It Had to Be You

by Delynn Royer

  “You and Danny aren’t safe here,” he finished. “We have maybe a day until Grottano figures out where you are. You both need to be moved to a safe place while I work this out. The first thing I need to track down is Murphy’s schooner.”

  “And we can’t exactly call the police,” Trixie said, finally stirring. “I mean, who can we trust?”

  “Only us, at least for now.”

  “Precisely.” Trixie stood, placed her hands on her hips and regarded him expectantly.

  “So, we need to think of a place that’s far from New York,” he said cautiously. This was too easy. “And not connected with your family or mine.”

  “Oh, that’s a snap.” She moved to a desk. “How about the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia?”

  “Sounds pricey.”

  “Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy some things. Fancy hotel rooms and protection, for example.” She opened the drawer of the desk and removed a small leather-bound book. She paged through until she found what she was looking for, then picked up the telephone. “Yes, give me Chickering 6453 please.”

  Sean assumed she was making reservations. He didn’t much like the idea of her father’s money footing the bill for a luxurious room, but she was the one who would have to stay there not him. It was a small enough concession.

  “Yes,” Trixie said when someone picked up on the other end. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Pinkerton. It’s urgent.” She listened for a moment. “I’m calling on behalf of Wil Frank. Thank you.”

  It took Sean two seconds to realize that she was not making reservations. He was across the room in one, snatching the phone receiver from her hand. “Pinkerton? What are you doing?”

  “I’m buying protection. We can hire a Pinkerton as an escort. My father uses them all the time. Danny will be safe and you’ll be free to finish your investigation.”

  Sean opened his mouth to overrule her, then stopped. She had a point. He couldn’t be everywhere at once. If he took her and Danny to Philadelphia, he would have to leave them alone at their destination in order to return to Long Island.

  Not only would they be safer with a professional to watch over them, but Sean would be free to leave for Montauk first thing in the morning rather than lose a precious day to travel.

  He handed the receiver back to her.

  It was another several moments until Allan Pinkerton came on the line. “Mr. Pinkerton, this is Beatrix Frank.”

  Sean stopped listening. He looked out through the glass doors instead, pondering his next move. What would he find when he got to Montauk? Dusk had finally fallen completely, and a few electric lights from a land mass on the far east side of the bay flickered on the horizon.

  After Trixie hung up, she approached from behind. “So, it’s all settled. A man will be here by ten tomorrow morning and Applegate can make the reservation.”

  The room was lit only by one small lamp on the desk and a fire that burned low in the hearth. When he turned, it was to find Trix standing so close he could inhale the sweet rose scent that lingered from the bath she’d taken before dinner. It didn’t take much of a leap to imagine how she might have looked when she’d stepped out from that scented water.

  “Are you still sore at me?” she asked. Her blue eyes were lambent in the subdued light, her lips slightly parted, and Sean was reminded of their kiss. He wanted to touch her. In fact, he wanted to do more than just touch. He wanted to—

  “No,” he said, keeping his hands still. “It’s okay.”

  “I’m glad to hear that because I’ve decided I’m—”

  There was a soft knock at the door. The interruption was timely, though Trix didn’t appear to think so. “Yes?” she called out impatiently.

  One of the maids opened the door but didn’t enter. “Miss Beatrix? Mr. Applegate has asked if you’d join him and Master Danny in the billiards room.”

  Mr. Applegate was no man’s fool. He would not make it easy for Miss Beatrix to spend time alone with Sean. “Tell him I’ll be there in a few minutes,” she said.

  “Very good, miss.”

  As the maid’s footsteps receded, Sean thought Applegate’s purpose had been well served, at least for now. Sean’s wayward libido had been thwarted.

  “Will you join us?” she asked.

  “I have a telephone call to make.”

  “To who?”

  “I need to check in with headquarters. See if they have an update on Carter’s murder.” This was the truth, although she didn’t know the half of it.

  She seemed satisfied. “Join us after?”

  “Sure.”

  Trixie left and Sean stood motionless, chastising himself for getting tangled up with this girl. He couldn’t deny, though, the measure of relief he’d felt as he’d told her about the events of that day. Just speaking the words had lifted some of the burden from his mind.

  He placed the call to headquarters. It was getting late, but he had little doubt Chief Keegan would still be at his desk, personally directing the investigation into his lead detective’s death. Sean’s hope was that if he could catch Keegan alone, he could get the dope on what had happened.

  Sean identified himself to the radio room dispatcher and Keegan picked up. “Sean?”

  Unlike his call to Moe earlier, the line was clear of static. Sean could hear the tension in Keegan’s voice as surely as if they were standing in the same room. Not a good sign. His guard went up. “Yeah.”

  “Where are you, lad?”

  Sean eyed the hook switch on the telephone. Making this call might not have been such a good idea. “I don’t want to talk about that just now.”

  “Is the boy with you? Is he safe?”

  “He’s safe.”

  Keegan’s voice lowered. “You need to come in. The longer you stay away, the less I can do. A cop shot on the street in broad daylight, for chrissake. Every sheet in town is all over it.”

  Damn. Keegan sounded like he was talking to a dead man. What was going on? “Why did they toss my apartment?” Sean asked.

  There was a hesitation on the other end of the line. “Two witnesses saw a man fitting your description leaving the scene, and our boys found your gun in a trash can less than a block away. It was fired recently, and I think we both know what ballistics will say when they match it against the bullet that killed Owen.”

  Their connection was still pristine but Sean couldn’t have heard right. “That’s impossible. I have my gun. I have it right here.”

  “Sean...” Keegan sounded weary.

  It made no sense. Sean kept the receiver to his ear but set down the phone so he could pull his service revolver from its holster. It was the same holster he’d strapped on that morning before leaving for Murphy’s funeral, and he’d worn it all day. A sense of unreality settled over him as he stared at the familiar .38 caliber Colt, but when he turned it over, the shield number stamped on it was not his own.

  Keegan was still speaking. “If you tell me what happened, lad, I owe it to your da’s memory to see that you get a fair shake, but you’ve got to come in. You’ve got to come in now or my hands are tied.”

  Anger gathered like a storm inside Sean. Someone had switched his gun. But when? Sean rarely left his weapon out of his sight. He only took it off in his own apartment or, sometimes, at headquarters.

  Two memories flashed. First, Nell’s Colt Model Vest Pocket lying next to his service revolver on his end table. Then, Grottano’s smirk the day they’d passed each other, Sean going into Carter’s office, Grottano leaving... Hell. It had to have been Grottano. It could have happened that day or the next night when he’d taken Nell downtown for questioning.

  “I’ve been framed.” Sean felt like he could put his fist through a wall. “Someone switched my gun. You think I’d be so stupid as to plug Carter wi
th my own gun and then toss the damn thing in my neighbor’s trash after?”

  “We all do things in the heat of the moment.” Sean recognized the same paternal tone Keegan had adopted at the wake, only now it burned his fuse. “I don’t know you well, but I knew your father and uncle. That’s enough for me to know that you wouldn’t have planned such a damn rotten thing as cold-blooded murder. You must have had some reason for it.”

  Sean could barely speak through the tightness in his jaw. “This is the truth, and I’ll say it only once. Lou Grottano is dirty, and I think Carter was too. I don’t know why yet, but they were both mixed up in Murphy’s death. That’s the direction you need to be looking. If you keep after me, you’re following their script.”

  Keegan sounded doubtful. “Whose script, Sean?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I’m going to find out.”

  “Don’t do anything foolish. We can hash this out.”

  “No, sir. I don’t think I can trust that.”

  “Sean, lad, wait—”

  Sean hung up. He felt half sick to his stomach. Keegan might be sympathetic. He might want to believe Sean, but he would not save Sean from this. The police commissioner had only antipathy toward the memory of Brian Costigan and anyone connected with his old Confidential Squad. Any man in the department who stood up for Sean now, when so much evidence pointed to him as a cop killer, would curry no favor either from within the ranks or from the administration.

  Sean was now truly alone.

  The sense of unreality that had settled over him while talking to the chief now lifted. All that remained was the anger. Anger at whoever was working with Grottano to frame him and get away with murder. Anger at himself for being blindsided. For not somehow seeing what had been coming.

  Tomorrow he would start again from the beginning. He would retrace John Murphy’s steps on the last days of his life, and he wouldn’t stop digging until he found answers. His own life now depended on it.

  * * *

  It was a deceptively cozy and peaceful winter evening of billiards and a child’s card game called Fish. Applegate had left Trixie, Sean and Danny to their own devices early on. Trixie thought Sean was more reticent than usual as he’d played two games of pool with Danny, patiently showing him how to hold a cue stick and how to make a bank shot. In fact, he was so distracted that Trixie wondered if he’d told her everything after all.

  Later, Trixie knew it was her responsibility to keep up a lively banter with Danny even when she’d challenged Sean to a game of Eight Ball. Despite his preoccupation, Sean won handily. When, by nine, Danny’s eyelids began to droop, she was relieved and threw the game to him without him catching on.

  She then rang for Applegate, asking if he would please see Danny to his room, and once the boy was gone, asked Sean what was wrong.

  “What could be wrong?” he’d asked back, making her crazy, and then, before she could pursue the subject, he suggested they turn in for the night. He wanted a shower and they had a big day ahead.

  Maybe bigger than you think, Trixie had thought as he’d taken his leave and disappeared up the staircase. He’d cut her off twice, once in the study and again now, but she wouldn’t be put off so easily.

  She located a flashlight, donned her coat, and trekked down to the gatehouse where the head groundskeeper and his wife lived year round. She found Mr. Sweitzer and his wife at home, apologized for calling so late, and explained that she had a guest who needed a change of clothes suitable for boating the following day.

  Mr. Sweitzer, who was roughly the same size as Sean, was glad to accommodate. Trixie left with a borrowed bag of sturdy clothing as well as boots, a wool coat, slicker and gloves thick enough to protect against the worst nor’easter.

  If Sean thought he was going to track down a schooner anchored off Montauk at this time of year dressed in a suit and coat designed for the streets of New York, he was one sad excuse for a sailor.

  After entering the house, Trixie locked the front door and extinguished the entrance hall lights. She couldn’t deny the nervousness that plagued her as she took the curved staircase up to the east wing of the house where Applegate had opened rooms for both Danny and Sean.

  She was being reckless, but she was determined to learn what it was that Sean was still holding back from her, as well as inform him that she had every intention of going along with him tomorrow. If anything more than that should develop between them...

  Well, this was 1924, after all. Her sexual experience might be limited to a few rushed encounters with Nick Welles in the backseat of his Pierce-Arrow runabout, but what of it? She was part of a new generation of flaming youth. The old rules no longer applied, and one man was pretty much the same as another.

  Right?

  Her palms started to sweat as she followed a line of softly lit wall sconces down the hallway to Sean’s room. Once there, she detected a shaft of light coming from beneath the closed door. She gave a firm knock. For an interminably long moment, there was no response and Trixie’s resolve wavered.

  Perhaps he was asleep.

  Trixie started to turn away just as the door opened and Sean stood in the archway, bare-chested and with a white towel cinched at his waist. Trixie stared, noticing vaguely that his ebony hair still dripped wet and that his lean, muscled body glistened damp from the bath.

  She had more than once imagined this tantalizing image in her mind and now that she was presented with it in the flesh, she didn’t know what to do with it.

  Her expression must have said as much because Sean’s look of surprise at finding her on his threshold changed to amusement. “What’s the matter, kid? Never see a naked man before?”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Holy Toledo,” Trixie said under her breath.

  “What do you expect when you knock on a man’s door at ten o’clock at night?”

  “Nothing. I—”

  Sean glanced down the hall, then took her by the arm, pulling her into the room. “Better get inside before the butler catches you. He’s liable to poison my breakfast.”

  Trixie was only peripherally aware of the dimly lit guest room, the small hearth, the door to a private bath still ajar, a four-poster double bed, its crisp white sheets cleanly turned down for the night. It would have all looked familiar if it weren’t for the half-naked Adonis who’d taken up temporary residence here. That part was new.

  As Sean closed the door behind them, Trixie managed to find her runaway voice. “I brought you...these.” She thrust the bag of borrowed clothes at him.

  “Clothing,” she clarified when he just stared at the bag. “For tomorrow. If you’re going out on the water, you’ll need more than just—” A towel? She had to fight a giddy urge to laugh.

  Sean took the bag, looked inside. “Where did you—?”

  “The groundskeeper. He’s about your size. They should fit.” Oh, stupid girl, she thought, unable to stop the babble or tear her attention away from the magnificent sight of him.

  “Thanks, I guess.” He closed the bag and looked back at her expectantly. “So, what do you want, Trix?”

  That was a loaded question. “I want to go along with you tomorrow.”

  “No.”

  “Before you say no, just listen to what I—”

  “No.” He tossed the bag onto a chair and turned away.

  Trixie chafed at the abrupt finality in his tone. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Let it alone.”

  He sounded tired. It had been a long and harrowing day and even Sean Costigan needed to sleep. Instinctively, she moved toward him, touched his arm and was aware of the warmth of his skin, of thick, hard muscle. “I won’t let it alone.”

  At her touch, he looked at her. “It’s not safe to be with me.”

  It was an answer that was no
answer at all, and Trixie stared at him, all traces of giddiness gone. Now she had no doubt. Something was wrong.

  He moved away to the closet, pulled a black cotton robe from inside. It was one of many in the house, a gesture of hospitality that her father provided in all of their guest rooms. He rested one hand on the edge of the towel at his waist.

  “In honor of your visit, I’d put on pants, but your butler made off with them, promised to have them all clean and tidy by tomorrow morning. Not a bad guy if you count snootiness as a virtue.” He paused. “Just a warning, kid. It’s no skin off my nose, but you may want to turn around now or—”

  “Oh, right.” Before the towel could drop, Trixie did as he suggested. “Well, you know, I’m not a complete babe in the woods, Sean. I’ve seen things. Plenty of things.” She winced at her own words. Things?

  “Is that right?” he asked wryly.

  “Um, yes.” Trixie bit her lip. Darn him, he couldn’t get out of answering her question by unnerving her. “What do you mean it’s not safe to be with you?”

  “When I called headquarters tonight, I spoke to the chief,” he said grimly.

  “And?”

  “I’m the number one suspect in Owen Carter’s murder.”

  “Huh?” Trixie spun around just as he cinched the tie to his robe. “That’s ridiculous. It happened this afternoon, right? After you talked to him, right? Danny and I were with you the whole time. You couldn’t have killed him.”

  “Right.”

  “So, what gives?”

  Sean took a deep breath. Trixie thought she saw a glimmer of anger in his eyes, but his tone was controlled. “Yesterday, Carter and I had a falling out at headquarters, loud enough for half the squad room to hear, and today they found my gun at the scene of the crime. By tomorrow, ballistics will have it matched to the gun that killed Carter.”

  Trixie pointed to the nightstand where Sean’s holstered revolver rested. “But your gun’s right there.”

  “It’s not mine. The shield number is different. Someone switched it.”

  Trixie’s jaw dropped. “Someone switched it? You mean—?”