Where Cowards Tread
A Ravenwood Mystery
Sabrina Flynn
WHERE COWARDS TREAD is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s overactive imagination or are chimerical delusions of a tired mind. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely due to the reader’s wild imagination (that’s you).
Copyright © 2020 by Sabrina Flynn
www.sabrinaflynn.com
Cover Art © 2020 by MerryBookRound
www.merrybookround.com
* * *
Published by Smashwords
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
To Gus Gus
eater of worlds
“Conscience doth make cowards of us all.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Contents
1. Domestic Bliss
2. Welcome Home
3. Happy Returns
4. Sharp As A Knife
5. Leaps of Logic
6. Darkness
7. The Popular
8. Menke's Grocery
9. Hidden Depths
10. A Blind Eye
11. The Quiet One
12. A Long, Long Night
13. The Morgue
14. A Turbulent Sea
15. Afterdrop
16. A Fresh Start
17. The Princess
18. Spies and Fat Ladies
19. A Riotous Evening
20. Round Two
21. The Tailors
22. Middleman
23. Dead Ends
24. Breakthrough
25. When In Doubt
26. The Herbalist
27. A Dark Path
28. A Noble Heart
29. A Clash of Minds
30. The Lone Outlaw
31. Joss House
32. Questioning the Dead
33. The Fallen
34. The Den
35. Rock Bottom
36. A Long Road
37. A Clue
38. Chinese Theater
39. The Call
40. The Del Monte
41. Cat Burglar
42. The Hunt
43. Reckoning
44. Justice
45. Interrogation
46. Home Sweet Home
47. No Bounds
48. The Snitch
49. A Family Ring
50. Loose Ends
Afterword
Acknowledgements
Also by Sabrina Flynn
About the Author
Glossary
1
Domestic Bliss
Saturday, October 6, 1900
Lewis J. Fletcher didn’t want to go home. But there he was. He slid his key into a lock. When it clicked he pressed the lever, but the door stuck. Even his key resisted the idea of home.
“Empty-headed…” he muttered.
He turned the key the other way, and this time the door opened. He stepped inside the cramped entryway and shed his hat and coat.
“Ella, you left the door unlocked!” he called.
What seemed a whole parade of running footsteps answered from downstairs.
Lewis clenched his jaw. He glanced in the hallway mirror and smoothed his black hair, then ran a finger over his chin. He’d need another shave before tonight.
An infant screamed from upstairs and a small child darted from the basement. The child wasn’t wearing a scrap of clothing.
Lewis lunged for the child as he tried to bolt past. “Ella!” Lewis called. “Why is Bertie downstairs?”
The boy’s face and hands were covered in honey.
“Dammit,” Lewis swore, holding the child at arm’s length.
“Is that you, Lewis?” a weak voice called from the second floor, fighting to be heard over the screaming infant.
“Yes, mother,” he hollered back. “Where is Ella?”
“She’s gone out. I’m not feeling well.”
Lewis frowned at his blond-haired half brother. Nineteen years separated them, and a father. He carried the child into the kitchen. It was a mess like everything else in his life. Bertie had gotten into more than just the honey. Flour was strewn about like confetti.
Lewis set the child in the sink and turned on the taps. Bertie screamed with outrage. “It’s your own fault. I should let the dog lick you clean.”
Now there was an idea.
Lewis ordered his brother to stay put, and opened the back door. A mop of a dog came bounding in, its eyes covered over by a layer of hair. It was a wonder the mutt managed to get anywhere.
A shrill ring joined the infant’s squalling and Bertie’s whining. Lewis put a hand to his head. What now? He started towards the hallway telephone, then stopped, remembering the child. He hastened to get Bertie out of the sink, turned off the taps, and set the dripping, naked boy on the floor. The mop of a dog immediately got to work.
Lewis hurried to the telephone. “Hallo?”
“Lewis?”a voice came back.
“Ella.” His frustration with her came through the line. Younger by seven years, Ella was about as useful as Bertie at times. Why was she out so late? “Why aren’t you at home? Bertie got into the kitchen, and the house is a mess.”
“Didn’t mother tell you?”
“I’ve only just arrived,” Lewis said.
“You know mamma wants me to find work. I answered a wanted ad she showed me.”
Lewis sighed as he leaned back to check on Bertie in the kitchen. Mop was doing her job admirably. Then he checked the time: a quarter after six. “Look, Ella, I have a board meeting at the Masonic Temple. Where are you?”
“I’m with Mr. Bennett at his house. His family are nice people, and so is he. They want me to start working for them right away. I’ll be paid twenty dollars a month.”
“Where’s the house?”
Hesitation. Lewis pictured his younger sister trying to remember the address. She could be mindless at times. Eventually Ella dredged up the location, but as she did so, her voice trembled. With fear? Nervousness? Women were a mystery to Lewis.
“Hold the wire, I’ll let mother know.”
“I—”
Lewis didn’t wait to hear what Ella had to say. He set down the earpiece and bounded up the stairs two at a time. The last thing he needed was to be late to the Board of Relief.
His mother was lying in bed with a washcloth draped over her forehead. The room was dark and an infant screamed in its cradle. Lewis plucked the babe from its bed and attempted to quiet him, as he relayed the information.
“Absolutely not,” his mother said. “I don’t know the family.”
Lewis bit back a sharp remark. Then why had she sent Ella to interview for a position unchaperoned? “Is James hungry?” he asked instead.
“Colic.” It was close to a moan.
Lewis awkwardly patted the infant’s back, then gave him over to his mother. She took the babe, reluctantly. Lewis swore right then and there that he’d never marry.
Why his mother had married a second time after his father’s death, he could not fathom. The only thing Daniel Spencer had done for his mother was to give her bruises and saddle her with two wailing, intolerable infants before promptly abandoning them.
But then Lewis had an inkling of why she’d remarried. Bertie had been ‘premature.’ Lewis loathed his mother’s indiscretion.
“Tell Ella to come home at once. And to make sure to bring
the groceries for tomorrow. That girl is the most absent creature in the world at times.”
She got it from you, mother, Lewis bit back the words. Instead he fled the bedroom, and picked up the earpiece. “Mother wants you home at once.”
“But the position—”
“We need you here.” Lewis glanced towards the kitchen. The child was gone and so was the mop of a dog. “Come home now. Bring the groceries. If the Bennetts want to hire you, they’ll understand you need to arrange your affairs.”
Silence. And a faint, “I’ll come home.” Click. Lewis stared at the earpiece, then hung it on its hook. He checked the wall clock, swore silently, and went to find his honey-covered half brother.
2
Welcome Home
Monday, October 8, 1900
Holding a newspaper grounded Isobel Amsel Riot for the first time in a week. It felt solid in her hands. Each crinkle of paper reminded her that the world kept turning and that she intended to rejoin it. Though sitting as she was on the window seat, with one bare leg dangling in the crisp air, she didn’t appear to be in any hurry to leave her bedroom. Their bedroom.
Isobel lowered the paper a fraction and gazed at a large bed. Atticus Riot still slept, his raven hair mussed and boyish, the sharp grooves of his breastbone melding with muscles and scars, covered by a scattering of dark hair. Her eyes trailed appreciatively from his chest, to his ribs, over his stomach, and down to the line of hair that disappeared beneath the blankets.
She leaned her head against the wall, and took a drag on her cigarette. Smoke seeped out the open window, mingling with fog. The air was brisk and the logs in the fireplace smoldering. And contrary to what the newspaper was reporting, the weather wasn’t warm in San Francisco. The Silver Mistress had her own ideas.
Isobel was tempted to slip back under the covers with Riot, but if that happened they’d never leave. She returned to her newspaper.
The war in the Philippines was still raging. President McKinley was up for reelection. Union strikes, baseball, an aeronaut whose balloon malfunctioned and parachute failed him, a dynamite explosion (she cringed remembering her own experience), a dead man found in an orchard—
Isobel sat up straight, her eyes narrowed on the short headline. She was overtaken by a momentary twinge of deja vu. But, no—hadn’t she read that very same headline at the asylum?
A soft scuff against wood, and Isobel looked up sharply. Riot hadn’t moved. She leaned out of the window. A small girl was balancing on a bit of decoration, a rope ladder in her hand. Sao Jin, the younger of their adopted daughters, was dressed in a cap, sweater, and trousers. No shoes. Her long black hair was divided into two braids that hung down her back. Despite the scars that crisscrossed her face, some might describe her as ‘adorable’. Isobel knew better.
Officially, in the Cantonese tradition of surname first and given name last, she was now Riot Sao Jin, but Sao Jin Riot would suit the pint-sized daredevil, too.
“Cigarettes are disgusting. They stain teeth yellow.”
Isobel flashed her teeth. “I don’t smoke often enough.” She smashed the stub into her ashtray, which was mostly ash. “That rope ladder is only for emergencies.”
“I am testing it for emergencies.” Jin balanced along the decorative ledge, over thirty feet off the ground, as she held the ladder with one hand, pulling it around the corner.
Isobel had watched the girl climb too many trees to feel overly concerned. Still, there was an annoying twinge of fear that Jin would slip and fall. As wild as Isobel had been, she’d never forced her mother to watch any of her mountaineering feats.
“You’ve thoroughly tested it. Now climb back up.”
“I must practice. If there is a fire, I might get confused by the smoke.” On the surface, the argument was completely logical.
Jin reached out to hook her hand around the window frame. Isobel raised an eyebrow, wondering what the child would do with the ever stretching rope ladder.
“Don’t think about coming in here. Riot isn’t dressed.”
Jin peeked around the window frame, and Isobel shooed her back with a raised newspaper. “Jin, I’m serious.”
“I can never tell when you are lying.”
“I never lie.”
The girl stared at her.
“Good morning,” Isobel said crisply. “How do you like your room?”
“I like it.”
“Make a list of anything you need. Don’t you have school today?”
“It is only six o’clock. Sarah says we have to help Miss Lily with breakfast, and then do chores. School starts at noon.”
“Noon?”
“Did you expect Miss Dupree to wake up early?” Jin asked.
“I had hoped she would,” Isobel muttered.
“You know she is a prostitute.” The statement should’ve been shocking coming from a young girl. In another, better world, it would be, but Jin, like so many girls, had not had a perfect life. Jin’s eyes were wise beyond her years and there was no going back.
“Are you excited to start school?”
“I would rather you teach me.”
“I’m sure Miss Dupree will keep things interesting.”
Jin looked dubious. “Are you coming down to breakfast?”
“I suppose.” Isobel resisted the urge to glance back at Riot. Sooner or later, she added silently.
“What are you doing today?” Jin asked in her clipped tones. The girl had a personal grudge against contractions.
“We’re headed to the agency. And no, you can’t come.”
Jin’s shoulders deflated.
“So tell me, really, how was your visit with my mother and father?”
She and Riot had picked up the children Sunday morning, or tried to. Marcus Amsel had not let the new couple leave until they were fed stuffed to bursting with sausages and sauerkraut, and semi-intoxicated with beer. It had turned into an impromptu Oktoberfest when the local Amsel clan conveniently turned up at her parents’ doorstep.
Isobel had sworn off food for the next week and Riot was currently sleeping off her father’s schnapps. She had only a vague memory of sailing the Pagan Lady home that evening, and suspected Jin had done most of the piloting.
“I told you,” Jin said. “I liked it.”
Isobel’s brows drew together. “Are you sure?”
“I like your mother and father.”
Isobel gave a small shake of her head. “Amazing,” she muttered.
“They took us swimming, but I jumped in the water and sank, and then Mr. Hop would not let me swim without a rope around my waist. Your father took us on walks, and showed us how to distill wine. We went sailing, to the theater, and Mr. Hop made me noodles and rice and pork buns, and Avó taught us how to make sopas.” Avó, the Portuguese word for grandma.
“I’m glad you enjoyed yourselves.”
Jin leaned forward, searching her eyes. “So tell me, really, how was your wedding trip?”
“It was relaxing.”
“Are you sure?” Jin asked, doing a fair imitation of Isobel’s earlier question. “Or did you discover that Din Gau is fat and lazy and smells bad?” Din Gau was what the criminal tongs called Riot: Rabid Dog.
“I can hear you, Jin.” A deep voice came from the depths of the room. Riot’s voice wasn’t gruff. It was a smooth purr that made Isobel’s toes curl.
Jin jerked in surprise, and Isobel grabbed the child’s wrist before she teetered backwards.
“I am fine,” Jin protested, wrenching her arm free.
“Think of it as a precaution.”
Jin’s eyes narrowed to a calculating slit. A moment of thought, and the child stepped backwards off the ledge. It was fortunate Isobel remembered the rope ladder, or she might have followed the child out the window in an attempt to save her.
Jin’s left hand was solidly wrapped around the rope, and the child swung down and around the corner. The house shook with a bang.
“Yiu!”
The muf
fled curse reassured Isobel that Jin hadn’t fallen. But Riot hadn’t known about the rope ladder. He rushed to the window, and gripped the sill to peer down at the ground.
“She had your ladder,” Isobel explained.
Riot swore under his breath, putting a hand to his bare chest. The rest of him was bare as well.
“Welcome home, Mr. Riot,” Isobel said. She gave his flank a slap, and only narrowly ducked beneath his arms. But Riot was persistent. And quick. Isobel soon found herself back in the large bed by the fire, her laughter traveling through the open window.
3
Happy Returns
The kitchen in Ravenwood Manor looked like a somewhat courteous tornado had blown through. Dishes were stacked to one side, food wiped off, pots soaking, and even the crumbs were grouped into little piles waiting to be cleaned.
Mrs. Lily White ran a tight ship. She sat at the round kitchen table with her children: Grimm, Maddie, and Tobias. Sarah and Jin had joined the family, and Tim was leaning back in his chair with a mug in one hand and an unlit pipe in the other.
Where Cowards Tread (Ravenwood Mysteries #7) Page 1