No Rest for the Departed, page 8
“Thought you’d want to know, Greaves,” he replied. “Didn’t Asa ever tell you?”
No. “Any names for the members of that rotten crowd?” He was being prickly with O’Neal for no sensible reason. “A fellow named Raymond, maybe? Or Loomis? Anybody else?”
“Loomis. That name sounds familiar.”
“Thanks.”
O’Neal nodded, grabbed his hat, and strode out of the office just as Taylor walked in. Out in the main station room, the booking sergeant called out to O’Neal in Irish. The two enjoyed a hearty laugh together.
Nick frowned. “I don’t understand why O’Neal bothers me so much, Taylor.” Or why all the cops appeared to like him so much. Even the ones who hadn’t known O’Neal when he’d first worked at the station four years ago before leaving for a job in Chicago.
“Can’t say, sir. He seems all right to me,” Taylor said, taking the chair in front of Nick’s desk.
“Nobody annoys you, Taylor,” Nick said, making a tidy stack out of Meg’s letters.
“Did you find anything in your sister’s letters, Mr. Greaves?” he asked, hunting for a cigar in his coat pockets.
“I’ve been rereading them so often I think I have them memorized, but not learning much of use,” he said. “Other than she used to visit Swain’s Bakery, when she had spare change, to buy fruit jellies.”
She’d always been fond of anything made from apples in particular. They’d had a small orchard on their farm in Ohio. When fall arrived and the crop ripened, she used to beg their mother to make pies or apple butter with them. Nick used to laugh over her antics. Used to laugh a lot, back then.
He refocused on Taylor. “You like to take Miss Ferguson to Swain’s, don’t you?”
His assistant blushed. “Um . . . yes, sir. It’s nice.”
“That’s good.”
Taylor peered at him, a worried furrow in his brow. He was always worried. Just like Addie Ferguson and Celia. “Yes, sir.”
“Were you or Mullahey able to confirm what Loomis told us about Eckart?” he asked.
“We did.” Taylor set down the half-smoked cigar he’d located in one of his pockets and retrieved his notebook. He flipped through the pages until he got to the one he was looking for. “He was employed by the North American Steamship company at one time, just like Mr. Loomis said. As a carpenter aboard ship. Doing repairs or fashioning crates and whatnot. Was out at sea a lot, as a result.”
“And the story about him moving to Oregon?”
“Others down at the wharves who knew Mr. Eckart confirm that,” his assistant said. “Worked the packets for a while before moving up thataway. Nobody’s sure why he did, though.”
“Because my sister was dead and he had no reason to stay in San Francisco?”
“Maybe so, sir.” Taylor collected his cigar. “He came back here a few times over the years since moving to Oregon. None of the men I spoke with about him realized that Mr. Eckart had been in the city the past few weeks until I told them.”
“Trying to keep a low profile.”
Taylor shrugged and put away his notebook. “Seems like it, sir.”
But why? Because he suspected he might get killed? “O’Neal informed me that my uncle Asa disliked the men Eckart was friends with, because he was my sister’s beau,” Nick said. “Loomis was supposedly one of them.”
Taylor lifted his eyebrows. “Mr. Loomis? Should we be suspecting him of killing Mr. Eckart?”
“Worth considering.”
Taylor contemplated the stack of Meg’s letters. “Still don’t understand why you got those letters, Mr. Greaves,” he said. “If the S your sister addressed them to is Sylvanus Eckart—which seems likely, right?—why would he have sent them to you? Why not keep them himself?”
“I would have kept them, if I were him.”
There’d been a woman, a pleasant young lady Nick had met before volunteering to serve during the war, who’d sent him letters while he’d been away. He’d held on to those for a while, even though he’d never pretended he was serious about her. Doubted she thought he was, either, but she’d faithfully sent messages anyway. Her patriotic duty, maybe. Her letters to him had represented the normality of home, though. Someplace far from gunfire and blood and death, and for that reason alone had been precious. Sad that he couldn’t recall her name.
“Unless Mr. Eckart wanted you to keep them safe,” Taylor said. “Because he was afraid something bad was about to happen to him. You were her brother, after all, and might want them.”
To do what with them? “Meg mentions a woman named Judith in her letters to him. There’s one time in particular . . .” Nick hunted through the letters to find it. “Here’s what it says—‘Judith reminds me that you’ll be back soon.’ A friend of Meg’s, obviously. Why not send the package of letters and that photograph to her?”
“What if he did, sir?” Taylor struck a match and lit his stub of a cigar, puffing until the tip flared orange. “Maybe this Judith woman had been given the letters for safekeeping and she’s the one who sent them to you.”
“Why not return them to Eckart? Since he was back in San Francisco and looked to be staying for a while.”
Taylor sucked thoughtfully on his cigar. “We need to find her too, don’t we?”
“Nobody I’ve spoken with so far remembers any of Meg’s friends, Taylor, and certainly not some woman named Judith,” he said. “It’s as if anybody who ever mattered to her has vanished or gone to ground.”
“Or been killed,” Taylor added.
Nick tucked the letter back into its spot in the stack. “I did get a name for the man with the missing fingers. Part of a name, that is. Raymond. Don’t know if that’s a first name or last name,” Nick said, avoiding mentioning Mina. Stupid, when Taylor would assume that’s where the information had come from. “I was told he worked in a sawmill. And that he did often frequent Bauman’s.”
“Want me to ask one of the officers to keep an eye on the saloon and see if Mr. Raymond returns?”
“I doubt we’ll be seeing Raymond at Bauman’s anytime soon, Taylor,” Nick said. “If he didn’t kill Eckart himself, then he probably knows who did and will lay low as a result.”
Nick exhaled and turned his chair to face the window, look out at its partly below-grade view of passing legs. The sun was out, promising a nice day while he was stuck in this gloomy, smelly office. He needed to get outside. Stretch his legs. Walk and think.
“So here’s a key question—how did Raymond ever get ahold of Meg’s letters to Eckart?” he asked. “Who gave him her letters and that photograph? Judith? Eckart? Somebody else entirely? And what do they want me to do?” Time to learn the truth about Meg. About everything. Before it’s too late.
“Hm,” Taylor mumbled.
Nick turned back to his assistant, who’d smoked his cigar down to a nub. “I’m back to where I started, Taylor, with no more idea what the truth about Meg is that I’m supposed to learn than when I first got those letters.”
“You’ll figure it out, sir. I know you will.”
Glad somebody had faith in him. “Do you know if Mullahey is finished looking around at Eckart’s place?” They needed more clues. Anything to go on.
Taylor used the ashtray on Briggs’s desk to stub out what was left of his cigar. “I’ll get over there and find out, sir.”
“While you’re there, see what you can discover about Loomis. He lived in the same building,” Nick said. “Maybe we are ignoring an obvious suspect in Mr. Eckart’s death.”
Chapter 7
“Where were you this morning, Cassidy?” Mr. McCann, the commission merchant who Owen worked for, glared at him. Glaring was worse than scowling, and Owen sort of missed a simple frown. Mr. McCann fisted his hips to add heft to the ferocity of his expression, delivered from beneath the thickest, darkest brows Owen had ever seen on a person. His boss didn’t need to add any heft, though; the bark of his voice was alarming enough. “We had ten packages of furniture to offload this morning. Goods I was commissioned to procure by three different store owners. I had to hire one of the dirty kids that hang around the pier to load the wagon, Cassidy. Maybe I should give him your job, if you don’t want it.”
Shoot. He was gonna . . . going to lose another job. Mrs. Davies would be really disappointed in him.
“Um . . .” Quick! Think of something! “I was helping the police identify a smuggler, Mr. McCann.”
The improbability of the explanation startled the glare clean off his boss’s face. Claiming he was helping the police—which he was, in a way—had worked with Mr. Roesler as an excuse for missing work. Only one time, though, Owen reminded himself. The second time he’d tried it hadn’t gone as well.
“A smuggler?”
“Yes, sir.” Owen cleared his throat and stood straight. As straight as his body would agree to, given that he wanted to hunch against that durned cold breeze whistling between the ships docked at the wharf. The wind was bothering Mr. McCann, too, because he kept having to clap his hat on his head to keep it from blowing off. “You see, there was this suspicious fellow the other day down by the warehouse—not the one you use, sir, the one next to it—talking with this other suspicious fellow. And you know there’ve been a lot of reports about opium being smuggled on the Hong Kong packets. Not that the Hong Kong packets come in around here, but, umm . . . so when a police officer came by asking folks if they knew anything about those fellows, I told him I thought I did, and he took me off to see if I recognized the guy over at the Clay Street wharf. Unfortunately, he’d run off.” He concluded his made-up story with a sigh.
“What did this suspicious fellow look like?”
“Oh, a regular sort. Hard to describe, actually.”
“But you’d recognize him if you saw him again.”
“Um . . . yes, sir. Because he reminded me of my brother.”
Mr. McCann’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you were an orphan.”
That stung. Owen hated being reminded that his parents had abandoned him and were likely dead someplace. Had to be dead someplace to explain why they’d broken their promise to fetch him in San Francisco once they’d found a new life and settled down. Two years had passed since they’d made that promise. Two years was an awfully long time, but he did keep hoping they’d either turn up or he’d find out where they’d gone to.
He stared Mr. McCann in the face. “Doesn’t mean I don’t have a brother, Mr. McCann.” Even though he didn’t.
“Well . . . Don’t offer to help the police or the customs officers and miss work again, you hear, Cassidy? There are plenty of other kids who’d willingly take your job as porter and likely be better at it.”
Owen couldn’t decide what was more insulting in Mr. McCann’s comment—being referred to as a kid or being told he wasn’t good at his job. “You mean you don’t want me helping the law, sir?”
His boss stepped so close that the gold pocket watch chain draped across his chest came near to brushing against Owen. He stank like he’d bathed in Farina’s cologne. Owen held his breath. “Not if it keeps you from doing your job, Cassidy. Am I clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. McCann strode off, but not before barking an order to the wagon driver, who’d been listening with rapt attention.
Shoot. I shouldn’t have gotten sassy with Mr. McCann. Too late to apologize. Not that he really felt like apologizing. Because shouldn’t Mr. McCann want Owen to help the customs officers find smugglers, if they actually ever did ask for his help? Unless he . . .
“Best not to consider that Mr. McCann might be a criminal, Cassidy,” Owen muttered to himself. Because once he started thinking that of his boss, he’d have to start thinking that just about anybody down at the wharf could be.
“Cassidy, are you talkin’ to yourself again?” shouted the wagon driver.
“Reminding myself I need to do a better job.”
“Heck, I coulda told you that,” he replied, guffawing.
Frowning, Owen scuttled over to where a stack of crates consigned by several of Mr. McCann’s customers stood waiting. The wharf area was crowded that afternoon, a large steamship having arrived from Shanghai not a half hour ago, and folks jostled Owen in their rush to reach their destinations. Voices speaking foreign languages swirled around him like eddy currents in a stream, their clothing a bright whirl of colors. He’d hate to lose this job, even if he was cold half the time. Being down at the docks was kind of thrilling. If you didn’t mind the gruff longshoreman, or the stench of fish, or the piercing ferry whistles, that was.
One voice out of the many caught his attention, and he looked up from the crate he was moving in order to search for its owner. He spotted the woman, weaving her way through the pack of disembarking passengers, her eyes fixed on the man she was approaching. What was she doing at the wharf again? He’d noticed her getting off a boat only yesterday.
Strange, thought Owen. Mighty strange.
“Her again.” The wagon driver, who’d climbed down from the seat to rearrange crates on the bed, was staring after the woman too.
“It’s sorta odd, isn’t it? I’m sure I saw her down here yesterday.”
“Oh, I’ve seen her lots of times at the wharf.” He chuckled. “Bet the mariners she’s visiting aboard the ships enjoy her company.”
“What? She does what? Oh.” Owen blushed over how naive he could be sometimes. She didn’t look like that sort of woman to him, though. When he’d first arrived in San Francisco and had sheltered in alleyways and behind warehouses, he’d met plenty of street girls. None of them had looked like her. For one thing, this woman, in her cinnamon-colored dress, her bonnet trimmed with ribbons, appeared to be too well-fed. “I dunno about that.”
“Cassidy,” the driver said with a grunt as he hoisted a crate onto the wagon bed, “you’ve got a lot to learn.”
• • •
Her two afternoon patient appointments dispensed with, both of them thankfully uncomplicated and quick, Celia collected her hat and cloak. Before Barbara noticed she was heading out again, she departed the house, quietly shutting the door behind her. Her cousin’s tutor was keeping Barbara so busy with studies that they’d converted the rear upstairs bedchamber into a schoolroom, affording Barbara more room to work than the dining room table provided. An additional benefit, at least so far as Celia was concerned, was that its more distant location made it harder for Barbara to overhear Celia’s conversations. Such as the brief one she’d had with Addie, telling her she was headed to the police station to report what she and Owen had discovered that morning.
Celia splurged and took the Omnibus railroad to City Hall rather than walk from Vallejo. She turned up Clay just as Nicholas charged through the police station door and out onto the street.
“Nich—Mr. Greaves!” she called, switching from his Christian name when she noticed another policemen departing the station at the same time. The fellow shot Nicholas a knowing glance and chuckled as he strode off.
“Miss Ferguson finally told you that I’d come by your house,” he said once she reached him.
“Have you been waiting for me?” She consulted her Ellery watch, pinned at her waist. “How did it get to be half past three in the afternoon already? I am sorry I did not come by earlier, if you have been.”
“Are you going to explain where you and Cassidy were poking around this morning?”
“Should we conduct your interview out here on the street?” She gestured toward the people walking by on the pavement. As they were in the vicinity of City Hall, the men and women—mostly men—comprised a motley assortment of city officials and folks attending court proceedings. “Or might we find a more pleasant location?”
“A new coffeehouse has opened on the corner two blocks north of here. We can talk there. The place is never very busy.” He took her elbow and tugged her up the road.
“You need not drag me to there, Nicholas. I will accompany you without complaint.”
He released his grip. “I can never be sure, frankly.”
“No need to be touchy, either.”
He charged ahead of her, his pace forcing her to scurry to keep up. He’d not walk so rapidly if he had to struggle with a crinoline and heavy skirts.
“So, where were you and Cassidy this morning?” he asked. “Don’t bother denying having gone someplace with him. Addie told me you had.”
“We went to the Chases’ former residence out near the Mission Woolen Mills.”
His steps slowed. “What were you doing out there?”
“Precisely what you suspect we were doing—asking after your sister. Just like you had done last week,” she said. “And before you chastise me, I only went in response to Mrs. Jewett’s concerns about you and those letters you received.”
“She really shouldn’t have bothered you.” He resumed striding along. “And this is none of your business, as I’ve already told you.”
Celia caught hold of his arm, bringing him to a complete halt. “You should have immediately told me about the letters, Nicholas. Why did you not?”
“Because I didn’t want you doing this, Celia.”
“What?”
“This.” He motioned at her with a wave of his hand. “Investigating. Asking questions.”
“Nosing about?”
He stared down at her, the shade offered by his hat brim deepening the brown of his eyes. “Let me deal with those letters and Eckart’s murder, Celia,” he said. “I don’t want you involved, and I don’t want Cassidy involved, either. I’ve got a lead on the man who delivered those letters, name of Raymond, and who might’ve been with Eckart the day he was shot. Might be our killer.”
“Don’t you want to learn the interesting piece of information I discovered about Meg’s beau, Nicholas?” she asked, forging ahead. “Of course you do.”
He rolled his eyes. “Go ahead, Celia.”
“I discovered that her beau visited the Chases’ California Street house two weeks ago, agitated and urgently requesting to speak with Mr. Chase.”
