Went missing. The vagueness of those words has infuriated me this last week, and now I wish I could cling to them a bit longer. When she was only missing, there was still a chance of finding her alive. My head throbs with the pain of unshed tears.
“If he had nothing to hide, why leave at all? He had given us an alibi—albeit one that we couldn’t completely nail down. Why not stick around?”
“Fear for his life. Doubt of a fair trial. This is Chicago, after all.”
“That’s a harsh statement from a lawyer’s daughter.”
I hold up the still-folded coroner’s report. “The world is harsh.”
Mariano’s gaze softens as he regards me. “I won’t argue that point with you, Piper.”
Walter sits beside me and rests a large hand on my shoulder. “What happens now, detective?”
“We’ll keep trying to find Matthew. I’d like to get that letter from you, Piper. Doesn’t need to be right now, though.” Mariano folds his notebook shut and tucks it back into his pocket. “We’ll continue to make it clear that we only want him for questioning, but the press will continue to skewer him. After a few weeks of fruitless searching, the case will probably go cold. The LeVines might hire private detectives, but we won’t be able to do anything else.”
Walter exhales long and slow. “You don’t seem to believe in sugarcoating.”
“That’s out of respect for my audience.” Mariano nods at me. “Walter, if you wouldn’t mind giving me and Miss Sail a moment, I have some questions I’d like to ask her in private.”
Walter’s jaw clenches. “Is now really the best time?”
Mariano regards him for a moment. “Yes.”
Walter, who I’ve seen make countless diving catches and hustle doubles, now seems physically taxed by the act of standing. Moments later, the front door clicks shut.
I expect Mariano to sit, but he remains standing and crosses his arms over his chest. Though not broad, there’s certainly something intimidating about him. Even in a moment like this, when I know he’s on my side. “Can you think of any reason why someone might have confused you and Lydia?”
At a different time, I would have laughed. “No. We look nothing alike. Why?”
His gaze is evaluating.
“What is it, Mariano?”
“The Finnegans. It seems to keep coming back to them. I just . . .” Mariano tugs his tie loose. “What do you know about them?”
“Not much. I think I already told you that my father has had a case or two that involved them. But like I said, he doesn’t talk to me about his work.”
“The Finnegans are up-and-comers in town. Brothers. They want to be the next Torrio and Capone.” Mariano retightens his tie. “A few weeks ago, your father was able to get a case dismissed, and that resulted in Colin Finnegan—the younger of the brothers—going to jail. Does that sound familiar at all?”
“Maybe.” Anything that happened before Lydia went missing seems like a lifetime ago. How long has she been dead? How long has my search for her been pointless?
“All I’m trying to say is that your father riled the Finnegan brothers. And they’re not known for mercy or turning the other cheek.”
“What mobsters are?” I trace the hem of my uniform skirt, and my mind drifts to Lydia’s uniforms hanging neat and useless in her armoire.
“Lydia was found still wearing your coat.” Mariano crouches so we’re at eye level with one another. He must sense I’m drifting. “Did you know she had it?”
“She had forgotten hers.” A swell of emotion rises up in my throat and lodges there. I think of handing it to her that afternoon at my house. That afternoon when everything felt complicated and scary, and I had no idea the sky was about to fall. “She said she’d bring it back to me the next day.”
“She also had a handkerchief with your initials in her pocket. It just makes me wonder if maybe . . .”
The breath whooshes from my lungs as I piece together his train of thought. “Lydia’s hair is red and long, though.”
“It could have been under the coat. Or under her hat.”
“But surely as soon as they got close to her, they would see it wasn’t me.”
“One would think so.” Mariano removes his hat, brushes off imaginary lint, and settles it back on his head. “I’m just wondering—combined with who your father is and the way the Finnegans keep coming up in this case—if this actually isn’t about Lydia.”
Mariano doesn’t say the words, but they dangle out there anyway—if it’s actually about you.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
TWO WEEKS LATER—JUNE 5TH, 1924
At St. Chrysostom’s Episcopal Church, on the same stage where Lydia once stood with the choir and sang hymns to her great God, the casket is closed. Mrs. LeVine had wanted it open, but the mortician had called this “inadvisable,” considering the amount of time Lydia’s body spent in the river. Instead, a framed photograph, the same one I showed Johnny Walker in my silly, girlish hope that Lydia was still alive, has been placed atop the casket lid.
I’m alone at church. Just me and the saints depicted in the stained glass.
As I make my way up the center aisle, the heels of my shoes silent on the thick red carpet, I see that the casket lid has been opened after all.
I quicken my steps, even as I ask myself if I really do want to see what’s under that lid. But the temptation to see Lydia, to capture one last glimpse to carry with me through life, is too great to resist.
Only the corpse doesn’t have Lydia’s long red hair. Rather, it’s a bobbed, honey color. And the cream linen dress . . . the same one I wore on the night she was taken.
When I peer at the face, I see why. It’s not Lydia in the casket—it’s me.
I scream and stumble down the carpeted steps. The church is full now. Father, my brothers, Walter, Emma Crane, Mariano, and even Alana Kirkwood of The Kansas City Star, all dressed in somber black. The look in their eyes is clear. You. It was supposed to be you.
I burst through the sanctuary doors, into the foyer, and find Lydia. She hovers in the air like an angel, radiant and beautiful in all white. Her red hair spills all around her, same as when we were girls, free to run and laugh.
“It was supposed to be me.” The words feel like a long overdue confession.
Lydia nods and smiles, as if it’s oh-so-good that I’ve come to this realization. “And you can’t outrun death, my dear.”
You can’t outrun death, my dear. The words reverberate in my ears as I blink awake in my bedroom. The light streaming through my window is bright yellow, distinctly midmorning. My muscles ache, and I ease my knees away from my chest, my arms from my sides. It’s as though my body tried to shrink, to disappear, as I slept.
When my feet bump Sidekick, he stands, stretches, and shakes, before leaping from the bed. Then he looks back to me, tail wagging and tongue hanging out.
“I won’t begrudge you your happiness.” I ease myself into a sitting position. “You’re quite tolerant of my depression.”
He paws at my bedroom door until it opens, and the clicking of his nails against the floor fades as he makes his way downstairs.
I look at my pillow, still dented and inviting. You need to get out of bed, Piper.
I put my feet on the floor. You have to do this day. Now, get up.
The clock reads 10:02. So many hours between now and getting to close my curtains again. I can still smell breakfast. Sausage and biscuits. Father must be going into work late.
You need to eat breakfast, I coax myself, and then you can come back to bed if you still want to.
My mother was wrong. I can’t trust myself—I have to lie just to get out of bed.
In the bathroom mirror, a thin, chalky oval stares back at me. Set against the paleness of my face, my dark brown eyes seem almost black. My hair has begun to grow out of the fashionable bob that once seemed so vital to my happiness, and it hangs at an awkward length. In the dream, Lydia ha
d told me I couldn’t outrun death, and the ghost of a girl I see in my bathroom mirror makes me think she’s right. That I haven’t.
I unhook my kimono from the back of my bathroom door and slip my arms into the silky sleeves. In the two weeks since Lydia’s funeral, rare is the night that I don’t dream of her. Sometimes I’m standing on the sidewalk of Astor Street, watching her get yanked violently into a car. I try to scream, but I can’t. In other dreams, I’m there when the life-snatching seizure begins. There’s a gag in her mouth, and I’m trying to pull it out, but it’s never-ending. Like a circus trick.
The funeral dream, in comparison, isn’t so bad. At least I get to see her alive and smiling.
The floorboards are warm beneath my bare feet as I make my way downstairs. The conversation of Nick and my father—baseball, like it matters—reaches my ears before I see the two of them seated at the dining room table. Father is dressed for the day in shirt sleeves and trousers. Nick is still in his buffalo-check pajamas, picking at his breakfast. Even from the hall, I can see why he’s eating so late. His face is pale and puffy, a sure sign that, yet again, he came home in the wee hours of the morning.
When they notice me, the conversation halts.
Father smiles. “Good morning, Piper.”
“Good morning.” I glance at Nick. His eyes are their new normal shade of red, from drink and lack of sleep. He doesn’t speak to me.
Joyce comes through the door with a breakfast plate in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. “Sidekick is so good to let me know when you’re up and about.” She smiles warmly and sets my plate on the table, across from Nick and Father.
“Thank you, Joyce.”
With Walter returning to California the day of Lydia’s funeral, and Father and Nick usually gone to the office, I’m accustomed to taking my breakfast alone or in the kitchen. It’s strange to feel so awkward with one’s own family.
Father sips at his coffee. “How did you sleep, dear?”
“The same.”
They exchange a look that seems to be about me, and I pretend not to notice.
“Nick was just telling me about his plans to go to the lake with some friends. I think it’d be good for you to join him.”
I involuntarily snort. Sure, relaxing on the shores of the lake. That will make everything better.
I reach for the jar of peach preserves. “I don’t feel up to it today.”
The silence is thick, like the weight of air just before it rains.
Nick leans back in his chair. “Do you have other plans?”
I shrug. “What’s it to you?”
Sidekick pushes his way through the kitchen door and into the dining room. He stretches out on a plot of carpet beside me in a satisfied, full-belly way. He always eats his breakfast in about three bites, as if otherwise the food will vanish.
“I’d rather not watch you waste your life away.” Nick’s gaze holds a challenge. “Is that reason enough, sister? That I care about you?”
I could say the same thing to him, it seems. Perhaps he’s wasting away his life in a more vibrant kind of way—speakeasies and race tracks and house parties—but it’s wasteful all the same.
“I’m fine.” I keep my voice level. “I’m grieving, but I’m fine.”
“I don’t believe you.” Nick’s tone is flat.
“Kids,” Father says. “This time is difficult enough without bickering.”
“We’re letting her languish too much. She should be improving by now.”
“Why, because you are?” I snap. “She was my best friend, Nick. And she was . . .”
The typewritten notes of the coroner’s report swim before my eyes. Fibers were found in the oral cavity of the victim, so it’s likely the victim was gagged.
I blink away the words, try to push out what I want to say. “And she was . . .”
The lungs were filled with not only water but emesis, leaving me to conclude that the victim aspirated before being bound and discarded in the river. Given the victim’s history with seizures, it’s my belief that—
“Taken.” The word—so beautifully vague—finally comes out. “She was taken. Am I not supposed to grieve?”
“Grieve? Yes. Give up? No. You barely said good-bye to Walter when he left. You won’t answer telephone calls. You won’t come out with me and my friends.”
Sidekick wedges himself between my legs. The tension in the air has set him trembling.
“I know losing Lydia hurts. It hurts me too, Piper.” Nick’s jaw quivers for a moment. “But there are still people who care about you. And I’m not just talking about that Cassano kid who keeps sniffing around.”
There’s a tinge of anger in that last sentence. Is this related to his hangover, or is he actually mad about the two visits Mariano has paid me since Lydia’s funeral?
“Detective Cassano is the same age as you, Nicholas Sail.”
“I think you know what I mean.”
That I shouldn’t be receiving attention from an Italian? Or a Catholic? Has studying the law turned my brother against immigrants?
“Nick.” Father’s tone holds a warning. “I think you’re being unfair.”
Nick turns to Father. “You can’t possibly think it’s a good idea for Piper to see him.”
I slather preserves onto my biscuit with such force, it crumbles against my hand. “I’m sorry, but I thought this conversation began with you wanting me to live my life more.”
“I do. I just don’t think he should be a part of it.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, son.” Father stands. “If Piper is interested in dating Mariano, she has my blessing. And I would encourage you to leave her alone about it. I’m afraid I have to leave now.” He drops a kiss on my head. “Jane and I are meeting with the hotel manager to finalize arrangements, and I have a few things to take care of before I go.”
Nick waits all of ten seconds after Father departs the dining room to press me further on Mariano. “Father doesn’t want to be the bad guy, but this is a terrible idea, Piper. I don’t trust him.”
“If you would actually talk to Mariano, then maybe you would know he’s not the bad fellow you make him out to be. This is all just stupid prejudice on your part.”
“You don’t know what you’re getting into. Has he even told you about Zola?”
My heart thumps faster at the mention of another girl. Who is she? And how does Nick know about her when I don’t? But I refuse to let on like I’m ignorant. “How do you know about her?”
“I make it my business to know such things.”
I snatch my plate and coffee cup from the table. “Maybe you should pay less attention to my life and my friends and a little more to the choices you’re making.”
“Piper, come back.” Nick’s half-hearted plea reaches me at the door as I stalk away. Sidekick scurries alongside me. “Don’t be so dramatic.”
My coffee sloshes in the cup as I close the front door with my foot. Thank goodness the reporters have stopped loitering on our streets, or I might find photographs of me in my kimono and bare feet splashed across the society pages.
Sidekick barks as he romps after a squirrel. I’m grateful when the squirrel scampers to safety up the tree, because he’s surprisingly good at nabbing them. Sidekick stands beneath the oak, staring up like the rodent could fall at any moment.
Behind me, the door opens.
“I’m sorry, but he’s insufferable this morning.” I set my coffee cup on the step. “I couldn’t take it for one more second.”
Father settles beside me, folding his long, thick body into the small space. “He’s worried about you.”
I lick a stray drop of jam from my thumb. “He should find better ways to show it.”
“You really shouldn’t be out here by yourself,” Father says. “Especially dressed like this. That journalist has been hanging around here again.”
“I haven’t seen anyone for a week.”
“This isn’t a local one. Nick was
talking to her yesterday because she was loitering around the house.”
“Oh, her.” I cram a large bite of biscuit into my mouth. “Hopefully, the people of Kansas City lose interest soon, and she’ll leave us alone.”
Sidekick abandons his pursuit of the squirrel and takes to rolling in a sunny patch of grass. Father and I watch him in silence for a few moments.
“I know you don’t like Nick’s lectures, and I didn’t want to fan the flames and say so in front of him, but I do think you should exercise caution with Mariano.”
I huff out an irritated breath. “What happened to your blessing?”
“You still have it. I’m just recommending you slow down a bit. I believe Mariano is a good sort of chap, but marrying two cultures is always tricky, especially with his type of fam—”
“Whoa.” I put up a hand. “It’s not like that. We’ve never even been on a date.”
Father sucks in his lower lip, like he does when he’s thinking something through. “In my day, if a fellow paid the kind of attention to a girl that Mariano has paid to you, it meant they were going somewhere serious.”
“I’m not saying it isn’t going somewhere serious.”
“You’re just saying I’m putting the cart before the horse.”
“Yes. Miles away from the horse.”
Father’s mouth curls upward. “I won’t pretend that’s not a relief.” He glances at his wristwatch. “Now I really will be late. I’m taking the Chrysler. I don’t think Nick needs the Ford for his lake excursion, so if you want the car left here, you should feel free to ask him.”
I wipe biscuit crumbs off my kimono. “Thank you, but where would I be going?”
“I would rather you not go anywhere. But Jane says I’m living too much in fear, that you’re eighteen, and all that good stuff.” Father clasps a hand to my knee. “Just be careful. Don’t go anywhere alone. Okay?”
My own words from my dream—it was supposed to be me—shudder through my thoughts. “Okay.”
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
She’s in heaven among the Lord’s angels.” Mrs. LeVine pauses stirring milk into her tea so she can dry her eyes with a handkerchief. “That’s what I have to keep reminding myself. She’s healthy again. She’s with my mother and my sweet Rachel, God bless their souls.”
The Lost Girl of Astor Street Page 15