A Love For All Time

by Chloe Douglas

  “What business do you have on Larimer?” Detective Giovanni inquired, his gaze narrowing.

  “That is where the time portal is located.”

  “Are you aware of the fact that there was a murder committed today on Larimer just before dawn?”

  Good heavens! She had no idea.

  Lettitia was about to admit as much when Detective Giovanni said, “Did you see anything?”

  Realizing that she’d just been handed a trump card, Lettitia affected what she hoped was a suitably mysterious air. “I saw a great many things whilst on Larimer Street. Moreover, if you take me there, all will be revealed.” Unable to hold his gaze, Lettitia nervously glanced away. Subterfuge did not come easily to her.

  Reclaiming her elbow, Detective Giovanni continued down the street. When they finally reached their destination, he removed a ring of curiously fashioned keys from his trouser pocket. Extracting one of them, he inserted it into the door of a red horseless carriage.

  “Hop in.”

  She eyed the contraption with no small amount of trepidation. “I am perplexed as to how one ascends such a conveyance.”

  Shaking his head, Detective Giovanni exhaled a weary breath; the only warning he gave before he placed his hands around her waist and unceremoniously deposited her inside the carriage. He then strapped her into the chair, his arm brushing against her bosom as he did so.

  Seating himself beside her, he maneuvered the large conveyance onto the street. To Lettitia’s consternation, the vehicle quickly picked up speed.

  A few minutes later, Detective Giovanni brought the conveyance to a sudden halt. “Larimer Street,” he boomed like a conductor on the South London line. “I take it this is the right stop, Your Ladyship?”

  Lettitia perused the deserted street, recognizing the entrance to the alley from earlier in the day. “It is. And I am not a peer of the realm.”

  “No kidding.”

  Although the detective’s sarcasm was maddening, she held her tongue. Now was not the time to alienate him. She’d come too far. She had no choice but to see this intrigue through to its conclusion.

  Alighting from the wheeled behemoth, the detective hastened to her side of the conveyance. His movements were brusque and impersonal, and he assisted her to the pavement.

  “If you will follow me,” Lettitia said, stepping toward the alleyway.

  Detective Giovanni cuffed a hand around her upper arm. “Just where the hell do you think you’re going? The murder was committed on the other side of the street.”

  Glancing beyond his shoulder to the other side of the street, Lettitia noticed that there were long yellow streamers blowing in the evening wind like tails on a kite.

  “But I was standing in the alley when… when the heinous crime was committed.”

  Wearing a circumspect expression, Detective Giovanni scrutinized the narrow passageway. Traffic along the thoroughfare was light, not a pedestrian in sight. Behind them, an abandoned building stood sentry, most of its windows boarded over. By day, Larimer Street had the ramshackle air of a neighborhood that had seen better times. Now, with night having fallen, a hidden villainy seemed to emanate from every shadowy corner.

  “Okay, lead the way,” he said at last, giving her permission to proceed.

  As they walked down the dimly lit alley, Detective Giovanni kept a firm grasp on her elbow, whether out of courtesy or to keep her manacled to his side, she knew not.

  Espying a stucco garden wall, Lettitia came to a standstill. Atop the crumbling edifice, someone had long ago placed a wrought-iron fixture, the metal having been worked into the shape of a star atop a spherical moon. Detective Giovanni paid no attention to the fixture. Instead he peered up and down the alleyway.

  “Unless the perp ran down this alley, you couldn’t have seen anything. This is too far away from the crime scene. Are you sure this is the right place?”

  “Quite certain,” Lettitia replied as she reached inside her reticule and removed the device which had been entrusted to her by Madame Mazursky. Opening the ornately incised silver disk, she fumbled with the settings.

  A beam of white light burst forth from the disk, making a luminous connection with the wrought-iron fixture.

  “What the hell is that?” Detective Giovanni snarled.

  Rather than answer the question put to her, Lettitia said, “Prepare yourself, sir.”

  “For what?”

  The light emanating from the disk intensified in its brilliance.

  “To unlock the mystery of Time,” she replied, bracing herself for the implosion.

  “You gotta be fucking kidding me!”

  Chapter 2

  “Shit!” Mick bellowed at the top of his lungs, nearly blinded by the swirling beams of brilliant light that encompassed the two of them in a whirling vortex of energy.

  One instant he’d been standing in the alley off Larimer Street; the next he was being sucked through some sort of illuminated vacuum. All around him, Mick saw blurry images of people whizzing past at a dizzying speed. Who they were, and what they were doing in this supersonic funnel, he had no idea.

  Moments later, as the bright light faded, Mick struggled to catch his breath. Grateful that he was once again standing on solid ground, he slowly turned full circle. He felt like he’d just cannonballed through a particle accelerator at the speed of sound. Or even faster if such a thing was possible.

  Lettitia, still holding the strange disk in her hand, warily took his measure. “I trust you made the journey without incident?”

  “Freakin’ unbelievable,” he muttered in a stunned whisper. “Where in the world am I?”

  “You, sir, are in London.” She inclined her head in a queenly nod. “I bid you welcome.”

  Surprised that it was daylight where before it had been early evening, Mick peered heavenward. Thick streams of black smoke shadowed the sky, the dark billows emanating from innumerable chimneys and smokestacks. “Welcome to Hell is more like it,” he said in a husky voice.

  Suddenly hearing a loud clamor, Mick turned his head toward the nearby street. The straw-covered lane teemed with horse-drawn wagons, carriages, carts, and buggies. Scores of pedestrians dodged the wheeled onslaught, more than a few offering up a choice curse as they nimbly crossed the cobbled thoroughfare.

  As he eyeballed his squalid surroundings, Mick quickly deduced two things: he wasn’t in Kansas; and he sure as hell wasn’t in Oz.

  A bow-legged man wearing a pair of leather chaps strolled past. Across the top of his shoulders, he balanced a long stick from which dangled four dead rabbits. Mick grabbed him by the upper arm, stopping him in his tracks.

  “Am I really in London?” he asked, disinclined to believe anything Lettitia told him.

  “Piss off, you gin-sodden bugger!”

  Since Mick could barely understand the thick Cockney accent, he figured he had his answer.

  Still holding onto the other man’s arm, he asked the next logical question. “What year is this?”

  The man shrugged free of his grasp. “As if you don’t know it to be the year of the three eights,” he hissed before continuing on his way.

  Stupefied, Mick turned toward Lettitia. “ ‘The year of the three eights. What does that mean?”

  “It means that you are in London, this being the year 1888,” she calmly informed him as she stuffed the silver disk into her beaded purse.

  “Well, send me back to Brooklyn circa 2013. Now.”

  Rather than comply, his companion straightened her shoulders. In the short span of time since he’d made Lettitia Merryweather’s acquaintance, Mick had seen a multitude of emotions in her smoky gray orbs. Trepidation, anger, obstinacy. But this was the first time that her eyes glimmered with a conniving intent.

  “I will return you to your own time and place after you locate my sister.”

  Mick let that soak in a moment… before he ripped into her.

  “If you think I’m gonna let you pull me around by the short-and-curlies,
think again!” Snatching the handbag off of her wrist, Mick ignored her indignant outcry as he broke the Eleventh Commandant–Thou shall not rummage through a woman’s purse. When he found what he was looking for, he flung the beaded bag back in her direction.

  “Okay, tell me how it works,” he ordered as he opened the disk that she’d used to activate the time portal. One side housed some kind of old-fashioned watch rimmed with Roman numerals and astrological symbols. At least that’s what Mick thought they were. The other side contained what looked like a compass needle submerged in an aqua-blue liquid. On both sides of the device there were small nubbins similar to those on a wristwatch.

  Mick thumbed one of them.

  “Don’t touch that!” Lettitia screeched, trying to snatch the device out of his hand.

  He held it aloft, out of her reach. “Why? What’ll happen?”

  “There’s no telling what calamity will befall us if you reset the device. Those settings have to do with time and place.” Clearly worried, she peered over her shoulder.

  Mick craned his head to see what had garnered her attention. In a niche set within a brick wall, he saw an iron ornament exactly like the one in the alley on Larimer Street.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “One activates the other.”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “Not until you ascertain my sister’s whereabouts.”

  “Shit. That’s extortion. You can’t—”

  “Yes, I can,” she said over him, her expression resolute. “And so that we are clear on the matter, I will do anything, anything, to find my sister. The time portal can only be accessed during the seven days of the lunar cycle when the moon is at its fullest. Which means that you have seven days to find Emmaline.”

  Physically shaking—he was that pissed—Mick relinquished custody of the time device. Until he could figure out a way to escape, he had no choice but to surrender the field.

  “Earlier, you kept mentioning some madam person.”

  “Madame Mazursky is a well-known spiritualist. In fact, it was she who gave me the time device and sent me to the future in order to secure your assistance.”

  Christ. What do they think I am, a damned bloodhound?

  Mick was stumped as to why this mysterious Madame Mazursky would send Lettitia one hundred and twenty-five years into the future to find him. He was just a New York City cop, not freakin’ Sherlock Holmes. Determined to find out what the hell was going on, he made a mental note to have a little chat with Madame Mazursky. Sooner rather than later.

  What he needed now was a stiff drink.

  “Come on.” He cuffed a hand around Lettitia’s elbow. When she balked, he tightened his grip, not in the mood to play nice. She’d tricked him into taking her to Larimer Street, and now that she’d transported him to Merry Olde England, she was holding him prisoner until he found her missing sister.

  “I demand to know where you are taking me,” Lettitia huffed in an imperious tone of voice.

  His fury still at a fast boil, Mick stopped in mid-stride and pivoted toward her. “I’ve had about all I can take of your demands,” he growled. Invading her personal space, he pressed his chest against her well-endowed bosom, a move that instantly caused a life-affirming swell in his boxer shorts. “It just so happens that I’m in need of a stiff drink and that bar across the street has my name written all over it.” Given the large tankard of frothy ale painted on the sign over the door, there was no mistaking the establishment for being anything other than a drinking hole.

  Lettitia turned her head, her gaze narrowing as she peered at The Ten Bells. “Sir, do you realize what time it is? Why, it is only–” she glanced at the small silver watch pinned to the front of her jacket– “eight o’clock in the morning.”

  Mick consulted his wristwatch. “Maybe in your neck of the woods, but according to my watch, it’s seven o’clock in the evening. Which means that happy hour is still under way.”

  “Under no circumstance will I accompany you into that den of sinful inequity!”

  “Fine by me. In fact, it’s probably better that you not accompany me.”

  “Surely you do not mean to leave me standing in the street while you—”

  “Is this bloke givin’ you trouble, miss?”

  At hearing the unwelcome intruder, Mick glanced behind him. Standing at the ready was a big, burly, blue-suited constable slapping his nightstick against the palm of his hand. Mick instantly released his hold on Lettitia, taking the unasked measure of stepping away from her.

  “This gentleman is… is an acquaintance of mine,” Lettitia sputtered, her chest heaving.

  The constable jutted his chin at Mick’s ripped coat sleeve. “ ’e’s dressed a might queerly to be associating with a lady such as yourself.”

  “He’s from America,” Lettitia said, as if that explained everything.

  Evidently it did, and the constable bid them both ‘G’day’ before continuing on his beat.

  “Really, Detective Giovanni. You must learn to control your temper. As well as your repugnant vices,” she added, pointedly glancing at The Ten Bells.

  Ignoring her, Mick crossed the cobbled street, maneuvering around a large, two-wheeled buggy as he made a beeline for the bar.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lettitia primly raise her skirts several inches as she crossed the busy thoroughfare.

  “Need I remind you, Detective Giovanni, that a gentleman always assists a lady across a street? To not do so demonstrates a lack of—”

  “Can it, Lettitia. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, you’re not one of my favorite people right now.”

  “Sir, you cannot mean to go in there!”

  “Just watch me.” With exaggerated politeness, he held the tavern door wide open. “Coming, dear?”

  Huffing indignantly, Lettitia marched across the threshold of The Ten Bells in a swish of black taffeta and frilly white petticoats. Following in her wake, Mick took the lay of the land: there was an old-fashioned, mahogany bar; an aproned barkeep cleaning glasses with a hand towel; and a buxom woman serving beer to a table full of early morning revelers.

  Yeah, this will do.

  As he seated himself at a corner table, Mick hollered at the barkeep, “Give me a bottle of your best Irish whiskey.”

  “And just how do you expect to pay for your demon spirits?” Lettitia harped, looking down her nose at him. “Your money is worthless here.”

  “But yours isn’t.”

  “I will not pay for your evil vices!”

  Tuning out the temperance harangue, he motioned to the empty chair opposite his. “Have a seat.”

  Not budging so much as an inch, Lettitia stared at him, an obstinate gleam in her eyes.

  Uh-uh, sweetheart. Nothing doing. Mick folded his arms over his chest, refusing to lunge to his feet to assist her.

  “Must you be so uncouth?”

  “Yeah, I must. It’s encoded in my caveman DNA.”

  “Sir, your remark is nonsensical.”

  Forced to seat herself at the table, Lettitia sat with her back ramrod straight, her spine a good six inches from the back of the chair. When the barkeep placed a bottle and two empty glasses on the table, she glared at the man as though he were the devil’s minion.

  Mick reached for the whiskey bottle. Pulling the cork, he took an appreciative sniff before pouring a healthy measure of amber-colored booze into his glass. “Hey, Lettitia, lighten up, will ya?”

  “Henceforth, I would prefer that you address me as Miss Merryweather,” she intoned, stone-faced.

  “Care for a snort?” He held the bottle aloft, intentionally egging her on.

  On cue, Lettitia exclaimed, “Most certainly not!”

  “Suit yourself.” Mick drained the glass in two swallows.

  “It is obvious that you are no stranger to strong drink.”

  “Must be the Irish in me,” he deadpanned, refilling his glass. Before the Ki
ngsborough Massacre, he used to have an occasional beer on the weekends. Now he polished off nearly a fifth of Jameson’s a week. It was the only thing that put him to sleep. Even with the nightcap, he only averaged four to five hours of sleep on any given night.

  “Okay, let’s get down to business.” Mick pulled a notebook and ink pen out of his jacket pocket. “Tell me about your sister.”

  Judging by the way her gray eyes opened wide, Lettitia was obviously surprised by the request.

  “What? Did you think I was gonna drink myself under the table? The sooner I find her, the sooner I can go home.”

  “What exactly do you wish to know about Emmaline?” Lettitia countered in a circumspect tone of voice.

  “For starters, when did you see her last?”

  “Tuesday, the seventh of August. We met for tea.”

  “At what time?”

  “As I told you already, it was at tea time. That being four o’clock in the afternoon,” she clarified when he irritably pointed to his watch crystal.

  Mick jotted down the date and time. “Did the two of you routinely have afternoon tea?” he asked, glancing up from his notepad.

  “We met only on the days that I volunteered at St. Ursula’s Hospital.”

  “Why did you only see your sister on the days that you volunteered at the hospital?”

  Acting like a guilty perp, she dropped her gaze to the table. “I will not divulge the intimate details of my sister’s life. To do so would be unseemly.”

  “Hey, if you want me to find your sister, you better start divulging.”

  Lettitia’s head instantly snapped upward. Wordlessly, she glared him, a picture that was worth a thousand words, and not a civil one among ’em.

  “And stop throwing daggers my way, will ya? Seeing as how I’m doing you a huge favor. Any other woman would be kissing up to me right about now.”

  Splaying a hand over throat, Lettitia recoiled. “How dare you suggest that I—”

  “I wasn’t,” he interjected. Mick left it at that, not in the mood to give a lesson in twenty-first century slang. “Now how about answering my question?”