No Comfort for the Lost (15 page)

“Didn’t the surgeon come and remove her arm? He said he would try to help.”

“You go,” the woman demanded and strode off, leaving Celia standing alone in the alleyway.

As she turned to leave, a flash of blue caught her eye. The woman who had befriended Celia’s patient had exited a door and was hurrying down the alleyway.

“Wait!” Celia called out, dashing after her. She dodged a chicken squawking across her path. “Please! I want to talk to you.”

The girl glanced back, skidding in the alley’s filthy mud, and fell.

“Let me help you,” Celia said, extending a hand. The young woman looked at Celia with suspicion before accepting the offer and allowing Celia to pull her to her feet. Celia didn’t release her grip, convinced the girl would bolt again if given the chance. As it was, she looked as alarmed as a hare caught in a net. “You speak some English, correct?”

The girl shook her head, belying the denial. She tried to tug her hand free, but Celia held fast.

“You do just a little. I remember.” Celia remained firm. “What happened to my patient, your friend?”

“Man come yesterday. But she dead.”

The surgeon had waited an entire day before attending the girl. At least he had finally done what he’d promised.

“What about Li Sha?” she asked. “Tell me what you know.”

The Chinese girl stilled at the mention of Li Sha’s name, and her eyes welled with tears. “She friend.”

Celia released the girl’s hand. “The last time I was here, you mentioned some man to my cousin, Barbara. Do you think this man hurt Li Sha?” she asked.

A tear slid down her smooth, high cheek. “He look for her,” she said. “Angry.”

“This angry man came here, looking for Li Sha?”

Reluctantly, the girl nodded.

“Was he a white man? Pale, like me, with a brightly colored waistcoat and red hair, perhaps?” Celia asked, making a guess as to the man’s identity. She gestured at her own face and clothes, mimicking what she hoped suggested flashy attire.

The young woman nodded again and was about to say more when her gaze shifted to a spot beyond Celia’s shoulder. Her eyes widened.

“I go,” she said, and bolted in the other direction.

A Chinese man had been watching them from a nearby doorway. He was dressed in an immaculate inky black silk tunic and trousers, a black silk skullcap on his head and red silk slippers on his feet. He was an herbalist, based on the sign above the entrance of his shop written in Chinese and English, and on the rows of jars and drawers within the shop itself, the bones and unidentifiable objects suspended from the ceiling.

Skirts lifted clear of the alleyway mud, Celia walked over to the merchant. A nearby laundryman, sweeping a saucepan-shaped iron back and forth over a shirt, watched her with interest.

“You speak English,” she said to the herbalist.

“The girl must not talk to you,” he answered. “And you must not come here alone. Dangerous.”

“But I am not alone. The constable is waiting . . .” Celia glanced toward where he normally stood. He wasn’t there. “The constable
was
waiting.”

“It best you leave, Mrs. Davies.”

He knew her name. Perhaps all the merchants in Chinatown did. “If the girl can help lead the police to Li Sha’s murderer, she must speak out,” Celia persisted.

“Why?” he asked, his expression opaque except for the pessimism in his dark eyes.

“Tell me who you think killed Li Sha. A former client? Someone from the anti-Chinese groups? A man named Connor Ahearn, perhaps?”

The herbalist shifted his weight to step closer, the rustling of his glossy silk releasing a sweet and strangely medicinal odor.

“There are many who hate us.” He let his gaze scan the street, drawing her attention to a shop owner cleaning up broken window glass.

“You might all be in danger,” Celia said urgently. “Connor Ahearn and his friends want to burn your shops and your homes.”

He considered her. “If the white men want to hurt us, how can a mere Celestial stop them?”

Just then a Chinese customer, her black hair caught up in a fantastic pile secured with a lacquered hair comb and her aquamarine silk tunic rustling, approached the shop and stepped around Celia. The woman issued a command to the merchant in Chinese and tottered into the shop on her high shoes. The herbalist hastened after her without another word.

• • •

I
must inform Mr. Greaves.

Celia wondered if he could do much with what she’d learned, since the information had come from someone who could not testify in court. It was critical, though, for him to know that Connor Ahearn had recently been seen in Chinatown looking for Li Sha. Because to her mind, the information solidified his role as the most likely suspect.

Medical bag swinging in her hand, Celia rushed across the road, dodging traffic and a freshly deposited pile of steaming manure. Even though the herbalist had been unwilling to confirm that Mr. Ahearn was responsible for Li Sha’s death, it simply made sense that he was. According to Mr. Greaves, he despised the Chinese and Li Sha in particular. He owned a knife and lived near where Li Sha’s body had been found. Would Li Sha have thought to approach Connor Ahearn for money the night she died? She might have done, if she were desperate enough and also believed he might gladly help a Chinese person leave San Francisco.

“It all fits!” Celia exclaimed to herself just as she collided with a grocer hauling a crate of potatoes from a wagon parked at the curb.

“Hey, watch it!” the grocer shouted, scrambling after the potatoes rolling toward a dirty puddle.

“Pardon me,” she murmured, and helped him collect his spilled wares before rushing onward.

The warning notes she’d received continued to mystify her, however. Celia supposed Mr. Ahearn might have come to believe that Li Sha had mentioned him to Celia, perhaps saying she was afraid of him. He might have learned from one of the Langes that Celia had taken Li Sha under her wing, a relationship that would naturally lead to confidences. Had Tessie Lange come to suspect Connor Ahearn as well? Had she gone to the Barbary to get him to admit he was responsible? But why not inform the police of her suspicion? Unless she was too frightened he would kill her, also.

“Mrs. Davies!”

It was Joseph Palmer. He steered his buggy to a halt on the street alongside her.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Palmer,” she said. “I apologize for not speaking with you at the funeral. I wish to extend my thanks again for your kind generosity. Although I wonder if my cousin might have already expressed our thanks,” she added, a clumsy way of asking what he and Barbara had been so urgently discussing that morning.

“Miss Barbara? Why, yes. Yes, indeed,” he replied smoothly. “Do you require a ride home, ma’am? I was headed to my warehouse to meet with Mr. Douglass, but I can make a detour.”

“Actually, I was bound for the police station.”

His leather gloves creaked as he tightened his fists around the reins. “To visit your brother-in-law?”

“I did see Tom this morning already. No, I wish to . . .” She stuttered to a halt. She found the intense way he was watching her unsettling. She’d known Joseph Palmer for years. She could trust him with what she had learned from the Chinese prostitute. Nonetheless, she decided not to.

Celia smiled politely and said the first thing that came to her mind. “I wish to ask if the police have finished with all of Li Sha’s possessions. I would like to distribute them to her friends. Small tokens only. She owned so little.”

“She had sold everything she’d been given, hadn’t she? A healthy, clean break from her past life, in my opinion.” Mr. Palmer tapped his fingertips to the brim of his top hat. “If you do not require a ride, Mrs. Davies, I must be on my way. I am late for a meeting. Give my regards to Miss Barbara. Good day to you.”

“Good day, Mr. Palmer,” she replied.

He flicked the reins across the horse’s back and steered the buggy away.

She did wonder, though, as she stared after him, how he had learned that Li Sha had sold the gifts she’d received.

• • •

“
Y
our daughter never came to the station today, Mr. Lange,” said Nick, who’d gone to Lange’s store after a failed attempt to find Palmer’s associate, Douglass, at the man’s office. “Where is she?”

The man blinked at him and pressed a fingertip to his spectacles to straighten them. “I have not seen her since before I left for Miss Li’s funeral. She left no message for me. I do not know where she is.”

“Not since before the funeral?” That would’ve been—Nick checked the clock hanging on the far wall of Lange’s apothecary store—more than six hours ago. “She hasn’t been here for six hours?”

“This is not like her. There has been such trouble since Miss Li died. And now . . .
ma pauvre fille
.” Lange removed his spectacles and wiped his eyes.

Damn, had his daughter run off? “This doesn’t look good for her, Lange. It makes me think she’s guilty of something.”

“Something horrible has happened. This I fear.”

“Is there any indication somebody took her against her will?” Nick scanned the main store area. No sign of a struggle in here. “Were either of the doors to this building forced open, for instance?”

“No. They both were locked when I arrived from the cemetery. She took her key from where it hangs in the kitchen and left.” He shuddered and steadied himself against the large table in the center of the room.

Nick eyed him. What the hell did Lange know that he wasn’t telling? “Do you have some idea where she might be, or who she might be with? Ahearn, maybe? He came looking for her yesterday.”

“I cannot say.”

“Your daughter has either skipped town because she knows something about Li Sha’s murder, Mr. Lange, or Li Sha’s killer has apprehended her. Either way, your daughter’s in trouble, and it could be fatal trouble.” Nick leaned across the table, and the man cringed. “So, maybe you
can
say where you think she’s gone. And while you’re at it, why not also explain why she told me she came home last Monday night an entire hour earlier than what you claimed.”

Lange, white-faced, stared at Nick. “I . . . I was mistaken.”

“What’s going on, Lange?”

Beads of sweat popped out on the man’s forehead. “There is a man I have seen on the street, an evil-looking man—”

“And you’re just telling me about him now?” Nick asked.

“I do not think Tessie knows this man,” Lange replied.

“When did you first notice him?”

Lange paused to think. “It has been a few weeks. Not longer.”

“And it wasn’t Ahearn.”

Lange shook his head. “I should have warned her. You must search for her, Detective Greaves. It is most urgent.”

“Can I look through her room? There might be a clue to where she’s gone.”

Lange led him upstairs and opened the first door on the left beyond the kitchen. It was a tiny, dark room with a narrow window looking out at the gap between buildings. Lange went to light the lamp on a bedside table. The room contained a quilt-covered bed, neatly made, a washstand, and a chest of drawers with a mirror on the wall above it and a lacquered wooden box on the polished surface. A handful of pencil sketches of animals, which looked as though they’d been drawn by a child, were tacked to the walls, and a long wool cloak hung from a hook by the door.

The cloak gave Nick an idea. “Have you ever seen your daughter with a set of men’s clothing, Mr. Lange?”

“What? No.”

The question had been worth a shot. Nick poked through the drawers and examined the items on Tessie’s washstand, but there wasn’t much to see. “Does your daughter keep a diary?”

“I think not.” Lange gazed sadly around the room. “There is nothing here to tell us where she has gone.”

Nick crossed back to the chest of drawers and flipped up the brass latch on the lacquered box. The box was lined with purple velvet and, apart from a mother-of-pearl hair comb, was empty. “Is this comb all Tessie keeps in here?”

“
Mon Dieu
, no. She had her mother’s jewelry.” Lange squinted at the box. “Where did it go?”

“I’d say the jewelry went to a pawnshop, Mr. Lange,” answered Nick.

“But her clothing, it is all here.”

Nick frowned. She might have left town on her own accord, but without her clothes it was more likely she’d been waylaid. “We’d better find her, Mr. Lange. Before somebody else does.”

• • •

N
ick headed up the street toward his lodgings. The lamps were being lit along the road, and the gas flared and snapped behind the glass. The doors to a saloon hung open, and somebody was belting a bawdy song, making the patrons laugh. Just another night in San Francisco. And somewhere out there was Tessie Lange, possibly with a purse full of money obtained from pawning her mother’s jewels. She might’ve left her clothing behind to hide her intention to leave the city. Or she might’ve left it behind because she’d planned to come right back home, once she’d finished with her business. But she hadn’t come home. And all Nick knew for sure was that Tom Davies wasn’t responsible for her disappearance.

Nick turned down a quiet street and realized that footsteps echoing off the buildings had been accompanying him for several blocks. He strolled on casually and started whistling, some tune he remembered from his childhood. He sauntered around the next corner and ducked into the deep entrance to a hardware store, unholstering his gun. A shop boy who’d been washing windows across the street caught sight of the Colt and froze, the scrub brush dripping soapy water onto the sidewalk.

Damn.

Nick gestured for him to go inside, and mouthed,
Go
. The boy blinked at him.

“Go inside!”

The kid grabbed his bucket and bolted through the door, sloshing water.

Nick took a cautious step forward, risking a look along the sidewalk. He didn’t see anybody, even though the person following him couldn’t have been more than a dozen yards behind him.

The hardware store owner had come to the front window and was staring at Nick over the cans of nails and tools on display. If Nick kept standing there, he’d gather a confounded crowd.