Crossings (A Harry Reese Mystery Book 2)

by Robert Bruce Stewart

  “Yes, dear. But getting back to this afternoon, you felt the bartender was overly Dooley-like?”

  “Well, yes,” I agreed. “You see, he gave a detailed description of a man he’d allegedly seen just once, briefly, two days before. A man I saw out at Aqueduct that same afternoon. How could he describe Demming so well?”

  “He was someone who was acquainted with Demming and was sent precisely to give his description. That’s very good, Harry.”

  “Thank you, Emmie.”

  “But why would Detective Tibbitts conceive of a plan to implicate Mr. Demming? And how would he acquire this faux bartender so quickly?’

  “I can’t figure that out,” I conceded. “By the way, how did you get the cards from Osborne’s desk?”

  “Well, yesterday I tried sneaking in at the end of the day. I made it upstairs and was just down the hall from his office, when a night watchman challenged me. I was able to evade him, but only at the cost of my shoe. This evening I had a more foolproof plan. I went in with the scrub women and had Elizabeth go in separately to distract the night watchman. It took some time to scrub my way into his office, but once I had the cards, I resigned.”

  “Why did you say more foolproof?”

  “Well, the one flaw involved that same watchman. Rather than allow himself to be diverted by Elizabeth’s charms, he detained her. She had to ransom herself with a bribe. Can you reimburse her from your expense account?”

  The telephone rang before I could answer. The fellow from Newcome’s was on the line.

  “As near as I can make out, Warner and his wife left Tuesday afternoon, sometime before five o’clock. They had bags with them. No one has seen them since.”

  “But no one knew why they left?”

  “No. Or where they went. I got into the apartment and it looks like they left in a hurry. There was something on the stove they just left. I found some letters from Mrs. Warner’s family. She’s from Chicago. Should I have our office there check on them?”

  “Yes, please.”

  I hung up and told it all to Emmie.

  “At least they’re both alive,” she said.

  The next morning Emmie and I went up to the Warners’ building on First Avenue. We spoke to a number of women about the place, including one who saw them leave, Mrs. Shannon. She was a rather gossipy sort, so we asked her what she knew of Mrs. Warner.

  “Oh, she was friendly enough. A little peculiar, maybe.”

  “In what way peculiar?” Emmie asked.

  “She would say silly things, as if they were really true. Kind of like a little child would do. She told me once she was the daughter of a very rich man and that her husband had kidnapped her. Then a week later, she said she was a princess, and her husband had cast a spell on her. Just silliness, like a little child.”

  “Do you know if she gambled?” I asked.

  “You mean the policy shops?”

  “Yes, or elsewhere.”

  “I don’t know if she did, but I don’t know she didn’t.”

  “Did you know Mr. Warner well?”

  “No, he kept to himself mostly. He was friendly, but not one for chatting.”

  We got into the apartment, and Emmie threw out the abandoned meal. There were several photographs of the couple, so we took what looked like the most recent. We also saw the letters. Mrs. Warner was clearly close to her family. There was no evidence either of them gambled. While we were there, one of Ratigan’s operatives showed up. He had a photograph of Osborne and we went with him as he showed it around the building. One woman thought she may have seen him enter the building, but whether it was Monday or Tuesday, morning or afternoon, she couldn’t remember. No one knew where Richard Warner was from.

  The three of us then went over to Prince Street and the machine shop where Warner was employed. I asked to speak with the foreman. A big, middle-aged fellow came over.

  “I’m Henninger. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m trying to locate Richard Warner.”

  “So am I, brother.”

  “He’s missing?”

  “More like skipped out. Right in the middle of the afternoon. Why are you looking for him?”

  “Well, I think he’s in some danger. Was that Tuesday afternoon?”

  “Yeah. A kid comes in and asks for him. Told him something’d happened to his wife. So he leaves in a hurry. That’s the last I saw of him. When he didn’t come in Wednesday, I went around to his place. No one was there. Same yesterday. The neighbors said his wife wasn’t sick. They just left.”

  “And no idea where he went?”

  “No. No idea.”

  “Where was he from?”

  “All anyone knows is that he grew up on a farm, upstate someplace. Maybe near the canal.”

  “The Erie Canal?”

  “I assumed so. He just said canal.”

  Then we left him and went over to Newcome’s, and Emmie and I went into Ratigan’s office. It was obvious he didn’t like having her there. But if he wanted to get her out, he’d have to do it himself. I told him about the possible sighting of Osborne at the Warners’ building.

  “If he went during the day, Warner would be at work, and Osborne had that address,” I said. “So he must have gone to see Mrs. Warner. Probably to tell her to get out of town.”

  “So he must have warned Mrs. Barclay and Anna Farrell as well,” Emmie said.

  “That would make sense,” Ratigan allowed.

  “Any news from Chicago?” I asked.

  “Not yet.”

  I told him what we had heard about Warner coming from a farm near a canal upstate.

  “I don’t suppose there’s a way to find out where?”

  “You’d need a small army of detectives. That would be a job for the Pinks.”

  “Heaven forfend!” Emmie had read my mind.

  “No, we don’t need a lot of loose cannons running about,” I said. One was plenty.

  Then Emmie and I went off and had lunch. Before parting, Emmie told me that Elizabeth had something planned for the evening. I tried not to think of the possibilities and made my way to the Bureau.

  Keegan was in and I told him what we had learned, and about Tibbitts setting up the false witness.

  “I could try to have him taken off of this,” he said.

  “Maybe it would be better not to. Now, anything he says or does is really a clue. Besides, we probably couldn’t trust another cop any more than we can him.”

  “Yes, that’s certainly true.”

  “I thought I’d go out to Aqueduct and ask Demming what he thought it was about.”

  “Yes,” Keegan said enthusiastically. “Perhaps I should go with you.”

  There wasn’t any point in his going with me, but it would have been tactless to say so.

  When we arrived at the betting ring, Keegan went off to find his favorite bookmaker and I located Demming. He was busily exchanging hand signals with some other fellows about the place. As the horses went to the post for the next race, the bookmakers and their patrons rushed out to watch and I was able to get his attention. I told him about his being sighted in the First Avenue saloon. He found it very amusing.

  “You see, Harry, this is their way of telling me not to put my nose where it doesn’t belong.”

  “Who? Minden?”

  “Him, or Bannon. He must have seen us together, and he may have learned all about you by now.”

  “They’d give you up, just for speaking with me?”

  “It was meant as a shot across my bow. Don’t take that part of it too seriously.”

  “Which part should I take seriously?”

  “That they are involved in this at all. It would seem there’s more to this than I realized.”

  I left him and went back into Manhattan to see if I could find a way of locating the Warner farm through some sort of directory. At about five I was in the Astor Library and I ran into Emmie. She’d been on the same quest.

  “It’s no use, Harry. Appare
ntly there are thousands of farms in New York State, but no one has considered it worthwhile to list them for us. What’s the use of the Grange?”

  “I suppose they have other concerns, Emmie.”

  “Perhaps, but it seems rather selfish.”

  We went home to Brooklyn, but separated on that side of the river. I was to go to Graef’s for wine, and Emmie to the fish market on Washington Avenue. At the apartment, Elizabeth and Dorothy were making elaborate preparations. Emmie and I changed for dinner and it wasn’t long afterwards that Dorothy emerged with a platter on which sat a head of cabbage. It had walnut eyes, a carrot nose, and pimiento lips. She placed it on the table as a centerpiece, then left us.

  “What’s this about, Emmie?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. What’s the date?”

  “The date? The 19th, why?”

  Just then Elizabeth came out and had us sit down.

  “We are here today to celebrate the feast of St. Elphege, the patron saint of children with awkward names. Though he is no longer a child, it is hoped our observance will bring some succor to Harrison.”

  “St. Elphege is depicted as a head of cabbage?” I asked, unwisely. Elizabeth silenced me with one of her cold looks.

  “St. Elphege,” Elizabeth went on, “as you no doubt know, was Archbishop of Canterbury in the eleventh century, not long before the arrival of the Conqueror. Unfortunately, just as he was getting comfortable in his new quarters, the Danes took it upon themselves to invade. They carried Elphege off and treated him most cruelly, stoning him and whatnot, until one of the Danes took pity and ended his suffering by dispatching him with an axe. He is sometimes represented with an axe cleaving his skull, thusly.”

  Her hand emerged from under the table holding a meat cleaver. She dispatched St. Elphege with such force the platter below shattered.

  “Sorry, Emmie.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, dear,” Emmie assured her.

  “That was a gift from my mother,” I reminded her.

  “Was it?”

  We then had the most appetizing meal ever prepared in that apartment. Though I was a little uneasy throughout it, as St. Elphege seemed to be looking at me accusingly. His left eye, anyway.

  The next morning, Emmie and I went in to Ratigan’s office to see if he had learned anything new.

  “It doesn’t look like the Warners went to Chicago. At least, they aren’t staying with her family there. A man spoke with her parents last evening. They say they haven’t heard from their daughter in several weeks, and they aren’t sure exactly where Warner comes from. Upstate somewhere. But it was a farm.”

  With no other lead, Emmie and I returned to the Warners’ building. While she was seeing if there was anyone about we hadn’t spoken to yet, I got myself back into their apartment. We had searched it fairly thoroughly earlier, but there was always a chance we had missed something.

  I went through the kitchen and the only interesting thing I found was a tin of rat poison. Its existence might not have been worthy of note in itself, but that it was on a shelf in the midst of canned fruit seemed curious.

  I emptied every drawer, looked under every piece of furniture, and went through the pockets of each piece of clothing. If the Warners did decide to return, there would certainly be some tidying up to do. I was about to call it a day when Emmie arrived with an older fellow.

  “This is Mr. Gilbo, Harry. He says he remembers seeing a photograph Mr. Warner showed him. It was of a canal.”

  “Do you know where he kept it, Mr. Gilbo? I’ve looked everywhere.”

  He surveyed the scene. “Yes, you certainly have.”

  “I assure you, we wouldn’t have resorted to this if we weren’t certain the Warners are in some danger.”

  “So your missus says. Well, he had a little box he kept things in. He brought it out once when I asked him where he grew up.”

  “But he didn’t tell you where he grew up?”

  “On a farm. He described it but it could have been a farm anywhere. A dairy farm. And he told me about the canal boats, and trading things with the boys who lived on them.”

  “You don’t know where he kept this box?”

  “He went into the bedroom and came back with it. It had things from his childhood. When his wife came home, he hid it. I don’t know why.”

  “What could you see in the photograph?”

  “Just a boat on a canal, but he said it was near his home.”

  We thanked him and he went off. Then we went into the bedroom and I started picking things off the floor.

  “What are you doing, Harry?”

  “Well, Emmie, I don’t know if I should be revealing this to you, but whenever a boy wants to hide something from prying eyes, he finds a loose floorboard.”

  “What if there are no loose floorboards?”

  “He finds a crowbar.”

  When we actually did find a loose floorboard, and below it an old wooden box, Emmie giggled.

  “It’s like Tom Sawyer, Harry.”

  14

  In the box was an old stereoscopic photograph of a canal. The only caption was written in pen, “Battle Island.” On the reverse was written the name of the photographer and “Oswego, NY.”

  “Where’s Battle Island?” Emmie asked.

  “I don’t know, but there’s a branch of the canal that goes to Oswego.”

  “Where’s Oswego?”

  “On Lake Ontario. But that’s just where the photographer is from. The scene could be anywhere along the canal.”

  “We need a gazetteer,” Emmie said.

  We went back over to the Astor Library, where they had several gazetteers for New York State, but only the last listed Battle Island. It was on the Oswego River, just above Fulton.

  “Where’s Fulton?” Emmie asked.

  “Just above Syracuse.”

  We consulted a railway guide and learned we had two options. We could either take a night train, and arrive in Fulton at seven the next morning, or take an afternoon train to Syracuse, find a hotel, and catch an early morning train to Fulton. We made our way back to Brooklyn in order to pack.

  “Oh, let’s take a night train, Harry. We can book a sleeping car.”

  “Have you ever taken a sleeper, Emmie?”

  “No, but it always struck me as being romantic.”

  “Romantic? On a Pullman sleeper, the porter decides when you go to bed and when you get up. There’ll be a choir of men and women barking and snorting all night long, loosely accompanied by a half-dozen infants who’ve somehow learned to bawl in rounds. Then there’s the young couple just one berth over in need of no sleep whatsoever. The whispers and giggles go on until about three a.m., and at four the first toddlers begin a sloppy steeplechase up and down the aisle. The extra fare is about the same as a night in a good hotel, and we’ll arrive completely exhausted.”

  “But we’ll be the young couple, Harry.”

  “We’ll be the young couple in the comfortable hotel in Syracuse.”

  Emmie gave in rather easily, and it wasn’t long after we boarded the 2:00 express that she suggested we visit the parlor car. Some people facing a journey of several hours bring an engaging book, others a cold deck. I declined to accompany her and made it clear she wasn’t to consider me her lender of last resort. I didn’t see her again until dinner.

  “I’ve been thinking, Harry. Would all these women ever have agreed to have their husbands murdered?”

  “Well, what if they were tricked into it? They went along at first when they just thought the policies were for some sort of fraud.”

  “But it seems rather a big leap to go from participating in a fraud to killing your own husband.”

  “What if the wife didn’t know that was the plan until after he’d been killed? Now she’d be in a very difficult position. If she went to the police, it would look like she was involved from the beginning. She’d have no way out.”

  “Mrs. Marquisee found a way out,” Emmie answered.
/>   “Yes, I guess she did.”

  After dinner, Emmie returned to the parlor car. She showed up again about half past nine, just before we arrived in Syracuse. She looked rather down. The conductor and a porter were with her and they were being unusually helpful in getting us off the train.

  “Just remember, miss,” the conductor called after us.

  “What was that about, Emmie?”

  “They took my money, Harry.”

  “Who did?”

  “All of them. They said I was cheating.”

  There was little doubt she had been, of course. But there are times when a family must circle the wagons regardless of where the fault lies. I wasn’t altogether sure this was one of those times, but I could only hope the experience would impress her. I said a few comforting words.

  “But what did the conductor mean, when he told you to remember?” I asked.

  “He told me he never wanted to see me on his train again. It was very embarrassing, Harry. ”

  “I can imagine so. But at least you weren’t kicked off the New York Central entirely.”

  We found a room at a decent hotel and then found a saloon we had visited on a previous trip to Syracuse. Emmie could be oddly sentimental about such things, and always seemed surprised when the reality didn’t conform to her nostalgic visions. This was not the friendly tavern she remembered, but the haunt of working men who were out celebrating the end of their work week. There were about fifty patrons there, most of them not at their best, and not a single woman. We went back to the hotel and had wine sent up to the room.

  The next morning, Sunday the 21st, we caught an eight o’clock train to Fulton. Fulton was a small town and we spent a good deal of time finding a stable where we could hire both a carriage and a driver. The driver was an older fellow and we were told he was familiar with the rural area north of Fulton. And he was, in a vague kind of way. The Oswego River and the canal ran together and we ventured up the western side. As soon as we left the village of Fulton, the valley was nothing but farms. The driver knew most of the places, but the further north we got, the less sure he was. Somewhere above Battle Island, we asked at a nearby farm and were told there was a Warner farm in Volnay, on the opposite side of the river. We went up to Minetto, where there was a bridge, and the driver suggested we stop for lunch. I began to suspect he knew the whereabouts of our destination all along, but saw us as a source of ready cash that should be made the most of.