A Lesson in Love and Murder

by Rachel McMillan

  Or she could just kiss him. Her lips tingled at the unwelcome thought.

  Merinda Herringford did not make a habit of appearing vulnerable around members of the opposite sex. She was mighty impressed by Benny Citrone, though.

  Clearly Benny was mentally thumbing through an index of her own accolades, for he grabbed her arm and pulled her close. “You’re a detective. I’m a tracker. We are so alike. Sniffing out the darkness and… ”

  “My sense of smell is not that good,” Merinda huffed, unsure of what she was supposed to say in this situation and lacking a Godey’s Lady’s Book* to help her.

  “You use the same abilities.” His mouth was just above hers, his eyes tracing her lips like a pencil. “Just differently. I use the powers of deduction too. Look at the trees, the stars, the imprint of the horse’s hooves on the ground. That, Merinda, is my brand of deduction. You see and observe. I do too, but I am propelled by nature.”

  She couldn’t breathe. She tried to fall back on her heels, but he kept her so near and his breath mingled with hers and his eyes were sparkling the most luminous blue. “And that, Benny, is why we can never have a life together. For I am at home in the city.” She waved her hands, indicating the whole of Michigan Avenue.

  “A life together?”

  Merinda snapped down to earth and tried to recollect the part of her heart that had spilled out of her mouth. Cracker jacks! How did Jem do this? Live like this? Knowing that at any moment the words she kept bottled up might spill out audibly. She’d never speak again. She sputtered, “Who said… what I meant was… you are attracted to me.”

  “Pardon me!”

  “Do you think that my years of studying the art of deduction have left me immune to male glances?”

  “You perturb me,” he said, raking his fingers through his hair. “I fascinate you.”

  “Perturb!”

  “When I’m near, you lean closer and your eyes spark just a bit. You really do have the most interesting eyes,” said Benny.

  “I don’t know whether you’re flattering me or… ”

  “Are you attracted to me?”

  Merinda coughed. “I do not find you completely repulsive.”

  “Nor do I find you repulsive. Indeed, I find you… No. Enough of this. Stop looking at me like that! My handbook says that women are not conditioned for the harsh elements of the Yukon!” Benny said.

  “The Yukon!” she spluttered.

  Fortunately, before Merinda could become any more flustered and do something completely flabbergasting—like propose—she looked up and realized they had reached the Palmer House.

  Merinda chewed her lip. “If you are desperate enough for something, then you believe its resolution into being.”

  “That’s not very logical,” Benny joshed.

  “I know. But it’s my story, isn’t it? I’m a lady detective who trips into solutions. I have to believe that the conclusion I reach will be the right one because I believe so much in my cause.”

  “Which is?”

  “That just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I can’t find a way to dig into the mysteries the men in Toronto would ignore.”

  “You’d be a great Mountie,” he said proudly. When silence ticked incessantly between them for a few moments, he said, “There’s a lot spinning in that head of yours.”

  “I was wondering if I should kiss you,” she blurted. “But that just seemed so commonplace.”

  Benny, startled, swallowed. “C-commonplace?”

  “You and me.” Merinda motioned between them. “We’re not ordinary. But clearly there is some sort of chemistry here. I think we’d be better suited to arm wrestling.”

  “Instead of kissing?”

  “Do you want me to kiss you?”

  “I… ” Benny’s face took on the color of a ripe tomato.

  She leaned in and stood on her tiptoes. Their lips hovered with a phantom closeness for a moment. Everything fizzled and flickered. Their noses nearly touched as the world fell away.

  “You have a pretty smile.”

  “Yawn,” she said, falling back.

  “Why yawn? It’s pretty. It’s part of you.” He moved in, gripped her shoulders, inclined his head, moved his lips close to hers, and…

  “Anyone can have a nice smile!” she spat.

  “I thought you were going to kiss me!”

  “You ruined it!”

  “By complimenting you?” His voice rippled frustration. “So you’re leaving?”

  Merinda pivoted on her heel. “I will walk on that side of the street”—she inclined her head—“and we’ll talk later.”

  “Merinda… we’re going in the same direction.”

  “It won’t be too long until you get to the inane moment where you say my eyes are like stars!”

  “I wasn’t going to say that! You’re an absolutely flummoxing woman, Merinda Herringford.”

  Merinda turned before his eyes could catch her smile.

  Ray and Jasper waited for Jem, who was, if Ray thought about it, a little too indecently excited for an enterprise that required criminal activity.

  “Well, I ask you,” Jem said with a wink, “do you really expect to vet the new shipment without the aid of the rather invaluable Silent Jim?”

  In spite of her enthusiasm, Ray tried to convince her to stay in the Palmer, but she was adamant, and when he told her she was very much unwelcome, she merely ignored him, sitting on the front step of the lodging house in hat and trousers, inspiring glances and even a wolf whistle from the particularly astute, so Ray decided she would be safer with him than anywhere else.

  The plan was very much the same as before: receive and survey the goods and ensure they were ready for David Ross’s imminent use.

  “There’s another shipment chugging in now,” Hedgehog said, pointing his bowler toward a vessel sliding into the docks.

  “That’s a lot of fireworks,” Jasper remarked. “That anarchist fellow the other night, he said he wanted to make an impression. This is more than that.”

  “We don’t ask. We don’t tell. We get paid for transporting things that are a little less easy to get in through traditional channels.” Hedgehog tugged his bowler on and turned his back. “You two wait for this one and whatever requisition Valari has for you.” He walked away.

  Ray, Jem, and Jasper waited. And waited. The boat seemed so near, but why did it take so blasted long for it to finally glide in and dock? The midsummer heat billowed around then. The hot morning warned of a blazing afternoon.

  “I wasn’t cut out for criminal life,” Jasper said as men on board threw ropes over the side of the boat and began scrambling down from the deck. “It’s so sedentary.”

  Ray hollered to ask if they needed help unloading, and they began the slow jog toward the boat when given the assent.

  It started as a hiss and then a fizzle, and then the air shimmered around them. Jasper, panicking, got to Jem even before Ray could and shoved her out of the way. The blast followed but seconds after, sending them back with little time to fling up their arms and protect themselves.

  Jasper fell the hardest, protecting Jem, and once the shock and smoke dissipated, he blinked the grit and grime of the dark fog away and frantically looked to her. “Are you all right?”

  Jem nodded. “A little dizzy. W-where’s Ray?” Her eyes searched the vicinity. “Jasper?”

  Nearby, Ray stood, uneasily, an incessant ringing vibrating through his left eardrum, pricking daggers through his head and throwing off his balance.

  Jasper rose with Jem and joined him, and they sprinted as far away from the blast as possible.

  “There’s a chance of another explosion,” Jasper yelled, and while Ray could make out the echo of sound, he couldn’t hear a word. “And there won’t be any survivors there.” They surveyed the growing devastation and fire. Not too long and the sirens of the fire brigade would be heard, the boat doused, the charred bodies moved. Jasper assumed the destruction, all red and orange, shoo
ting incendiary sparks to the sky, could be seen a mile away.

  Ray held one hand to his ear and folded over, free hand on his knee.

  “You all right?”

  “Eh?”

  “Jasper, can he even hear us?”

  “I can hear you, Jem,” Ray said, having watched her mouth and her panicked face and put two and two together.

  Jasper led them farther away, pulling Ray with a tight force so Ray was required to do little walking. They fell against a makeshift shed, Jasper coughing the debris out of his lungs.

  “Are you all right?” Jasper asked Ray again when he had composed himself.

  Ray ran his hand over his soot-smudged face. “My ear is popping something fierce. This awful buzz.” He broke into Italian for a moment, unable to think hard enough to translate.

  Jasper motioned for him to remove his hand from his ear.

  “Your ear’s bleeding pretty badly,” Jasper said. His eyes were full of concern.

  Ray took Jasper’s offered handkerchief, smoke stained and wilted from the dense humidity of the day, and held it to his ear.

  Ray could sense Jasper was holding himself back with force, shoulders tightened, fists balled, wanting to propel into law enforcement mode. Jem shivered, and Ray assumed it was from the shock of the blast. He painted her face furiously with his gaze. She was pale and she had a slight cut on her temple from when Jasper had shoved her out of the way. Other than that, she seemed fine.

  Jasper gripped Ray’s shoulder. “Not a lot I can do for those poor fellows back there,” he said, his kind blue eyes made brighter by the smoke film on his face. “But I can get you looked after.”

  Jasper wanted to take Ray to the nearest hospital. Ray said that would cost a fortune and require his name and several other details he would happily not have in the open. Instead, they went to the Palmer House, ascended the elevator to Jem and Merinda’s room, washed up, and now sat in the broad sitting room of the girls’ suite.

  Eventually Merinda and Benny arrived. Jasper swallowed, watching Benny inspect Ray with the precision of a medical professional. There didn’t seem to be a place or situation that Benny Citrone could not step in and command. “Blasted eardrum,” Benny said.

  “What does that mean?” Jem asked frantically.

  “Likely that he’ll never hear from that ear again,” Benny said softly. “Perforated eardrums are not that uncommon up north,” he explained. “I’ve seen something like this before.”

  “It could be worse,” Jasper said, looking at Merinda and wanting to smooth the sadness from her face. “We’re lucky to be alive.”

  Ray, wincing at Benny’s application of a sort of a makeshift cotton bandage, agreed. “It was bad,” he said much more loudly than he would have if his voice was not compensating for what had been blasted out of his ear.

  “Everyone there is dead,” Jasper conceded. “All the men on that illegal boat. No one could have survived that.”

  “You can’t hear,” Jem sniffed.

  “I’d say it’s remarkably good fortune.” Ray looked up at her with a forced half smile and a tired wink. “Whenever Merinda Herringford opens her mouth, I just turn my head to the left.” He demonstrated, and his eyes met Merinda’s.

  “Oh, hush, DeLuca. I feel awful about this. And you, Jasper! This is dangerous. Explosives and men losing their lives just to make some silly statement.” She folded her arms and rocked back on her heels.

  “There were a lot of explosives,” Jem said. She was standing at Ray’s shoulder and absently running her hand up and down his arm. “The boat is in smithereens. And then some. Merinda, you should have seen the explosion in the water.”

  Merinda nodded. “Ross told me that he had a much loftier goal than a streetcar.”

  “Tell them, Merinda.” Benny instructed.

  “Benny and I are helping Ross blow up the Coliseum. That’s why the shipments have been so big. Someone in Toronto is getting a huge paycheck for explosives Ross means to use to blow up the former president.”

  “Theodore Roosevelt?” Jasper exclaimed.

  Benny nodded. “Tuesday—day after tomorrow. The second day of his convention. Roosevelt is slated to give a speech to officially promote his new platform.”

  “And we were helping,” Jem said woozily. “I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “You have nothing to feel badly about, Jemima.” Benny said. “Merinda and I will stop them. Just as you, Jasper, and poor Ray over there will stop Hedgehog.”

  “Hedgehog couldn’t care less about the president,” Jem muttered. “From everything I have seen, that man only cares about his next influx of money.”

  “Precisely,” Benny said kindly.

  “There’s little more to be done today,” Jasper said. “Don’t go to that flophouse tonight. Get a room here.”

  Ray laughed and pressed the kerchief harder to his ear. Everything hurt. “With what money?”

  “Mine,” Merinda said with finality. “Well, my father’s.”

  Ray hadn’t felt a real pillow under his head in days. It was soft, filled with down. One of the many brilliant amenities in this beautiful hotel. He had never really taken Jem on a proper honeymoon, and ironically a hotel such as this would be a place worthy of her delicate sensibilities and high tastes. Ironic because, at this very moment, Jem was a sniveling wreck.

  Ray cracked a small smile. Her nose was quite endearing when red. “Y-you can’t hear!” she sniffled into her handkerchief, her shoulders shuddering with her sobs.

  He pulled her tightly into him. “It could have been much worse. For you. For Jasper. For me, even.” He swallowed, his heart turning over at her red cheeks and big, glimmering blue eyes. He could have left her alone. With a baby on the way. The thought seemed to hit him in the gut, followed by the immediate guilt that the severity hadn’t registered until now. He had been too startled by the explosion and could barely remember the long, painful trek from the harbor to the Palmer House. Then Benny sat him in a chair, rendered his diagnosis, and Ray was given a clean, quiet room.

  Fussing over Jem took his mind away from the fact that he would always hear in halves. At least he had all of her.

  They sat on the edge of the bed. “I want you to go home,” he said, cupping her cheek. “This is so very dangerous. Everything here is wrong and dangerous, Jem. I don’t want you anywhere near it anymore.” He traced the line of her jaw with his finger.

  Jem didn’t seem to hear him, staring forward, fingers intertwined in her lap. “I wish it had been me,” she said.

  “Heavens no,” Ray said shortly.

  “You already need to listen twice as hard as I do. For stories, when you have trouble understanding someone with a heavy accent.”

  “I have one very good ear,” he assured her. “And my life. And, as I told you, it will make a wonderful excuse not to hear Merinda drone on.”

  Jem tried to laugh, but it came out as a squeaky hiccup. Instead, she defaulted to sobbing more heavily into her handkerchief.

  “Jem, I don’t even have the will to reprimand you. Or the energy.” He whistled through his teeth. The room was spinning slightly, and he felt nauseous. He wanted to fall on the bed and close his eyes. He flopped backward, feet still planted on the floor. Jem followed suit.

  Ray made out the designed plaster of the ceiling. “I can beg you, though,” he said tiredly. “I can plead with you to stay out of all of this—away from the Coliseum, away from the anarchists.”

  Jem turned her head and looked at him. He could feel the brush of her eyes on his profile, even as he kept his eyes upward in order to hear her clearly if she spoke.

  “Now when the baby cries, you’ll have an excuse not to get up and tend to it. You’ll say you just didn’t hear it.”

  Ray flickered a slight smile. “Exactly.”

  “I never want to stop having these wonderful adventures. Seeing Chicago for the first time, watching you and Jasper solve mysteries while Merinda and I do our own sleuthing. Even aft
er the baby comes, I will want to keep my foot in this world.”

  “You say that now, Jem. But once you’re a mother… ”

  “No.” She cut him off. “That will be a big part of my identity. But I can’t transform just because I have a child. I can’t imagine everything I have loved and enjoyed to that point fading away forever just because I have a new adventure.” She stopped speaking, but he could hear her thinking. “I won’t expect you to give up everything you love, and you can’t expect me to either.”

  He grabbed her hand. “But you’re everything I love,” he said.

  “No. Not all. And that’s good. That’s right.”

  “I am still pleading with you to go home.”

  “When all my friends are here?” The down quilt rustled slightly as she shook her head vehemently over the coverlet. “Not a chance. How very lonely that would be!”

  “So you’re staying.”

  “I am. I am staying close. So very close.”

  And Ray smiled, truly—stretched wide across his face—for the first time in days.

  * * *

  *Merinda was only familiar with this popular treatise on ladies’ fashion and lifestyle due to her years as Jemima’s flatmate.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Perhaps your method of deduction will differ from other great sleuths as they pull back the curtain on their brilliant revelations. Maybe you will think aloud, weaving threads into the tapestry of your solution. The true detective realizes that it is not the means to the solution, but rather its ultimate resolution, that matters most in the study of deduction.

  M.C. Wheaton, Guide to the Criminal and Commonplace