“What did he do?”
“Influenced his ancestors’ investments back in the twenties. Then when everyone else lost their asses, Fred’s grandpa raked it in, thanks to Fred’s knowledge of the future. Bad enough to change the past at all, but for such blatant personal benefit...” His gaze hardened, its threat unmistakable.
Tony inwardly cringed under its intensity. He made a pretense of studying the cracked cup in his hand. Holy shit, what if they found out about his own investments? He hadn’t been greedy, just made a couple of wise decisions.
Resolve settled over him like a new fallen snow. He’d save Bethany. But he’d make sure Everly—and any other Saturn Society people—never found out. All he had to do was figure out how.
CHARLOTTE FINGERED THE QUARTER ON ITS GOLD chain around her neck as she hopped the trolley at Fourth and Main. Theodore had given her the necklace last week as a gift for her sixteenth birthday—and also in honor of her passing the First Rite. She’d drilled a hole through the coin, then secured it to the necklace with a wire loop. Somehow, putting the two together seemed fitting.
She’d had no difficulty escaping from that locked room in the Saturn Society house into 1901. The proprietor of the Smoke Shop had been surprised when she emerged from his attic, but luckily she’d convinced him she hadn’t stolen anything, and he let her leave.
Her trip to 1901 had been far less unpleasant than her childhood forays into the late nineteenth century, when she’d been chased by horrid, dirty tramps, then caught by the police who took her to the girls’ home where the matrons rapped her knuckles and worked the girls from dawn to dusk. Neither journey was one she cared to repeat.
She soon reached Mr. Pippin’s elegant Society House at 140 South Harrison Street. She always enjoyed going to the House and spending time with Mr. Pippin, ever since the day he’d shown up on Papa’s front porch when she was ten, claiming he was a psychiatrist, who’d read about her disappearances in the papers and thought he could help. After her three trips back in time, Papa was so distraught that he hadn’t even cared that “Doctor” Pippin was colored. Mr. Pippin later told her he wasn’t a physician, it was only a story he’d fabricated so Papa would let him “treat” her.
Mr. Pippin had told her all about how time travel worked, and most important, how to stop if she felt herself starting to jump when she didn’t want to. To this day, Papa believed something horrific had befallen Charlotte during her early disappearances (she’d once heard him and Uncle Curtis talking about “white slavers”), and she’d made up the time travel story to forget about what had really happened. On Mr. Pippin’s instruction, she’d stopped correcting Papa, and let him believe what he wanted. It was easier.
She flung the door open and burst into the House. As she expected, her mentor sat at his desk in the vestibule, poring over an album of photographs he’d compiled over the past several years—time criminals, men and women who’d committed selfish acts of change in the past. Although the green banker’s lamp’s light didn’t reach the elegant green and maroon striped wall paper, it reflected brightly on the mahogany desk and illuminated the tome before him. He glanced up. “Good afternoon, Charlotte.”
She returned his greeting. “Look.” She lifted the quarter on its chain out of her dress.
Mr. Pippin stood, squinting. “Ah yes, the coin from the future.” He was the only person she’d shown it to besides Dewey. He leaned closer. “Sensible way to keep it hidden.”
“Of course, Mr.— Theodore.” He’d recently told her to call him by his Christian name.
He gave her a thin, barely-there smile, the only kind he seemed capable of since the day his wife Nellie Mae had disappeared three years earlier. He patted the book. “Look through this new edition, and familiarize yourself with these miscreants, should you chance to happen upon any of them.”
Charlotte dutifully sat in his vacated desk chair and studied the photographs as he retired to the parlor to read the newspaper. Their last visitor—a writer from the 1970s researching prohibition and bootlegging—had left over a week ago.
She tried to memorize the faces before her, along with the accompanying details that would help identify the criminals.
“Well, that one’s gone,” she murmured. Alan Fishel, born in 1926. Not even a gleam in his father’s eye now, in 1920. Yet Fishel had been caught by the watchkeeper in New York City a month ago, as noted in the book. Traveling back in time to buy stock in an attempt to get rich. She remembered hearing the news at the time from a jubilant Theodore.
What had become of Mr. Fishel?
Her thoughts turned to Nellie Mae Pippin, and her heart clenched. There had been no one kinder than the dark-skinned woman who used to bake cookies in honor of Charlotte’s afternoons with Theodore, who’d shared hours worth of quiet wisdom and companionship with a motherless girl. Her words of advice and knowledge hadn’t been about time travel, or even science, but about people, the world, and life. Then Nellie had disappeared in a time-distortion. No one knew where—or when—she went, if she was alive, or if she even existed anywhere, in any time, at all.
Actions like Fishel’s caused those ripples in time. He deserved whatever punishment the Society had dealt him.
Charlotte turned another page and scrutinized the photo, then gave the next page the same careful study. She’d do whatever it took to prevent others from using their gift in ways that caused the sort of time-rifts that had taken Nellie Mae. She’d do whatever Theodore asked, to help him eradicate these people before they could do even greater damage.
Charlotte flipped the next page, and her heart doubled a beat as the name on the printed page burned into her vision. Chills coursed down her limbs despite the lack of a breeze in the Society House’s warm vestibule.
Tony Solomon. The man who’d saved her life. Who’d listened to her talk of her dreams and ambitions without laughter or scorn. The man whom, as a child, she’d thought she’d marry someday.
No. It’s not my Tony. But the name was his. The man in the photo wore a beard and long, unkempt hair. Not the Tony she remembered. It could be another Tony Solomon. Neither name was that unusual.
In a pig’s eye. The glasses were the same as those the man she’d met in the attic had worn seven years ago when they’d been trapped in the attic. So was his expression of wary concern.
She drew away from the book, the smell of new paper and ink rising from the page as she dragged her hand across it. Dread swelled inside her as she remembered what he’d said the last time she saw him, when he was working at the refugee camp. Bad people locked me up. What had Tony done?
Tony rapped on the door to Dewey Henderson’s room at the Whispering Pines Nursing Center. Charlotte’s brother was alive, over a hundred years old, and Tony’s closest link to her.
Seeing the old man in the flesh would prove that Tony’s experience in 1913 was real, that he really had been a hero.
He’d researched her. There had been newspaper articles about her disappearances, and references to “tall tales of time travel” on Lydia’s genealogy site.
Charlotte had been a time traveler, too. If he could go back and visit her, she’d tell him how to warp within his own lifetime. He’d saved her life. Surely she wouldn’t refuse him such a small favor.
“Who’s ‘ere?” a gravelly voice called.
“My name’s Tony Solomon. I spoke to your granddaughter.” He leaned close to the door and strained to hear activity.
“Hang on a minute...”
The old guy probably didn’t move too quickly. It amazed Tony that he lived in an assisted living room instead of the full nursing section. Tony picked at his sleeve as he waited. A spot of something stained the cuff of his sport coat. Probably salad dressing, from yesterday’s lunch meeting with Keith Lynch, where the CEO had informed Tony that he was putting him on an indefinite leave of absence. Tony had started to argue, but then Lisa had called, cutting the conversation short. As if his sister had ESP, and had known Tony had needed some sense
talked into him. As she’d pointed out, he was lucky he still had a job after disappearing without notice for three weeks. He’d told the doctors he couldn’t remember where he’d been. Keith wanted him to take some time off to get his life sorted out.
Strange thing was, the day he got out of the hospital, Tony could’ve sworn he’d seen Keith’s SUV in the parking lot at the apartment. Then Keith had shown up at Mulroney’s, and he hadn’t given even a hint of his plans.
The enforced leave would have stung a lot more without the income from the apartment complex and most of all, Tony’s plan to prevent Bethany’s death. Being off work for a few months would give him more time to spend with her once he got her back.
Finally, Mr. Henderson’s door swung open.
Henderson slouched in a wheelchair, his head listed to one side. Oh man, let this be one of his good days. The granddaughter had warned Tony Henderson’s level of lucidity varied from day to day, sometimes hour to hour. Tony held out his hand.
The old man took it and gave it a limp shake. “What’d you say your name is again?”
“Tony Solomon.”
“And you’re a friend of Lydia’s?” Other than his lax posture, the old man was surprisingly hale for being over a hundred years old. Then again, Tony didn’t know any other centenarians for comparison.
“Actually, I just met her.” It was the truth, if exchanging a few emails counted. “I was searching for information on your sister. I’m, I mean my great-grandpa—was a friend of hers.” Damn, screwed up already. “I found her on Lydia’s genealogy web site.”
The cuckoo clock on the wall ticked away several seconds before Henderson wheeled his chair around and motioned for Tony to follow him inside. “Your great-grandpa was a friend of Mabel’s, huh?” He indicated a wingback chair.
Tony slid into the proffered seat. “No, Charlotte’s.”
Henderson sat still, the only motion a slight wobble of his chin. He’d gone into some kind of funk. Maybe it wasn’t one of his good days after all. But then Henderson fixed his rheumy brown eyes on Tony, and their sharpness told him the old man was sizing him up. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.” He spoke softly.
Tony launched into his carefully planned story of how he found out about Charlotte. “My grandma passed away recently, and we found her father’s journals in her stuff. He mentioned your sister in one of them.” He spit the words out quickly, as if the falsehoods left a bitter taste in his mouth.
A faraway expression settled over Henderson’s face for a long moment before he spoke. “What’d you say your name was?”
Tony repeated it.
“That was his name, too.”
A tingle radiated down Tony’s limbs. Henderson knew of him? “Whose name?” Tony gripped the arms of his chair, then loosened his hold before Henderson noticed. Charlotte must’ve told him about her rescue.
Henderson didn’t reply. Tony swallowed, then continued with his story. “In my great-grandpa’s journal, he wrote about saving her life in the flood. I’m named after him.”
“Oh yes, heard that story a hundred times if I heard it once.” Henderson’s eyes sparkled. “How he pulled her outta the water when she’d done near drowned. Carried her on his back, walking over the telegraph wires though he was scared out of his wits.”
You don’t know half of it. Tony shifted in his seat.
“She was never the same afterward,” Henderson continued. “Took to disappearing for weeks at a time.”
Tony leaned forward. “You mean she ran away?” he asked, though he suspected he knew better.
The old man scowled. “Could be, but the third time... she disappeared right out of her bed.” Tony fought to stop himself from squeezing the arms of his chair. “The police found her near the girls’ home on Tyler Street, two weeks later. Other times, too.”
“Wh- what happened to her?” Did Henderson have any idea?
“Said she went back in time.”
So she had warped. Shock shot through Tony’s center, but Henderson chuckled. “Charlotte was always... overimaginative. Whole family thought she was a little loopy. More so when she got older. Always building crazy contraptions in the basement, always...” He concentrated on Tony again. “After the third time she went away, Papa made us take turns watching her sleep. Mabel said Charlotte had never talked in her sleep before, but she did then... crazy stuff... like we were all gone and our house wasn’t there.”
Tony’s breath caught. She had to have been terrified. He asked something a normal, rational person would. “So what really happened to her?”
Henderson slowly moved his head from side to side. “No one knew. Including Charlotte. When our father took her to a psychiatrist, all she’d say was she didn’t know. Couldn’t remember anything. Papa believed something terrible happened to her, and she’d concocted the time travel story to block it out. Then that other doctor showed up.”
“Other doctor?”
“Another psychiatrist, I assume. Came to the house, said he’d seen the papers, knew what was wrong with her. Papa was beside himself, willing to try anything, even a colored doctor. So he took her to the fellow’s house down on Harrison Street. Funny... it was in the same spot the Smoke Shop was, where she and that man—your great-grandfather—were trapped during the flood.”
The Saturn Society. “Was the doctor able to help her?” Tony asked.
“Must have.” Henderson’s gnarled hands wrapped around each other. “The disappearing stopped after she started seeing him. And no more foolish talk of time travel. But the strangest thing was, the man never charged Papa a dime.”
Tony quelled an urge to clean his glasses. “She had a normal life then?” Had she joined the Saturn Society?
Henderson snorted. “If you could call it that. Never married, though she had suitors aplenty. Could be her nutty projects and crazy talk kept the fellers from proposing...”
Henderson’s words faded as the implications of the so-called doctor on Harrison Street settled into Tony’s brain. The so-called “doctor” had to be Theodore Pippin. If Charlotte belonged to the Society, she might not be so willing to answer his questions. Not when the knowledge would enable him to break the Society Code.
“...too busy with her work.” Henderson spat the words. “And running errands for the doctor. But I figure it was also because none of ‘em could measure up to Tony.”
Tony struggled to keep his face neutral against a whirlwind of emotions and surprise. “Wh- what do you mean?”
“Oh, she put him on a pedestal.” Henderson flipped his hands over, as if washing them. “I always thought it was a lot of nonsense, she’d built him up in her mind. But once I met him myself, he was everything she said.”
“When?” Flecks of dirt on Tony’s glasses that might or might not be real clouded his vision. He snatched the glasses off and rubbed them furiously with the corner of his jacket. “Who?”
Henderson chuckled, a dry raspy sound. “Why, your great-grandpa, o’ course. When he came to see her in thirty-three.”
Tony’s rubbing slowed.
“You all right, son?” Henderson said. Tony managed a nod, then slid his glasses back on. Charlotte could move through time. He’d given her the ability. But why had he gone back to her, when he’d vowed not to travel into the past again except to save Bethany? Had Charlotte provided the information he needed?
“Mr. Henderson? What... what did my great-grandpa do? When he visited Charlotte in 1933?”
Henderson pensively looked off to the side. “Oh, he helped out at the restaurant some—”
“Restaurant?”
“Irving’s Place. Where she worked after they shut down the research shop.” Henderson gazed somewhere above Tony. “I can remember it like it was yesterday... helluva cook, my sister was. Then Irving went too far, and he wouldn’t tolerate it—your great-grandpa, I mean—got her in trouble with Irving. ‘Course, he’d already run off Elmer. So they came to me, spent a week at the ol’ fishin�
�� shack. Lordy, she was happier than I’d ever seen her...”
Lightness, fear and wonder bubbled up inside Tony. Had he and Charlotte been... more than friends? It was hard to imagine, when he’d only known her as a nine-year-old girl. What was she like as an adult? Questions battered his mind. What had Irving done to Charlotte? And what had Tony done to Irving? And Elmer, whoever he was? What had happened at the fishin’ shack?
Henderson squinted at Tony. “Come to think, you look just like him.”
“Yeah, everyone tells me that.” The lie slid out like warm syrup, surprising Tony with its ease. He couldn’t concentrate, all he could think of was
Him?
And Charlotte?
More than friends? More than little girl and rescuer?
The real reason he’d come to visit Dewey Henderson broke through his musings. Bethany.
He had to go to Charlotte. Whatever else happened between them didn’t matter. She was his best bet to find out what he needed to know. Even if she belonged to the Society, she’d tell him. He’d saved her life. If she was at all honorable—and he had trouble imagining her otherwise—she’d feel she owed him. “Where did you say she lived back then?” Tony asked.
“On Hopewell Lane, offa West Fourth. Cute little house, though Lord knows how she afforded it on what Irving paid. They tore it down when the highway came through. ‘Course, she was long gone by then.”
Tony gripped the chair’s arms. “What happened to her?” Heart attack, stroke, cancer?
Henderson’s eyes grew watery. Or was it Tony’s imagination? “In thirty-three, the second time he came... She disappeared again. That time, for good. They found a piece of her dress down by the river... lots of blood, but no one knew what happened. Mabel thought maybe she was mixed up with the mob. Never saw hide nor hair of your great-grandpa again, either.” He stared at the wall for a long moment, and when he resumed speaking, his voice shook. “God, I miss her.” Henderson slowly turned his head to face Tony, his brown eyes calculating and accusing. “Unless there’s something you’re not telling me...”
Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) Page 14