by Amy Stewart
I was entirely unprepared to answer a question about pies and secrets. “They do feed us well” was the best I could muster. “But they also very much want to hear about our programs, and I know they’re eager to meet you.”
“Oh, they’ve met me.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms above his head, then laced his fingers behind his neck so that Cordelia had to duck to avoid his elbows. “I don’t mean to say anything against your traveling picture show, Bob, but nobody really wants to know the sheriff. They’d rather not think about the sheriff at all if they can avoid it. Now, a mayor is someone people like to meet. And a congressman.” He laughed genially at that. “That’s you, Bob! The congressman. That’s who they’re coming out to see. They don’t need to see Mr. William Conklin. They all know me, and they know to put a mark next to my name on Election Day. They’ve been doing it for years. Tax board, Freeholder, sheriff, garbage man, dog catcher . . .”
He laughed at his own joke again. Sheriff Heath cleared his throat and said, “The voters do appreciate your service, Bill. I don’t expect you to have any trouble at all in this election. Mr. Courter goes around making a fool of himself, and you’re right, people like an even-tempered sheriff they can just forget about.”
“That’s me, Bob,” Mr. Conklin said, grinning again at Cordelia. “Just forget about me.”
“How could we?” Cordelia said, and handed him the schedule she’d written out. “I hope you’ll join us when you can.”
Sheriff Heath said, “I think you’d particularly like to make an appearance right here at the jail next week, when we put on Captain Anderson’s Salvation Army program. He’s going to speak to the men about turning their lives around. Deputy Kopp’s sister is going to lead the group in song.”
“Is that right?” Mr. Conklin said.
“She’s been practicing for weeks, with a friend of hers,” I said.
Cordelia put a hand on Mr. Conklin’s arm. “Please do come, Bill. I’ve invited some ladies to attend the concert and take a tour of the female section.”
This was the first I’d heard of a tour of the female section. I didn’t like the idea of putting my inmates on display. I glanced at Sheriff Heath, but he wouldn’t return the look.
“I’ve invited the wives of the ministers, and of the Freeholders and a few businessmen—all the old families. We’ll put out a nice spread. You’ll want to be there for the cakes and pies alone.”
“Well, then, I won’t say no. With all your ladies working their magic, we can’t lose.” He reached around for the hat hanging on the back of his chair, which seemed to signal that the meeting was over. I was entirely sure that Sheriff Heath had hoped to spend the next hour poring over every detail of the jail’s budget, programs, and daily operations, but Mr. Conklin didn’t seem interested.
“The public doesn’t expect much, Bob,” he said, as he shook the sheriff’s hand. “Just keep the criminals on the inside, that’s all anyone cares about.”
Mrs. Heath coughed and looked sharply at her husband. No one looked at me.
“Aw, what did I say this time?” Mr. Conklin said, in the awkward silence that followed. “I know you didn’t mean to let that fellow run off. Don’t worry about it, Miss Kopp.”
“I didn’t let him run off,” I said. “He ran off, and I caught him.”
Mr. Conklin looked between us, confused. “Well, who did let him get away?”
“Bill, you know from your time as sheriff that things can go wrong, even for a good deputy,” Sheriff Heath said. “It’s better not to name names. You never did.”
“Well, but I never had a lady being insulted back then! Go defend her good name, if she wasn’t to blame! John Courter’s out there making speeches about it.”
This was the first I’d heard of any speeches about me from Mr. Courter. Sheriff Heath didn’t so much as blink—I have to credit him that. “Mr. Courter doesn’t have a say in whom I employ or why. If I let him force me into a debate over my deputies, there will be no end to it. Don’t you see? I refuse on principle.”
Mr. Conklin chuckled at that and gave a little bow to me and Cordelia. “Ladies, I’m going to leave you to Mr. Heath and his principles. I’ll see you next week. Save one of those pies for me.”
13
after my mother died, my brother’s wife, Bessie, took over the responsibility for hosting our family dinner once a month, to everyone’s relief. Francis had married the best sort of woman: a sturdy and energetic creature who turned out the most savory of dinners and the most delectable desserts, ran an orderly household, raised well-behaved children, and imbued the entire family with her rosy good cheer. She seemed to approve of everything we Kopp sisters did, and believed our lives to be one grand adventure after another.
She also played the role of mediator between me and my brother. He saw it as his obligation to point out the dangers inherent in my profession, and its overall unsuitability as an occupation for a sister of his. It unnerved him to see my exploits written up in the papers. I suspect that he took some ribbing over it at work: while he sat behind a desk at a basket importer’s office, I was out chasing down escaped fugitives, wrestling thieves to the ground, and extracting confessions from recalcitrant witnesses. Even when I was doing nothing more than watching over striking workers at a textile mill, the papers wrote up a breathless account of it, and Francis undoubtedly had to hear about it at work.
Every time I saw him, he had a new idea about a more appropriate profession for me than that of deputy sheriff. At our Sunday dinner, I was treated to his latest. He offered to set me up in a millinery shop, where I might spend my days putting feathers into hat-bands.
Norma put a stop to him before I could. “I wouldn’t expect you to know a thing about women’s hats, but surely you’re acquainted with your own sister and her manner of dress.”
“There’s nothing wrong with her manner of dress,” Fleurette said. “I dress her myself.”
It was true. I reached six feet in height at the age of twenty, and never did find a thing to wear in the shops after that. Fleurette knew my measurements perfectly, and started turning out dresses for me as soon as she could work a sewing machine. It fell to her to invent my uniform, as the sheriff’s department had no provision for a female deputy’s suit. I’d never felt more authoritative in my life than I did the first time I stepped into one of Fleurette’s fine uniforms.
“I only mean to say,” Norma continued, “that her style of dress, and the cut of her hat in particular, is not one to be emulated by the well-to-do ladies of Hackensack, upon whom she would depend for clientele. If her hair would fit under a conductor’s cap, she’d wear one of those and be perfectly happy about it.”
“I do like those caps,” I admitted.
“Then why not set up a shop making uniforms for lady officers?” Francis asked. “You could send circulars to the larger police departments. There must be a call for it.”
“Why on earth would I sew uniforms for lady officers when I can be a lady officer?” I asked in astonishment.
Francis was seated at one end of the table, in front of a platter of sliced ham. I was seated at his right, and his children, Lorraine and Frankie, were next to me, eyeing the steaming dish of scalloped potatoes, the basket of rolls, the buttered peas, and the string beans in hot bacon. It was difficult for any of us to wait.
Francis pushed the ham aside to make room for a dish of creamed spinach. “I only thought that with the election coming up . . .”
“We’re not to speak of politics at the dinner table,” Lorraine pronounced. In just the last year, she’d grown from a playful little girl into a prim young lady who liked to remind others of the rules.
“Well, I approve of that. I’d rather not speak of politics at all. Where did these tomatoes come from?” I said as I took a plate of them from young Frankie. “I thought yours were done for the year.”
“Don’t you recognize them?” Bessie asked. She’d come in from the kitchen without her
apron, which was our signal that dinner could begin. “Those are from your garden. Your sisters brought them over.”
“Constance didn’t so much as look at the vegetable garden this summer,” Norma said.
“I paid for a boy to take care of it,” I answered. “Isn’t that enough?”
“Could I pay for a girl to do the washing as well?” Fleurette asked.
“Try to pay your own keep first,” Norma returned. The scant wages Fleurette earned as a seamstress, and her predilection for spending them on herself and not on the household expenses, were an endless source of disagreement between them. In fact, my wages, along with a few small leases of our land, kept all three of us, and I saw nothing wrong with that arrangement.
The conversation continued along those lines while the platters went around. I’d never had such a good dinner in my life until Francis married Bessie. She only asked us over once a month, probably because Norma, Fleurette, and I ate enough to feed a small nation when we sat at her table. Even a woman of Bessie’s hearty constitution must’ve been exhausted by the effort. We tended to deplete her supply of jams and pickles, too, as we couldn’t be bothered to do our own.
A few satisfied moments of silence followed as we could do nothing but murmur appreciatively at the culinary miracles Bessie had wrought.
“I understand you fished a fellow out of the river last week,” Francis said.
“Saved his life,” I said, and buttered another roll to fortify myself. “Now I’m trying to help a woman who’s been committed to Morris Plains under suspicious circumstances.”
“Yes, only she can’t tell the sheriff,” Fleurette volunteered. “She’s written off to a lady lawyer to enlist some help, but it’s to be kept a secret because the sheriff can’t afford another scandal in the papers.”
“That isn’t the reason,” I said. “Sheriff Heath never said a word about the papers. It’s simply outside of our jurisdiction to be involved in a commitment case. I’ve written to a lawyer as a private citizen, nothing more.”
“But he was thinking of the papers,” Francis said. “Nobody gets elected on a campaign of letting nuts out of the nut house.”
“She isn’t a nut,” I said. “The voters wouldn’t want to see a housewife locked away without cause.”
Francis laughed at that. “The voters or the housewives? Because one will be lined up at the ballot box and the other won’t.”
I wasn’t about to get into an argument with my brother over votes for women. I could see that Bessie didn’t want to either, for she jumped up and took away Francis’s empty plate. “I have a lemon cake and an apple pie. Shall we take a vote, in the spirit of the campaign?”
There could’ve been no more welcome diversion. Bessie made her lemon cake with a milk frosting that no one could resist, but her pies were also legendary. There is something about a lattice crust, brushed in butter and sprinkled with tiny boulders of brown sugar, that renders whatever is underneath superfluous. But of course the apples were coming into season and promised to be excellent.
I begged pitiably for both and the children joined in. Our votes won the day, and soon we were settled in contentedly with our dessert plates and coffee. Bessie, trying to keep the conversation light, said, “Mrs. Heath has taken a real interest in the campaign, which I think is all to the good. I see her at the library every week. Her mother’s quite encouraged by it.”
“I’ve only met Mrs. Westervelt in passing,” I said. Cordelia’s mother was possessed of a community spirit that Cordelia seemed not to have inherited. Mrs. Westervelt ran the library (where Bessie volunteered her time a few afternoons a week), directed the historical society, and wrote the history of Bergen County in multiple volumes. She belonged to every club in town, could speak extemporaneously on subjects ranging from botany to road construction, and seemed to know all of Hackensack by name. Her daughter could not have been more different.
“Well, as you can imagine, Mrs. Westervelt is quite relieved to see Cordelia doing something to help her husband rather than fight him every step of the way.”
“I suppose. She does seem happier when she’s busy. I didn’t know it was all her mother’s doing.”
“Oh, yes. Mrs. Westervelt has very firm opinions on how a wife ought to conduct herself.”
From the other end of the table, Norma said, “I’d like to hear that.”
“According to Mrs. Westervelt, a wife ought to stay busy,” Bessie said, “and have a reason to get out of the house, such as a club or a charity. If she can, she ought to find some small way to involve herself in her husband’s business. ‘Just enough to make for better conversation at the breakfast table,’ as she likes to say. She told a woman to bring her garden club downtown to plant flowers along the street where her husband runs a shop. Do you know the lady did it the very next day?”
“What has she told you to do?” Fleurette asked.
“It wasn’t a bad idea,” Bessie admitted, taking a sip of her coffee. “She thought I ought to take the most popular line of wicker-work that Francis sells, and get a group together to fill decorated baskets for the needy. We’d have our picture made for the paper, and credit would go to Francis for the donation.”
“I’d rather have credit for selling baskets than giving them away, as that’s more our line of business,” Francis said.
“Well, I think it’s lovely,” Bessie answered, “and the children want to have a hand in it, too.”
“Cordelia’s gone beyond flowers and decorated baskets,” I said. “She’s in the sheriff’s office every day and gets quite involved in his affairs. She’s the one who wants to keep me out of the papers right now.”
“I don’t know why she’s so worried about what gets said in the race for sheriff, if her husband’s running for Congress,” said Fleurette.
“It’s because he’s running on his record,” Francis said. “He’s never done anything but serve as sheriff and undersheriff, so the voters will judge him by it. William Conklin is the one running against John Courter in the sheriff’s race, which means that Conklin will have to take a stand for Sheriff Heath or stand against him.”
“What do you think of Mr. Conklin?” Bessie asked me. “Will he make a good sheriff?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said, but it took a great deal of effort to keep my voice from betraying me. “I only just met him and haven’t yet formed an opinion of how he’ll run the jail. He was sheriff back in 1910, and he hired Sheriff Heath as a deputy, so I suppose they think alike.” I’d seen no evidence of that, but I was reluctant to criticize the man who was to become my boss.
Francis raised an eyebrow at that. “I’ve seen Conklin at my club a time or two. I don’t think he has much in common with your sheriff, but in this election that might work in his favor.”
“Francis!” Bessie scolded. “Sheriff Heath is a friend of this family and always will be after what he’s done for your sister. Now he’ll be a congressman, which is terribly impressive. Have you ever known one personally?”
“What I mean to say is that Mr. Courter is going around criticizing Sheriff Heath for hiring a lady deputy in the first place, and coddling the inmates, and for letting them escape—”
“I very particularly stopped the man from escaping,” I interjected, but he went on.
“And all anyone will remember is the accusation. It puts a picture in the minds of the voters that isn’t so easily erased. There are those who never will tolerate the idea of a lady cop. Plenty of them vote. You must know that. John Courter certainly does.”
My brother was overly fond of making gloomy predictions, but there was a clarity to his words that worried me. Was I to be turned into a weapon against Sheriff Heath?
14
a letter arrived from Geraldine. She thought it best to pay a visit to the Kayser household straight away, and asked me to meet her train from New York the following Tuesday. Sheriff Heath wouldn’t want me to interfere further—I’d done enough already, by writing to a lawyer�
�but I couldn’t beg off now.
“If it isn’t sheriff’s business, I don’t know why you’d get involved,” Norma said, when I put the matter before her.
“But don’t I owe it to Mrs. Kayser? She’s sleeping in an insane asylum while I spend the night in my own comfortable bed. Besides, I promised to get a message to her daughter.”
“Why don’t you go in disguise?” Fleurette asked.
“I don’t think there’s any disguising you,” Norma said. “The trick is to make sure that Mr. Kayser doesn’t go to the sheriff and complain about you. Do you think you can behave, for one afternoon, in such a way that won’t cause a man to lodge a complaint?”
I considered that. “He wouldn’t have reason to complain, if he thought it merely routine to check on the welfare of the children.”
“That might work,” Norma said, “except that he probably never had a lady deputy stop in before. Hasn’t he sent his wife away half a dozen times already?”
“But there never was a lady deputy before!” Fleurette said triumphantly. She loved nothing better than to craft a plausible lie. “You can tell him it’s the new way of doing things, now that you’re in charge.”
“Make it sound routine,” Norma said, “and you might get by. No one wants to speak to the sheriff if it can be avoided. He won’t, if you don’t give him a reason.”
It was as good a plan as any. On the appointed afternoon, I turned up early at the Rutherford station and passed a quiet half-hour with a magazine and a particular type of hot cinnamon bun that one could only purchase from a little stand next to the ticket-window. I had often tried to inquire as to the source of the cinnamon buns, hoping to discover a bakery that specialized in them, but the girl who worked at the stand spoke only Turkish and seemed not to understand my hand gestures and attempts at getting the idea across in English, German, or French.