A Lesson in Love and Murder

by Rachel McMillan

  While Jem was in the adjoining suite, Merinda had fought the persistent urge to finally flick open Benny’s satchel and go exploring. But with Jem safely tucked in with DeLuca on another floor, no prying eyes would notice if she took a few moments.

  Merinda exhaled, bit her lip, and then flicked the loose latch of the satchel open. Inside, a notebook. On them lines of sometimes smudged, sometimes worn ink slanted in Benny’s precise hand. There were years of papers at her fingertips, some bound in hard-backed journals, others leafed out, their corners reaching toward her. Letters he never sent to his cousin. Thoughts and descriptions painting a wilderness canvas as clear in her imagination as day.

  She slid a carefully folded letter out, its once sharp creases dulled. She guessed she should feel guilty, but Benny was a client, and these letters, she tried to assure herself, were part of a case.

  Benny wasn’t a great writer, she decided. He didn’t have DeLuca’s hyperbolic flourish, but his whole heart was on each measured line. Questions layering questions—did he remember Mad Old Johnson from the Regina detachment and his habit of bringing his pet squirrel to the barracks? Did he remember playing with swords and lances atop that lame old donkey in Riverton? Did Jonathan remember the green vapor of the northern lights, the sweep of the snow, the voice of their grandmother calling them from the brush of woods where they had been playing Indians?

  Merinda’s chest constricted. The letters enshrined Jonathan as the smart one, the one with potential. The one who could have risen to the highest ranks.

  She opened another book—Benfield Citrone and Jonathan Arnasson’s Guide to the Canadian Wilderness. The first pages were written in block letters as if by a schoolboy, but as she flipped through the pages, the writing became more and more assured. A young man’s writing. Peppered with language and phrases that, despite their brief time together, she already associated with him. Little flicks of wisdom here. An anecdote there. He had contributed to this book for years.

  Wear your snowshoes backward so your tracks are easily recognizable on newly fallen snow.

  She fell asleep with the letter on her chest.

  She was just rereading a paragraph about backward snowshoes the next morning when Jem returned for her toiletries, forcing Merinda to look up and quickly return the sheets to their place.

  “You’re as bad as I am when I kept and read Ray’s journal!” Jem chastised while rummaging in her case for toothpowder.*

  “I-I wasn’t. I was hoping there might be something on… on… ”

  “Spare me.” Jem sat down beside Merinda on the sofa, waiting for an explanation.

  “Jonathan is Benny’s whole world,” Merinda said, her eyes welling. “And that will be taken away from him. We are helping our client find his cousin so that justice will see him hanged. My conscience is all in a knot.”

  “You have a conscience?” Jem winked. “That’s why you need something solid to believe in, Merinda. More than Goldman, who will leave after she has said her piece and rallied a few followers, or Ross, who will forget you exist the moment his grand plan for the Coliseum is complete. You need something stronger, some anchor beyond these anarchists and their ideas of justice and this big banner they’re waving to make a point.”

  “I believe in us,” Merinda said solemnly. “And what we do.”

  “Running around strange cities until we trip onto a solution?”

  “Ross believes in his cause. That he devotes himself to some greater good that will ripple through people and inspire them to fight for their freedom.”

  “But Ross is only a man,” Jem said gently. “And men are fallible. Men can let you down.”

  “I did not sign up for a church service, Jemima.”

  “I know. But God stands for justice too. God stands for equality.”

  Merinda stopped a moment. “Equality?”

  “Merinda, there’s so much more than what you see in your Wheaton and underneath your microscope. There’s a completely different and vast and wonderful mystery.”

  Merinda rolled this around in her mind for a moment. “Mystery?”

  Jem nodded. “God is the greatest mystery. And when you believe in something, no matter how grand, no matter how invincible, you are willing to do anything, however preposterous, to see it to its solution.” Jem smiled.

  “That’s it!” Merinda clapped her hands.

  “I take it this is not Merinda Herringford on the brink of a spiritual awakening,” Jem said lowly.

  “I am not undermining what you said, Jem! I respect your dedication to your beliefs. And a belief system is so strong it can break any chains of logic.”

  “Is this your golden moment?” Jem asked resignedly.† “Because I am not sure I am completely prepared.” She winked and settled into a chair.

  Merinda stayed quiet a moment, finally flopping into a chair and stretching her long legs across the carpet. She chewed on the end of her pencil. “The Red-Headed League!” she cried. “In the story the criminals hire a pawnbroker named Jabez Wilson to sit and copy out the encyclopedia. Holmes discovers that the copying job was a distraction so that criminals could use Mr. Wilson’s pawnshop—which was adjacent to the bank—in order to find a way into the bank and rob it. This is like that story, Jem! The bombs and explosives keep the authorities hopping, and while they are scurrying around, someone has the opportunity to do something big.”

  “Something big?”

  “There’s something I need to do! You go get DeLuca and have him find Jasper. An hour from now, I want us all in conference in the tearoom!”

  * * *

  *Jem felt bad about stealing Ray’s journal. Very bad indeed.

  †Readers of Merinda’s previous adventures will recollect the term golden moment being applied to her more breathtakingly astute deductions.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Our first loyalty is to God. Then to the Force. Then to our brothers in arms. There is no stronger bond than men united in a common goal: for the good and peace of our post, the contentment of those under our charge, the upholding of the law that strengthens and binds us all.

  Benfield Citrone and Jonathan Arnasson, Guide to the Canadian Wilderness

  Where were you?” Jem asked the moment Merinda arrived at the Palmer House. “No one has seen you for hours.”

  “I was connecting the dots.” Merinda extracted her bowler hat and shook out her blonde curls. “Jasper, DeLuca! Good. Anyone seen Benny? No? Well, his loss. We’ll inform him later.”* She plopped into a chair and ordered a few pots of strong coffee and several pastries without regard to cost. “I went down to Hedgehog’s office at the wharf.”

  “By yourself?” Jasper said, scandalized, and then he looked to Ray. “Tell her how dangerous that is. Remind her how just yesterday an entire boat of explosives resulted in your losing hearing in your right ear.”

  “That’s very dangerous,” Ray said unconvincingly to appease Jasper. For she had his rapt attention the moment she mentioned Hedgehog’s office.

  “There’s a tie to Toronto of course. Spenser gets a cut of all of the explosives purchased. But that’s the least of our problems right now. Because someone is going to get an even bigger cut.” She took a deep breath. “You blow up a streetcar, and the already heightened police presence is more than enough to take care of the aftermath. You blow up a Coliseum, and you have the entire force appearing for duty. It will be chaos.”

  “What does this have to do with Hedgehog?”

  “Look at these orders.” Merinda spread the papers on the table in front of her.

  “Hedgehog doesn’t care if Ross blows up the entire city,” Jasper said. “All he wants is the black market money.”

  “Didn’t DeLuca’s sister say that Tony was primed for a score? I doubt that had anything to do with rattling a political rally.”

  “Hold on,” Ray interjected. “I never told you that Viola… ”

  “You left your coat in my hotel room after Benny patched you up. I went through the poc
kets and found the telegram.”

  Ray’s ears reddened. “Merinda! You had no right… ”

  “Shhh. This is not the time, Ray,” Jem chided.

  “David Ross thinks he is a phoenix, and he wants to make a bang. Literally,” said Merinda. “But after this he will need more money. Legal fees, if he’s caught. Or a quick getaway and enough to set up this anarchist sect of his somewhere else. He thinks he’s a martyr for his own cause, but I can’t see him going through with actual martyrdom. He keeps sinking his money into these explosives and having to pay out Hedgehog.” Merinda stopped, smiled, stretched. “But what if he could do something for Hedgehog that would also set him up for good?” Merinda paused. “There’s a Sherlock Holmes story I was just telling Jemima about. How Sherlock and Watson discover a ruse to lure Jabez Wilson from his pawnshop and into phony employment so criminals can dig a tunnel to a bank.” She reached into her pants pocket. “When at Ross’s place on our first day here, I noticed two copies of this newspaper. I couldn’t figure out why he kept it. It is from two weeks ago and it has nothing about the anarchists or Goldman or Roosevelt. Nothing that could possibly interest him. Until… ”

  She swiveled the crumpled paper toward Jasper, Ray, and Jem, smoothing it with her hand. “The Heritage Trust Bank grand opening.” She pointed to the article. “The bank isn’t even open yet. Won’t open until Thursday, a week after Roosevelt has left. Right now, though the bank has a beautiful exterior, the article says it is still under renovations. But according to the article, security has already started moving in some of the goods and money to be ready for the grand opening.”

  “A deserted bank.”

  “No one will care about a deserted bank when a bomb blows up the Coliseum and the president.”

  Jasper whistled. “That’s quite a lofty goal.”

  “Ross has nothing to lose. But he has spent the past several months ensuring that someone else would take the fall.”

  “How?”

  “Well, you would need some type of defining signature. Something you could plant at the scene.”

  Jasper’s hand went to his breast pocket. He extracted one of Jonathan’s Turk knots and held it up.

  Merinda nodded at the evidence. “Exactly. When he met Jonathan, he found a man who was flawlessly precise in everything. A Mountie, for heaven’s sake! Cracker jacks! Who better to know how to follow things to the letter while still taking exceptional care. Jonathan’s training was just what he needed. He has a way out of this.”

  “And a man like Hedgehog? You wave a dollar bill in front of his face and anything seems possible,” Ray surmised. “Of course he bought in.”

  “Ross is brilliant at convincing people to join his causes,” Merinda expanded. “He has this way about him. Especially susceptible people. I can imagine him painting a brilliant scenario. Saying he has found the biggest score of Hedgehog’s life. Telling him how to go about bribing a guard, staking out a joint. All things he has had to do before setting streetcars on fire.”

  “I confess,” Jasper said, rubbing his hands over his knees, “I am more eager to stop Ross and the imminent loss of Roosevelt’s life—not to mention the hundreds of bystanders—than I am to stop a robbery.”

  “I concur, Jasper, and that is why we are going to do both. The three of you”—she bopped her head at Jasper, Ray, and Jem—“are going to take care of Hedgehog and Tony and stop them from robbing the bank.”

  “And you?”

  “Benny and I are going to plant bombs around the Coliseum tonight.”

  “Merinda, you’re going to help this man blow people up? Assassinate Roosevelt?”

  Merinda shook her head. “No. We’ll get Jonathan to help. I’ll tell Benny tonight. Jonathan knows how to make it look like the wires are set for explosion at first glance. We’ll arrange it so it looks like some kind of decoy. Ross trusts Jonathan to handle the explosives. But he wants to be the one to detonate the bomb closest to Roosevelt. So, that one”—and here she stopped, either to cough or for dramatic effect, her audience was unsure—“has to be real. Or Ross will notice it in a second.”

  “So you’re playing with a real bomb.” Jasper shuddered.

  “Several real bombs,” Merinda said with a nod. “It will take some quick thinking and action, but Jonathan assures us he can handle it. We’ll let Ross think everything is going according to plan. If he gets suspicious, he’ll do something drastic. And he mentioned having a pistol with him to finish the job if anything goes wrong. So the last thing we need is him spooked and shooting at random.”

  “He is a man with a fixed idea, Merinda,” Jasper said. “There’s no reason or giving up in that kind of obsession.”

  “That’s his weakness. He can’t see beyond his idea of glory and his planned escape. But he’ll never get a chance to strike the match.”

  “This is ludicrous!” Jasper said. “How are you going to detain him?”

  “He thinks we’re on his side. Especially me. It’s blinding him to anything else. Benny is twice his size, and he’ll have a gun.”†

  “The place will be swarming with guards and police.”

  But even as Merinda was assuredly laying out the plan, Jem remembered a Wheaton quotation Merinda often skipped (for it was a far harder pill to swallow than the retired detective’s treatise on deductive reasoning): “Things rarely, if ever, go according to plan.”

  Ray, Jem, and Jasper arrived before Hedgehog. Jasper used his weight to shove the door of the lean-to open. Ray scratched a match on the sole of his shoe and lit a lantern.

  “She’s being preposterous,”‡ Jasper said. “She’s going to get herself killed.”

  “Have a little more faith,” Ray said. He lowered a crate from a stack and motioned for Jem to sit. Then he kicked one across the floor for Jasper and another for himself.

  “Stop wringing your hands, Jemima.”

  “I’m a little nervous,” Jem confessed.

  “Ray, Jemima, you know at this very moment Merinda and that Citrone fellow are planting bombs. Actual bombs around the circumference of the Coliseum.” He swallowed. “With the intent of killing a president!”

  “They’re saving him.” Ray waved a hand. “I trust Citrone. He seems a level-headed fellow. Knows his way around, and obviously this renegade cousin of his wants to make amends.”

  “You have to have faith in Merinda too, Jasper,” Jem said.

  “I have faith. I… ”

  “You have to tell her so. You’ll notice that Benny Citrone never doubts or questions her. He just goes along. He trusts her while taking care of her. Trusts that she can make her own decisions for her own safety and good. She needs that. Or she’ll never feel truly validated.”

  Ray’s throat was suddenly dry. He coughed a few times just as the door creaked open and Hedgehog appeared.

  “It was really quite good luck that I met you.” Hedgehog found himself a crate and sat, appraising Ray through the halo of light from his own lantern. “Then again, I have always had a certain knack for people who can be of real use to me. And there was something about the way you were able to take that first night in stride.” Hedgehog turned to Jasper and Jem. “Your friend here opened a crate, a dead carcass falls out, and he just keeps working. Doesn’t squeal for the police or faint or shake.”

  “Just one of my many stellar qualities,” Ray said sardonically.

  Hedgehog unfolded a large sheet of paper over his lap. It was as Merinda had surmised: a blueprint of the bank that he surely bribed from one of his many connections.

  Merinda’s crowbar was at the ready, but they found the door to the G entrance open as David Ross had promised in a telegram he’d sent earlier that day. En route Merinda had a chance to repeat her golden moment deductions to Benny, who listened intently. On one point they were in complete agreement: Jonathan would have to somehow make the explosives faulty.

  Once inside, they saw a patriotic splurge of red, white, and blue cascading from the high dome of a ceiling.
The building seemed to thrum with energy left over from the thrilling first day of the convention. Even without illumination, the dangling electric lights reflected a sheen of sparkle off the metal chairs and cement floor. Seat sections were marked by bold signs, and Benny and Merinda looked across to imagine the men Ross said he had pressed into service last minute stationed there with Jonathan’s faulty bombs.

  Above the main floor was a raised balcony level, jutting out and held by stout pillars. So many aisles, Merinda noticed, so many easy places to flit in and out. Her exploration moved upward to the crisscrossed beams and metal wiring, the half-moon windows snubbing out the full moonlight.

  Benny was close beside her. He took the place in stride, hands behind his back, shoulders erect. At this moment, Jemima might have said something along the lines of his cutting a dashing figure.

  David Ross was a man obsessed, running his fingers over the dark columns, proudly caressing them. A man whose mind held the circumference of a world imagined. Ross was intoxicated with his ideas and promises for the next day.

  It took Merinda a few moments to draw his attention back to the task at hand. She rapped her walking stick on the tile. “David!”

  “It’s glorious, isn’t it?” He reached into his breast pocket and handed them each a reporter’s pass. “There are two seats at the front reserved for you. You’ll be directly in my line of sight.” He turned to Merinda, and his eyes sheened. “I want you there at the last moment. You who have done so much to restore my confidence in our plan. A woman willing to cross into a new life. You’re invaluable to me!”

  Merinda almost felt sorry for Ross. As Benny measured the length between their marked spots and the door and yelled a few things about compensating for the obvious law enforcement, she stared at David’s profile. His beliefs were misguided. His idea of action more so. But he had confidence in her, and she couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty at the thought that she was going to betray him.