A Barricade in Hell (7 page)

Baldwin finally stopped staring at his shoes and looked into Jack's eyes. His face was slack, his eyes dull. “We … we went to a pacifist lecture. She told me to call her Effie, but the big man with her didn't like that. He told me to call her Miss Fontaine. Miss Effie Fontaine, evangelist for peace. She says God is against us fighting a European war. Mandy's wanted me to go for weeks so … so I'd understand. There was a reception after the lecture. I didn't want to go, but Mandy wanted to talk with Miss Fontaine again. She wanted … she wanted to tell her how much she enjoyed…”

He stopped speaking, staring blankly at the wall. Jack shook Archie's shoulder again. “Did you go to the reception with Mandy, Archie?”

“They served French wine. I thought it strange an evangelist would condone liquor, but Mandy just laughed at me. I remember her laughing. And … and she wouldn't stop. People were watching. Staring.” He slumped back in the chair and covered his face with a hand. “Mandy's gone, Jack, she's gone. Please help me find her.”

Gabe cleared his throat. “The reception was last night, Mr. Baldwin?”

“The lecture was Friday night. Downtown at a church.” Archie suddenly came alive. He grabbed Jack's arm, eyes wide with fear and alarm. “What day is this? Is it Saturday? I can't remember! Oh please—tell me it's only Saturday.”

“I'm sorry, I can't. Today's Monday, Archie, not Saturday.” Jack's voice was soft, soothing. He pried Archie's hand off his arm and stood. “I need you to answer a question for me. How did the blood get on your shirt?”

“Blood?” Baldwin stared blankly at the dark stains down the front of his shirt and his trousers, as if Jack's calling attention to the condition of his clothing let Archie see for the first time. He brushed at his shirt halfheartedly at first, his efforts growing more frantic and violent when the blood stubbornly refused to vanish. “You're wrong, Jack. I … I must have spilled the wine. It can't be blood. Oh God … Mandy … please … it can't be.…”

Jack grabbed Baldwin's wrists, stopping him from ripping off his shirt. Archie surged to his feet and howled, the sound more wounded animal than man. With Gabe's help, Jack wrestled him back into the chair. “Calm down and listen to me, Archie. Listen! I'll find Mandy. She can't have gone too far. I'll find her.”

Baldwin wilted as suddenly as he'd turned combative. He curled over his knees, rocking and sobbing.

Gabe opened the door and motioned the first two patrolmen he saw to come inside. Perry and Taylor were both tall and well muscled, hopefully more than a match for the shorter, slimmer Baldwin if he became violent again. “Mr. Baldwin, I need you to go with these officers. They'll help you get cleaned up and take you to a place where you can rest. Officer Perry will bring you some food if you're hungry.”

Panic welled in Baldwin's eyes, but he didn't struggle as the two young officers took his arms. “Find her, Jack, please. Find Mandy.… I can't remember where she went.”

“We'll find her, Archie.” Jack clapped him on the shoulder. “You have my word. Now, go rest. I'll visit you later.”

The door closed, the click of the latch a hollow echo.

“Christ, Gabe.” Jack wiped his mouth with a shaking hand. He paced the length of the room, appearing as trapped and restless as Baldwin. “I don't know what to think. The man I used to know would never hurt anyone. Amanda said he'd changed, but she never let on to Sadie he was raving. If he's been this mad all along—”

“Don't jump to conclusions.” Gabe dropped into the chair Baldwin had vacated. He set his fedora on the table, idly running a fingertip around the crown. “We don't know if Miss Poe is really missing or not, or if she has any notion that Archie thinks she's missing. This could all be a hallucination. Given what I've seen so far, I'm not inclined to trust his word on anything yet. We don't have any hard evidence, Detective.”

“What about the blood on his shirt, Gabe?” He ripped off his plaid cap and slammed it down on the table. Jack raked fingers through his hair, looking anywhere but at Gabe. “All that blood is evidence of something heinous. It's not Archie's, we know that. The only question is whether it's Mandy's or someone else.”

“One thing at a time.” Gabe shoved the chair back. “Finding out if Amanda is safe at home is the first step. Where does she live?”

“Nob Hill, less than a block from my stepmother.”

“That's where we look first. If Miss Poe is there, we go on to Chinatown. If not, we open a missing persons file and go to Chinatown in the morning.” Gabe handed Jack his cap. “Do you want to call Sadie before we leave?”

“This isn't a conversation I'd want to have with my wife over the phone. I don't want to say anything until we know what happened to Amanda.” Jack's expression was grim. He'd already resigned himself to the idea Baldwin was guilty. “I never thought I'd be praying for a suspect to be lying or delusional. And I sure as hell never thought I'd be thinking of Archie Baldwin as a suspect either. He was a good person until he went to Belgium.”

“I'm guessing he's still a good person and that's why he came looking for you.” Gabe waved Jack through the door. “Let's go. Edwards is still waiting with a car. Does Miss Poe have servants who might know her whereabouts?”

“A housekeeper, Maddie Holmes. Maddie's been with the family since right after Amanda's mother died. She has a daughter a year younger than Amanda. They grew up in the same house, but Lia moved away two years ago to get married.” They hurried down the hallway and across the station lobby. Jack was a few inches shorter, but he matched Gabe's long strides. “Maddie keeps pretty close track of Amanda, especially since Mr. Poe died. I hope to God she'd call the station and ask for me if Amanda went out with Archie and didn't come home again. But not everyone thinks like a cop.”

The tense, prickly feeling on the back of Gabe's neck returned. They threaded around patrolmen and civilians in the crowded lobby, finally pushing through the front door and reaching the fog-slick sidewalk. He buttoned his coat as they walked. Damp cold crept under his clothes, chilling his skin and digging down to the bone. Gabe flipped up his overcoat collar and quickened his pace.

Climbing into the backseat of the police car was a relief even if it wasn't noticeably warmer. Jack gave Patrolman Edwards the address. Edwards pulled away from the curb, slipping into fog-shrouded traffic slowly and carefully. Headlights on the passing cars formed glowing halos in the mist, an eerie sight, as if they traveled amongst a pack of mythical monsters.

Neither he nor Jack spoke on the slow drive to Nob Hill's mansion-filled streets, each lost in his own thoughts. Gabe's mind circled back to the same idea again and again.

No one had called to report Amanda Poe missing. That didn't mean she wasn't lost, needing to be found.

 

CHAPTER 5

Gabe

The house on Nob Hill was bigger than any of the neighboring mansions, large even by the standards of the rich and well off. A black iron fence that stood seven or eight feet tall closed off the entrance to the grounds and the front yard from the street. Double gates across the drive swung open at a touch from Officer Edwards. Gabe noted the ornate patterns and scrolls that formed the letter
P
in the center of each gate.

A gravel drive ran down one side of the house and continued to the back. Edwards drove the car up onto the paved crescent in front of the porch, parking near the front steps. Fog was thinner at the top of Nob Hill, a pearly mist that swirled with a life of its own but didn't obscure the view of the street and neighboring houses. The city and the bay below had completely vanished beneath a blanket of gray fleece.

Gabe climbed out of the patrol car and looked around, curious about Poe's house and the grounds. At first glance, he couldn't decide if the hulking structure was meant to intimidate or impress.

Like so many buildings in San Francisco, the Poe mansion was relatively new. Built in the first year after the quake, the mansion stood three stories tall, with rows of wood-framed windows on each floor, double-front doors, and a wraparound porch.

A riot of shrubs and trees filled the front yard, planted in clumps with islands of lawn between. Mulch-covered flower beds and winter-bare rosebushes softened the severity of the redbrick house front and edged the white columned porch. A gazebo showed at the back of the house on one side, a garage for motorcars at the end of the gravel drive on the other.

Jack came around from his side of the car. His overcoat was unbuttoned and flapped around his ankles, stirring eddies in the fog. He nodded toward the house. “Walter Poe wasn't shy about flaunting his fortune. Impressive isn't it?”

“Very.” He climbed the slick stone front steps with Jack, unable to shake the feeling this had never been a home to Walter Poe's daughter, but a temple to wealth. Poe's shipbuilding empire extended up and down the entire California and Oregon coast. Gabe gestured toward the looming front doors. “How did Sadie become friends with Amanda? All this seems a bit outside her usual social circle. An heiress to the Poe fortune is someone your stepmother would cultivate. Sadie's more down to earth.”

“Not all the hoity-toity are like Katherine. My stepmother is in a class by herself.” Jack rang the doorbell. Chimes sounded somewhere deep inside the house. “Amanda's spent a big part of her life trying to deny she comes from one of the richest families on the West Coast. Sadie met her at a supper club. That was in 1910, if I remember right, just about seven years ago. Amanda was out with a group of friends her father never approved of, mostly because they didn't have enough money. Sadie knew some of the people in Amanda's group from school. They introduced Sadie to Amanda, and the two of them got on famously.”

No footsteps sounded within the house and no one arrived to answer the door, so Gabe rang the bell again. Maybe they'd made the trip for nothing. “How much money was enough for Walter Poe?”

“If your last name was Hearst, Morgan, or Rockefeller, you might have enough money to associate with his daughter. Mr. Poe was always afraid people would try to take advantage of Amanda for her money. Occasionally he was right. She fell in with a few scoundrels.” Jack peered in the narrow window next to the door and leaned on the doorbell. “I think months went by before Sadie found out who Amanda really was. They were fast friends by then.”

Gabe frowned and hunched deeper into his coat. “Delia must know her too.”

“She does. I think Amanda was a little too wild for Delia when they first met, but they got on well enough. By the time Amanda stopped trying to shock her father and run from his money, Delia had taken the teaching job in New York.” Jack began pounding on the front door with his fist. Hollow, booming echoes rattled the windows next to the entrance. “Maddie, are you in there? Maddie! It's Jack Fitzgerald. Open the door!”

Gabe went back down the steps and surveyed the front of the house. “All the lights are on downstairs and on the second floor. Maybe we should go around to the back. It's a big house. The housekeeper might not hear us.”

Jack beat on the door again. “Maddie! This is official police business. Open the door!”

A curtain twitched on the big window to the right of the door. Gabe got a glimpse of a middle-aged woman's face before the heavy lace panel dropped back into place. He took the steps two at a time, reaching the porch as the front door swung open.

Maddie Holmes's cerulean blue eyes peered suspiciously at the two of them through wire-rimmed spectacles, her gaze darting from Gabe to the car in the drive, and back to Jack. Her shoulders slumped for an instant before she caught herself and stood up ramrod straight. Bracing herself for the worst.

Amanda wasn't here. He knew without asking a single question and so did Jack. The slim hope he'd harbored that Archie Baldwin had only imagined his fiancée's disappearance evaporated, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. Gabe put on the stoic face he wore when dealing with victim's families. The only thing in doubt now was just how terrible this would become by the time they found Amanda.

“Good afternoon, Lieutenant Fitzgerald.” Maddie brushed back a strand of dark hair that had escaped her chignon. The nails on her long fingers were neatly trimmed, and small tasteful rings sparkled on both hands. “What can I do for you?”

“How are you, Maddie? This is my partner, Captain Ryan.” Jack swept his plaid cap off and stuffed it into a coat pocket. “Is Amanda at home?”

“No, she went out with Mr. Baldwin.” Her fingers curled around the edge of the door and she moved to stand in the small opening, blocking the way inside. “Has something happened?”

“That's what we're trying to find out, Maddie. We need to ask you some questions about Amanda.” Jack smiled and moved closer, putting a hand on the doorknob. “May we come inside? These may not be easy questions to answer. The sitting room will be more comfortable for you than standing on the porch with the neighbors watching.”

She bit her lip and nodded, pulling the door open wide. Once they were inside, she led them across an entryway bright with gleaming marble floors, polished rosewood tables, and gilt-framed portraits of old men wearing dour expressions. Her heels clicked softly on the white and rose-tinted marble, oddly in counterpoint to the ticking of the black walnut grandfather clock outside the sitting room door.

Gabe took the seat Maddie indicated, balancing his hat on the wide, upholstered arm of the chair. The sitting room was lavishly furnished, with red velvet cushions on brown leather chairs and a black horsehair sofa. A marble fireplace filled one wall, and tall, glass-fronted cabinets held porcelain figurines and decorated china vases. Paintings of pastoral scenes hung on either side of the fireplace, no doubt costly and done by a famous artist.