest you try it.”McKinney turned and walked over to the defense table.

The defense, he knew, consisted of one woman—a tired public defender, Nina Anderson—who was overworked, underpaid and had stopped caring about her clients after she managed to get a rapist’s case thrown out on a technicality. Two weeks later, the same man raped and killed a ten-year-old girl. McKinney had seen her in court since then and it seemed as though she was just going through the motions.

Seated next to Anderson was a pasty-faced young man in a suit two sizes too small. Watching John Phillips rock back and

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forth, McKinney had the vague impression that he knew the man from somewhere. He didn’t look like the sort of person who would torture and kill a little old man. McKinney sighed. One thing he had learned long ago was that anyone is capable of anything. You couldn’t tell whether a person was guilty or innocent of a crime by looking at them, talking to them, or even hearing a confession or eyewitness account of the crime. The only thing that never lies is the physical evidence, and that requires skill to interpret. A skill he had spent years honing.

Counselor Anderson looked up from her notes. Her messy blonde hair was shot through with streaks of gray and her fingernails had been chewed down to the quick. Despite her disheveled appearance, McKinney thought she was an attractive woman. He wondered what she looked like when she smiled.

“May I help you?” she asked.McKinney looked at the manila folder in his hand. The hand

shook a little. He sighed and dropped the folder on the table in front of her. As he walked out of the courtroom he looked at the state’s attorney’s table. Jameson was making a flushing motion with his hand. He mouthed the word, “whoosh.”

It was too late in the day to go back to the lab, so McKinney decided to head home. He slipped a Magic Sam CD into the player on the dash and drove north along the lake, his windows open to let in the fresh, cool smell of the lake air. He went over the case in his mind. He was convinced that Jameson didn’t have enough evidence to bring the kid to trial, but he wasn’t certain that circumventing the state’s attorney had been the right thing to do. It was bound to get him in trouble.

When he got home to his Wrigleyville apartment he found his daughter, Angelina, sitting on the back steps leading to their third floor walk-up, reading a book. Living in Wrigleyville had

BRIGHT AND YELLOW, HARD AND COLD

7

been his idea—easy access to Cubs games and less expensive than the Lincoln Park condo they had lived in when his wife was alive. As a kid, he had spent so many summer days sitting in the Wrigley Field bleachers that his parents teased him they could see ivy growing on his legs. Now, going to a game held no interest for him. McKinney looked up at Angelina as he trudged up the steps. The setting sun bathed her in a warm, summery glow.

“Ciao, Bella. How was summer school?”“Hey, Dad. School was fine.” She held up her book for

him to see, a collection of short stories by Flannery O’Connor. “Homework. Oh…and Director Roberts called. He wants you to call him back.”

He grimaced. “Ugh.”“Rough day at work?”McKinney kicked some dirt off the wooden step below her

and plopped himself down. This was his favorite part of the day, coming home to spend time with his daughter, and he sat smiling up at her. Angelina’s mother, Catherine, was an Italian beauty who had died after a prolonged battle with breast cancer. McKinney had barely held on to his job after that. He became moody and withdrawn, spending most of his time sitting alone in his study, not really doing anything, just staring. Slowly, he became aware that having a teenage daughter who had lost her mother was a responsibility that wouldn’t allow him to indulge his grief. Still, Angelina had taken over the job of piloting the family finances. She balanced the checkbook, made certain the bills were paid, and came up with a budget that McKinney had a hard time sticking to. She had inherited her mother’s resourcefulness, along with her long, dark hair and olive skin, but at sixteen was still a little gangly. McKinney was gangly at fifty. He hoped Angelina wasn’t wading in that part of his family’s gene pool. McKinney called her Bella because, on the day she was born, he knew that she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen or would ever see again. On her thirteenth birthday she declared that she was no

Tim Chapman

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longer a little girl and asked McKinney to call her by her given name. He tried, but it was a tough habit to break. Looking up at her now he felt that same amalgam of pride and wonder that he was sure no other parent could know.

“I gave one of my reports to the public defender without having been subpoenaed or getting permission from the state’s attorney. I think her client is being set up to take the rap for something he didn’t do. Director Roberts and most of the folks at the lab act like we’re an arm of the State’s Attorney’s Office. They don’t understand how much forensic science depends on objectivity. I’m worried about repercussions, though. It would be nice if I could afford to send you to college in a couple of years.”

“Well, Director Roberts sounded pretty mad.”“Roberts,” McKinney snorted. “All he cares about is avoiding

controversy until he can retire and collect his pension.” He hooked a hand over the banister and pulled himself to his feet.

“I’ll call the lab now and smooth things over.” He kissed her on her furrowed teenaged brow as he sidled past her on the steps.

“Did you feed and walk Hendrix yet?“Not yet,” she said. “I’ve been studying.”“Well, let’s get going,” he said. “I don’t want us to be late for

tai chi class.” As he opened the screen door and stepped into their kitchen a big, black poodle launched his furry, wagging fifty pounds at McKinney’s stomach.

Sh� We Not Revenge

D. M. Pirrone

ALLIUM PRESS OF cHICAGO

Allium Press of ChicagoForest Park, IL

www.alliumpress.com

This is a work of fiction. Descriptions and portrayals of real people, events, organizations, or establishments are intended to provide background for

the story and are used fictitiously. Other characters and situations are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not intended to be real.

© 2014 by Diane Piron-GelmanAll rights reserved

Book/cover design and maps by E. C. Victorson

Front cover images:

“Chicago in ruins after the Fire of 1871” [State and Madison Streets] New York Times;detail from “boats sepia” by Amir Bajrich/Shutterstock;

“antique blood stained paper” by Ryan DeBerardinis/Shutterstock

Title page image:Chicago Fire refugees living in a building foundation

Harper’s Weekly, November 4, 1871Illustration by Theodore R. Davis

ISBN: 978-0-9890535-3-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pirrone, D. M. Shall we not revenge / D.M. Pirrone. pages cm Summary: “Shortly after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Irish detective Frank Hanley is assigned the case of a murdered rabbi. He is aided in his investigation by the rabbi’s daughter, Rivka. They uncover political corruption involving Irish gangsters and a prominent relief organization”-- Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-0-9890535-3-2 (pbk.) 1. Murder--Investigation--Fiction. 2. Political corruption--Chicago--Fiction. 3. Jews--Chicago--Fiction. 4. Irish Americans--Chicago--Fiction. 5. Chicago (Ill.)--Fiction. I. Title. PS3616.I76S43 2014 813’.6--dc23

2014011252

1

PROLOGUE

July 14, 1861

Once, Frank Hanley had thought the worst that could happen to him was jail. Now he knew different. He struggled in the grip of the bully boys that held him, ignoring the burn in his

shoulders from his arms twisted behind his back and the throbbing pain in his ribcage where they’d worked him over. From the upstairs room at Sean Doyle’s lakeside saloon, where customers sometimes paid to take women, Pegeen’s screams lanced through the night air. Each one cut Hanley like a knife, straight through to the bone.

“Calm yourself, boyo.” Sean Doyle, the sharp lines of his foxlike face visible in the glow from a kerosene lamp, raised a glass toward Hanley. “You’ll get her back when Billy’s done with her. Well shut of any notions she’s too high-and-mighty to whore for me when I tell her to.”

“Damn you to hell!” The words came out in a low growl as Hanley bucked and twisted against his captors. Both were new to Doyle’s employ, and he couldn’t put names to their faces. Half drunk as he was on the whiskey Doyle had fed him, he couldn’t budge them. One fellow—Hanley’s own height but a good thirty pounds heavier—yanked his arm so hard, it felt like his shoulder might pop from its socket. The pain made him gasp and he sagged in the thugs’ hold.

“I’m sorry about this, Frank. I really am.” Doyle didn’t sound it. He tilted his head back and sipped, the lamplight gleaming off his red hair.

“But you’ve got to learn, the pair of you. When I say something’s to be,

D. M. Pirrone

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you don’t say no.” He dragged out the last three words, making each one ring like a hammer blow.

A thud followed by a slap came from upstairs. Then Charming Billy Shaughnessy’s rough voice. “You don’t shut up, I’ll do it for you.” Pegeen’s sobbing was muffled abruptly, as if Billy had clamped a hand over her mouth.

Terror and rage gave Hanley new strength. He lurched forward, throwing one bully boy off balance, and stomped on the man’s foot. The thug yelped and loosened his grip. An elbow to the ribs broke his hold. Hanley heard a chair scrape across the floor and fought harder against the remaining thug, Pegeen’s cries spurring him on. Then her voice choked off. The creak of bedsprings, hard and fast, filtered through the ceiling along with Billy’s grunts. Panic shot through Hanley. Got to win this now, before—

A stunning blow caught him across the chops. He staggered, tasting blood. The thug he’d injured grabbed his free arm again and twisted it near to breaking. He clenched his jaw against a cry of pain and glared at Doyle, who stood in front of him.

“God, but you try my patience,” Doyle said, wiping blood from one knuckle where Hanley’s teeth had cut into it. “All I’ve done for you the past five years, and it’s down to this.”

Hanley spat blood at him. A wet, red gobbet landed on Doyle’s white shirt.

“Ah, Frank.” Doyle sounded regretful, though Hanley knew better now than to believe it. “You shouldn’t have done that.” Without warning, his fist slammed into Hanley’s stomach. The bully boys’ grip kept Hanley from doubling over and he fought not to heave up his guts. An uppercut to his jaw made his head ring. Dizzied, he would have fallen, if not for the thugs holding him up.

A shout from Billy, hard and triumphant. The rhythmic creaking ceased. Hanley choked down bile, tasted stale whiskey at the back of his throat. Pegeen. God. He could hear Billy getting off the bed, then his steps crossing the floor. The thud of his feet, as he descended the rickety stairs by the serving counter, struck Hanley’s ear like a death knell.

Billy sauntered into view, one hand buttoning his fly. In the lamplight,

Shall We Not ReveNge

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Hanley made out scratches on his smirking face. One red line snaked from beneath an eye past his flattened lump of a nose. Through the horror inside him, Hanley felt a flicker of pride in his girl. Pegeen had damaged the son of a bitch, at least. Which was more than he’d done. A wave of shame washed over him, dizzying in its impact.

“Sweet piece you had there, Frank,” Billy said. “You could’ve made plenty off her, you’d seen sense. Guess you’re not so smart as our Sean always says you are, eh?”

Dazed and sickened as Hanley was, it took a moment for Billy’s meaning to sink in. “You…God, you…”

“Ah Christ, Billy.” Doyle threw him a disgusted look, grabbed his whiskey off the table, and threw it back in a gulp. “I’d wanted you to go that far, I’d have said.”

Billy shrugged. “Had to shut her up. Don’t know my own strength sometimes. Sorry, Sean.”

Hanley lunged toward them both, heedless of the bully boys who still held him fast. Stabbing pain shot through his arms and chest. “Fucking bastards, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you with my bare hands—”

Billy snickered. He rolled his broad shoulders and shifted into a fighter’s stance with negligent ease. “Go ahead and try. You’re beaten and you know it.”

“Take off, Billy,” Doyle said. “You and me, we’ll settle up later.”For a moment, Billy’s bravado deserted him. “Sure. Sure, Sean. Sorry

again.” He gave Hanley a final sneer, then walked out of the saloon into what was left of the night.

The fight went out of Hanley and he sagged in the bully boys’ grasp. He had no strength left, no will to fight or curse or do anything except hang there as silence crawled by, his mind hurling itself against a blank wall of denial. Pegeen couldn’t be dead. Thick-as-a-post Charming Billy, so stupid it was a wonder he knew day from night, he didn’t know anything, not any goddamned thing…

Doyle nodded to his thugs. “Leave go of him. We’re done.”The moment their grip slackened, Hanley tore away from them and

raced for the stairs.

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4

The room was near pitch-dark, scant moonlight seeping in around the makeshift curtain over the window. Hanley stumbled over a warped floorboard on his headlong rush toward the bed. Pegeen lay there, a huddled shape barely visible. She felt warm under his hands when he reached her. Relief shot through him as he pulled her up into his arms.

“Pegeen? Sweetheart? I’m here, I won’t let them hurt you anymore…”She was limp in his hold. Not a movement, not a sound. Not a breath.He said her name again, shifted one hand to cradle her face. Her

slack mouth felt swollen beneath his fingers. Heart pounding, he eased her back down on the mattress, then strode to the window. Heedless of the pain spiking through his ribs, he tore the curtain aside.

Moonlight flooded the room. Its pale gleam caught Pegeen’s eyes, open and staring upward. Unblinking.

Hanley staggered back to the bed and sank down on its edge. Pegeen’s lips were puffy and bruised, her slender throat stippled with the marks of Billy’s hands. He pulled her upright again, cradled her lifeless body in his arms. No. No. No.

As if from a vast distance, the sounds of Doyle’s departure drifted up from below. The closing of the saloon door drew all Hanley’s grief and rage into a white-hot pinpoint.

Damn you to hell, Sean Doyle. God help me, I’ll send you there.

5

ONE

January 26, 1872

The darkness was nearly total, pierced only by the ever-burning pinprick of gold above the Ark. The stench of human waste and the rancid sweetness of blood blotted out the safe, familiar

scents of the synagogue—new-cut pine, old beeswax, the faint smoky smell of the lamp oil. Rivka’s stomach heaved, but there was nothing left in it to bring up.

She pressed the crumpled prayer shawl to her nose and breathed deep. Her father’s scent, a blend of cherry tobacco and sun-dried grass, clung to the cloth. The blood smell also remained. She tasted it, thick and bitter, at the back of her throat.

For a time, she knew only the hoarse catch of her breathing and the rocking of her body. Cold crept through her bones from the hard floor where she sat. The clouds passed and moonlight returned. Thin, cold, as insubstantial as a wandering soul. She saw the pale blue of her nightdress, a narrow stripe of the wood beneath, the edge of the sticky dark pool under her father’s head. His face, looking up at her. Broken. Empty.

One hand crept out from the stained prayer shawl and closed his still-whole eye. The other eye was gone, socket and surrounding skull shattered by the force of the killing blow.

She tucked her hand back inside the wadded cloth and bound the clean portion around her fingers as she swallowed the burning in her

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throat. She began to recite the Mourner’s Kaddish, each syllable of the Hebrew falling from her mouth on a cloud of cold white air.

“Tell me how you found him,” Frank Hanley said gently.“It was very late.” The girl—Rivka—hadn’t moved from her spot

on the floor, next to the obscene halo around the corpse’s battered head. The sheet someone had laid over the body didn’t completely cover the darkened blood. Rivka’s face was turned away from it. Hanley watched her toying with a corner of the wadded white cloth she held.

“Rivkaleh, you should not be talking to him.” The interruption came from Jacob Nathan, who’d brought Hanley here from the Lake Street police substation. He strode over and squatted by the girl, his heavy gray coat brushing the floor. “Go with Hannah now,” he said, patting her cheek and then gesturing toward the door. A middle-aged woman in black stood there, concern written on her patient face. “See, she has been waiting for you.”

“No.” Rivka drew away from Nathan with a headshake. A hank of black hair slid out from under the kerchief she wore and brushed across the navy wool blanket someone had draped over her shoulders.

“Rivka—”Hanley spoke up. “I need to hear what she has to say, Mr. Nathan.”Nathan shot him a disapproving look. “I can tell you—”

“You told me she found him. I need to hear it from her.”Nathan gave a sharp sigh and stood. He hovered near them in front

of an empty bench. Similar benches of polished wood surrounded three sides of a low platform. A lectern stood near the front of it. Other details registered as Hanley glanced around the little temple—the body by the platform, a small table some distance away from it draped in a white runner cloth, a long white curtain near the back of the room that gleamed in the sunlight from the plain glass windows. In front of the curtain sat three silent men in heavy coats and skullcaps. Nathan had said they were here to tend to the dead, once Hanley was finished.

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He returned his attention to Rivka’s face. Strong jaw, sharp cheekbones. Gray eyes shadowed by pain, with circles beneath them that shone like bruises. Their color emphasized her pallor. Hanley felt a flash of sympathy. She’d been here for hours, according to Nathan. All night, or a good part of it, alone with her father’s dead body. He’d known soldiers during the War for the Union who faced a similar ordeal with less courage than this slip of a girl.

“Papa left before supper,” she said. “He told me he might be gone some time and I shouldn’t wait up. I went to bed a bit after nine. I woke much later. It was very cold and I got another blanket. I went to Papa’s room to see if he wanted one, too. He was not there.

“The kitchen clock struck, two times. I put on my boots and shawl and came over to the shul—the synagogue. I saw no light, but sometimes my father prays in the dark when he’s troubled. He says the moon gives enough light to see, and what better candle to use than the Holy One’s own?”

Her voice trembled on the last words and she huddled deeper into the blanket. “I came into the shul.” Her grip tightened around the cloth bundle against her chest. “I should have brought a lantern, but kerosene is so dear…The moon shone through the clouds. I saw the curtains of the Ark, the shape of the bimah. The blood. And Papa. There.” She jerked her head toward the low platform. “Thrown down by the bimah, like a sack of washing.”

She closed her eyes. Anguish drew her upper body inward, curling around the bundle as if shielding it from some terrible threat. Hanley moved instinctively to steady her, then crushed the impulse. He had no business offering comfort here—to a strange young woman, a murder witness. She might be involved, for all he knew. He needed to listen and observe, without emotion clouding his judgment.

“I went to him,” she said. “I saw—” A quick nod of her head toward the corpse. “The blood was on the tallis. On one edge. I wanted to save it. Keep it clean. So I lifted him and took it.”

Her fingers worked against the crumpled white cloth. Silk? Hanley’s mother would know at a glance. Tal-eess. Hebrew, he guessed. “What is that? What’s it for?”

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8

She didn’t answer. Maybe she couldn’t. “A prayer shawl,” Nathan said. “He must have been praying when—” He broke off, as if speaking the rest of his thought might choke him.

A queasy pang made Hanley swallow hard. He’d seen his share of death, as a soldier and in the past six years patrolling Chicago’s streets, but the idea of murdering a man at prayer shocked him. It seemed an especially brutal crime, one that shouldn’t happen to a harmless old rabbi.

“The clouds came then,” Rivka said. “The dark. And after them, Jacob.” Her dulled gaze flicked to Nathan. “By then it was morning. Jacob and the minyan came and saw.”

“Minion?”“A gathering for prayer,” Nathan said. “Ten men, sometimes more.

We come early every morning, to pray with our rabbi, Rav Kelmansky…” He trailed off, eyes fixed on Rivka, burly arms wrapped around his chest, as if even his wool coat couldn’t keep out the chill. He avoided looking at the dead man.

Hanley addressed his next question to Rivka. “Did you see anyone or hear anything before you came here last night?”

“No.”He waited, but she said nothing more. He thanked her gently, then

straightened up and shook the kinks out of his long legs. “You had your prayer gathering—your minyan—yesterday morning, Mr. Nathan?”

“Yes.”“Did you see your rabbi afterward that day?”Nathan took a moment to answer. “I saw him in the afternoon.

We study together.”“Was that the last time you saw him alive?”“Yes.” The word came out shakily, as if it took all Nathan had to say it.“When was that? Early afternoon or later?”Nathan closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to them. “Mid-

afternoon. I’m sorry, I cannot be more precise. To speak of my Rav—” He broke off and turned away.

“I know this is painful,” Hanley said. “But the more you can tell me, the better chance I have of finding the murderer.”

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Nathan’s nod was barely noticeable. He’d likely be more helpful once the worst shock was past. A look at the body was Hanley’s next step, but he didn’t wish to add to these people’s distress any more than he had to. It could cause problems later, when he’d need their trust. He moved to catch Nathan’s eye and gestured toward the sheet. “May I…?”

“This is necessary?”“Yes.”Nathan gestured to one of the men by the door, a lanky youth with

eyeglasses and a scraggly beard. Together, they pulled the sheet back. The younger man returned to his seat.

Hanley thanked them and fished a small sketchbook and pencil from a pocket of his overcoat. His first clear look at the corpse made him suppress a shudder. It reminded him of bodies he’d seen on the battlefields—soldiers in blue and gray sprawled in the dirt, their heads half blown off by rifle balls.

He took a slow breath and began to draw the body. He heard Nathan walking toward the door, then voices. Nathan, the woman he’d called Hannah—his wife, Hanley guessed—and the others, talking quietly in a half-familiar tongue. Nathan sounded calmer now. Before long, the creak of the door told him someone had left. He glanced up and saw Nathan standing alone, watching him.

He returned to his work. The body had fallen just in front of the platform. What had the girl called it? Bimah. A powerful blow had crushed the upper left side of the dead man’s skull. He knelt for a closer view of the wound, detailing the shape and angle of the staved-in bone. Seeing it as lines and shadows helped the horror of it recede a little. The undamaged right eye was closed. The left hand bore a gold wedding ring, and the dead man’s clothing appeared undisturbed. Closer inspection of the hands showed no defensive wounds. Hanley finished the last few lines, put his sketching materials away and began searching the dead man’s pockets.

“Detective!” Nathan snapped. “Stop!”Annoyed, Hanley took a moment to master himself and then looked

over at Nathan. The man’s distress, written on his weathered face, made

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him soften his tone. “I need to know if a thief might have gone through your rabbi’s pockets already.”

Features pinched with distaste, Nathan slowly nodded.Hanley resumed his search. He found only a crumpled cotton

handkerchief. The victim’s trousers, coat and vest were fine wool, more expensive than Hanley’s own garments and little worn. Carefully, Hanley slid one arm beneath the dead man’s shoulders and turned the body sideways. The stiff, cold flesh shifted in a single motion from armpit to toes. No bending at the waist, nor the immense dead weight of a snoring drunkard. Rigor mortis, friend of corpse retrievers.

Behind him, Rivka made a small, pained sound. Hanley paused, then went on with his examination. He pulled the coat lapel out far enough to read the tailor’s mark inside—Nathan and Zalman. Then he lowered the corpse and unbuttoned the vest for a look at the shirt beneath. Plain cotton, it bore marks of darning and the collar had been turned at least once.

“You made this suit?” Hanley asked Nathan.“I made all his suits. Good wool. My best work. What more should

our rabbi…and my friend…deserve?”“Worth something, then.” Especially in this harsh winter, with so

many people desperate for a little warmth.“I charge a fair price.” Nathan looked even more perturbed. He

scratched under his flowing beard. “I would not cheat anyone—Rav Kelmansky least of all.”

“I didn’t suggest it.” Hanley kept his tone mild with an effort. He put his next question to Rivka, who was watching him now instead of the floor. “Did your father carry money, or a pocket watch?”

“A few coins. He sold his watch for food after the Fire.”“Someone robbed him?” Nathan said. His eyes flicked to the dead

man. “That could be. These are dangerous days.” He shifted his weight, as if restless.

Something was definitely bothering him. The mere fact of violent death, or more? Some knowledge of it, maybe. Or maybe he was simply afraid. Martial law had ended scarcely three months before and tensions

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still ran high among the desperate, burned-out thousands who called Chicago home. This small Jewish neighborhood appeared to be surviving all right, from what Hanley had seen on his way here. These days, that could make them a target.

He looked around, seeking hints that anything valuable might have been taken. It struck him for the first time how different this little pine-board temple was from his parish church, Saint Pat’s. The room was a simple square, its unadorned walls the straw-yellow of new lumber. Where the altar should have been sat a tall cabinet with curtains instead of doors. The little table he’d seen earlier was empty of whatever might have stood on it. The only valuable thing he could see was a silver candelabra, lying some distance from the corpse.

Nearer by, a trail of thin, dark smudges led from the blood pool around the dead man’s head toward the door, with what looked like a detour toward the table. “Was anything missing when you arrived this morning?” Hanley asked. “Any valuables or relics?”

Nathan shrugged. “A spice box, silver, about so big…” He held out one broad hand that measured a short distance between thumb and fingers. “And one menorah. Like that.” He nodded toward the fallen candelabra. “There should be two of them. We have little worth stealing. Our Torah survived the Fire, thanks be to the Holy One.”

“How much are they worth, would you guess?” The fallen candelabra looked sizable. If the stolen one was just like it, that much silver should fetch a decent sum. Enough to spend a few evenings gambling it away…or to house a family for a few weeks at least, someplace that didn’t smell of old smoke, unwashed bodies, and yesterday’s cabbage.

“In money?” Nathan spoke the word with contempt. “I don’t know. What is your hand worth? Or your eyes? How should we put a price on things that are priceless?”

“If someone came to rob us, they’ve done it.” The taut anger in Rivka’s voice startled Hanley. “Only at no profit to themselves.” She began to shake. It took him a moment to realize she was laughing, a bitter sound with no mirth. “No profit. Only a life, only my father…” Her laughter turned to sobbing—a harsh, tearing sound, like the cry of a crow.

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Hearing it made his throat hurt. He turned away, toward the bloody smudges. As he moved, he saw Nathan go to Rivka, lift her from the floor with one brawny arm and maneuver her toward the nearest bench, as easily as if she were a little child.

Hanley sketched the marks, then knelt and traced one. Thinner than his pinky finger, each mark had a curve at either end. Blood on the side of a shoe or boot-sole. He placed his own booted foot against one of the marks, lining up with where the toe should be. The heel curve reached to just behind his arch. Not too tall, whoever had walked out of here with a dead man’s blood on his shoe.

He glanced at Nathan, who sat with Rivka—gone quiet now—huddled against his shoulder. The man likely wasn’t more than five-foot-six. His boot soles were impossible to see. Hanley hadn’t noticed blood anywhere on the uppers during their walk here from Lake Street—but he hadn’t been looking then.

“You found something?” Nathan said.“May I see your boots, please?”“What for?”“I need to see them.”“Why—”“Onkl Jacob.” Rivka’s roughened voice stopped Nathan in mid-word.

“Ikh bet dikh.”Nathan looked at her, face drawn, then edged away and pulled off

his boots. He held them out toward Hanley and dropped them. They hit the floor with a thunk. “Here. For whatever you expect them to tell you.”

“Thank you.” A close examination showed no blood. Only a little mud, dried clumps caught in front of the heel. Exactly what he’d expect if Nathan had been walking around any number of places yesterday afternoon, during the warm spell. Warm being a relative term in a Chicago winter.

He handed the boots back, then debated with himself over whether or not to demand Rivka’s. The tracks led out the synagogue door, and she’d said she hadn’t left the place since finding her father’s body in the wee dark hours. It felt indecent to ask if he could check her boots for blood.

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But he didn’t have the luxury of sensitivity. Especially on his first solo homicide case. If he botched it the commanding officer of the West Division would savage him—and promptly replace him with the commander’s own protégé at Lake Street Station. Hanley’s promotion had been touch and go as it was. Considering his background, it was a miracle he’d gotten the job.

He had to do everything right. Better than right, just to show the people who expected him to fail. “Miss Kelmansky? I’d like to see your boots as well, please.”

“She has nothing to do with this.” Nathan stood up, one boot still in hand. “Isn’t it enough that you make her tell you the horror she found here? That she stayed all night with, so her father’s soul would not go back to the Holy One alone? Leave her. She has suffered enough.”

Rivka touched his arm. “Onkl.”The word—uncle? That was what it had sounded like—brought Nathan

up short. He sat heavily on the bench, his back to her. She worked one-handed at her boots, all the while keeping her grip on the tallis.

Finally she rose and padded forward, boots held out toward Hanley. The motion dislodged the blanket, revealing a heavy shawl of chocolate-brown wool over a blue flannel nightdress. The fabric was worn enough to hint at the shape beneath, with just enough curves to spark Hanley’s interest. He felt heat rise in his face and coughed to hide his embarrassment.

He took the boots, careful to avoid brushing her fingers, and examined them. No blood. No mud, either. He handed the boots back. She put them on, still one-handed, more hair falling around her face as she bent over. Her awkward movements displayed a ragged dignity that made him want to apologize. She looked exhausted. She must have managed to stand though sheer force of will.

He glanced around the room again, offering her what privacy he could. More blood spatters caught his eye, this time near a front corner of the platform, arcing away from the body in shrinking dots. A larger dark splotch and a smear pointed in the opposite direction, toward the menorah. It lay some distance from the body, as if it had rolled or been thrown.

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He picked it up. The frigid air had chilled the metal. Six arms curved outward, three on each side, from a central column. The column base was streaked with blood and matted hair. The menorah felt heavier than the truncheon he’d once carried on his hip. To hold it comfortably required two hands.

“Is that how they—” Nathan broke off, staring at the menorah.“‘They’? You have some idea who—”“No.” Nathan rubbed his arms as if for warmth. “I am…this is…

upsetting. I spoke without thought. Forgive me.”The words to form a sensible question wouldn’t come. Later, Hanley

thought. Jacob Nathan wasn’t going anywhere.He went to the corpse and held the menorah base next to the

shattered portion of skull. A good fit, it looked like. Will Rushton, the police surgeon at the city morgue, could tell him for sure. He set the menorah down. When he sent more men to retrieve the corpse, he’d tell them to take this, too. Rushton and the coroner would want a look at it.

He knelt by the first blood droplet and fished out his pencil and some string. He set one end of the string at the edge of the droplet, stretched it across and then held the string down at the other edge while he marked the spot where they met. He did the same with the rest of the droplets and the larger blood splotch. The droplets were getting smaller the farther they’d landed from the corpse. Spatter from the killing blow, he guessed. Rushton could confirm that, too.

The sound of the door made him look up. The young man with the eyeglasses came in and went over to Nathan, who had gone back to Rivka and was standing with a hand on her shoulder. She leaned against him. The two men spoke briefly, then the younger one resumed his seat on the bench.

“You are finished with us now?” Nathan asked.“Almost. Who’s that you were talking to, and what about?”“Moishe Zalman. My assistant. We were discussing arrangements

for our dead.”Hanley thanked him and let them go. Nathan and Rivka left the

synagogue together, but Zalman stayed behind. Maybe something to

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do with tending to the body, Hanley thought, though it seemed odd that he just sat there.

On his way outside, Hanley spoke to the patrolman waiting by the door. Square-built and sandy-haired, Rolf Schmidt was a competent officer, despite being only two years on the force. This Market Street neighborhood was part of his beat. “I’ll send more patrolmen to help with the body,” Hanley told him. “Tell these people they can have it back after the coroner’s finished.”

Schmidt nodded. Hanley strode into the thin sunlight and took a deep breath. The cold, fresh air banished the smells of death. A taste of smoke lingered, a reminder of the October fire. Almost four months after the Great Conflagration, as the newspapers called it, its traces still stained every breeze in Chicago’s burned-out district. At least it wasn’t ash any longer. Most of that had long since been washed to earth by rain and snow, turning the ever-present mud beneath the streets and sidewalks into a gritty mess that stuck to everything it touched.

He gazed across the muddy yard between the synagogue and the scattering of frame buildings opposite. Like the temple, their clapboards looked barely weathered. Through gaps where houses and shops had once stood, he could see passing traffic—horsecars, peddlers’ wagons, carts and drays of every size. The empty lots, their blackened earth dotted with dirty snow crust, drew the eye like missing fingers. Before October eighth, they’d been greengrocers, dry-goods stores, saloons, homes. Parts of a city that had lived and breathed. Now they were gone. Some might never be rebuilt. Either way, Chicago would never be the same.

He blew on his fingers to warm them, then glanced down at the churned-up mud by the boardwalk that spanned the yard. A patch of tiny ridges caught his attention. He knelt for a closer look. Frozen by the overnight temperature drop, the stiffened muck formed a footprint, large and deep, with a thick heel and a wide, flat sole. Grains of snow furred the tops of each ridge. The print’s position suggested a missed step off the boardwalk, heading away from the synagogue.

Carefully, Hanley brushed the snow away. Beneath it, he saw a swirl

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of tiny lines too small to make out. He sketched the footprint as best he could with stiffening fingers. The print took shape, dark pencil lines forming a pattern. A boot sole, a man’s from the size. Jacob Nathan had muddy boots, he recalled, and apparently no chance to clean them yet. Hanley, like most people, cleaned his boots every night.

He closed the sketchbook, taking care not to smudge the drawing. Then he turned up his coat collar and set off toward the station. Sergeant Moore would want his report.

DEATH ATCHINATOWN

Frances McNamara

ALLIUM PRESS OF cHICAGO ALLIUM PRESS OF cHICAGO

Allium Press of ChicagoForest Park, IL

www.alliumpress.com

This is a work of fiction. Descriptions and portrayals of real people, events, organizations, or establishments are intended to provide background for the story and are used fictitiously. Other characters and situations are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not intended to be real.

© 2014 by Frances McNamaraAll rights reserved

Book and cover design by E. C. VictorsonFront cover images:

Ida Kahn and Mary Stone in Western dressCourtesy of General Commission on Archives and History,

the United States Methodist Churchand

“Traditional Chinese Pattern” by John Lock/Shutterstock

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McNamara, Frances. Death at Chinatown / Frances McNamara. pages cm. -- (An Emily Cabot mystery) Summary: “In the summer of 1896, amateur sleuth Emily Cabot becomes involved in a murder investigation when a herbalist is poisoned in Chicago’s original China-town”-- Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-0-9890535-5-6 (pbk.) 1. Chinese Americans--Fiction. 2. Murder--Investigation--Fiction. 3. Chinese Americans--Illinois--Chicago--Fiction. 4. Chinatown (Chicago, Ill.)--Fiction. 5. Mystery fiction. I. Title. PS3613.C58583D36 2014 813’.6--dc23 2014015348

1

ONE

Mr. Cormick here suffered injuries from a shotgun blast a month ago.” The surgeon gestured and looked down, but I kept my eyes on the balding patch just visible on

the top of his head. “We were unable to locate all of the pellets at the time of original treatment and he has been in continual pain ever since. Today, gentlemen…and ladies,” Dr. Erickson said, with a bow in our direction, “we will, for the first time, use a new technique which the German physician Dr. Roentgen discovered while experimenting with a Crookes tube.” He paused to point at a round glass bulb mounted on a wooden stand.

My husband, Stephen, stepped forward, holding up a photographic negative against a white sheet, which Dr. Erickson pointed towards. “With the help of Mr. Emil Grubbé and Dr. Stephen Chapman, we are able to use the Roentgen rays to find the problematic pieces of lead still in the man’s thigh. Mr. Grubbé will explain the methodology.”

A slightly disheveled young man with stringy black hair shambled over to the negative and mumbled about the plate used, the method of placing the limb between the tube and the plate, the exposure of forty-five minutes, and the procedure for fixing the image. He pointed out a copper wire around the leg, which had been used as a marker, and the pellets visible six centimeters below it. So this was the work that Stephen had been spending so much time on. He had tried to tell me about it, but I was distracted

Frances McNamara

2

and, I had to admit, uninterested. In the current circumstances, however, I couldn’t help being impressed. In fact, I was fascinated as I realized the machine could show the inside of the body. I had to admit to myself that it really was an amazing discovery.

“And now we will be able to address this man’s pain through removal of the missing pieces,” Dr. Erickson explained. It was obvious he was impatient with the mumblings of the technician, and it was clear that he saw Stephen as nothing more than an attendant, as he directed him to hold the negative so that it could be examined. “Now we are ready to remove the material.” He nodded to the nurse administering the chloroform. “The patient will be unaware of the procedure. Gentlemen…” he said, addressing several younger men standing nearby, “…you will secure the limbs to prevent any unconscious movement.”

Dr. Erickson wore a conventional herringbone suit, although he removed his jacket and vest, handing them to a nurse. After he rolled up his shirtsleeves she brought a basin for him to wash his hands in. Once he’d dried them he donned a white apron. All the while, he talked about how the unfortunate Mr. Cormick had been treated for his wounds and the surgical procedure he planned to perform.

I ventured a quick glance at the patient, but he was laid out on a stretcher sheathed in white sheets. His face was indistinguishable, as a nurse held an overturned wire netting over his nose and mouth. It was stuffed with gauze and she carefully drip, drip, dripped a liquid from an amber-colored glass jar onto the gauze. I could smell a cloying, sweet scent that made me want to pinch my nose, but I restrained myself.

It was clear to me that Dr. Erickson wanted to make sure we had an unobstructed view. I would have liked to demur, to leave even, but I sensed that would have reflected poorly on Stephen, so I said nothing and attempted to concentrate my attention on the least shocking sights in the room—thus my interest in Dr. Erickson’s head. Staring at it kept me from glancing down at

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3

the injured man and the knives and the bandages, the thought of which I found somewhat alarming.

The surgeon was a tall man with prominent cheekbones, and had a full white beard and mustache, very neatly trimmed. His cold gray eyes were on a level with mine. As he spoke, I paid attention to each movement of each wrinkle on his well-lined face, intent on not looking down at the man on the stretcher below us.

I noticed that Stephen now stood in a corner of the stage, but I knew that he could still see me. Conscious that I was there at his request, I was determined to endure the experience, despite my quite natural revulsion. I could face anything if I had to. I had seen seriously wounded and ill people before, and even encountered dead bodies in my past, but I had never observed a surgery where they purposely cut into human flesh.

Dr. Erickson appeared to be ready, and I let my gaze drift up to the ceiling, hoping to avoid the sight of blood as he wielded the scalpel, but he hesitated.

“Unless we can prevail upon one of our visiting physicians to demonstrate the skills they have learned in Michigan? Dr. Stone, you told me you are trained as a surgeon, is that not the case?”

e

When I had first met Dr. Mary Stone and Dr. Ida Kahn in the lobby just a short time before, I was disappointed. They seemed so very ordinary. It was only much later that I realized it must have required a great effort to transform themselves chameleon-like for American society. For, despite their very American-sounding names, they were very thoroughly Chinese.

I knew they had come from China four years previously with Miss Grace Howe, a missionary, to study at the University of Michigan. And I knew they had completed medical degrees that spring of 1896. They were visiting Chicago all summer before returning to their homeland to open a clinic. For months, I had

Frances McNamara

4

been hearing about them from my husband. I suppose I expected something more exotic than the two slim figures in ordinary walking suits with flat straw hats. They could have been any of the women scholars at the University of Chicago in those days. They had the almond-shaped eyes of an Oriental, but nothing beyond that to mark them out as extraordinary. Held up as paragons by my husband and others, they were said to excel in both social and professional spheres. Yet, when I introduced myself to them in the comparatively cool corridor of the Rush Hospital on that blazing hot August day, I was not overly impressed.

“We have heard so much about you from your husband,” Dr. Mary Stone told me, as she accepted my extended hand in a firm shake. The gloves we both wore did nothing to relieve the oppressive heat. My skirts felt like a heavy drag, my hat a burden, and my jacket too constricting. I struggled to ignore my physical discomfort and to pay attention as she turned to the other women in her group. “This is Dr. Ida Kahn and her adoptive mother, Miss Grace Howe, who has accompanied us during our stay here.”

Ida Kahn seemed a copy of Mary Stone except for the round spectacles she wore. Miss Howe was a large-boned woman whose face was flushed with the heat of the day. I nodded to each, not feeling it necessary to extend my hand, since Mary was gesturing to two other women as well. “And this is Mrs. Laura Appleby—she is the widow of an eminent physician and has been most kind to us during our stay—and Miss Charlotte Erickson. Her father is the distinguished surgeon who will be leading the demonstration today.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Chapman,” Miss Howe told me. “You are also here for the demonstration? Mary and Ida are anxious to see it. Not my cup of tea, but our time here is for them to learn as much as they can before we return to China. Your husband made special arrangements for them to attend and we are very grateful for that. I must say, he has been extremely helpful

DEATH AT CHINATOWN

5

with introductions to many people in the medical community here. I know the girls are in his debt for that.”

I clenched my teeth in an effort to refrain from commenting on my husband’s activities. That summer Stephen had been spending more and more time away from home. His activities had taken him into the city, leaving me in our Hyde Park home with our children. It was not uncommon for him to even spend overnights in the city without notice. When I protested, he parried with enthusiastic descriptions of various new procedures or research he had seen, and then invited me to attend demonstrations. He was deaf to my insistence that I was needed at home and he had become slippery as an eel in slithering out of arguments. It had come to a head the evening before in a big argument, and ended in his insistence that I attend this demonstration and meet the Chinese doctors. That morning he had departed early, leaving me to find my own way to the hospital and to introduce myself to these women. I would not let them see my annoyance, but I was hard pressed to conceal it.

Before I could reply we were interrupted. A tall man in his fifties strode across the corridor towards us. He planted his imposing figure in front of Miss Erickson and accosted her with no consideration for the rest of us. “Charlotte, what are you doing here?”

The young woman was of medium height. She wore the black of deep mourning and she cringed away from the man’s towering figure. Mrs. Appleby, who also wore black, stepped between them, as if to protect the young woman. “Isaac, please, I asked Charlotte to join us. After the demonstration there is a luncheon to honor our Chinese guests. I thought it would be a fine thing to have another young woman in the party.”

“Madam, I will not allow it. I will not have you influencing my daughter. Is it not enough that you assisted her in poisoning her own mother? How dare you continue to force your attentions on her when I have forbidden it?” He frowned at his daughter,

Frances McNamara

6

who appeared to wilt under his furious gaze. Brushing past the older woman, he took his daughter by the arm and led her away.

“I apologize,” Mrs. Appleby told us. “Please do not mind what he says. He has not recovered from the death of his wife. She was one of my dearest friends. When she suffered pain in her final struggles she asked me for help in finding herbs that could provide some relief. Like many physicians, Dr. Erickson has an unreasonable prejudice against homeopathic treatments. He knows perfectly well that nothing we gave her harmed her. He just needs someone to blame for his loss.”

It was an awkward moment. “I am so sorry Miss Erickson will not be able to join us for the luncheon,” Mary Stone commented.

“I have heard that Dr. Erickson does not believe women are suited for medical research or surgery,” Ida Kahn said.

“He hasn’t always been that way,” Mrs. Appleby hastened to comment. “He has changed since the death of his wife. Before that, he helped to train women physicians at the women’s hospital she supported. And I’m afraid that is not the only change he has undergone.” She shook her head. “He has resigned from most of his appointments at local medical establishments, and much of his practice. It’s unusual for him to even do the kind of surgical demonstration he’s doing today. Please forgive any rudeness. I believe he still suffers from a painful grief.”

I thought this did not bode well for the coming demonstration. If the surgeon disapproved of women physicians, the presence of the Chinese doctors would be awkward, to say the least. Restless with a certain apprehension, I looked around in vain for Stephen. He was the one who’d insisted I attend this session, but where was he?

At that moment, a young man came and asked us to follow him to the demonstration. When I realized that Miss Howe and Mrs. Appleby had no intention of attending, I thought of remaining with them. But I remembered Stephen’s insistence, and reluctantly allowed myself to be herded to a nearby doorway.

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7

We mounted a few steps and found ourselves in an operating theater. I was shocked. When Stephen had suggested I attend a demonstration, he had not mentioned that it was surgical. The room was a small amphitheater with boxy wooden desks lining the rows. They were mostly occupied by young men in suits, who I assumed were medical students. I hoped we could remain as far as possible from the floor of the room where the operation would happen. But as I moved toward one of the last rows, we were hailed from below.

It was Dr. Erickson. “Come, come, gentlemen. I see our lady visitors have arrived. Make room, make room. You must allow them seats in the front row.” He waved at the young men in the first row and they promptly gave up their seats, much to my dismay. I had no choice but to follow Mary and Ida down the steps and to slip in behind a desk. It would be the only thing between us and the operation about to take place below.

e

And now, here was Dr. Erickson asking Dr. Stone, one of the Chinese women doctors, to cut into the man lying on the stretcher. The very thought made me cringe with anticipation. I thought it was cruel of the doctor to challenge her in that way. My husband had been a surgeon before he came to Chicago to do research, but that skill was forever lost to him when he was injured by a shotgun blast, several years before our marriage. I had never seen him perform surgery and had no desire to. How alarming it must be for Mary Stone to be dared to perform surgery in this rather antagonistic atmosphere, where the only other women were nurses or observers. I was almost prompted to protest when he badgered her.

“Come, come, madam. Did they not teach you that this is the essence of modern medicine? Or do you plan to merely prescribe herbs when you return to your country? Surely that is not what you

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came to here to learn? If you graduated from the great institution of the University of Michigan, surely they taught you to do simple surgery, didn’t they?” He had an unpleasant grin on his face, as if he were happy to cause the young woman discomfort. It made me angry with him. I heard Ida speak softly to Mary in Chinese. I was sure it was a warning.

But Mary answered Dr. Erickson in a soft voice. “I would be most honored to participate, if you would allow it.”

That surprised him into silence, for a moment at least, while she carefully picked her way through the row of spectators and down the steps to the operating area. My gallant husband stepped forward to help her descend. “You can see how we have used Roentgen’s rays to make the image,” he told her, leading her to the hanging sheet and placing the negative at her eye level. “There are all sorts of uses for this equipment. You must take one of these devices back to your country with you. People will be amazed by what we can see. I’m sure you will find use for it.”

She followed him politely and put her face close to the image, glancing back at the patient from time to time.

“We will have to see if we can put together a setup and ship it to you in Jiujiang,” Stephen said enthusiastically.

Satisfied with her inspection of the image, she gave him a charming smile. “That is so generous of you, Dr. Chapman. But I am afraid there will be no electrical power in the cities and towns where we will be working. You must save the equipment for places here where it can be used.” She removed her hat and jacket and carefully rolled up her sleeves to the elbow. A nurse appeared at her side with a basin of water and she thoroughly soaped and rinsed her hands and arms, donning an overlarge apron that the nurse tied behind her back. Before turning to the patient, she walked to a small table with a curious-looking container, set atop a spirit lamp, that appeared to be giving off a misty spray. Smiling at it, she gestured to Ida, who nodded. Then she turned back to Stephen. Everyone else was silently paying

DEATH AT CHINATOWN

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attention to her every move. I thought they were watching for her to make a mistake but I saw that she was unmoved by that attention. “Perhaps the most important things we can bring back with us are the antiseptic procedures of Dr. Lister and the careful sterilizing of materials near open wounds.”

“Ah, yes. Germ theory has been a great advance for all of us,” Stephen agreed. His mentor at the university, Dr. Jamieson, had been researching germs, and that was what had originally drawn Stephen to his laboratory. I guessed, from what I knew of Stephen’s work at the university, that the curious-looking container was spraying carbolic acid in order to destroy germs during the surgery. This was something the women doctors could take back to China without needing electrification to use it.

Dr. Erickson was getting impatient. Mary was clearly very knowledgeable and thorough in her preparations, but he stood with his hands on his hips, as if he was not at all impressed. He loomed over her as she approached the man on the stretcher, but she appeared to be unaffected. She was a petite, slight figure, tiny beside the tall men around her. Her Western-style dress and flat Oriental face contrasted with the suits and beards of the masculine figures. With utter calm, she took up a scalpel and I turned my stare to the ceiling.

By the rapt attention of the audience, I judged that she performed well. Certainly they would have reacted immediately to any error on her part. I was holding my breath without even realizing it. Then I heard a tink, tink, tink, then a general exhalation of breath, followed by, amazingly, applause. Looking down, I saw blood, but also a metal tray holding three shotgun pellets. Mary was still carefully working on the wound, as unaffected by the now positive atmosphere as she had been by the negative atmosphere that preceded it. I looked up again, avoiding the sight of the bloody sheets. After some time had passed, I glanced down and could see that she had sutured the wound. Finally, the still sleeping patient was wheeled away. I could breathe easily again.

♠ ♥

♦

♣

FICTION/ Mystery & Detective/Historical

Joan Bard-Collins was born in Chicago and grew up in northwest Indiana. She is a partner in her husband’s architecture/engineering company. They share a passion for Chicago’s architectural history.

She invites you to visit her at www. jbardcollins.com.

HONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORHONORABOVE 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J. BARD-COLLINS

ho

no

r a

bo

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BA

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-CO

LLINS

Pinkerton agent Garrett Lyons arrives in Chicago in 1882, close on the trail of the person who murdered his partner. He encounters a vibrant city that is striving ever upwards, full of plans to construct new buildings that will “scrape the sky.” In his quest for the truth Garrett stumbles across a complex plot involving counterfeit government bonds, fi erce architectural competition, and painful reminders of his military past. Along the way he seeks the support and companionship of his friends—elegant Charlotte, who runs an upscale poker game for the city’s elite, and up-and-coming architect Louis Sullivan.

Rich with historical details that bring early 1880s Chicago to life, this novel will appeal equally to mystery fans, history buffs, and

architecture enthusiasts.

© Dan Merlo

“Bard-Collins’ detailed knowledge of building, architecture and Chicago history forms a solid base for a debut showcasing a hero reminiscent

of Sam Spade.” —Kirkus Reviews

ALLIUM PRESS OF cHICAGO

HONORABOVE ALL

J. BARD-COLLINS

Allium Press of ChicagoForest Park, IL

www.alliumpress.com

This is a work of fiction. Descriptions and portrayals of real people, events, organizations, or establishments are intended to provide background for

the story and are used fictitiously. Other characters and situations are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not intended to be real.

© 2014 by Joan Bard CollinsAll rights reserved

Book/cover design and map by E. C. Victorson

Front cover image: “State Street Looking South from Monroe”from Picturesque Chicago (Chicago Engraving Company, 1882)

Title page image: detail from façade of Louis Sullivan’s Jeweler’s Builiding, Chicago, 1882

ISBN: 978-0-9890535-7-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bard-Collins, J. Honor above all / J. Bard-Collins. pages cm Summary: “Pinkerton agent Garrett Lyons arrives in Chicago in 1882 to solve the murder of his partner. He enlists the help of his friend, architect Louis Sullivan, and becomes involved in the race to build one of the first skyscrapers”-- Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-0-9890535-7-0 (pbk.) 1. Sullivan, Louis H., 1856-1924--Fiction. 2. Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency--Fiction. 3. Architecture--Illinois--Chicago--History--19th century--Fiction. 4. Murder--Investigation--Fiction. 5. Chicago (Ill.)--Fiction. 6. Mystery fiction. I. Title. PS3602.A7524H66 2014 813’.6--dc23 2014027246

1

ONE

A decade after the Great Fire, Chicago’s central business district, a mile square in size, was choked by converging networks of steel. Each day nearly one hundred trains entered the city, depositing freight and passengers at six depots. Wind-driven clouds of gray smoke covered citizenry, animals, and buildings. The Union Passenger Station served as the western vestibule to Chicago. Within a year of its construction, the brick and limestone walls of this imposing ‘temple to steam’ had already acquired a layer of grime. Behind the depot, a barrel-vaulted train shed, with a high-arched steel and glass roof, covered eight rail lines. No other city in America was growing faster or with such enthusiasm.

The porter tore open the door of the Pullman car and shouted,

“Chi-caw-go! Union Staaa-shun!” He stepped back as a stream of passengers spilled down the narrow steps onto the platform and

hurried toward the station.Garrett Lyons, valise in hand, walked in the opposite direction. He

moved with a steady, purposeful stride, letting the crowd surge and eddy around him. As he neared the rear baggage car his steps became a brisk trot.

“Watch it! Careful boys!” His words were sharp, and spoken with authority.

The two men unloading freight stopped. Their heads snapped toward him. “Yes, sir. No offense meant.”

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“Well then, put him down easy.”The men carefully lowered the long oblong pine box onto a nearby

trolley. They moved forward but Garrett held up a hand.“No thanks, fellas. I’ll take him now.”Lyons placed his valise on the coffin and began pushing the trolley

toward the station, ignoring stragglers who gave him a quick glance before hurrying on. Midway he stopped, took a cigar from his vest pocket, lit it, and watched the flame from the match burn down to within a quarter inch of his thumb. He was shaking it out when he heard a sharp voice.

“I’m looking for Sam Wilkerson.”Lyons saw a tidy little man with gold-framed eyeglasses walking

toward him. He pointed his cigar in the general direction of the trolley. “There he is.”

“You must be his partner, Lyons. The Pinkerton Agency sent me to handle the funeral arrangements.”

“Figured as much.”“Bill Pinkerton is not taking this too kindly. He expects your full

report soon. But he did authorize payment of Wilkerson’s funeral expenses.”

Lyons looked down at him as though expecting to be further enlightened.

“Bill Pinkerton? I report to Allan.”“Allan Pinkerton had another heart seizure a month ago and hasn’t

fully recovered. His eldest son Bill’s been in charge of the Chicago office the past three months. So that’s who we’re all answering to.”

Lyons continued pushing the trolley along the platform.The man tried to keep pace and speak at the same time. “What

happened in St. Louis? I worked with Sam Wilkerson nigh on six years. Never saw anyone get the drop on him. Then I hear he was shot in the chest. Don’t seem right.”

The two men reached the end of the platform. Lyons took his valise off the trolley. His words were brusque. “Look, Sam’s dead. He was a damned good agent, experienced, trustworthy…and my partner.

HONOR ABOVE ALL

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I figure he made a dumb decision, one of his few, and then it was all over for him. Sooner or later it happens in this business. You tell Bill Pinkerton that, as far as St. Louis is concerned, what’s done is done. None of us can change anything.”

“I’ll be sure to pass your thoughts on.” The man’s eyes met Lyons’s for a moment before shying toward the ground. “Wilkerson’s mother is here for his body. Have anything else to say?”

Garrett laid his palm carefully on top of the box and paused before answering. When he spoke his voice was sharp. “Tell Mrs. Wilkerson I know who killed her son. I’ll bring him in. When I do, I’ll put the noose around his neck myself.”

The man was about to reply when he saw something in Garrett Lyons’s eyes that silenced any further remarks.

♠

Outside Union Station Garrett walked past uniformed drivers from the Parmelee Transfer Company, who were busy loading luggage onto waiting hansoms and two-horse hacks. Instead, he flagged a passing omnibus and found a seat amidst the zoo of mid-morning passengers crammed inside. He made himself comfortable as the vehicle plodded eastward along Adams Street. A weak sun shone fitfully through drifting clouds, cloaking nearby buildings in a soft haze. Only three months had passed since his last visit to Chicago, yet nothing looked familiar.

Early in his army career, a half-breed army scout told him, “You have the gift, mon ami.” True. Lyons had an innate sense of place—not something he remembered ever learning. The ability to look at a map, a town, a street only once, close his eyes, and let the landscape etch itself onto his memory. Chicago was one city that tested this ability. Out of habit he glanced upward. A futile look. He saw canyons of gray buildings that seemed to change form with his every visit.

As always, Chicago’s streets were a tangled mass of pedestrians, animals, and vehicles—wagons, carriages, hansoms, all with metal wheels and pulled by iron-shod horses. The resulting rumbling and clattering

J. Bard-Collins

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was unrelenting and, at times, overwhelming. With the amount of traffic and the number of horses in use, manure got beaten into powder and washed away when it rained. However, for the past two weeks Chicago had suffered a dry spell. Now, this powder hung suspended in the air, clinging to anything that passed through it. By the time Lyons got off the omnibus and walked a half block to the post office, a thin film covered his coat and he pulled in dust with every breath.

The clerk at the postal window handed Garrett a meager pile of envelopes. “Wait, there’s something else.” He turned and disappeared into a warren of shelves and cubicles.

Garrett sifted through his mail. One item caught his immediate interest, an invitation. Open House–Poker Evening, Hosted by the Lotus Club, Tremont House. Scrawled across the bottom in familiar script were the words, “dinner first…six o’clock, Billy’s Chop House—Louis S.” Garrett glanced at the date. That evening. He was half smiling when the clerk returned with a small package.

“Seems kind of strange that Mr. Wilkerson mails this to himself and you. There are two names on it.” A long moment passed while the clerk looked at the writing on the packet, then at Garrett. Fortunately, another customer appeared behind him and further explanation was avoided. Garrett nodded his thanks, took the packet, and left the post office by the Jackson Street door.

Outside he stopped and shifted the parcel from one coat pocket to another, while casually glancing over his shoulder, then to the side. It was one of the many precautions Sam taught him that had saved Lyons more than once during the past three years. Feeling more at ease, he walked south along Third Avenue. This time of day the narrow street was crowded with pushcarts from which Chicagoans could purchase an assortment of merchandise, as well as food. Today he saw fewer carts but the usual number of customers. Enticing aromas reminded Garrett that he hadn’t eaten. He bought a bag of roasted chestnuts, then shouldered his way through the crowd until he reached a cart midway along the street.

“Not many familiar faces, Jacob. Where is your second in command?” Garrett asked.

HONOR ABOVE ALL

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“Well, now, Lieutenant Lyons, the man went and got hisself smashed by one o’ them beer wagons. Happened last month. Damn thing came barrelin’ down Jackson, hell for leather, and him standin’ in the wrong place.” Like most veterans of the war, Jacob always addressed Lyons by his former rank. “Least it was quick. Not like this.” He nodded toward his own limp arm.

The men who pushed the carts along Third Avenue were a strange lot. Many were veterans who’d managed to live though the Civil War but couldn’t seem to get away from it. Jacob Masterson caught some shrapnel in his shoulder at the Battle of Stones River in Tennessee. The wound had continued seeping since then, hence his useless arm. He’d traveled to Chicago every year to reapply for his disability pension and eventually stayed on.

“How are you boys making out?” Garrett asked.“It’s a gamble. Always more traffic crowding us into smaller spaces.

Ain’t nothin’ we can do, though. Been reading about that mess o’ yours in St. Louis.” Jacob reached under his cart and took out a small flyer.

“The Pinkertons been passing these around. Offerin’ a nice reward.” Jacob’s face was weathered, grim, beyond any hope of surprise. “You know what I think o’ the Pinkertons. Besides, figured you’d be comin’ to town and stop by.”

Garrett looked at the sketch. “That’s Theo Brock all right. Hear anything?”

Jacob shrugged his good shoulder. “One fella in particular told me he had information. He’ll talk only to you, though. Interested?”

“Tell him…meet me outside the Tremont this evening at ten. No later.”

♠

Lyons had discovered the Revere House on a previous visit to Chicago. Situated north of the river, the small hotel offered reasonable rates and a measure of anonymity. In addition, the Revere provided its guests with a private bathing room on each floor. Even in Laredo or Wichita, a man would find that amenity out back of the building.

J. Bard-Collins

6

After an uncomfortable train ride, followed by the dirt and noise of the city, Garrett felt the need for a good long soak. As the hot water sloshed over him, his body began to relax. He lathered more soap on his arms. Before sliding deeper into the soothing water he ran a fingertip along a scar on his forehead, a narrow miss. The “kiss of the bullet” the scout, Otwah, once told him. He looked at the round indentation that marked the center of his palm. Throughout his army career the thought of his death had been an alien one—until eight years ago at Powder River. Two of his fingers were still numb at the tips. Whenever the weather turned cold or wet his shoulder ached and the muscles in his hand tightened.

It had been a routine patrol, one of many he’d ridden during his career. But at Powder River everything went wrong. He changed orders in the field, leading his men into a Cheyenne ambush that ended his military career. The past eight years, no matter how far he ran, how much he drank, Garrett could bury the dead but never the guilt. He closed his eyes, slid farther into the warm water and tallied this trip’s mental balance sheet.

Deliver Wilkerson’s body to his family—done.Report to Bill Pinkerton? Well, in due time he would, after he

found Brock.His room at the Revere contained all the essentials—bed, wardrobe,

bureau, mirror, and a window facing Clark Street. Garrett dressed, then took another look at his mail. A booklet from the Remington Company advertising a new line of firearms held little interest. An invitation from a Kansas City casino to an annual high-stakes poker game was put aside. Another letter bore the return address of the U.S. War Department. Garrett turned it over in his hand but couldn’t bring himself to open it, afraid of what he’d find. Once it made a decision, the U.S. Army seldom reversed itself. He put the envelope down and picked up Sam’s parcel. Probably crammed full of French postcards, or the like, he thought. Sam Wilkerson, a confirmed bachelor, had lived with his widowed mother, a stern Lutheran. So his partner was in the habit of sending items of a more personal nature to their post office

HONOR ABOVE ALL

7

box. Only now Sam was dead. Nothing would change that fact. Garrett decided the package and army letter could wait.

He opened his valise and tossed the two items inside, then removed a pearl-handled derringer. It was custom made to hold two bullets instead of one and fit comfortably in his palm. A gambler’s gun, but one he used with deadly accuracy. He slipped it into his pocket and reread the invitation. Though he recognized the Lotus Club and Tremont House, and was familiar with the club’s regular Monday poker games, Garrett had no idea what an “Open House—Poker Evening” was. He checked his watch. Louis Sullivan was not a man to be kept waiting.

Garrett studied his reflection in the mirror and straightened his tie. As he was about to leave the room he stopped a moment, went back to the valise, and took out his Navy Colt revolver. He held the weapon in his hand, weighing it by feel. It was an older model he’d won in a poker game early in his army career. A few years back he’d had it modified to take modern cartridges. He tucked the Colt into his belt and buttoned his coat. After all, this was Chicago.