Petticoat Detective

by Margaret Brownley

  Someone touched her arm, and she jumped. It was the beggar who’d tried to gain her attention a time or two before. Recoiling at his unpleasant odor, she pulled away and walked past him. Several feet away, she stopped and turned, shocked by the realization that she had treated him much like the little boy’s mother had treated her. Shunned him, more like it, as the town had shunned her.

  This time she looked him square in the eyes.

  His face was weathered, not by years, for he was still relatively young, perhaps in his late thirties, but by sadness. The hair framing his gaunt face fell to his shoulders in tangled strands. How many times had she passed him without noticing that he was a veteran of that awful war? How many times had she failed to see the man inside the weary shell?

  Even a person trained to be a private eye didn’t always see what was right in front, clear as day. What else did she not see? God, what else?

  Clutching the flowers in the circle of her arm, she pulled a banknote out of her purse. She held it outward as she walked toward him. He took it from her, his fingers curling around her offering like a man grabbing a lifeline.

  “God bless you, ma’am,” he said, and even his voice sounded old.

  She smiled. “You don’t know how much I needed to hear that.” Now more than ever she needed God’s blessings.

  “I know,” he said, and he gave her a gap-toothed smile. “I’ve been watching you, and I know.”

  Surprised that he knew that about her—and maybe even a little ashamed that a beggar had given her the respect she’d failed to give him, she thanked him and hurried away.

  The church cemetery was located at the edge of town. At times, Miss Lillian’s Parlor House seemed stifling, and Amy was happy to escape, if only for a short while.

  She reached the church and followed a gravel path to the cemetery in back, entering through the ornate wrought iron gate. Mentally, she ran through the remaining names on her list. She’d hoped to have something tangible to write in her report to headquarters by now, but so far she had more questions than answers.

  She was so deep in thought that she failed to notice the woman hunched over a grave until she almost stumbled over her.

  The woman looked up, and Amy’s heart sank. It was the churchwoman, Mrs. Givings.

  “Forgive me.” Not only had she almost caused the woman physical harm, she had also interrupted a private moment, made obvious by the woman’s red eyes.

  Mrs. Givings struggled to her feet and pushed her spectacles up her nose. “That’s quite all right.”

  Amy lowered her gaze to the inscription engraved on the tombstone.

  “My daughter,” Mrs. Givings explained. “Smallpox.”

  Amy’s breath caught in her lungs. The little girl was only six years old when she died. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yes, so am I,” Mrs. Givings replied.

  Amy’s greatest fear was finding Cissy’s name on a grave somewhere. “How … how do you live with losing a daughter?” It was hard enough living with the loss of a sister.

  The question seemed to surprise the woman. Did she not think a harlot capable of feelings? Capable of compassion?

  “It’s not like I have a choice.”

  “I know, but it must be … difficult.”

  Mrs. Givings dabbed at her eye with a handkerchief. “Only when I focus on the loss of my daughter. It doesn’t hurt so much when I think about the glory of God’s love and grace.”

  Amy felt a surge of guilt. Not only had her sister’s disappearance made her question God at times, but her job required her to make snap judgments about people, too, and she had judged Mrs. Givings a bit harsher than most. Today she realized her mistake. The woman wasn’t the annoying Bible thumper she’d originally thought. She was simply a grieving mother holding on to God with both hands.

  “You lost someone, too,” Mrs. Givings said. It was a statement, not a question.

  “Someone close. A family member.”

  Such an observation wasn’t all that surprising. Sometimes Amy sensed loss in others, and had she bothered to look, she might have spotted it in Mrs. Givings. She often wondered if grief-stricken people sent out covert messages that could only be received by those going through similar losses.

  “My sister.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  They stared down at the little grave, a “fallen” woman and a “pillar of society” standing side by side, bonded by grief and loss.

  Amy leaned over and laid the flowers in front of the gravestone.

  Mrs. Givings looked surprised. “That’s very kind of you, but I’m sure that you meant them for your friend.”

  “That’s all right. I’m sure my … friend would understand.”

  Someone called from a distance. It was one of the other churchwomen waving from afar. It looked like Mrs. Compton. Mrs. Givings waved back.

  “I have to go. It’s almost time for the church quilting bee.” Sounding vaguely apologetic, she hesitated as if wanting to say more. Instead, she gave her daughter’s grave one last glance before hurrying away.

  Amy watched until the two women vanished through the back door. The church with its tall steeple and stained glass windows seemed to beckon, and she was tempted to answer the call. She wouldn’t, of course. Couldn’t. Not dressed the way she was.

  Never had she felt like such an outsider. The social barrier that separated her from Mrs. Givings had lifted, but only for a moment. Now it was firmly back in place, making even the church off-limits.

  As a tomboy growing up, she’d always felt different. She would much rather chase her brothers than play with dolls or learn domestic skills. The feeling of isolation grew worse through her teens. While her friends were down by the swimming hole or enjoying wild carriage rides, she was at the sheriff’s office inquiring about her sister.

  By the time she was twenty, most of her friends were already married, and some even had children. She was clearly regarded as unusual, if not altogether strange. But never had she felt like such an outsider as she did at that moment. Never had she felt so far away from God.

  Though it was only a little after the noon hour by the time she returned to the parlor house, already two horses were tied up in front. Amy recognized the brown gelding as belonging to Mr. Tully, a married man. Disgust turned her stomach, and she felt nauseous. People accused prostitutes of having no moral integrity, but what about the men who sought their services? Why weren’t they held to the same standards? After living here she wondered if she could ever again trust a man—any man—even Tom Colton.

  Amy had hardly reached for the bell when the door flew open.

  “You’re back at last,” Miss Lillian exclaimed. “Come quickly.” She motioned Amy inside and locked the door. “Hurry, hurry.” She led the way into her office with a swish of her purple silk gown.

  Bracing herself for yet another lecture on how she walked or chewed off her lip rouge, Amy reluctantly followed.

  Miss Lillian reached across her desk for a brown leather book.

  “Rose’s diary,” she announced with a triumphant gesture.

  Amy’s mouth dropped open. “Where did you find it?” She had searched Rose’s room and found nothing.

  “Beatrice and I were getting the room ready for Rose’s replacement, and we found it beneath a loose floorboard.” She handed Amy the diary and tapped the leather cover with a jeweled finger. “There’s not much there of a personal nature, but perhaps you’ll see something I missed.”

  Heart leaping with excitement, Amy turned the book over. Had this been what Rose’s killer had been looking for? Maybe this was the break for which she’d been praying.

  Amy started to leave then thought of something. “You keep the front and back doors locked, but what about the cellar door?”

  Miss Lillian looked confused. “The cell—? Oh, you mean the trapdoor. That’s padlocked and hasn’t been opened in years. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason.” Thanking her, Amy left the parlor and hurried
upstairs. She paused outside her closed door, hand on the brass knob. The threads placed in the cracks for security purposes were still there, but that’s not what caused her to pause. She could no longer enter her room without thinking of Colton’s kiss. The memory of being in his arms was so vivid she had to blink to make sure he was only a figment of her imagination.

  Shaking away the vision, she flung the door open. For perhaps the hundredth time that day she reminded herself that his kiss was meaningless. She meant nothing to him, and certainly he meant nothing to her.

  Her job didn’t allow for romance, a fact she found out the hard way from a Chicago businessman named Paul Devereux. She might have married him except for one thing: he had no patience for her habit of disappearing on a case for several weeks at a time. Eventually he found what he called a “stay-at-home” girl. It hurt. It hurt a lot.

  In retrospect, it seemed like a small price to pay for the profession she loved. Her job provided everything she ever wanted: independence, a chance to travel, thrills, and adventure. Solving crimes also gave her a sense of closure that had been sorely missing from her life since Cissy’s disappearance.

  She didn’t need a man. If anything, it would only complicate her life. Complicate his.

  Still, she couldn’t help but wonder how it would feel to be kissed by Tom Colton under very different circumstances. To be kissed by him as if it really did mean something.

  Chapter 23

  Reading Rose’s journal was like reading the scattered thoughts of a twelve-year-old. Ink smears and crossed-out words dotted the pages.

  Poor spelling and lack of punctuation made the writing hard to read, at first, until she grew accustomed to Rose’s style. But even then some words and even entire sentences remained a mystery.

  Poor handwriting could not be read; it had to be deciphered. A Pinkerton detective named Curt Cullins was considered an expert in the science of graphology, and she had learned much from him. He’d studied the penmanship of people from all walks of life. According to Cullins, physicians, politicians, and singers had the worst handwriting, ministers and lawyers the best.

  Rose’s sentences crowded together, suggesting she probably grew up poor. Such a person was inclined to use resources carefully, and that included paper.

  Nothing of a sexual nature had found its way among the pages and almost nothing personal. She wrote about the terrible dust storms that had plagued the area and “took the starch out of everything.” She described the wind being so strong that visitors arrived “hatless and with coattails over their heads.”

  Dave Colton was mentioned only once. “D.C. asked me to marry him,” she wrote, but oddly enough that was all.

  Several pages were missing, and only the ragged edges remained. Amy ran her fingers along the seam holding the diary together. Pieces of Rose’s life torn away? If only a person could pick and choose which memories to keep and which to discard as easily as ripping pages from a diary.

  Months passed between entries until about midway when accounts appeared weekly and sometimes even daily, but were even less personal. It wasn’t a diary, after all; it was a record of birds, and one sentence stood out from all the rest: “Birds fly because they have perfect faith.”

  A harlot writing about faith? Rose, it seemed, was full of surprises.

  Hummingbirds, sparrows, wrens, and owls filled the pages, along with rudimentary sketches.

  Stuck between the pages was a piece of blank paper. Amy held it up to the light. It was straw paper, the kind favored by butchers. It was also similar to the paper used to disguise money at the First National Bank in St. Louis. Packets of currency had been replaced with straw paper that had been cut and packaged like the real thing. No one was the wiser until several days later, and by then the thief had probably fled the state.

  She reached for her cloth purse and pulled out a dollar bill. The bill matched the size and shape of the straw paper exactly, and that couldn’t be by chance. Was the Gunnysack Bandit behind the St. Louis Bank theft? As far as she knew, even Robert Pinkerton, who was very astute at such things, had not suspected the Gunnysack Bandit of that particular crime.

  She put the paper aside to be included in her next report to headquarters and continued reading. The entry dated December read simply, “Spotted Hummingbird and Waxwing in garden.”

  At the end of January Rose had written: “D.C. promised we would leave as soon as he returned. Don’t want him to go. Saw Waxwing.”

  How odd. Birds got equal billing with a planned trip.

  The last entry in the journal was written on February 6. The rest of the pages were blank.

  Why would Rose go to all the trouble to hide a journal mostly of birds beneath the floorboards? Even more puzzling, why did she stop journaling on that particular day, nearly two months before her death?

  Unless … She raced across the room and lifted her mattress. Flipping through the pages of the notebook hidden there, she found what she was looking for. There it was: February 6, the day Tom’s brother’s body was found. The empty pages of Rose’s journal marked the day her world came to an end.

  Amy mailed a detailed report to Pinkerton the following morning, addressing the envelope to Aunt Carolyn at the prescribed post office box assigned to her. She also included the straw paper and described where and how she found it.

  A letter from “Aunt Carolyn” waited in her box. According to Mr. Pinkerton, Marshal Flood’s record was clean, and she was to make contact. One problem solved.

  None of the other names on her suspect list had criminal records, but the one name that commanded full attention was Tom Colton’s. According to the Pinkerton report, he had, indeed, been a Texas Ranger until three years ago. The day his brother walked out of prison was the day Tom Colton resigned.

  So far everything Colton had told her was true. Somehow she knew that, of course, but it was still a relief to have it confirmed by headquarters.

  She folded the letter and stuffed it into her fabric drawstring purse to be destroyed later. Everything was written in cipher, but a Pinkerton operative could never be too careful.

  Leaving the post office, she turned toward the marshal’s office. Without warning, Tom Colton suddenly appeared out of nowhere and fell in step by her side.

  “Looking for me?” he asked.

  “Absolutely not.” She slowed her pace, but only because his presence made her pulse skitter. It was annoying—more than that, distracting—the way his nearness affected her. “I’m on my way to the marshal’s.”

  “Why?” The question popped out of him with the force of a bullet.

  She had a ready answer. “Miss Lillian is anxious to know if there’s been any progress made into Rose’s death.”

  “I can save you the trouble. There hasn’t been.”

  “Thank you, but I think she’d prefer I hear it out of the horse’s mouth.”

  “Have it your way, but I get first dibs on any new information you might have.”

  She stopped midstep, forcing him to swing around to face her. “Why is that?”

  “I’m paying you. The marshal is not.”

  She lifted her chin in open defiance. “I wouldn’t be so certain of that.” She hated having to throw her role as a loose woman in his face, but she needed to put a barrier between them. Maybe then she could free herself of the hold he had over her.

  He stared at her long and hard. “Why, Amy? Why are you working for that … that woman? You’re bright and smart and pretty and…. Blast it all!” He leaned over her. “Why are you throwing yourself away on a bunch of worthless men?”

  She gazed up at him, her body rigid. She’d asked each of Miss Lillian’s girls that very same question; now it was asked of her. “Why do you care what I do?”

  He reared back and a puzzled frown fleeted across his face. “I don’t know why,” he said quietly. The words hung between them for a moment before he turned and walked away.

  You don’t care for me, she wanted to shout. You don’t ev
en know me! Instead, she called, “We found Rose’s journal.” It wasn’t much, the journal. It was nothing, really. But she needed to remind him that it was business between them—nothing more. It could never be anything more.

  It worked. At least he stopped walking. Holding his back to her for a moment as if bracing himself to face her, he then turned. “Did you say journal?” The remoteness in his eyes remained, but his voice held a note of hope.

  She nodded. “It was in her room beneath a floorboard.”

  “Does it … mention my brother?”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t say much. I’m not sure you’ll find it useful, but if you’d like to read it—”

  “I would.” He rubbed his chin as if trying to make a decision. “I’ll meet you at Miss Lillian’s.”

  “No!” The last place she wanted to meet him was in her room. Not after what happened the other night. Not after what passed between them today. “I mean …”

  They locked gazes.

  He was the first to break the silence. “Just so you know, what happened the other night was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”

  It was a mistake, as much for her as it was for him. Still, his words hurt. She didn’t want them to. She didn’t want to feel anything for him.

  “You’re right, it won’t,” she snapped. Her breath caught. “Meet me at the house at three.” She hurried away, but it felt as if she’d left a piece of her heart behind.

  Tom watched Amy walk away. He was tempted to trail the “follow-me-lad” streamers that floated enticingly from her feathered hat.

  Even from the back, her occupation defined her. The bright green dress practically screamed for attention, and men and women alike gave her a wide berth. She stood for everything he loathed, but it was sadness he felt. Sadness for her, sadness for women like her who sold their souls along with their bodies.