No Rest for the Departed, page 24
Mr. Loomis.
“He was acquainted with Mr. Eckart and had implicated Mr. Raymond Fuller in his murder,” Celia said. “Mr. Fuller was the man who’d delivered Meg’s letters to Nicholas. He may have been intending to deliver more letters to Nicholas last night.”
“Och.”
“Mr. Loomis owed Mr. Eckart money, which does give him a motive,” she said. “His alibi was weak enough for Nicholas to justify jailing him. He could not have shot Mr. Fuller, obviously.”
“So do we eliminate him, ma’am?”
“There could be two different people involved, Addie,” she said. “Let us turn to Mr. Brodie, customs official.”
Mr. Brodie.
“To be frank, I know nothing about him, Addie,” she said, considering his name. “Other than what his occupation is and that Owen spotted him whispering with Eileen.”
Addie’s forehead creased. “Wasna Mr. Eckart a sailor, ma’am?”
“A ship’s carpenter.”
“He may have been acquainted with Mr. Brodie, then,” her housekeeper said. “Met him because of Mr. Brodie’s work, or at one of the saloons the sailors and dockworkers go to.”
“So we have established a possible relationship between the two men but have no idea of a motive,” she said. “I have to next consider the young woman visiting him at the docks when she should have been tending to her chores at the Chases’ house.”
Eileen.
“She’d befriended Meg when she lived at the Chases’ Mission area house, Addie,” she said. “She knew of Mr. Eckart but had never met him, which leaves me wondering what motive she would have to kill him.”
“Because he knew she’d killed Miss Greaves.”
“It would be very bold of her to speak with me about Meg, if that was the case. And to bring me that brooch she’d found,” Celia said, writing notes as quickly as she could. She should get tips from Mr. Taylor someday. “Furthermore, Meg’s message to Mr. Eckart suggested a very different reason to have wanted her dead. Her discovery of a criminal activity led by a man. By the way, Mrs. Chase has a copy of that brooch. Plus, there was another one, very similar, being sold this morning at Mr. Chase’s auction house.”
“Is someone fencing jewelry at the auction house?” Addie asked.
“‘Fencing,’ Addie?”
“You know, ma’am. To knowingly sell stolen items to profit off them.”
“I did not realize you were aware of such activities,” Celia said, smiling at her housekeeper. Her romance with Mr. Taylor was turning her into a proper detective. “Thank you.”
Addie blushed. “Och, ma’am.”
“Perhaps this is more to the point—the brooch Eileen brought me is fashioned of colored glass instead of real garnets and not worth much, in fact.”
“Perhaps the auction house is offering goods that are not real.”
“Which the staff and Mrs. Chase vehemently deny,” Celia said. “I wonder if Meg Greaves had discovered this was going on, though, and that Mr. Chase was the man who’d learned that she knew about his illegal activities.” Or Mr. Hunter, his close business associate.
Addie forcefully set down her teacup, which rattled against the saucer. “He is the murderer, ma’am,” she stated. “Both of poor Miss Greaves and Mr. Eckart.”
“He could not have been the man who shot Mr. Fuller last evening, though. He was at the house during the benefit.” She frowned. “Conveniently hidden away in his billiard room.”
“Verra convenient.”
Celia examined what she’d written about Archibald Chase.
“Why did Meg not go to her uncle to inform him about what she’d discovered, Addie?” she asked. “If she’d become aware of a crime, she should have told him.” Nicholas’s beloved Uncle Asa.
“She’d not had the chance to?”
“Or she’d been afraid to,” Celia added sourly. “A police officer—not her uncle—had visited Meg shortly before she died. However, according to Nicholas, there were no records of police interest in his sister. So who was he?”
Mysterious police officer.
“Detective O’Neal knew her, though,” Celia added. “He’d worked for Nicholas’s uncle, been a friend to him as well. Meg had lived with her uncle while Nicholas was off fighting. Until she’d abruptly gone to the Society and begged for assistance.”
“She fled from the relative who should’ve protected her.”
Celia could think of many reason why she’d done so, none of them savory. But Asa Greaves was long dead and not responsible for Sylvanus Eckart’s death or Mr. Fuller’s. Mr. O’Neal, however, was very much alive.
She erased “mysterious police officer” and inscribed Mr. O’Neal’s name instead. What was his first name? she wondered. Francis, perhaps? A common enough name for an Irishman. Was it the Christian name of a murderer, though?
• • •
“Now lie still and rest, laddie.” Addie smoothed the coverlet spread atop him, the morning light soft on her face. Aside from some aches and the sting of the dressing Miss Barbara had used on his cuts, Owen felt fine—well, his finger did hurt a lot, too—but he enjoyed when she fussed over him, so he didn’t protest. “I’ll go fetch you some eggs and potatoes. How does that sound?”
“That sounds perfect,” he said, smiling.
Satisfied, she left. Barbara passed her in the hallway. She stormed into the bedroom and flopped onto the chair next to the bed, set so she could face him.
“She’s gone to the police station this morning.”
He didn’t have to ask who Barbara meant; she meant Mrs. Davies. “What for?”
“She said something to Addie last night about Detective O’Neal, so I guess she wants to talk to him.” She gave a wicked smile. “I was listening in.”
“Oh.” But why did she want to talk to him? This wasn’t his case.
“After that, she’s headed to the wig store where Mina works to find Miss Whelan. Apparently, she gave the store’s address to the Society, claiming that was where she lived.”
Owen shifted to better look at her, the movement sending a jolt of pain through his knee. It did hurt too, from banging it against a broken cobble sticking up in the street. Plus, if he was honest with himself, all his scrapes burned like the dickens. Dang.
He gave his knee a rub. “Might that be risky? Her going there?”
A furrow creased Miss Barbara’s smooth forehead. “She should be okay. It’s just a store to buy hairpieces.”
She didn’t sound certain. He wasn’t certain either. But it was morning time. Bad stuff didn’t happen in the morning. Usually.
“Anybody looking into what’s going on between Eileen and Mr. Brodie?” he asked.
“Mr. Taylor was told to interrogate Eileen,” she said. “I haven’t heard what he found out, though.”
“I never have liked Mr. Brodie. Don’t think it’s good if she’s mixed up with him.”
He struggled to sit up, banging his injured forefinger in the process. Barbara leaned across him to help. Her hands on his torso were firm and warm through the undershirt he had on. The press of her fingers gave him sensations he wasn’t comfortable with. Not where Miss Barbara was concerned.
Finished wrestling Owen into a seated position, she sat back. “Do you think Mr. Brodie is a criminal?”
“Mr. Brodie?” He might not care for the fellow, who was always yelling at the porters and stuff down by the wharf, but that didn’t mean Owen had ever suspected him of being a crook. The idea did take his mind off of how Miss Barbara’s touch had felt, though. “Dunno. Should I?”
“Why not? Haven’t you read about what goes on at the wharves? Import duty avoidance,” she said matter-of-factly. Owen could read, but his landlady didn’t exactly supply newspapers at his lodging house and he surely couldn’t afford to buy any himself. “Businessmen—like Mr. Chase, who owns an auction house and also imports merchandise to sell on consignment for his clients—occasionally sneak goods into the city without paying the taxes they owe. Which can be as high as twenty-five percent, mind you. Sometimes they pretend the crate of fabric is all cotton material, not telling anybody about the rolls of silk stashed underneath. Or they use false-bottom barrels to hide smaller items. Or they claim the Canadian whiskey actually came from a distillery in California.”
“I didn’t realize you knew so much about this sort of thing, Miss Barbara,” he said admiringly. Shoot. She was smarter than him. Just like Miss Grace. Now he had a whole other feeling. Like he couldn’t hope to measure up. Which made him miserable. “But what’s a person like Mr. Chase trying to avoid paying taxes got to do with Mr. Brodie?”
“It’s his job to make sure folks pay the duties on those imports,” she said, tucking a loose strand of her glossy black hair into the coil knotted at the base of her neck. Her hair was really pretty. “What, though, if he’s happy to accept a portion of the profits to look the other way?”
“If that’s true, the harbor officers should arrest him.”
“Maybe he’s really good at hiding his illegal activities and the police don’t realize what Mr. Brodie is up to,” Barbara said. “Or maybe they are being bribed to look the other way, too.”
Owen thought hard about the harbor police being crooked along with the customs officials, even though trying to think made his brain hurt. “Still don’t get why Eileen was whispering to Mr. Brodie so furtively.”
“Maybe she’d heard the police are after him, so she wanted to warn him.”
“But I don’t think the police are suspicious of Mr. Brodie. If they are, Mr. Greaves doesn’t seem to know about it.”
“Good point.” She wore a pink-and-white cameo of a woman pinned at her collar, and she stroked it as she thought. “Mr. Eckart worked as a ship’s carpenter, according to what Cousin Celia was saying to Addie last night. I wonder if he’d found out about criminal activities at the wharves.”
“He might’ve known folks involved in illegally sneaking goods into the city.”
“Mr. Eckart might’ve even been involved himself,” she said. “Or he’d told Miss Greaves about those folks, and that’s why she was killed and he ran off.”
“Why did he come back to San Francisco, though? He had to realize he was in danger.”
“Maybe he was afraid for their friend, Miss Whelan. Maybe somebody recently threatened her, and Mr. Eckart wanted to protect her.” She scrunched up her nose. “Does that make sense?”
“Mrs. Davies is in trouble then, Miss Barbara, if she’s trying to find Miss Whelan. She’s playing with fire,” he said. “I’ve gotta help her. Help me get out of bed.” He tried to swing his legs over the edge and winced. Dang, but his knee hurt. What good was he, if all he could do was hobble?
“You can’t go anywhere, Owen Cassidy. You’re too banged up,” she said, moving his legs back, making him feel all those uncomfortable feelings again.
“Then what do we do?”
Miss Barbara’s dark eyes took on an ominous shine and she jumped to her feet. “I can go.”
What? “You can what?”
“Go help my cousin.”
“You can’t go out and do that, Miss Barbara. Not you. Not by yourself.”
She scowled. “You mean because I’m half Chinese?”
Yes. That was absolutely what he meant. She’d been attacked before, simply because she’d been walking where some people thought the Chinese shouldn’t be. Which was a large part of the city, in those same folks’ estimation. “It’s plumb not safe. You’ll get hurt.”
“We’ll see,” she said and dashed from the room.
Shoot.
• • •
“A young woman named Eileen, who works for the Chases, was seen with you yesterday, Mr. Brodie.” Nick leaned his hips against the edge of his desk and folded his arms. Brodie, seated in the usual chair Nick put folks in, wore a flat expression on his face. A face that plenty of women might describe as handsome, with his square jaw outlined by a neatly trimmed beard. Maybe even Eileen thought so. “What did she want?”
“You brought me into the station to ask me questions about one of the Chases’ servants, Detective?”
“You’re not going to deny that she spoke with you yesterday, are you?” he asked. “Because my witness is reliable.”
“No, I’m not going to deny knowing Eileen.”
“What did she want to speak so urgently with you about?”
“She wanted to know where I was Wednesday evening.”
The night of Mrs. Chase’s benefit. Off to Nick’s right, Taylor cocked an eyebrow but kept on jotting notes. “Why?”
He sighed, a man annoyed by the requests of females. “She’d wanted to meet. I went to a play at the Metropolitan, instead.”
Charming. “And you have friends who can testify to that?”
“I do,” he said firmly.
“How do you and Eileen know each other?” Nick asked.
“I’m acquainted with Archibald Chase and have been a guest as his house on occasion.”
A customs official and an auction house owner. What a cozy arrangement.
“Where you struck up a friendly conversation with one of his housemaids,” Nick said. “Or maybe more than just a friendly conversation.”
Brodie frowned and didn’t reply.
“Mr. Taylor, what was the reason Eileen gave you for speaking with Mr. Brodie?” Nick asked.
He flipped to the prior page in his notebook. “She claimed that Mr. Brodie is the brother of a friend of hers, sir, who has been sickly lately. Eileen went to ask him if she was feeling better.”
“That’s pretty interesting, don’t you think, Mr. Brodie?” Nick asked. “The reason she gave my assistant. Doesn’t sound like your explanation.”
“She’d lose her job if she admitted to being smitten with me,” he replied smugly.
“So that was it? You missed a rendezvous with her on Wednesday evening and she was chastising you.”
“That’s it, Detective.”
Nick considered him. He wasn’t sweating like a lot of the people he interviewed. Folks who didn’t sweat when interrogated bothered Nick. Even innocent people sweated.
“I have a question about your friend Mr. Chase,” he said. “Has he ever been suspected of engaging in selling smuggled goods?”
Brodie shot a look at Taylor before answering. What was he hoping to see? “No.”
“And he has never bribed you to look the other way while he brought in imported goods without paying a fair import duty.”
“No,” he replied more firmly.
Well, it wasn’t like a customs official would readily answer in the affirmative. “And what about a man named Sylvanus Eckart. Ever met him?” Nick asked.
“No, but I was there when they pulled Eckart’s body out of the water off the Washington Street wharf.”
He looked genuinely bothered, even though he must’ve seen other bodies collected from the water before. Sadly, dead men floating in the bay was not an uncommon occurrence.
“Thank you, Mr. Brodie,” Nick said, pushing away from his desk. “You can go.”
He didn’t have to be invited twice and casually strolled from the office. A bit of an act, in Nick’s opinion.
“What’s it mean, sir?”
“Obviously, one of the two of them is lying to us about Wednesday night.” Nick grabbed his hat off his desk and strode out of the office. Taylor scrambled to follow him. “Brodie’s explanation is logical but I don’t completely trust it. Or him.”
“Do you want me to go over to the Chases’ and question Eileen again?”
“No, I want you to get down to the wharf. Try to learn more about the rumors that Chase might be involved in smuggling goods that he later sells in his auction house,” he said, climbing the steps that led out onto the alley. “And find Mullahey and have him bring the Hunters into the station for questioning.”
“All right, sir. Mr. Greaves.”
“Any news about the person chasing Cassidy yesterday?” Nick asked.
“A man who operates a boot and shoe store nearby thought he saw the fellow,” he said. “He had on a gray coat like what we wear. What I wear, that is, sir.”
“Not a long duster coat.” Were they dealing with two different people, or did their murderer own two coats just like he owned two different guns? Sadly, Brodie hadn’t been wearing either a gray coat or a duster.
“Because of the coat, the store owner thought a cop was chasing Owen. He figured Owen had stolen something,” Taylor said, politely tipping his hat at a demurely dressed young woman, a cascade of blonde curls peeking out beneath her flower-trimmed straw bonnet, passing on the sidewalk. Her answering smile was too knowing for her to be as demure as she wanted to appear. “Didn’t want to get involved and didn’t pay too much attention, unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately.” Couldn’t blame the fellow, though. “I’m off to discover why Judith Whelan gave the address of a wig store as the place for the Ladies’ Society of Christian Aid to contact her.”
“Miss Mina’s wig store?” his assistant guessed.
He must be made of glass, as easy as it was for Taylor to see through him. “Believe me, I don’t like the coincidence, Taylor. But Mina knew Fuller; she gave me his name. And Fuller knew Eckart, who knew Judith Whelan.”
“So Miss Mina had met Eckart?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’d bet anything either Fuller or Eckart introduced Miss Whelan to Mina, though. It’s the most logical explanation for why she chose that particular store to use as her address. I just need to get Mina to admit it and help me find her.”
• • •
One of the officers, seated at a desk in the police station, looked up as Celia strode through the room, bound for the detectives’ office. “You’ve just missed him, ma’am.”
She definitely stopped in the station far too often. “Mr. Greaves?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He must have gone to the wig shop, as promised. “Ah. Well, I am not here to speak with him,” she said. “I was wondering if Detective O’Neal was in.”
