Siri Mitchell

by Unrivaled

  Sam scratched at his ear. “He’s probably back in the packing area.”

  Mr. Blakely hadn’t been brought up from the kitchen to work in the office without protest. He’d been the only one to leave Standard Manufacturing with my father. And like my father and me, he preferred candy making to bookkeeping. He still snuck back into the confectionery whenever he could. “I really need to see him. Do you think you might be able to find him? I could wait in the office.”

  Sam went off to get him while I walked over to the office and turned the lamp on. I went around to the desk and tried to make sense out of a teetering stack of papers.

  As I was dusting off the desk, Mr. Blakely walked into the office, Sam trailing behind.

  “Miss Lucy—welcome back! You wanted to see me?”

  I went over and returned the embrace he offered. “I wanted to ask you a question. When was the last time we had advertising posters printed?”

  He tugged at his ear as he consulted the ceiling. “I think . . . it must have been . . .” He sighed. “To tell you the honest truth, I don’t know exactly.”

  “So we haven’t put up any new advertising since the Royal Taffy posters covered all of ours up?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “I hadn’t realized . . .” Mr. Blakely tugged at his ear again. “They covered all of ours?”

  “Yes! There’s not one Fancy Crunch poster remaining in the city.” If there was, I hadn’t seen it.

  “Well, that doesn’t . . . that’s not right!”

  “It’s not right. And it needs to be rectified.”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “I agree.”

  “Good. So . . . who does all that?” I couldn’t recall whose job it was.

  “Your father.” Sam and Mr. Blakely both said it at the same time.

  I sighed. If it was my father who had been supposed to do those things, then for certain it had actually been my mother. She was the only one who had ever done anything that wasn’t related to the actual candy making. And I couldn’t consult her about this because she wanted so badly to sell the company. And all the money in it was hers to begin with. “We need new posters.”

  Mr. Blakely nodded vigorously. “Yes, we sure do.”

  “So I’ll need you to order them.”

  He shook his head just as vigorously. “I don’t mind ordering the sugars or the nuts and all of that, but I don’t know anything about posters.”

  I looked at Sam, but he refused to meet my eyes.

  “We’re going to let Standard run us out of business for want of a few posters?”

  Sam shifted his feet. “And for the fact that they have Royal Taffy.”

  “There is nothing wrong with Fancy Crunch!”

  He and Mr. Blakely looked at me glumly.

  “Is there?”

  Sam lifted a shoulder and let it fall back into place. “It’d be better if . . .”

  It would be better if people would buy it. It would be better if it wasn’t so expensive to make. And it would definitely be better if Charlie Clarke hadn’t gone out and covered up all of our advertising posters, as I suspected he’d done. If I ever saw him again, it would be too soon! “Sam?”

  He flinched. “Yes, Lucy.”

  “I’m going to need your help with something.”

  We headed back home, Sam and I. I asked him to distract Mother so that I could sneak into her sitting room and rummage through her chest of drawers. She had insisted upon looking after the company’s correspondence and ledgers herself. As many times as I had headed for the kitchen with my father, she had called me to come look over the accounts with her.

  “It’s all well and good to make candy, but someday I hope you’ll marry someone who can make money.” She would fix me with her keen-eyed stare. “Never marry a dreamer. They haven’t a care in their head for dollars and cents.”

  She would complain about this thing or that thing. She would deplore the convention that kept her running the business from a distance instead of being present at the confectionery.

  I would tally the figures and the columns just as quickly as I could and slip out while her back was turned. For all that he was a dreamer, I much preferred caramelizing sugar with my father to writing out receipts with my mother.

  But now I needed information. I needed to look at the accounts in order to find out how much money there was to spend. But I had forgotten that her plans included not only selling the confectionery, but also securing a good marriage for me.

  “Lucille.” She stepped into the front hall as we came in the front door. “I was just telling Mr. Arthur about your voyage to the Continent.”

  Mr. Arthur. My hopes withered.

  Curse my fashionable skirt. I hadn’t been able to sneak by fast enough! “I’m rather busy right now.” I whispered the words to her as I tried to shuffle past.

  “Not too busy to gallivant about town with Samuel Blakely.” She hissed the words at me. “The air meet must have ended hours ago.”

  “It only—”

  “Mr. Arthur was there.” She seized my hat from me and pushed me toward the parlor. “I don’t need to remind you of his prominence in this city. And it’s no secret that he’s in need of a wife.”

  I caught Sam’s eye as I went and gestured with my chin toward Mother’s sitting room. If I was to be stuck in conversation, at least Sam could do the sneaking for me. I was certain Mother would join me in the parlor.

  But she didn’t.

  “I would like to have a word with you, Samuel Blakely.”

  He sent a terrified glance in my direction.

  I bit back a sigh, fixed a smile to my face, and reminded myself that I was, indeed, the Queen of Love and Beauty. And then I went into the parlor and resigned myself to entertaining Mr. Alfred.

  Mr. Arthur.

  Mr. Alfred Arthur.

  Oh dear.

  18

  I decided to get to the bottom of my father’s dispute with Lucy’s father. I might have asked Augusta, but I didn’t quite trust her to tell me the whole truth. So I did what I’d done in Chicago when I needed to find something out. I went to the streets. On Grand Avenue I bought a newspaper off a newsie, tucking it under an arm. And then I reached into my pocket and brought out a Royal Taffy. “I’m looking for some information.”

  The boy eyed the candy. “Could be I have some.”

  “It would need to be the truthful sort.”

  “That might cost extra.”

  My opinion of St. Louis improved as I added another Royal Taffy to the first.

  The boy looked up the street and down. Then he snatched the candy from my hand, hiding it in a pocket of his grimy, moth-eaten coat. “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything about Standard Manufacturing. And City Confectionery.”

  A look of suspicion crossed his face. “Is that it?”

  “Why? Don’t you know anything about them?” I held out a hand. I wasn’t going to give away two perfectly good Royal Taffies for nothing.

  “I know everything about them! And so does everyone else. You’re not from around here, are you, mister?”

  “Tell me.”

  “They were partners, some years back.” The boy could only have been eight or nine years old, but he said it with the straightest of faces.

  “That part, I know.”

  He shrugged. “That’s it. You know it all, then.”

  “But what happened? Why aren’t they partners anymore?”

  “Mr. Clarke was hired by Mr. Kendall to help with the factory and before Mr. Kendall could even blink, Clarke stole the company from him and kicked him out the door.”

  “Stole? I don’t think he actually stole the factory.”

  “All those rich people got some fancy way of explaining it, but in the end, Mr. Clarke had everything and Mr. Kendall had nothing. Not even the candy he used to make. What would you call it?”

  “I heard it was all done legally.”
<
br />   “Legal?” He sneered. “Might have been legal, but that doesn’t mean it was right.”

  Put that way, it did sound an awful lot like stealing. “But . . . doesn’t Mr. Kendall still make candy?”

  “He vowed he’d come up with something better than Royal Taffy, but he never has.” He patted his pocket as he spoke.

  “And what about . . .” What about Lucy? What about me? “What about their families?”

  “There’s a Mrs. Clarke, but she’s never had children. They say Mr. Clarke used to have a family somewhere up north. There’s some son come to live with them. They say he’s going to take over the factory when Mr. Clarke dies.”

  “They do, do they? A handsome fellow, is he?”

  He looked at me in a squinty-eyed way. “Not to my way of thinking.”

  I handed him another Royal Taffy.

  “On second thought, I seem to recall people saying he’s real handsome.”

  That was better. “Tell me about the others. The Kendall family.”

  “The mother’s got the money, and she waves it under Mr. Kendall’s nose every now and then just to remind him that it’s all hers. Only the old man had a heart attack, and he’s laid up at home trying to die.”

  “Wait—what?”

  “Word is Mr. Kendall’s bound to die soon.”

  Lucy’s father? The one she said she’d made candy with?

  “And there’s a daughter. Went away to Europe for a while. Just got back.”

  “What’s she like?”

  He shrugged. “She’s the VP Queen. Her mother’s decided to marry her off. That’s what they say, anyway.”

  “To anyone in particular?”

  He shrugged again. “The Minard kid is going to make a play for her, but the smart money is on the Arthur son.”

  “Arthur son . . . ?”

  “You know: the electricity company Arthurs. But he’s so old he could practically be her father.” The newsie had begun to walk away.

  “Is there anyone else?”

  “Why don’t you find out for yourself? Go to all those fancy parties. You’re the Clarke son, after all, aren’t you?”

  Scamp.

  I left the newsie and walked on down to the factory. I had to find some way to let Lucy know that I hadn’t meant any harm. That I was only trying to . . . destroy her father’s company.

  As I walked along, I passed a wall I had covered with Royal Taffy posters. Not seeing the Fancy Crunch posters beneath them didn’t mean I couldn’t feel badly about having covered them all up. I cursed myself. Things were supposed to have gotten less complicated in St. Louis, not more.

  The dinging of a streetcar bell warned me to get off the tracks. I stepped onto the sidewalk and read an advertisement as it passed: Give the Queen of Your Heart a Royal Taffy.

  The queen of my heart would probably throw it back into my face.

  I had to at least talk to Lucy. Let her know that . . . what? Why would she want to hear any more from me than she already had?

  I stepped off the sidewalk and tipped my hat at two ladies who were walking by. Continuing on my way, I saw a box of Royal Taffy on display in a five-and-ten-cent store window. The city was one big advertisement for my betrayal. What could I possibly say that could change her mind about me?

  You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen?

  I want you to know you’re the perfect VP Queen?

  When I found out about your father, I felt pretty mean?

  Listen to me! I was thinking in poetry. But I had a feeling Lucy Kendall wouldn’t want to hear any of it. The only thing she’d want from me is a promise that her father’s company was safe. And that would require betraying my own father, just when I’d finally found him again. Just when I’d been offered a second chance at life. Which would just about serve him right. Except that . . . I couldn’t. Lucy seemed to want the one thing I couldn’t give her.

  Mr. Mundt pointed to my father’s office door when I arrived. I went in and sat in the chair across from him.

  “I’ve seen your posters, Charles. A fine job you’ve done.”

  I found myself straightening. “Thank you.” Had he really stolen the company or had he done it like he’d said? Did it really matter if the result was the same? And how did I feel about calling myself the son of a man who prided himself on taking advantage of others?

  “But I’ve been told it’s time now for more aggressive measures. We need to do something more immediate.”

  More aggressive? Than plastering over all the Fancy Crunch posters in the city?

  “City Confectionery is still making candies. I’m working on getting their candy off the shelves, but in the meantime, we need to get them to stop production.”

  “Why?” Why did Lucy have to be a Kendall? Why couldn’t she be a Miller or a Jones or a—a Smith? And why did my father have to be so set on shutting down her father’s company? “What did he do to you?”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Kendall.”

  “It really has nothing at all to do with him. I wish I could tell you more, but I can’t. It was part of the agreement. Just know that my hands are tied.”

  His hands were tied? Then how was it that he was making plans, having me put up posters, and talking about taking immediate and aggressive action?

  “I owe someone a favor, and there’s really nothing more to say about it.”

  “Are you sure this person you owe the favor to is . . . aboveboard?”

  He chuckled. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”

  “Frankly, that’s the one thing that’s never been easy for me to do.” No. That was wrong. I’d trusted him without question as a child. But I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to do it again.

  “You can’t believe I would ever do anything illegal!”

  No. Just dishonorable and spineless and cowardly.

  “I’m your father, Charles. And I would never ask you to do something I wouldn’t do myself.”

  What was it that I wanted from him? He’d given me a job, he’d welcomed me into his home, he’d said he was sorry . . . but somehow, it wasn’t enough. “I just don’t think anybody’s going to thank us for destroying a dying man’s company. A dying man’s candy company.”

  “You’ve got to learn to think with your head, Charles, not your heart. I can’t tell you it didn’t make me a little queasy to agree to do this. But in the end I think, like me, you’ll see that it’s the right thing to do.”

  19

  “I was quite disappointed in the president. I would have thought he would refuse the ride.” Mr. Arthur was all but wagging his finger like some old spinster maid.

  I nearly laughed. He expected President Roosevelt to decline a ride on an air machine? When had the former president not taken a risk? Or a dare?

  “Now every young boy will want to be just like him. If God had meant for man to fly, He would have given us wings.”

  “But . . . didn’t you at least find it rather exhilarating?” I had a difficult time not smiling when I thought of those men soaring through the air like birds.

  “No. But why should we speak of it? I’m sure you were only there because of your duties.” He looked at me expectantly.

  I had been, hadn’t I? But something willful and perverse within me wanted to insist that I had not. Probably due to the influence of Charlie Clarke. I ought to have scratched his eyes out instead of held his hand. “Of course I was.”

  He nodded to himself as if he had checked off an important point on some list. “Please don’t think me a boor if I say that St. Louis could not have picked a better Queen of Love and Beauty.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Arthur.”

  “No more kind than you have been to me. And I insist that you call me Alfred.”

  Mother beamed from the corner where she had joined us some while before.

  “That’s very kind . . . Alfred.” I felt as if I had stepped into a pot of taffy. As if my feet were stuck and I couldn’t fre
e myself. I’d become accustomed to that feeling during my travels in Europe. It seemed every young man my aunt and uncle introduced me to had wanted to attach himself to my side, while all I wanted to do was look at the cathedrals and tour the museums. And visit the candy shops. In Europe I had always avoided those situations by pretending an endless fascination with our guides. Here, I had no such distraction. I smiled at Mr. Arthur as I clenched my folded hands.

  “Tell me, Mr. Arthur, about the electricity business.”

  His brows peaked beneath the near perfect wave of his honey-colored hair. “That would be far too tedious a topic for a girl like you, Miss Kendall.”

  If I couldn’t talk about his work, then what else was there to talk about? Politics were forbidden. Religion was impolite. I hadn’t read the newspaper that morning, and he didn’t look like the sort of man who read novels. “Do you have any . . . any plans for . . . for . . .”

  His brow lifted.

  “For Christmas?”

  “Christmas?” He colored, moving his neck as if his collar had suddenly become uncomfortably tight. “That’s more than two months away, but I don’t mind saying that I hope so.”

  Was there nothing he would speak of? “We generally pass a quiet day at home.”

  Mother spoke up from her corner. “But of course we are happy to partake in new traditions.”

  We were?

  She was looking at me, a smile frozen on her lips.

  “Um . . . yes!” I looked toward Mother, and she nodded. “We are always happy to partake in new traditions. In fact, in Italy fifers herald the Christmas season, and in many places children set out their shoes for St. Nicholas to fill instead of their stockings.”

  He blinked.

  “In some regions of France, there’s a man who’s believed to come around and give spankings to the naughty children. A sort of . . . opposite of Santa Claus.”

  Mr. Arthur’s face had gone slack in horror. “I hardly think that sort of thing to be proper! Do you, Miss Kendall?”