Summer of Dreams (14 page)

Gwendolyn went on to report that he was in a sensitive position in the government and she hesitated to name him, referring to him only by his initials. She said he was an idealistic man who had long been frustrated by the rampant corruption in the government and was quietly mounting a campaign to root it out.

Stella was almost certain A.G. worked at City Hall, for Gwendolyn knew him well and trusted him implicitly. So lavish was her praise that Stella suspected her sister was half in love with the enigmatic man.

It bothered her that Gwendolyn would not confide A.G.’s full name. It seemed peculiar, especially since everything she said of him nearly glowed with admiration, portraying him like a crusading archangel from the legends of old.

I love feeling useful,
Gwendolyn had written her.
A.G. and I are a team, and I’
ve already seen some of the men I’ve named brought up on criminal charges. We are making a real
difference in Boston.

Toward the end, Gwendolyn began to suspect her work was putting her in danger. In her final letter, Gwendolyn wrote that she feared for her life. She sounded almost embarrassed as she wrote it.
I hope I don’t sound too melodramatic, but should something strange happen
to me, please consider it foul play.

A woman of Gwendolyn’s swimming abilities drowning in five feet of water qualified as
strange
. So did the stonewalling Stella had received from the medical examiner’s office and the Boston Police Department.

Stella’s chief objective in working at City Hall was to discover the identity of A.G. As soon as she found Gwendolyn’s mysterious ally, he would be able to tell her everything Gwendolyn had learned and provide his perspective on exactly what had happened to her sister that cold December night.

It was why Stella skimmed the notes of every meeting taking place at City Hall. She flipped open the next file in the stack, and her eyes widened in pleasure. Andrew Gaines, Director of the Parks Department, had been in the building today.

He was a possibility. Director of the Parks Department was a powerful position in the city. He controlled huge swaths of public land and was instrumental in designating routes for the subway. He was someone Gwendolyn would have encountered in the course of her work. And being associated with such an idealistic job was the kind of thing that would have appealed to Gwendolyn.

So far, Stella had found fourteen men connected with City Hall whose initials matched A.G. She kept the names of all fourteen men on a scrap of paper taped to the underside of her desk drawer. Soon she would begin seeking them out to determine if they could be Gwendolyn’s man.

After skimming the other files, she found no additional men with the proper initials, so she opened the door to the archives to turn over the files. “Good afternoon, Mr. Palmer.”

The archivist was hunched over a newspaper at the front counter, and he barely glanced up as she entered. Which was unusual. Normally he pounced on her the moment she walked through the door to chat about whatever oddities he was obsessed with that day. She set the files on the front counter, but he still didn’t look up. Whatever was in the newspaper he ex
amined so studiously had caused furrows on his brow, and she was worried about him.

“Is everything all right?” she asked.

He grimaced and stood upright. “There is going to be an auction of old printing presses and typefaces in Philadelphia. The announcement says it is the largest collection of antique printing equipment to surface in the past decade.”

“Well, that’s wonderful . . . isn’t it?”

He shook his head. “The auction is next month. I don’t know if I should go. I can’t afford a set of antique type, and seeing it go to someone else would be unbearable.”

Her colleagues upstairs would have laughed at the despair in Mr. Palmer’s voice, but Stella understood. “You still ought to attend,” she said. “It will be like visiting the Louvre. You can’t buy any of the artwork, but just having the chance to admire it is worthwhile, don’t you think?”

A few of the tension lines eased on Mr. Palmer’s forehead. “There is going to be a complete collection of Caslon type on display. Including the Hebrew and Greek fonts. Can you imagine what a labor of love it must have been for William Caslon to create fonts in three different alphabets? I’ve never seen a complete set of Caslon fonts before, they are
that
rare.”

He continued to ramble about the eighteenth-century gunsmith who had given up his profession to design a new form of typeface. Stella did her best to pay attention, but she needed to get back upstairs and record Andrew Gaines’s name onto her slip of paper. Still, she sensed Mr. Palmer had no one to share his obsessive interests with, and he seemed so lonely down here in the archives all by himself. She listened to him gush about the brave gunsmith who had ventured into the risky world of typeface design, driven by nothing more than a craving to create beautiful text. Against her will, Stella began developing a reluctant admiration for the long-dead typographer.

Ernest abruptly stopped. “Hey, it’s Tuesday,” he said. “Aren’t you going to call your parents?”

Stella glanced at the telephone in the corner. Ernest had generously allowed her to use the telephone in the archives to call her parents each Tuesday afternoon. It was far better than trying to place the call from a crowded pharmacy or hotel lobby, where it was always so noisy it was hard to hear. Whenever Stella called, she needed to listen hard for clues about her mother’s condition. A hitch in her voice, a change of cadence . . . these were the signs her mother’s stability was wavering again.

“Not today,” she said. “I’ve got an appointment this evening I can’t miss. Might I call them tomorrow?”

“Sure thing,” Ernest agreed before turning back to his newspaper.

As she walked back up to her office, she hoped Mr. Palmer would go to the auction. Life was too short to hold back from the pure elation that could be found from the pursuit of a dream.

Of course, the irony was that Stella’s entire life was now completely devoid of passion, art, or anything else she had once cherished. That was okay, though. Until she found out who’d caused Gwendolyn’s death, the rest of her life would be held in suspension. Only after she exposed a murderer would she be free to try to gather the frayed threads of her world and weave them once again into a thing of beauty and meaning.

She trudged back up to her empty office and recorded the new name on the list taped beneath her desk drawer.

Now came the hardest part of the day. After weeks of trying to make contact, she had an appointment with Freddie McNeill. The prospect sent a chill straight down to the marrow of her bones, for Freddie was the waterman who had found Gwendolyn’s body floating in the river.

And he had information she needed to know.

S
tella drew a fortifying breath as she descended the staircase at City Hall. Was there anything more distressing than learning the details of your sister’s final moments on earth? Or seeing the place where her body had been pulled from the frigid river?

But it had to be done. The police had lost patience with her and no longer took her appointments. They insisted Gwendolyn’s death was an accidental drowning, but that didn’t make sense. When they were children, Gwendolyn had laughingly challenged the neighborhood boys to see who could swim across Windmill Pond the fastest. It was half a mile to swim the length of the pond, and Gwendolyn always won. She was a strong swimmer who would not have drowned in five feet of water.

For Gwendolyn to die by drowning was morbidly ironic. While Gwendolyn loved frolicking in the water like a dolphin, Stella had always been terrified of water, too afraid to even learn how to swim. And yet it was Gwendolyn who had drowned.

Freddie McNeill was the city waterman who rowed the Charles River each day, scooping out muck that built up in the
city’s inflow and drainage pipes. Without regular raking out, the pipes got clogged with sludge that could cause pressure difficulties at the pumping station. It was a messy job and best done at low tide, which meant Freddie was often the first person out on the river each morning.

And on a cold, drizzly morning in early December, Freddie McNeill had been the first one to spot the beautiful dead girl floating facedown in the freezing river.

Stella pulled her shawl tighter as she headed outside. Boston in early spring was chilly, and getting to the wharf where Freddie had asked her to meet him was going to be a challenge. Huge sections of the city’s streets were ripped up for subway construction, causing the streetcars to be rerouted and more crowded than normal. She needed to get all the way to south Boston within the next hour. As she scurried down the impressive steps in front of City Hall, she almost missed the tall man leaning negligently against a lamppost.

The instant she spotted Romulus she averted her face.

“Miss West,” he drawled casually.

She ignored him and headed north on Court Street, but he pushed away from the lamppost to follow alongside her. She should have known he wouldn’t be discouraged so easily, but she still had no intention of confirming his suspicions that she was the artist he was looking for. There were probably dozens of women named Stella West in the country.

“I like your shawl.”

She kept marching straight ahead without breaking stride. Perhaps if she ignored him he would leave her alone.

“William Morris?”

She glanced at him in surprise, for the ornate tapestry of her shawl was indeed from the great designer William Morris. The extravagant shawl was out of place with her bland clothes, but it had been chilly this morning and she’d succumbed to
the temptation to wear it. Wasn’t it just her luck that Romulus White seemed to have a keen appreciation for textile design and felt compelled to comment on it. She didn’t even know if William Morris’s fabrics were available in the United States, for this shawl had been a gift from the artist himself shortly before he died.

She walked faster, but Mr. White kept pace with her. “It’s a spectacular shawl,” he said. “It gives you a wonderful medieval flare, like Eleanor of Aquitaine striding down the streets of Boston.”

She fought to keep the smile from breaking onto her face. It would only encourage him.

The crowds were terrible at the next intersection due to an overturned wagon that had dumped hundreds of turnips across the cobblestone street. A policeman directed traffic, but Stella was trapped beside Romulus until the officer let them pass.

“I should properly introduce myself,” he said. “I’m Romulus White. I’ve admired your work ever since I first saw it on display at—”

She cut him off, desperate to avoid anything that hinted she was anything but an ordinary stenographer. “Romulus. What an unusual name.”

“My mother goes through periodic phases with historical eras,” he admitted. “For a while, she was enchanted with Roman mythology and couldn’t resist foisting the name of Rome’s founder on me. I’m grateful I wasn’t born during her medieval phase or I’d have been named Beowulf.”

He paused to squint at the overturned cart. “I wonder why that cart was carrying turnips?” he asked in an abrupt change of topic. “No one likes turnips. They aren’t fit for anything but cattle feed, and even that seems like cruelty to animals. I know a physician named Dr. Lentz who swears that root vegetables are the most nutritious things to eat, but I’m convinced the joy
from a single ounce of chocolate does the body and spirit more good than a whole cartload of turnips.”

He continued to ramble, but she stopped listening the moment she heard the name Dr. Lentz.

“Dr. Lentz?” she asked. “Dr. Rupert Lentz, the medical examiner?”

“Yes, do you know him?”

Stella had never been able to get past the ring of clerks, security officers, and red tape surrounding the medical examiner. All she knew of Dr. Lentz was that he performed Gwendolyn’s autopsy and was chiefly responsible for insisting that it was an accidental drowning. She’d been trying for weeks to pierce through the blockades and speak directly to Dr. Lentz, but she’d been routinely brushed aside. The last time she’d tried to force her way into his office, the police had been summoned. She fled before they arrived, but she was still determined to confront him in person.

“No, I don’t personally know Dr. Lentz,” she said. But this was an interesting development. If Romulus White had a connection to the medical examiner’s office, he could be useful to her.

The cart had been set upright, the driver scrambled to toss the turnips back into the wagon’s bed, and pedestrians were finally allowed to cross the street.

“You never did tell me your name,” Romulus said as he set out across the street alongside her.

“Stella,” she admitted. “Just Stella.”

“Well, just Stella,” he said with an amused tone, “did you know that I’ve been corresponding for years with a young lady named Stella West and that her landlord just informed me she works at City Hall? Imagine my surprise when I learned that one of the city’s stenographers shares an identical name with a talented lithographer who, until recently, has lived in London.
I can’t help wondering if the lithographer and the modest stenographer walking alongside me might be one and the same. What do you say, just Stella?”

The more she denied who she was, the more curious he would become, and that could be problematic. The best she could do was appeal for his silence. When she reached the other side of the street, she turned to face him. “If I am this woman you are referring to—” she began, scrambling for the best way to frame this delicate conversation.

“Stella West,” he supplied. “A lithographer of some note.”

“A lithographer of
spectacular
note.”

“Let’s not get carried away, just Stella,” Romulus said, but the gleam in his eyes brightened.

“If I am this woman, and if I have been bombarded by slavishly admiring letters for the past three years, might that be enough for me to get a bit carried away?”

He pretended a wounded tone. “Did my letters come off as slavish?”

“I’m afraid they did,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper. His letters had been delightful, glittering with wit and lighting up her day, but she had the perfect life in London and never seriously considered his offer. Now more than ever, she needed to focus on her mission without any distractions. She had an appointment to keep and had no business indulging in a flirtation on a public street.

“So if I am this lithographer who walked away from a celebrated career in London to work as an ordinary stenographer in a city office, don’t you think I would have a very good reason for that decision?”

“Certainly,” Romulus said. “And I wait with bated breath to hear about it.”

As much as she was tempted to stand here and flirt with him, a wave of exhaustion settled on her. She missed her parents. She
missed the life she used to have, but none of that mattered. She dropped all the playfulness from her tone and looked Romulus directly in the eyes. “I came to Boston because I believe that my sister was murdered,” she said bluntly. All humor vanished from Romulus’s face, but aside from a single raised brow, he made no move to comment, so she continued. “Everyone from the police department, the medical examiner, and the court system insists it was an accident, but I don’t believe them. I’ve tracked down the man who found my sister’s body, and I am due to meet him within the hour. He’s going to show me the spot where she was found.”

He looked appalled. “To what end?”

“To figure out what really happened.”

“Isn’t that best left to the police?”

She fought the temptation to roll her eyes. She and the police department were not on the best of terms. They’d been respectful the first few meetings, but as her refusal to accept their conclusion solidified, they dug in their heels and stopped answering her questions.

“I have lost confidence in the police. Also, they quit speaking to me after I threatened to sue the entire department for incompetence. Besides, if you want something done right, it’s best not to trust outsiders.”

“Some would say it is best to trust the experts. This doesn’t seem like the kind of thing a woman should do.”

How little he knew her. Some people collapsed when they were hurt. They floundered while waiting for someone to rush to their rescue and solve their problems—but that wasn’t her.

She raised her chin and stared at him. “Let me be clear,” she said. “When I wake up in the morning, I live, breathe, and function only in the interest of solving Gwendolyn’s death. I intend to hunt down exactly who is responsible and drag him, her, or them before a court of law. So, please, I don’t have time to talk
about art or pretty pictures or working at your magazine. I’m pleading with you not to pester me at City Hall. I need that job, and I don’t want to worry about you showing up to try to lure me to your magazine. That sort of thing raises questions. Right now all I need is to find the streetcar so I can meet the waterman on time.”

“Where do you need to go?” Romulus asked.

“South Boston, down by Cooperman’s Bridge. I’ve never been there before.”

His brows lowered in concern. “That’s a rough part of town. I’ll take you.”

“Would you?” She didn’t mean to sound so stunned, but this was the first time someone in this city had offered to do something nice for her. Perhaps she’d gotten so used to hostile officials and slammed doors that this bit of kindness seemed extraordinarily chivalrous.

“Let’s go,” he said confidently.

Stella’s nose wrinkled at the marshy, decaying scent as she and Romulus stepped off the streetcar near Cooperman’s Bridge. Tenements and warehouses were built close to the cracked and rutted street, with no trees or greenery anywhere to be seen. They headed toward the river, where the ground sloped downward. The wet, peaty smell grew stronger, and she covered her nose with the corner of her shawl. Sometimes even the scent of water was enough to set her teeth on edge.

A break in the warehouses revealed the river, wide and still. She kept her gaze averted from the shoreline as they headed toward the boardinghouse where Freddie McNeill lived.

Romulus sent her a worried glance. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have me handle this? I can ask him whatever questions you want and will report back fully.”

“No, I’ll be fine,” she said smoothly. She’d rather have a tooth pulled than confess her fear of water. She needed to shove those inconvenient feelings aside and get the task done.

A man smoking a pipe on the covered porch of a boardinghouse noticed her. He dropped the chair back onto all four legs and rose. “Are you Stella Westergaard?” he called out.

“I am.” She used her real name every time she interacted with anyone related to Gwendolyn’s case, for it tended to buy her a degree of cooperation. She glanced up at Romulus, who looked at her curiously. “West is merely my professional name,” she said. “It’s easier to spell.”

Romulus nodded, and she turned her attention back to Freddie. He plunged his thumb into the bowl of his pipe, snuffing it out and then tucking it into his shirt pocket. He loped down the wooden steps and crossed the graveled yard, his hand extended.

“I’m Freddie McNeill,” he said.

Stella didn’t mind a few tobacco stains and returned his hearty handshake. This man worked a long and grueling day on the river and was taking his personal time to meet with her. His skin was creased and dark like old leather, his grubby pants were held up by suspenders, and he had the strong build of a man who made his living from the strength of his back.

“I appreciate your willingness to meet with us.” She made introductions, but Mr. McNeill’s heavily lined face peered at her curiously.

“You look like her,” he said simply.

She swallowed hard. “So you can tell that?”

“Oh yes. The sun was barely up, but I saw her face. I doubt she was dead more than an hour or two when I found her, so she was in good shape. Not like some of the ones I’ve seen who float ashore after a few days. Those bodies are so swollen up and bloated they’re hard to recognize.”