A Ring of Truth

by Michelle Cox

  “Oh, him? He’s walking into a trap right now. Don’t worry about him. No more knight in shining armor, though, so you can forget about that.”

  “Jack, listen to me,” she said, feeling a desperate urge now to help Clive, wherever he was, despite the danger she herself was obviously in. “You . . . you don’t have to do this,” she begged, trying to bargain. “I . . . I can pay you. Whatever you want.”

  “You don’t have any money,” he scoffed. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “Then . . . take my ring!” she offered desperately, holding up the back of her hand to show him. “It must be worth thousands and thousands,” she said eagerly.

  He paused as if considering it for one fleeting moment before he turned away and looked out the window again. “Not worth it. Not worth it to have the mob on me for the rest of my life, which would turn out to be a very short one before they bumped me off. No chance, sister.”

  Helen moaned then, and Henrietta instinctively stood to go to her, but Jack pushed her back. “I ain’t gonna tell you again; stay put! Once more and I’ll have to tie you.”

  “But what does Helen possibly have to do with this? Why torture her this way?” Henrietta exclaimed, looking over at Helen. She was still unconscious, it seemed, which was probably a good thing, but Henrietta worried how long she could remain that way.

  “She doesn’t have anythin’ to do with it. She was just in the way,” he said with a shrug.

  “What do you mean?” Henrietta asked, shocked.

  “What I mean is that I needed this cottage for the rendezvous. It has a perfect view of the lake so that I can see the signal when they approach.”

  “I’m to be taken by . . . by boat?” Henrietta asked incredulously.

  “Why else would I be standin’ here? I’m waiting for the signal. It should be any time now.”

  Henrietta’s stomach knotted in despair. “Why . . . why not just take one of the cars?” she asked.

  “Too easy to trace, and too hard to get around McCreanney. I saw that right away. He’s too erratic of a sleeper, and then there’s the idiot Virgil to contend with.”

  “But . . . why not wait at the boathouse, why tie up Helen? With the flu, she could die, you know! Do you really want that on your head?”

  Jack laughed a deep, guttural laugh. “You don’t appear to be listenin’, doll. You think I haven’t killed anyone before? I just told you I’ve killed loads of women. And, anyway, she doesn’t have the flu, the old bag. I just said that to get you down here.”

  Henrietta’s throat constricted at the mention of the women apparently murdered at his hand. She was finding it hard to make sense of everything he was saying.

  “Besides,” he went on now, “the boathouse is too close to the house and the garage. Too risky. I couldn’t take the chance that you might scream. But I see you’re not the screamin’ type. You might be, though, when Neptune gets his hands on you. Lots of women scream then,” he added, grinning at her.

  He looked out the window again, his agitation clearly growing. “Come on!” he said to whomever he was waiting for. “Where are they? It’s getting fucking late!” he muttered to himself.

  “You took Helen’s ring, didn’t you?” Henrietta said, still trying to piece it all together and to keep him talking. She was hoping to buy time, but to what end?

  “Yeah, I did, so what?”

  “So . . . what does it have to do with all of this?”

  “Nothing! Don’t you get it? This isn’t a Sherlock Holmes novel. It’s not complicated! I was snoopin’ around the cottage, scoping out the place, when I saw the ring on the ground just outside her window,” he said, nodding toward the kitchen. “Picked it up and took it into town to sell it. Thought I could make a bit of extra dough. How did I know the dope, Virgil, would wander in and buy it?”

  “But . . . why did you go along with me, making me think it was some sort of big mystery?”

  “To get you to trust me. Worked, didn’t it?” he grinned, and she felt sick again as she remembered dancing with him.

  “So it was you all this time lurking around the cottage, not Virgil . . .”

  “That’s right, doll. You’re catchin’ on, now. The ole bat’s too blind to tell us apart. It was easy then to make everyone suspect him,” he laughed.

  Henrietta felt nauseous as she remembered Helen’s description of the lurking man—tall, blond. How had they not realized it was Fletcher, not Virgil? She winced as another thought occurred to her. “How . . . how did you know that I’d be here—in Winnetka—so far from the city?”

  “I told you. Neptune’s reach goes far,” he said with a haunted look. “He has eyes everywhere. Knows everything about everyone. He put me on the case right away. I even had to steal some stuff, had to make it look like the old chauffer did it so he’d get fired. Then I could slip in.” He looked proud as he said it, eager to tell the tale now. “No one thought you’d be up here so soon, though. Neptune was hopin’ to pick you up while you were still in the city. But when he heard you were already up here, he decided not to take any chances and wanted the trap sprung sooner than later. He’s arrangin’ things at his end, and I’m arrangin’ this side. It made it easier that she’s a daft old bird,” he said, inclining his head toward Helen.

  “So there was really nothing to the whole missing-ring story besides a cheap robbery on your part?” Henrietta felt her anger rising. “What about the scratches?”

  Jack laughed and pulled out a long stiletto knife. “Yeah,” he grinned, almost maniacally. “I carved up the sill. Part of the fun, ain’t it? Scaring the old bat to death. Didn’t think of it till I heard Edna telling ole Virg about how Helen was afraid, thought that someone stole her two-bit ring. It was just a bit of fun, waiting for the signal.”

  “You’re deranged!” Henrietta sputtered.

  Jack looked like he was about to respond when something seemed to catch his eye. “Fuck! There it is!” he said, taking a flashlight out of his coat pocket and flashing it three times in rapid succession out the window. “Come on! Get up!” he said, roughly grabbing her by the arm and pulling her.

  “No! I’m not going with you!” Henrietta said vehemently, trying to pull away from him.

  Jack responded by lurching forward and grabbing her wrists before she could even think what to do. Dropping the knife on the bed, he deftly took some rope out of his pocket with one hand and began winding it around her wrists. “Oh, yes you are,” he hissed.

  Henrietta debated screaming, but she feared being gagged, so she kept silent, instead pleading with him again. “Please, Jack. Don’t! Don’t do this! Clive can protect you from Neptune . . . he’ll pay you! I know he will! How much do you want?”

  Jack pushed her in front of him as if she hadn’t said anything. “No one can protect anyone from Neptune,” he said grimly as she stumbled outside into the night air. Knife back in hand, he prodded her toward the dock, where a boat, even now, was sliding up.

  Chapter 17

  Clive raced down Highway 41 toward the city. He hoped he could get there before Moretti could change his mind. Moretti was the ringleader of the gang he was currently after for the suspected murder of one Elizabeth Harding, whom they had found a few months ago lying in an alley off Canal Street. At the time, Clive’s main case had been tracking Neptune to the Marlowe with Henrietta, and he had suspected at first that the two cases might have been connected, that perhaps Elizabeth Harding was one of Neptune’s cast-off girls. But as time had gone on, any connection he had originally tried to forge hadn’t held up, as new evidence had appeared, implicating Moretti’s gang instead. There seemed to be a pattern emerging to the new crimes: always a young girl, usually with no friends or family, not brutally assaulted as was Neptune’s predilection, but always killed with some sort of stiletto type of knife in the neck just behind the ear. Moretti’s gang was known for carrying stiletto knives, and Elizabeth Harding had been found stabbed in just such a way.

  But why? Moretti’s turf wa
s usually the track, gambling, and booze money; normally, from what Clive knew, Moretti didn’t like to dirty his hands with unprovoked murder. They had suspected his gang of various knock-offs over the years but had never had enough evidence to convict. But this was something different, this new pattern of stabbing young girls. It looked like Moretti’s work, but it didn’t add up. Could it be a frame-up? Clive wondered. Someone trying to snuff out Moretti, perhaps? A grab for power now that Capone was behind bars? When Capone had gone down, everyone mistakenly believed that crime in the city would finally drop off, but in reality, it had actually increased as rival gangs like Moretti’s or Neptune’s or even Capone’s lieutenants—the Outfit, they were called—wrestled to fill the power vacuum. Could it be Neptune trying to get rid of Moretti? Normally they stuck to their own turfs, but maybe something had changed.

  Clive gripped the steering wheel tighter, cursing the fact that his concentration had suffered lately with the distraction of Henrietta and the problems at Highbury. He couldn’t help but remember Neptune’s warning as Clive was arresting him a couple of months ago that he would get the mob to come after him.

  At the time, Clive hadn’t been afraid of the threat per se, but it definitely now left him with a distinct feeling of unease. He wanted this case to be solved, for more reasons than one, especially if he really were to resign as he had told his father he would. Perhaps this should be his last case, he pondered, but it was a difficult one to crack.

  Moretti and his gang had eluded them for months, constantly leading them on wild-goose chases so that Clive had begun to suspect an informant. He had tried to get his own man inside the gang, but he hadn’t been successful, having stopped in this particular line of pursuit when his last man, one Frank Kuhle, had turned up in the river. The chief had been furious, of course, that there had been yet another death associated with this case and blamed Clive, which Clive accepted willingly and with much more regret, almost angst, then would normally be expected. He hadn’t given the man enough cover, nor had he given him enough information, he saw, though in truth, he hadn’t possessed much more than what he had related. Still, he had wanted to keep some information close to his chest, and maybe that had cost Kuhle his life. It was always a fine line between giving away too much information to the plant or not enough, but Clive had taken Kuhle’s death hard for some reason and fully blamed himself.

  And now, now that he was miles away from the city, a mysterious call had come through from Moretti himself, apparently, which Clancy had passed along to him. He had just gotten to sleep, having stayed up awhile reading to take his mind off Henrietta and the fierce debate inside his head as to whether or not he should go back to her room, when Billings had faintly knocked at his bedroom door, saying that there was an urgent telephone call for him from the Chicago police. A very sleepy Billings, dressed in his pajamas and robe, had dutifully led him to the library and had then taken himself back off to bed.

  “Inspector Howard speaking,” Clive had said wearily, standing there in his own robe and slippers, one hand in his pocket of his dressing gown. It was Clancy, relaying Moretti’s message that he was willing to talk, for a price. Clive usually never gave in to such demands for payment, but after listening to Clancy’s information, he had instructed Clancy to play along, taking down the location of the rendezvous point on a piece of stray paper on his father’s desk, and telling Clancy to meet him there with plenty of backup discreetly on hand. A nervous-sounding Clancy had gotten off the telephone, then, and Clive had hastily dressed and dashed down to the stables, where, by a stroke of luck, Fletcher had been unwittingly wandering about, doing God only knew what. Whatever the reason, he had luckily been on hand to quickly fetch the keys for the Alfa Romeo for him without Clive having to go through the trouble of waking someone up or having to search for the keys himself in the little cabinet McCreanney had erected in the garage to house them all. He had also told Fletcher, as he spun off down the driveway, to tell Henrietta or his parents in the morning that he had had to leave on police business.

  “Damn it!” he said out loud now, pounding his fist on the steering wheel as he sped along. Why had Moretti decided to make a move now, when he was so far away? It was almost as if they knew of his movements . . .

  There was something he was missing, he thought, as he passed the few lone cars on the highway. He ran through the conversation with Clancy one more time in his mind. Why had Moretti wanted to meet downtown at the Water Tower? That seemed a strange place for a rendezvous, too public. But maybe that’s what they were banking on. Clancy had sounded strange, though. Not his usual self. Perhaps he had been sleeping on the job; God knows he had caught him often enough. No, thought Clive, it was something else . . . He seemed flustered, almost cryptic, but why? Had the chief been standing there? Certainly not, Clive reasoned. At almost two in the morning, the chief would be nowhere but in bed beside his wife unless there was some sort of city emergency. Clancy had said something strange, though, when Clive had asked him if he were all right. Something like “Oh, yes, boss, everything’s tiptop here; you know, just like when all the planets are in line . . .” his voice had trailed off then, and Clive had heard a noise as if Clancy had dropped the receiver. He had gotten back on the line, however, and had urged Clive to hurry and that he would have the men ready with arrows fletched. Another noise and what sounded like a grunt before Clancy had said a hasty goodbye and then hung up. Clive sighed. He hated to demote a man, as it was lousy for the overall morale amongst the men, but what could he do? Clancy was horribly incompetent. He had proved that over and over again. If he didn’t do something about him, Clive realized, he himself would be the one to look weak. And yet, if he were resigning soon, anyway, maybe he should leave it to his replacement to sort out.

  He glanced impatiently at his pocket watch, hoping he would make it in time. He was still only about halfway there. Having Fletcher handy had at least shaved off a few minutes, he thought gratefully, and his mind drifted, then, to Fletcher himself. Though he tried to like the man as if to prove something to Henrietta, there was something sneaky there, something he didn’t like. For instance, what had he been doing wandering around the stables at this time of night, anyway? Originally, he had chastised himself for his quick judgment of Fletcher, thinking that it had merely been childish jealousy on his part in regard to Henrietta, but he couldn’t shake the feeling as time went on that there was something else to it. Something in the back of his mind that he was forgetting . . . but what? He felt he knew Fletcher in some way, but how? He tried to shift his attention back to Moretti, but it kept wandering instead to Fletcher . . .

  As he drove alone in the night, farther and farther from Highbury and closer and closer to the city, the pieces to the puzzle continued to swirl incomprehensibly around in his mind until, finally, a chilling revelation suddenly came to him. The pieces began to fall quickly downward, then, to form themselves into an obvious picture, which Clive finally recognized, to his horror, before the last piece even fell into place. He knew now.

  How could he have been so stupid? he despaired, pulling the car over to the side of the road, a thin sheen of sweat covering his body as he did so. Clancy had been trying to give him a message in his own idiotic, cryptic way, but, Clive had to admit, it had worked. It was obvious now what he had meant! The planets are in line was of course a reference to Neptune. Neptune was somehow involved, and that could only mean that Henrietta was in extreme danger now that he was miles away from her. Not only that, but the arrows fletched was a reference, of course, to Fletcher. He knew it! he admonished himself, banging on the steering wheel again.

  Madly, he spun the car around, turning it back northward, as he tried to desperately think of what to do. He had passed a lonely roadside bar not too far back, he remembered. He would head back there and use their telephone to call the house and alert them, make sure Henrietta was safe.

  As he pushed the car as fast as it would possibly go, causing it to vibrate horribly, he tried
to place Fletcher in all this. After racking his brain over and over, it finally came to him that he had heard the name when he was just a junior officer sitting in on an interrogation of Neptune, the false Neptune, as it had turned out. They had picked him up on suspicion of running a prostitution ring, but they had eventually had to let him go as they had not had enough evidence to hold him. Clive had been standing guard when Neptune was allowed his telephone call. It was all coming back to him now. He had heard Neptune tell whomever he was speaking to to send Fletcher to pick him up . . . So that was it! Fletcher was one of Neptune’s pawns, and he had left Henrietta unprotected with him! he realized with a deep groan.

  He felt a mad rush of desperate anger as he pulled up to the Three Gables Inn and dashed inside, flashing his badge and demanding to use the telephone. The bartender, a slight, balding man with wisps of hair trailing across his bald spot, hurriedly set the big black telephone on top of the bar for him, his few tired, inebriated customers curiously watching the show unfold through squinted eyes on what had been, up until now, an uneventful evening.

  Clive waited impatiently for the number to go through, but instead of hearing a ringing on the other side, the operator came back on and informed him that there was trouble on that line and did he wish to make a different call?

  “What do you mean trouble on the line?” Clive almost shouted.

  “Just what I said, sir. It appears that line has been temporarily disconnected. We can send a repairman out tomorrow, but there’s nothing more to be done tonight yet. Do you wish me to connect you with another number?” she asked with more than a slight hint of annoyance.

  Clive hung up then and rubbed his forehead with his hand in agony. Fletcher had obviously cut the line. A burning-hot fear filled his heart as he realized he could never make it back to Highbury in time to save Henrietta from whatever Fletcher’s instructions were. He had already been gone too long.