A Lady Never Trifles with Thieves (13 page)

A hand clamped my shoulder and spun me half round. Mary Anna Squires whispered, “What have you done with Rendal?”

I blanched. “I haven’t done—”

“Don’t play coy with me, Miss whoever-you-are. You were cozied up to his maid the other day. The desk clerk says he hasn’t seen Rendal since the night before that.”

Comprehension was sluggish for one with a reputedly agile mind. Jealousy, more so than concern for LeBruton’s well-being, was the crux of the matter. The two-fisted philanderer must also have taken a hotel room to foment bachelorhood.

I looked the debutante straight in the eye. “I don’t know you. I’ve never met anyone named Rendal. Why you saw fit to accost me in church, I can’t divine, but I’ll thank you to leave me be this instant.”

The vixen bared her teeth, then tossed her head and flounced away.

I sent up a silent prayer that LeBruton was decommissioned, not deceased. It was followed by thanks for leading me from the temptation to tell Miss Squires to avert her inquiries to Rendal’s wife.

Elise Estabrook strolled from the sanctuary, talking to a heavyset woman with a rictus smile. I suppose my eagerness to catch Elise’s eye showed, for her companion nodded in my direction.

“Jody,” Elise said, “I didn’t realize you attend our church.” She cackled. “Though why I’d have noticed you, I can’t imagine.”

“Nor can I,” I said, laughing. I sincerely hoped I’d be as blithely outspoken as she when I reached her age.

She introduced me to Maude Blount and her similarly corpulent husband, Terrance, then to Durwin Estabrook, a towering, silver-haired man who walked with a cane.

“Jody is a detective,” Elise said to no one in particular and everyone in earshot.

“It’s Joby. Short for Josephine Beckwor—”

“Jody is investigating Belinda Abercrombie’s murder. Or
was,
anyway.” Elise’s head tilted sympathetically. “Poor thing. Locking up that dreadful Italian put you out of a job, didn’t it?”

I definitely loved this woman. “You mean you haven’t heard? Vittorio Ciccone was released from jail late last night.”

“What’s that?” Durwin leaned forward on his cane.

“You mean the police just turned him out on the street? By jingo, the man’s a cold-blooded killer!”

Several of Terrance Blount’s chins buckled. “I don’t believe it. You must be mistaken, Miss Sawyer. They had him dead to rights.”

“Besides,” Maude chimed in, “if they had, the news would have been all over town before now.”

“My source must remain confidential,” I said, “but you might say I heard it straight from the horse’s mouth.” In truth, Izzy heard it from mine, when I’d rehearsed this monstrous prevarication in the stable at dawn.

“I wonder if Hubert knows yet,” Durwin said. “Heaven save the chief of police when he finds out.”

Elise agreed. “Maybe we should call on him and Avilla. Better to hear it from us, than one of the servants—or worse, read it in tomorrow’s newspaper.”

I wrung my hands. “You won’t say who told you, will you? It could compromise my informant, if Mr. Abercrombie storms police headquarters…not that it’ll do any good.”

Durwin chuffed. “The devil it won’t. Hubert isn’t in the best of health, but you’d never guess it when he loses his temper.”

“Which he’d have every right to do,” I countered, “except everyone on the force from chief to turnkeys has been ordered to deny they’ve dropped all charges against Ciccone. They hope the real killer will be apprehended before his release becomes common knowledge.”

“That I
can
believe,” Blount said. “The mayor and the chief have backslapped each other silly since the arrest. This being an election year, the egg’ll be so thick on their faces, they’d never get it scrubbed off.”

In a quavering voice, little removed from a shriek, Maude said, “Who cares a whit about politics? There’s a lady-killing burglar roaming the streets. What will those fools have to say for themselves if he strikes again?”

“Careful, Maude,” Elise warned. “Keep screeching like a scorched cat and they’ll draft you into the choir.”

“How
dare
you—”

“How dare I what? Use common sense, instead of having a hissy fit in the middle of the vestibule?” Elise scouted her audience and found them attentive, then looked from her husband to the Blounts to me. “Has it occurred to anyone other than myself that the police may have freed this Ciccone person for the express purpose of catching him red-handed?”

A man standing with his back to me pursed his lips. Beside him, another exchanged a speculative glance with a woman I presumed to be his wife.

Durwin said, “If they don’t yet have the evidence to convict him, that could be a clever strategy.”

“Give him enough rope and let him hang himself,” Blount agreed.

To me, Maude said, “I promise I won’t mention your name, but I won’t keep this a secret from my daughter, daughters-in-law, and close friends. If anything should happen to them…well, I simply couldn’t live with myself.”

Eyes downcast, I nodded as if in resignation.

H
aving set countless tongues wagging in trepidation by slandering the mayor, chief of police, and, by default, the entire department, I sallied forth to the LeBruton home. The buggy’s hood shielded me head to knees from the slanting drizzle. The balance of my anatomy—most especially my feet—couldn’t have been wetter had I waded a creek and sunk to my hocks.

Gloomy befit the house’s mien, but any bright spots in Arapahoe County this day were cloistered indoors. I whoaed Izzy at the mouth of the alley.

I swear, ten full minutes must have passed before I gnawed apart a length of lacy ruffle from the hem of my petticoat. The factory’s seamstress could not be faulted for shoddy workmanship or cheap thread. After winding the raveled strip round my bent arm like a skein of yarn, a fist-sized knot was then tied at either end.

Due to ruts and pond-wide puddles, my duck-walk to pass unseen between analogous plank fences was literal, rather than a parody. With the signal rag jammed in a fork in the LeBruton’s gate, I returned to the buggy, drenched from head to toe.

Papa told me my birth had been premature by a few weeks. Age had not improved my affection for waiting on much of anything. If I owned the world, trains would run on time, appointments of all kinds would be contracts, not suggestions, and telegrams and signal rags would be answered within an hour of their dispatch. I’d brought nothing to read. Nothing to eat, or drink, though if dehydration seemed imminent, I could always suck a pint or two of rainwater from my sleeve.

With some regularity, I was hailed by passing Good Samaritans who must have assumed I was stranded and didn’t have sense enough to walk to the nearest warm, dry house and beckon assistance.

I couldn’t convince Izzy that our wretched existence was good practice for the escapade planned for the following night. He fidgeted in his harness and, on occasion, lurched against the breast collar in case I was ready to leave but had neglected to tell him.

A true quandary presented itself at the ninety-minute mark. The need to relieve myself weighed heavily on more than my thoughts. The fear Abelia would scurry down the alley moments after my departure wrestled with suspicion that I might sit there till the snow flew without laying eyes on her.

The prospect of knocking on the front door like a citizen seemed foolhardy. I had no idea what had transpired over the past four days. How would Abelia react to my appearing on the porch? Or Penelope? Or me, if Rendal should answer the bell?

Too late I realized that a second signal, denoting all was well, should have been agreed upon.

“There’s no sense in changing clothes just to go back out in the rain.”

Won Li said, “Your lips are blue. You are shivering. If you want my help, do as you are told.”

“Damned stubborn Chinaman” was the kindest thing I said as I flounced to my bedroom. When I came out, the table was laid with a serving of chicken stew, cold biscuits, and rice pudding.

“Thank you, but I’m not hungry.” My stomach growled like a rusty hinge.

“Eat.” He pulled out a chair and sat down, hands folded on the table. “Then we will go.”

“Now who isn’t listening?”

“If a tragedy has occurred, there is no remedy you can provide for it. Regardless of the circumstance, if you become ill from the damp and no nourishment, you will be of no help to Mrs. LeBruton or Abelia.”

An hour later, we fussed about who should ply the buggy’s reins. My sole objection to Won Li driving was the necessity of changing places before we reached the LeBrutons’. I swear to goodness, I do believe his haggling was founded on the chance of winning an unheard-of three arguments in a row.

He didn’t, but twosies were naught to sneeze at.

Izzy’s coat and mane had dried, sheltered as he was under the stable’s lean-to, but he wasn’t eager to get wet again. Although the rain had ceased, not a wink of blue rent the clabbered sky.

I enjoyed using the whip less than he appreciated its sting. He must have perceived I wasn’t bluffing, for at the squeak of the handle twisting from the socket, the Morgan stepped lively.

I refrained from driving by the house or down the alleyway. A Robin Hood’s barn approach was more discreet, particularly with Won Li riding shotgun. I dropped him at the corner, then continued across the street until I could view the LeBruton front entrance on the diagonal.

As a precaution, Won Li was to offer his services as a gardener first to the LeBrutons’ next-door neighbor. Upon reaching the property line, his metamorphosis from dignified Asian gentleman to obsequious servant was astounding.

He was a learned man—a professor of Asian antiquities—until a rival colleague had him shanghaied. Won Li nearly died during the voyage to America in a ship’s hold crammed with peasant laborers. Between the rancid food, brackish water, foul air, and stench of never-emptied slop buckets, it’s a miracle any of them survived.

In China, Won Li’s field of study had made him somewhat of a celebrity. To American employers who’d hired him to lay railroad tracks he was just another Chink. Ironically, his compatriots ostracized him because of his education and higher caste.

From the buggy, I watched Won Li’s shoulders round as if a pannier of rocks were strapped on his back. Chin tucked and hands clasped, his sandaled feet scuffled along the brick sidewalk. No one would guess he spoke three languages, had the equivalent of a doctorate in history, and had dined with the emperor at his summer palace.

Shooed away by the neighbor’s maid, he continued on to his objective. Nibbling a fingernail, I counted the seconds elapsing after his knock. I pictured Abelia trudging across those polished oak floors, muttering about there being only one of her and she was hurrying as fast as she was able, and if that wasn’t fast enough, the visitor could by-gum go hang, for all she cared.

Won Li’s arm raised a second time. What if no one answered? No, someone
had
to be home. Yet it wouldn’t be beyond the pale for a coolie’s summons to be ignored—on a Sunday, or any other day of the week.

Much like yesterday, when you ignored that small voice in your head urging you to ring the damned bell, not just walk on by.

A hand was on the dashboard and my foot was poised above the brace when I saw Won Li’s head bob in a subservient manner. Unless it was Rendal standing in the shadows, Won Li was quietly identifying himself and purpose of his visit.

The door’s slam startled me and a half-dozen birds roosting in tree branches. Won Li paused, then turned and shuffled from the veranda. He didn’t look up at me. I’d asked him not to, but such requests had seldom met with cooperation.

I wheeled the buggy around the block to meet him at the corner opposite where I’d let him off. As planned, he ventured up to the house on the other side of the LeBrutons’. He vanished behind an overgrown boxwood hedge. When he failed to reappear in the span of a rebuff, I searched him out.

I found him talking to and trading arm motions with a bow-legged codger in a tattered robe. The lower half of Won Li’s face was obscured by the bell of the old man’s ear-horn. I walked back to the buggy, assuming my patron would join me momentarily.

He did not.

When raindrops began to pelt the ground, I assumed it would hasten his return.

It did not.

I was a tick from marching down the sidewalk to remove him bodily before someone—chiefly, a LeBruton or Abelia, if any or all were still alive—called a constable on the demented young woman who’d dithered away the entire afternoon sitting in a buggy, in the rain, conversing with her horse, or more often than not, herself, when Won Li stepped from behind the hedge.

“For the love of Mike, will you
hurry up?”

He didn’t.

God is my witness, he even patted Izzy’s neck and praised him for his patience. I plied the reins the instant Won Li’s derriere swung into the seat. His landing was a tad off-kilter, but he had the reflexes of a cat. “Please, do ask another favor of me, soon.”

“All right, that was mean, but hell and damnation, WonLi. My heart was jumping out of my chest, while you were nattering on with that deaf old man. I couldn’t have been more conspicuous if a brass band had marched by.”

Silence, then, “Are you finished?”

“Yes.”

“The maid answered the LeBrutons’ door. I said, ‘I’m Won Li,’ to which she replied, ‘Well, I’m one second from kicking your butt off’n my porch,’ then she slammed the door.”

“Before you could give her the note.”

“That is correct.”

“Bullpats.”

Won Li cleared his throat. “As for the elderly neighbor, tomorrow I must borrow the buggy to return and trim the hedge, salt the back walk, and repair loose shingles on the porch, for which I will be paid handsomely.”

“What?
” Izzy veered in startlement. “Have you lost your mind?”

The look I received could have roasted chestnests. “I purported to be a gardener. Mister Ernst is in need of a gardener. Could I have refused?”

“No,” I allowed. “The city is alive with gardeners. Mister Ernst won’t have any trouble finding someone else.”

“Not that he will need to.”

“Excuse me?”

Won Li stared straight ahead. “It was I who was hired. It is I who will do the work. I will hear nothing more about it.”

“But—”

“Mister Ernst also told me that Penelope LeBruton is abed with female complaints and her husband is plagued by a bilious stomach. ‘Sumbitch is wearin’ a trench to the outhouse’ is how it was put.”

I worried a lip. LeBruton’s misery was excellent news. I wasn’t at all sure whether Penelope had collapsed from the strain, or Rendal had gotten his licks in before his bowels had revolted.

“You have done all you can for today, Joby. Tomorrow, I will be in a position to monitor the LeBruton household.”

“I know. That does relieve me some.”

He reached to pat my hand. “You have a kind and steadfast heart.”

“Why, thank you, Won Li.”

“It is only your mind that fails now and then.”

*   *   *

Within twelve hours, I couldn’t have agreed more.

Clad in one of Papa’s old Union suits dyed a mottled shade of black, I’d been stationed behind a scuppernong arbor since shortly after night had fallen.

The rain chilling me to the bone must have discouraged my suspect. I thought it might, before committing myself to braving the elements, but the chance of guessing wrong was too high to risk.

The windows I’d watched for what seemed like an eternity had been dark for quite some time. No horses’ hooves had clopped along the street for an hour—mayhaps longer. A tomcat prowling for love, or a late-night snack, had scared the pee-waddin’ out of me, but even the dogs and answering coyotes had retired.

The cloud cover was too thick for a sliver of moonlight to filter through. Scant visibility was as advantageous to me as it was to the faux-burglar who’d murdered Belinda Abercrombie, then rifled her jewelry case, stuffed the plunder in a pillow slip, and escaped without ever setting foot outside the house.

Catching the suspect in the act of framing Vittorio Ciccone for another crime was all that kept me sentried and marginally intoxicated by the pungent aroma of crushed grapes fermenting in the soggy grass.