A Dangerous Engagement

by Ashley Weaver

  “If Mr. Ames returns, tell him I’ve gone to De Lora’s,” I instructed Winnelda as I pulled on a wrap over a gown of emerald-green taffeta.

  “Do be careful, madam,” she said, wringing her hands with worry.

  “Don’t worry,” I assured her. “I intend to.”

  I took a cab to De Lora’s. I didn’t know if Mr. De Lora would be there. Perhaps he and Milo were still together, wherever they had gone. Perhaps something awful had happened to both of them.

  I tried to tell myself that if something had happened to Mr. De Lora it would have been big news and likely made the evening edition of the paper. That didn’t exactly set my mind at ease about Milo’s whereabouts, but I supposed I would know something soon enough.

  I made my way into the basement speakeasy and directly toward the door I knew led to the corridor and Mr. De Lora’s office. The place was crowded tonight, the press of bodies tighter, the smoke thicker. I felt tense and claustrophobic, dizziness and nausea barely held at bay.

  The same man who had been there the evening before stood near the door to the corridor, and he moved slightly in front of it as I approached, apparently guessing my intention. His eyes swept over me in an appraising way.

  “Can I help you?” he asked, though he didn’t sound at all enthusiastic about offering aid.

  “I’m here to see Mr. De Lora,” I said, hoping that a sweet tone of voice would be all that was required to let me pass. It wasn’t.

  “Mr. De Lora ain’t accepting visitors.”

  “Tell him … tell him it’s Rose Kelly,” I said. “I think he’ll see me.”

  I had been going over in my mind how best to break the news to him that I had lied about my identity and my purpose for seeking him out. I didn’t expect him to be pleased about it, but my concern for Milo was now overriding all else.

  “Sorry, lady. He don’t want to be disturbed.”

  “Couldn’t you at least tell him I’m here?” I realized there was a plaintive note creeping into my voice, but I didn’t care. If I wasn’t able to see Mr. De Lora, I didn’t know how I would proceed.

  “She’s all right, Bart.”

  The voice at my side caught me by surprise. I hadn’t heard Esther Hayes approaching.

  “But…” Bart started.

  “I’ll tell him I let her in.”

  Bart seemed to consider this for a moment, then shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

  Miss Hayes opened the door and we passed through. I didn’t realize how tense I had been until she’d closed the door behind us and the comparative coolness and quiet of the corridor hit me like a physical relief.

  “Thank you,” I said. “It’s urgent that I speak to Mr. De Lora.”

  Her dark eyes met mine incuriously. “You know the way to his office.”

  I nodded. “Thank you.”

  I began to walk away, but her voice stopped me. “Miss Kelly.”

  I turned.

  “You can trust him,” she said.

  I didn’t know what it was that had made her tell me this, but I hoped she was right. There was a lot depending upon it.

  I tapped at the door.

  “Come in.”

  He was alone in his office when I entered, and I felt a pang of disappointment that Milo wasn’t with him. Some part of me had been hoping that their business dealings had unaccountably extended the entire day and that Milo, in his careless way, had simply forgotten to telephone me. But, somehow, I had known all along that this wasn’t the case.

  He glanced up at me but made no greeting or move to rise from his seat.

  “Mr. De Lora, I need to talk to you,” I said, moving toward him.

  He motioned for me to take a seat on the chair facing his desk. Then he scraped a match across the edge of his desk, lighting the cigarette that dangled from his lips, and waited.

  “I’m not really sure where to begin.” I contemplated how best to go about explaining things. “You see, I haven’t been exactly straightforward with you. I’m afraid I may have misled you a bit when I said…”

  “Your accent is slipping,” he interrupted.

  I blinked. I had not even noticed that I was failing to maintain the American accent I had worked so hard to cultivate.

  “You’re with Ames, aren’t you?” he said, though I suspected it wasn’t really a question.

  Mr. De Lora was a smart man, but this deduction caught me by surprise. Since I had come here to learn Milo’s whereabouts, there was no sense in denying it.

  “He’s my husband,” I said at last.

  He nodded, not at all surprised, and I couldn’t resist asking: “How did you know?”

  “I could tell the moment he came into my office there was something there.”

  Had he really been able to tell? I had been so certain that I had maintained my mask of indifference when Milo had so unexpectedly walked into the room, and Milo had been absolutely brilliant in his display of disregard for me.

  “I thought we did a good job of hiding it. We were so careful.”

  “That was it,” he said, pointing his cigarette at me. “Too careful. There was some kind of a wall between you, unnatural for two good-looking, unattached people of the opposite sex.”

  He was sharp. I hadn’t thought of it from that angle, that a single woman would likely be very interested in Milo. Even not-so-single women often were. And yet I had showed very little interest in him and he’d shown none in me.

  “So you’re Mrs. Ames. Your name isn’t even Rose, I bet.”

  “No,” I admitted. “It isn’t.”

  He sighed. “Like so many things in life, the truth is often disappointing.”

  “I do hope you’ll let me explain myself.”

  “Oh, I’m counting on it.” His expression was pleasant, but I detected a certain hardness in his eyes. Not that I could blame him. I knew how unpleasant it was to be lied to.

  “But first, I need to know where Milo is.”

  He blew out a stream of smoke. “I haven’t seen him since six o’clock this morning.”

  I felt my worry swell but pressed it down. Panic would do neither me nor Milo any good.

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “I think it’s my turn to ask a few questions,” he said.

  My instinct was to protest, but I knew there was really no sense in arguing. If time was of the essence, I might as well answer his questions so he would answer mine.

  “First, what’s your real name?” he asked.

  “Amory.”

  “Amory Ames.” He smiled. “I like that. It’s got a ring to it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Next question. What’s your game?”

  “There isn’t any game, Mr. De Lora. Quite the opposite, in fact. You see, my husband and I came from England for Tabitha Alden’s wedding. We were in the house when Grant Palmer was killed on the doorstep.”

  Still he said nothing, his dark eyes on my face. I had the impression he was trying to wait me out, to make me uneasy. But I had faced down Milo’s impenetrable gaze for years, and I was not about to be intimidated.

  “I thought that, if I came in the guise of a reporter, I might be able to discover something about his death.”

  Now he spoke, releasing the words with a cloud of smoke. “What made you think I know anything about that?”

  “Grant Palmer once worked for you but then switched allegiance. I thought it was possible that you might have killed him or had him killed.”

  He grinned. “So you came here to interrogate me. You’ve got guts, I’ll give you that.”

  I wasn’t sure what to make of this dubious compliment, so I pressed on.

  “Tonight I found this in the Alden’s drawing room.” I reached into my handbag and removed the matchbook. I set it on the desk.

  “Someone in that house is linked to Frankie Earl, and I can only assume they were involved in the killing.”

  “So?”

  “So I realized that it must be Mr. Ald
en. He was smoking in the drawing room shortly before I discovered these matches, and I think he must be involved with Frankie Earl as well. Perhaps there have been some illegal activities going on at his warehouses.”

  “Is your husband on the level?” This question threw me off.

  “I … I beg your pardon?”

  “Does he really plan to invest or was that all part of this”—he waved a hand—“ploy.”

  “Oh, he’s perfectly in earnest.”

  He apparently took my word for this, for he reverted back to the topic of Grant Palmer’s murder. I wondered if that answer had been more important than I realized. Had his decision to help me hung in the balance?

  “So let me get this straight. You were invited to Tabitha Alden’s wedding. When one of the groomsmen gets rubbed out, you decide to play detective. And now you’re trying to prove that the police caught the wrong guy.”

  While I was not entirely flattered by this somewhat dismissive description of my efforts, I could not entirely deny it. “Something like that,” I said at last.

  “And why are you chasing down these leads on your own?”

  “I feel like I need to find out who really killed Mr. Palmer.”

  “Again, why?”

  I wasn’t used to being questioned so intensely about my altruistic motives.

  “Isn’t the cause of justice enough?”

  A smirk touched his lips. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’m not exactly concerned with law and order.”

  I could see that I was going to have to tell him the truth. “Level with him,” as his vernacular would put it. “I’ve been … involved in murder investigations before. I have rather a knack for locating the truth. I wanted to do that in this case.”

  “What business is it of yours?”

  He was using the same arguments Milo had always used when I tried to involve myself in a mystery, but there was something in his relentless dismissal of my arguments that wore me down.

  I sighed. “I suppose it wasn’t, not entirely. But it is now. I don’t know where Milo is, and I’m very much afraid I’m staying in the home of a killer.”

  He looked at me for a moment, as though trying to make up his mind about something. Then he reached down and pulled open a drawer to his desk. His hand went inside, and he pulled out a gun and set it down on the surface of his desk. I wondered if this was some sort of threat, but it seemed that he was only searching for the documents beneath, for he soon pulled out a stack of papers.

  Setting them on the desk, he slid them toward me.

  I reached out and picked one up and studied it. After a moment, I looked up at him, surprised. “These are financial records.”

  “This is a business,” he replied.

  “Yes, but…”

  His brows went up. “Did you think that we just collect the dough and throw it in a treasure chest somewhere?”

  “Of course not. It’s just that I don’t understand…”

  “Look closer at the signature at the bottom.”

  My gaze moved to the line at the bottom of the page, the scrawl of dark ink, and I realized that, though it was almost undecipherable, I recognized it.

  I looked up at him. “This is Mr. Alden’s signature.”

  He nodded. “Ben Alden is in on my nightclub scheme.”

  I stared at him. “You mean, he’s an investor?”

  “Not exactly. He’s going to be shipping a lot of stuff for me. We’ve got it all worked out. That’s the contract. All legal and everything.”

  “But … I don’t understand,” I said, looking down at the paper, then back up at Mr. De Lora. “Why hasn’t he said something?”

  “As you know, I’m not the most reputable person, and I don’t think he cares to have his name linked to mine. Especially not with a high-profile wedding in the works. We met a couple of times, and I had to sneak into his house at night. All the money that changed hands has been in cash, too. Untraceable.”

  So this was the secret that Mr. Alden had been keeping, the source of the strange behavior and mysterious visitors that Tabitha had observed. He was working with Leon De Lora and didn’t want Tabitha to know about it, afraid that she would worry over an unsound investment. This didn’t explain everything, however.

  “But what about Grant Palmer?” I asked. “I was under the impression that they were in on some sort of scheme together.”

  “Palmer is the one that recommended me to him initially, and he worked as my go-between for a while. Palmer even made a delivery of cash to me once. Then Palmer started trying to pull Alden into some sort of deal with Frankie Earl. Alden came here the night Palmer was murdered, in fact. Told me he’d had to throw one of Earl’s guys out of his house and that he wondered if it might put his family in danger.”

  So that had been the cause of the angry altercation Milo and I had witnessed. And also the reason he had seemed so stricken when he had returned home the night of the murder. He had been afraid Frankie Earl’s men might have harmed Tabitha in retaliation.

  “Ben Alden isn’t the kind of guy who would try to play both sides of the fence,” he went on. “I’ve got a good instinct when it comes to people. Besides, I had a look at his books.”

  “Oh?” I was a bit surprised that Mr. Alden had turned over secure financial information to a man of Mr. De Lora’s reputation. “Then you have an exceptionally close business relationship.”

  He smiled. “Not exactly. I acquired the books one evening and had them back by the next morning.”

  My eyes widened. I realized then what he’d meant. He had been behind the break-in at Mr. Alden’s office.

  “You … you got the books in a break-in,” I repeated.

  “I suppose I’ve gone and shocked you,” he said.

  He had, but I was too preoccupied to much care. My mind whirled. “Was there something in the warehouse you needed as well?”

  “The warehouse?”

  “Yes, someone tried to break into the warehouse.”

  He shook his head. “That wasn’t me. I have enough inventory of my own to take care of.”

  I studied him, wondering if I should believe what he was telling me. I saw no reason not to. After all, he had admitted readily enough to breaking in for the financial records. Why would he deny breaking into the warehouse?”

  “The books seem to be in order,” he went on. “But my accountant can probably tell you more than I can.”

  I was momentarily confused. He was going to introduce me to his accountant?

  He got up from his desk and went to the door.

  “Esther,” he called.

  A moment later Miss Hayes appeared in the doorway.

  “Come in here a minute and tell Mrs. Ames about Mr. Alden’s books.”

  “Mrs. Ames?” she repeated, her eyes moving between Mr. De Lora and me.

  He smiled. “It turns out Rose Kelly doesn’t exist.”

  “I see,” she said, betraying no surprise, and, indeed, very little curiosity.

  She came into the room and took the other chair across from Mr. De Lora’s desk, folded her hands in her lap, and looked at me. “What do you want to know?”

  “You’re the … accountant?” I asked.

  “Esther’s half the brains of this place,” Mr. De Lora said. “My silent partner, so to speak.”

  “Not entirely silent,” she replied.

  The corner of his mouth tipped up. “No, not silent. There’s the singing, of course. And the earful she gives me when I need it.”

  She gave him a faint smile, then turned to me. “I sing because I enjoy it. But I enjoy numbers, too.”

  “That’s marvelous,” I said. “I’ve never been much good at numbers.”

  “She’s the one who’s been pushing for the nightclubs,” Mr. De Lora said with a smile. “I didn’t exactly plan to go straight when Prohibition ended, but Esther has other ideas.”

  “There’s no reason to go on making money illegally when it can be made without the risk,”
she said calmly.

  “It’s a very sound business decision,” I agreed.

  “Anyway,” Mr. De Lora went on, “Esther had a good look at the books. Maybe she can answer some of your questions.”

  I turned to her. “Was there anything telling in Mr. Alden’s books? Anything that was unaccounted for or suspicious?”

  Her eyes flickered to Mr. De Lora, as though wanting to be certain that she could share this aspect of the information with me. He gave her a little nod, and she turned back to me.

  “Mr. Alden’s books all seem to be in order. He’s been making a great deal of money. A great deal. But, so far as I could tell, everything was adding up correctly.”

  So Mr. Alden’s sudden financial windfall had been the result of activities that were indeed aboveboard. “Nothing suspicious? No discrepancies?” I pressed.

  “I told you: he’s not really cut out for a life of crime,” Mr. De Lora said.

  “There was one thing,” Esther Hayes said suddenly.

  We looked at her. “There were a series of numbers that seemed to indicate a shipment of the same type of items, but the last few shipments have been slightly heavier than the others.”

  The thought came to me suddenly. “Was it for tires?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “How did you know?”

  “The warehouse manager said someone had tried to break into the part of the warehouse that held the tires. And Mr. Palmer came there once, claiming to be looking for Tom Smith. He had a woman with him, Jemma Petrie. I think she was his mistress. Could it have been that they were looking for something hidden there?”

  Mr. De Lora’s face darkened. “If he was with Jemma Petrie, I know very well what was hidden there.”

  “What?”

  “Jemma Petrie wasn’t his girlfriend. He was selling her drugs.”

  I looked up at him, shocked. “Surely not.”

  “She’s sweet, isn’t she?” he said to Esther with a smile before turning back to me. “Frankie Earl is not, shall we say, moving toward more legitimate pursuits now that the alcohol business is going down the drain. He’s been moving drugs, and he’s been doing it for a while. I suspect that Mr. Palmer found a way to help him out with that. Apparently, moving the drugs inside of automobile tires. I think he presented Mr. Alden with a ‘legitimate’ businessman who wanted his items shipped, and Mr. Alden was none the wiser. Palmer had recommended me, after all, and it turned out all right.”