Silver Dreams (3 page)

"Where are you going?" Elizabeth asked.

"Back to the hotel of course."

"You can't go back there! They'll kill you."

Max Cassidy fixed a bold stare on Elizabeth that started at her tiara and ended with the lap he'd rested his head on for a fraction of a minute. He chucked her under her chin. "Don't worry about me. I'm not about to let that mob see me. Besides, I've only used up two of my nine lives."

The carriage stopped at the side of the street and Max reached for the door handle. Before he stepped out, he looked at Elizabeth one more time. "What's your name?  I'll check out the
Courier News
for your byline."

Somehow she couldn't imagine a man like Max Cassidy reading her little society story, but she gave him her name anyway. "It's Sheridan. Elizabeth Sheridan."

"Well, thanks for the lift, Betsy."  He jumped out, closed the carriage door, and leaned in the window. "You didn't need to worry tonight. I wouldn't have let the Galbotto boys touch a hair on that gorgeous red head of yours."  He flashed her a wondrously boyish wink, then headed back up Seventh Avenue.

"Thank goodness that's over, Miss Sheridan," Jasper said, pulling into the thoroughfare again. "Your father will have my head for this, and me only six months in this country and needing the work."

"No he won't, Jasper. Your job is safe," Elizabeth assured him.

"How's that, miss?"

"Because neither of us is going to tell him what happened tonight." 

Elizabeth tapped her finger against her lower lip. That's all I'd need. Papa would never let me out of the house again if he knew how close I came to...to...

She suppressed a grin as she realized she wasn't at all sure how to describe what had just occurred. But if there was such a thing as a jolt of journalistic energy, she'd just received one, and finally something exciting had happened in her life.

Chapter Two

Aware of the power that Estelle Cromley wielded in Winston's outer office, Elizabeth smiled sweetly at her. The woman had run her father's office efficiently for the past fifteen years, and no one, not even family, got past Miss Cromley and into the inner sanctum of Winston Sheridan until she specifically gave her permission.

"Good morning, Miss Cromley," Elizabeth said.

"Good morning, Miss Sheridan. Your father told me you were coming in today. I believe he's waiting for you."  She put the receiver from her inter-office transmitter next to her ear and pressed a buzzer on the speaker box. "Your daughter's here, Mr. Sheridan. Yes, sir, right away."  She nodded at Elizabeth. "You may go in."

Elizabeth had only been in her father's office a few times. It was not a place she normally wanted to be, and whenever she'd been forced by circumstances to go there, she'd felt like a trespasser. Elizabeth much preferred to face the editor-in-chief on home territory where his illustrious title carried little significance. There they shared a rocky, but more nearly equal footing.

Crossing the thick Aubusson carpet, Elizabeth stood in front of Winston's desk and spread her fingertips on the tooled leather top. "You wanted to see me, Papa?"

"Yes, dear, sit down."

She did so, stiffly.

"First of all I want to commend you on the Dorchester article. I was most anxious to get this morning's paper to read it, and I was not disappointed."  He held up the Tuesday edition of the
Courier News
and pointed to her byline. "By George, Elizabeth, you do have some talent in journalism after all. You've even made me wish I'd attended the blasted ball, and you know how I hate those things."

Elizabeth sat a little straighter in the tufted wing chair, drew her first relaxed breath, and accepted her father's praise gratefully. He truly was a newsman, in his blood and his heart. If only he would recognize those same traits in her. "Thank you, Papa. I hope this means you've got another assignment for me."

"I do. In fact, I've had a request for your services."

"Really? From whom?"

"Mrs. Clara Beswick on Staten Island is entertaining this week. Her guest of honor is someone named Lady Catherine Sutcliff, the Duchess of Something-or-Other. Anyway, Mrs. Beswick is having high tea at her home Thursday afternoon, and she'd like for you to be there. She specifically asked for the lady reporter who covered the Dorchester party with such a delightful flair for detail."

Elizabeth failed to hide her disappointment. "That's my assignment, Papa...high tea on Staten Island?"

He looked sincerely wounded and definitely baffled by her tone. "What's wrong, Elizabeth? You don't like it?"

"Well, to be honest, I'd hoped for a story with a bit more substance."

"Elizabeth, you can't expect that one society piece qualifies you as a star reporter?"

"No, of course not, but..."

Winston waggled a thick finger at her. "Remember the rules. I'm the boss. Besides, I firmly believe you've found your niche in the Lady's Page. You can make quite a name for yourself if you stick to what comes naturally to you."

What comes naturally!  Elizabeth grimaced at the thought. If her father only knew how she'd struggled with every word of the Dorchester article. She'd much rather have written about the craps game in the basement. If she'd covered that story, her fingers would have flown across the typewriter keys! Knowing that it was pointless to argue, however, she forced a smile. She had, after all, given her word. "Of course, Papa," she said. "I'll cover the tea on Staten Island."

He patted his waistline, appearing as satisfied with the outcome of this meeting as he would have been with a gourmet meal. "Good, good. I'll have Jasper drive you to the ferry at noon on Thursday and wait at the dock until you get back. I'll see you at home later today if you have any questions."

She'd been dismissed, so she stood and walked to the door.

"Oh, one more thing, Elizabeth," he said. "Have you seen your brother this morning? I asked Bridey about him at breakfast, and she said he was sleeping in. But she had that way about her, you know that shifty-eyed thing she does when you can't tell if she's telling the truth or lying out her bustle."

Oh, dear. Elizabeth knew perfectly well about Bridey's failure to make eye contact. The cherished maid had been covering for the Sheridan children all their lives, but Elizabeth didn't think her father had figured out the signals.  Whenever Bridey answered a direct question while keeping her eyes on the ceiling moldings or floor boards, it meant something was amiss. Elizabeth wondered if her father had noticed that whenever it happened, Bridey left the house almost immediately. Elizabeth knew she went straight to confession to receive absolution for telling the little lies.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Papa," she said. "But I'm sure Ross is home, probably still sleeping like an innocent baby."

Winston smirked. "Elizabeth, we both know Ross hasn't been innocent since he grew out of breeches and learned to sneak past the butler. I hope you're right, though. I don't want to grapple with any more of his problems right now. You would tell me if Ross was up to his old tricks, wouldn't you?"

"You know I would, Papa."  Elizabeth took special care to make sure her own gaze didn't flit to the ceiling as she said it.

When she came out of the
Courier News
Building, Elizabeth didn't feel like going home to face whatever trouble her brother might have gotten himself into. And besides, there was nothing to do at home but sit and brood over her next assignment. She turned north up Broadway intending to walk off the doldrums that had suddenly settled over her. Within a block she passed a newsstand, and stopped for a look.

The trademark light green paper was unmistakable as were the bold Gothic style letters identifying the journal as the
True Detective Gazette
. She fumbled in her purse for a nickel to buy a copy of the paper, paid the vendor and immediately turned to the editorial page to consult the journal's masthead. She wanted to find out where the
Gazette
was head-quartered...where Max Cassidy worked. She recognized the address as near Washington Square, not too far from where she was at the moment. She stuck the paper under her arm and hailed a cab with the intention of just gazing at the building from a distance.

On the way she perused the articles in the journal. She found three bylines belonging to Maxwell Cassidy. The stories credited to her mysterious passenger were strange indeed.

The first one was headlined, "Dangerous Relation...Man gets twenty stitches from mother-in-law who was ten miles away in Brooklyn Heights."  Reading the lead paragraph, Elizabeth discerned that the hapless man received his wound from an irate wife who bludgeoned him over his head with a portrait of her mother. The heavy antique frame disintegrated on impact, splintering all over the poor fellow's bald pate.

Max's second headline read, "Beware the Meat Course...Can you identify that unique flavor?"  This article was about a man at a South Street Seaport meat packing plant who had his arm chopped off by a butcher's saw. His co-workers rushed him to the hospital and when they returned, they found no evidence of the severed arm. The day's quota of sausages, however, had gone out to distributors as scheduled.

Elizabeth's stomach churned while she searched for the last of Max's articles, the one she had personally experienced, at least second-hand. "Injured Man Ends Up Rolling Lucky Seven," the headline read, followed by, "Patrick O'Toole grateful for help from Italian businessman who prefers to remain anonymous."

Elizabeth read the headline a second time as her incredulity grew. How could anything about Mr. O'Toole's ordeal be considered lucky, she wondered, thinking about the wounded man suffering with blindness and broken legs. And how could Max refer to that despicable Galbotto fellow as a helpful businessman as if he were a paragon of society? What kind of investigative reporting was this?

She read the details of Max's encounter in the basement of the Dorchester Hotel. He admitted that he was there to investigate the injuries inflicted upon one middle-aged man of Irish descent. The details of Max's own struggle with the unidentified ruffians were quite vivid, even to the picturesque descriptions of the "beefy fist which slammed into his upper lip."

Elizabeth didn't have time to finish the article because the cab stopped in front of a three-story brownstone building with the words
True Detective Gazette
scripted on the first and second story windows. She folded the newspaper, paid the driver and dismissed the cab. She no longer had an interest in merely observing the building. Since reading the article she was determined to question Max about his journalistic ethics.