“The man’s a monster.” Blake’s face turned rock hard. “But we’re going to catch him and make him pay.”
Duff’s shoulders drooped as he stared down at the floor. “Ain’t no way to catch him. Nobody cares about an Irish girl. Just look what happened out on the streets tonight. Nobody tried to stop that.”
“Some people did,” Blake said.
“But they couldn’t,” Duff said.
“No, but this killer is not a mob. He’s just one man.”
When Duff kept his head down, Blake ordered him, “Look at me, Duff.”
Duff slowly raised his eyes back to Blake’s face.
“We’re going to catch this killer,” Blake said. “He’s going to pay for what he did to Lila. And Dorrie and Megan and Brenda and Kathleen.”
“How are we going to do it, Mr. Garrett?” Duff asked.
“I don’t know, Duff, but we’ll find a way. You, me, Miss Adriane. Maybe we can make the headlines work for us. You see the Tribune and Herald are the same paper now.”
Duff looked from Blake to Adriane. “The same?”
“We merged the papers,” Adriane said. “It’s too long a story to tell right now when you need to get back to be with your mother, Duff.”
“I can explain it quick like, boy.” Beck came over to put his arm around Duff. “They done gone and got hitched up together a few minutes ago. Now come on. I’ll go with you back to your ma’s house. Mr. Garrett and his crew can get out the first issue of the Tribune-Herald without us. Course not as easy, but they’ll get it done.” He shepherded the boy out of the pressroom with his arm still around his shoulders.
“Beck will take care of him,” Blake told Adriane. “You’d better go see about your father.”
She had started toward the stairs when he stopped her again. “And take some paper and ink and write something. I’ll send one of the boys up for it when we’re ready.”
She looked at him. She hadn’t been able to write anything worth printing for days, even weeks. How could she expect to write anything now when she felt so totally drained by everything that had happened in the last few hours? “My father wrote the stories for the Tribune,” she told Blake.
“Then write the stories your father would have written. Better yet, write a story about your father and how he was standing up to the mob trying to stop the madness. Write about how he never intended for the men to take his words so far.” His eyes softened on her. “It’s a story that has to be written, Adriane. And one that should be written by you.”
Upstairs one of Blake’s men—Adriane thought his name was Calvin—met her at the door with a relieved look.
“He ain’t come around, miss,” he said. Then the man on the bed behind him forgotten, he peered past Adriane toward the stairs. “Sounded like more than a wedding going on down there. I started to come find out, but I figured I’d better not since the boss told me to stay here till you got back.”
“Mr. Garrett has everything under control.”
The man smiled a little. “The boss always does, miss. It’s a real talent of his getting things to go the way he wants.”
For some reason his words bothered Adriane. “I don’t suppose he wanted your offices to burn down.”
“Well, not that for sure. I reckon Jimson played rougher than even the boss expected, but he ain’t give it up. There’ll be an issue of the Herald on the streets in the morning just the same as every other day since he come to Louisville.”
“Not exactly,” Adriane reminded the man. “The Tribune-Herald.”
“For sure, miss,” Calvin agreed quickly with an embarrassed bob of his head. “And a fine paper it’ll be.”
She let him make his escape down the stairs without saying any more. Adriane didn’t know why the man’s words rankled her. Then she sighed. Perhaps because he was right. The truth was the masthead might say Tribune-Herald, but it was the Herald editor, the Herald men putting out the first issue, the issue that would set the tone of this new paper.
Adriane went to her father’s bed and watched his chest rise and fall a few moments before she took his cold hand in hers. “I love you, Father,” she whispered softly. The noise from the pressroom drifted up the stairs, but she shut it out as she went on. “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to please you, but I couldn’t marry Stanley. I couldn’t.”
She paused and studied her father’s face. There was no change. “Marrying Stanley Jimson would be like going into a dark closet, one nobody could ever rescue me from the way you used to rescue me from Henrietta’s closets. I don’t know what being married to Blake will be like, but I know it won’t be like that.”
She fell silent, rubbing her father’s hand as if she could rub life back into it. Finally she said, “I think you might like Blake if you didn’t already hate him so much.” She smiled a little at the contradictory words. “He has a way of getting things done. Even now, with his press nothing but a pile of rubble and ashes, he’s printing a newspaper on our press, on our newsprint, Father.” She half expected her father to rear up out of the bed in rage at that, but he was as motionless as ever.
Tears pushed up in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Father. I knew Stan would be angry, but I didn’t think he’d go this far. I wouldn’t have written him the letter if I’d known. I would have done what you wanted.” She held his hand to her cheek a moment. Then she took the rag from the pan beside the bed, wrung it out, and carefully bathed his face.
Adriane heard footsteps pounding up the stairs, and then Joe was in the doorway. “Sorry to disturb you, Miss Adriane, but the boss says to tell you to hurry up with that piece. He’s holding up page two for it.” Joe’s eyes caught a moment on the blank paper she’d laid on the end of her father’s bed before he kept talking as if he saw the page half full of words. “And he says maybe something about the two of you marrying and joining up the papers might not be out of line. But he says that’s up to you.”
“All right, Joe. Tell Mr. Garrett I’ll work on it.”
“The boss said to tell you we ain’t gonna put the paper on the street without something about Mr. Darcy in it. Something you write.”
After Joe went back downstairs, she stared at the blank sheet for a long moment before she made herself dip her pen in the inkpot. Then as if a dam had broken inside her, she could barely keep enough ink on the nib of her pen to keep up with the words flowing out of her.
She didn’t try to make her father into a hero. She simply wrote of him as a man who knew his part in the tragedy that had played out on the streets during the terrible night and who had done everything he could to stop the insanity, even to standing in front of a mob bent on violence. Violence that had not spared him. She wrote about the strength of his beliefs and the power of his words and in the last paragraph begged their readers to pray for his recovery. Then she signed it Adriane Darcy Garrett.
She stared at the name on the paper for another long moment before she got a fresh sheet of paper and quickly wrote a short editorial announcing the merging of the two papers.
This joining together of two so disparate newspapers will usher in new opportunities for growth as our great city prospers in the years ahead. The Tribune-Herald will ever be open-minded on any and all issues as we attempt to illuminate the truth.
She quickly reread what she’d written, and though she thought it could be better, she didn’t have time for rewrites. Once more she signed her new name. This time it did not look quite so strange, and she decided the name itself would have to serve as the announcement of her marriage. Due to her father’s grave condition, it would hardly be proper to print a formal announcement of the event. The very fact that she had married at such a time would be considered highly improper and scandalize the townspeople quite enough without flaunting an announcement in black and white in front of their eyes.
For a minute she considered scratching out her name at the bottom of both stories, but then she went to the doorway to call to Joe downstairs. When he rushed
upstairs, he looked a little surprised to see all the words. She smiled to herself. It wasn’t going to be the first time she surprised Joe. Or Blake.
The Tribune may have been merged, but its spirit wasn’t dead. Then sadness overwhelmed her, first for her father, then for Duff and his family, and finally for the whole city.
She returned to her chair by her father’s bed and began once again watching for the rise and fall of his chest. She was sitting just the same two hours later when Blake came into the room as the first light of morning was pushing through the window.
“It’s done,” he said. “The boys are picking up their bundles.”
“How does it look?” she asked without taking her eyes off her father.
“Not bad considering how we threw it together. If Beck hadn’t come back, we’d have never gotten it ready on time. You want to see an issue?”
“Not now.” She still didn’t look up at him.
“You should rest.” He came over behind her and laid his hands lightly on her shoulders. “I’ll sit with him.”
“No. He’s my father.”
He didn’t argue with her. “Then if you don’t need me here, I’ll go with the boys to see if there’s anything to salvage at our building. Maybe some of my files didn’t burn completely. There might be something. And I want to go talk to Duff and his mother.”
“Duff?” She finally turned her head to look up at him.
His face was fierce as he answered. “I made him a promise. I intend to keep it.”
“How?” she asked. “No one ever seems to see or know anything about whoever it is who kills these girls. It’s as if he rises out of the river like some evil wraith that can appear and disappear at will.” She wanted to weep when she thought of what Duff’s sister had suffered.
Blake tightened his hands on Adriane’s shoulders as his frown grew even fiercer. “The man doing this is no apparition. He’s real enough and we can catch him.” But then he sighed as if he knew words alone couldn’t make that happen. “If we can only figure out a way to bring him out in the open.”
Her hand came up almost of its own volition to touch one of his on her shoulder. “Thank you, Blake.”
“For what?” He looked surprised.
“I don’t know.” She searched for something to say that would make sense. “For rescuing me, I suppose.”
A smile chased some of the dark worry off his face. “You do seem prone to needing rescuing, for a fact.” He leaned over to lightly kiss the top of her head before he left. “Beck will be downstairs if you need anything.”
23
After Blake left, the room was too quiet with only the shallow sound of her father’s breathing. Adriane stood up and busily straightened her father’s covers and fluffed his pillow. Then she tried to pour some of the medicine the doctor had left down her father’s throat, but it slid out the corners of his mouth and trickled across his cheek to his ear. After she carefully wiped off his face, she laid a fresh, cool cloth on his forehead. When she could think of nothing else to do, she put her ear down on his chest to listen to his faint heartbeat and try to pull hope from the sound.
“He ain’t no better.” Beck stood in the doorway, a cup of coffee in one hand and a plate of bread, apples, and cheese in the other. A paper was tucked under one arm.
It wasn’t really a question, but Adriane straightened up and shook her head slightly anyway.
Beck’s mouth tightened a little as he handed her the food. “Blake told me to make sure you ate something.”
Adriane looked at the plate and then at Beck. “Blake?” she said. “What happened to Garrett, the enemy?”
“He weren’t never my enemy. Just the Tribune’s. And I reckon the two of you brought all that to an end last night.”
Adriane broke off a piece of bread and stared at it. “His man, Calvin, said he had a way of getting things to go his way.”
“What’re you getting at, Addie?” Beck studied her as he waited for her answer.
“I don’t know.” Adriane turned her eyes toward the window as though she might see some truth come floating in with the morning sunshine. Finally she said, “I’m just not sure I did the right thing.”
“Weren’t nothing else to do.”
“You mean because of getting the paper out?”
“I don’t think the Tribune had all that much to do with it, Addie. Or the Herald either.” Beck’s wrinkles softened a bit, but he didn’t actually smile.
Adriane stared down at the piece of bread she had reduced to crumbs, and Beck went on. “But if you did just get hitched to keep the paper rolling off the presses, you picked a good man. You should have seen him putting them stories in the galleys straight out of his head. The man knows what makes a good paper same as the boss. I brought one up for you to look at.”
Adriane’s eyes went from the folded paper still under Beck’s arm to her father on the bed. “Do you think we should send for Dr. Hammon again?”
“I’ll fetch him if you want me to.”
“But you don’t think it will do any good.”
The old man shook his head sadly as he looked at her. “No, child. I think the boss has done gone off and left us. His body just ain’t figured out it’s supposed to stop breathing yet.”
Adriane didn’t try to deny his words. Instead after a moment she asked, “Will you stay with me, Beck?”
“Me and the boss, we go back a long way, Addie. Before you were even born. I ain’t going nowhere.”
So they waited together. The doctor came, shook his head, and left. A little later, Lucilla made an appearance. She followed Beck up the stairs, but then hung back in the doorway as she offered to send a servant over to help them.
“I’ve never been good in sickrooms,” she said. “The smells, you know.” She held a dainty white handkerchief to a face almost as white. “You do understand, don’t you?”
“Of course, Lucilla.” Adriane quickly ushered her away from the room before the woman fainted.
Once out of sight of the sickbed, Lucilla quickly regained her composure. By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, the color was back in her cheeks as she turned to Adriane and demanded, “What exactly have you done, Adriane?”
Adriane wasn’t sure what she meant until Lucilla pulled a copy of the morning paper out of her reticule and opened it to point at Adriane’s new name. Adriane Darcy Garrett.
She kept her eyes on the printed words. She seemed to need to see them to believe it was true as she answered, “I married Blake Garrett last night.”
“How could you?” Lucilla looked a bit faint again as she began throwing out questions without giving Adriane time to answer. “What about Stanley? What about your father? And what about your future, my dear? Did you never think of your future?”
“I’ve thought of little else for weeks. I had no future with Stanley.”
“And what kind of future do you expect to have with this man? Especially after this affront to the Jimsons. The Tribune cannot survive that. You surely know your father owes a rather substantial amount of money to Coleman, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Adriane said.
“I won’t be able to help you.” Lucilla looked truly distressed. “Most of what the late Mr. Elmore left me is tied up in trusts his lawyers handle. Your father understood that and was working out other avenues of repayment.”
Adriane felt a deep sadness as she answered, “I know. Poor Father. It seemed so simple to him. I would marry Stanley, and all his problems would be solved.”
Lucilla looked at Adriane as though if she only tried hard enough, she might be able to understand. After a long uncomfortable moment, she said, “My dear, have you been indiscreet? Is that the reason you married Mr. Garrett so hastily?”
For the first time in hours, Adriane felt the seeds of a smile on her lips, but she didn’t allow it to grow. “No, Lucilla. I’m still quite pure.”
Lucilla’s eyes narrowed on her a bit. “And quite foolish.” Lucilla ja
bbed her finger at another spot on the newspaper she still held. “This story is proof of that if nothing else. Even if you did take leave of your senses and venture out on the streets last night, you should have never admitted to that foolhardiness in paper.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Adriane said.
Lucilla read the headline aloud. “Lady risks life to save Irish boy.”
Adriane quickly scanned through the story before she looked up at Lucilla and said, “I see no names in the story.”
“But it is about you, isn’t it, Adriane? You did go out on those streets last night when all decent ladies were locked in their houses on their knees praying.”
“I knew Father was in danger. I wanted to warn him.”
“Adriane to the rescue,” Lucilla said with a wry little smile. “But you didn’t save your father, did you?”
When Adriane didn’t say anything, Lucilla went on, her voice gentler now. “My dear girl, who is going to save you from your own folly?”
Again Adriane made no answer, and Lucilla put her small slender hand on Adriane’s arm. “I will help any way I can, my dear. I am fond of you, but you do understand I can’t go against the Jimsons. You should have married Stanley.”
Adriane stepped back away from her touch, and Lucilla’s hand hovered a moment in the air before she began adjusting her dark blue lace shawl over her lighter blue, crisply pressed, morning dress. After a moment, she said, “Do send a messenger at once if Wade shows the slightest change.”
“Of course,” Adriane said without smiling. Then as Lucilla turned toward the door, Adriane blurted out, “Do you love my father?”
Lucilla turned back toward Adriane, her small smile appearing to be affixed to her lips much the same way the sapphire brooch was fastened on her collar. “Is that what this is about? Love? My poor dear, you surely weren’t foolish enough to throw all your chances away simply because you fancy yourself in love with Mr. Garrett.”
Words Spoken True: A Novel Page 24