“I’m guessing he doesn’t tell her that he meets his girlfriend there.”
Yuck. “That’s disgusting.”
“But it’s not evidence of homicide. No matter how much we wish it were.”
I blow a limp strand of hair from my face. “Are you free tonight? I don’t want to wait until next week.”
Mariano sighs. “I’m not, actually. I have a report due, and the office has been so crazy that I can’t seem to get it done. But I could probably help you chase David Barrow next week, if you want.”
I tap my fingers on Father’s desk. Next week is awfully far away. “How does a person get in? Do you need a password still, or is that not a thing anymore?”
“Piper.” He says my name as a warning.
Mother’s words float back to me. Trust yourself. I can’t wait a whole week. I just can’t. “I won’t even talk to him, I promise. I just want to . . . observe, I guess. It’s a hunch.”
“And your hunch can’t sit safely at home for a few days?”
“I’ll take Emma with me—”
Mariano snorts. “Pick a different person. Someone male and scary. Is Walter in town yet?”
“Yes, actually. Or he will be within the hour.”
“If you can talk him into going with you, fine. So long as you’re not planning to approach David Barrow. You’re not, right?”
“I told you, I just want to watch him.”
Mariano sighs. “You won’t be the easiest girl to care about, will you?”
“I’m afraid you’re in no position to complain, detective. Now tell me how to get in.”
There’s silence, and for a moment I think Mariano won’t help.
“You won’t need a password.” His tone is resigned. “You’re a pretty girl, so all you’ll need to say is ‘Joe sent me.’ There’s a Chinese laundry on the east side of the old saloon. Go through there. And call me at the office when you get home. And don’t stay out late.”
“Okay, thank you.” Feminine chatter floats down the hall to me. The other bridesmaids must be here. “I have to go.”
“So do I. Be careful.”
“It’s more likely that I’ll die from boredom during my last dress fitting than I will from being out tonight.”
Peels of girlish laughter reach me in Father’s office. This afternoon may be destined to be a complete waste of my time, but I don’t intend for my evening to be.
“This is ridiculous,” Walter mutters as we navigate crowded Lincoln Avenue. “Hey, don’t walk ahead of me.”
“Then pick up the pace. Your legs are twice as long as mine. Surely you can walk faster than that.”
“Forgive me for not rushing on this insane errand of yours.” But Walter catches up and takes a protective hold of my arm. “You’ve never been in a place like this, Pippy. It’ll be dirty. It’ll be loud. There will be lots of drunks.”
“Which is why I’m not going alone.” My voice sounds brave, but Walter’s words have me shaking in my core. In my beaded sleeveless dress, my diadem, and made-up face, I’m miserably far out of my comfort zone. Snitching a pastry from the teacher’s room within the ivy-covered walls of Presley’s is vastly different than sneaking into a speakeasy.
The boarded-up windows of the old saloon come into view. And there, just as Mariano said, is the Chinese laundry next door.
Walter stops walking and holds me in place there at the corner of Lincoln and Belden. Pedestrians—mostly other couples in their Friday night finest—stream around us. “Just let it go.” His eyes plead. “What can David Barrow tell us that’s so urgent, really? Lydia’s already—” Walter swallows the word. “Sorry.”
“You don’t have to come in if you don’t want.” My words are ice. Here I’m already plenty nervous, and now I have to drag Walter in there with me. I pull my arm out of his grasp and don’t allow myself to look over my shoulder to see if he’s following.
To my relief, he is.
He holds open the door to the Chinese laundry and practically steps on my heels following me in. Inside, the air hums with the hiss and clank of washers and the chatter of foreign working women. The pungent scent of lye makes my head throb.
The man at the counter—olive skinned, with broad shoulders and beefy arms—stares at us.
“Um, hi.” My thumb runs down the chain of my locket and back up. “Joe sent us?” The words curl into an unintentional question, and I wish I could snatch them back and try again.
But the bouncer jerks a thumb over his shoulder, toward a hall. “That way, doll face. Follow the others.”
When I force myself to smile and say, “Thank you,” I receive a wink.
Walter presses a hand into my lower back as I follow the echo of footsteps down the hall, and down the staircase. In the basement of the laundry, we find groups of giggling college girls, men talking loud and boisterously, and couples decked out to dance, all waiting to cram into a small elevator that will carry us back up to the old saloon. Most of the girls are dressed similar to me—sparkling, sleeveless dresses and painted mouths. At least I look okay.
“Let’s make this as fast as we can.” Walter’s mouth is close to my ear. “This is no place for you to linger, Pippy.”
“I’m doing what I have to in order to get the information I need.” Words I never had to say to Mariano when we were on Clark Street.
His expressive eyes hold sadness. “She’s not coming back. And you need to figure out how far is too far before you accidentally cross a line you never intended to.”
I turn away, eyes blurred and heart hardened.
Inside John Barleycorn, the smoky air is rich with jazz music. On the dance floor, the sequins and beads of the girls’ dresses sparkle when they catch on the stage lights. Despite several fans, the air has a stuffy quality to it, though perhaps it’s only the boarded-up windows that leave me feeling slightly claustrophobic. Waitresses, showing a shocking amount of leg in their black dresses, saunter around the room with mugs of beer, shimmering cocktails, and plates of fried food.
I skim the crowd in hopes of spotting David Barrow quickly. “Let’s pick a table,” Walter says as he practically pushes me toward an empty high top. “I don’t want to just stand here.”
“Wait.” I squint through the smoke. Near the stage is a girl that looks like the Barrows’ ex-nanny. It’s a little hard to tell, because the waitresses have an intentionally monotonous look to them—bobbed hair and mile-long legs—but she seems familiar. “Isn’t that their old nanny?”
Walter follows my gaze. “Maybe.”
“I think it is.” I grab Walter’s hand and pull him through the crowd.
“Pippy, there are no open tables up there!” He has to yell to be heard over the heart-piercing wail of the saxophone.
“I don’t need a table. I need to talk to their nanny!” If only I could think of her name . . .
I press against the wall, and keep my gaze trained on her as best I can through the crush of people on the dance floor. Annie? That doesn’t sound quite right. Anita?
Same as the night I danced with Mariano at Vernon Park, some couples are far more demonstrative than seems appropriate for public viewing. I glance at Walter, and find him watching the dancers with a wistful expression. He is far, far away from here.
“What are you thinking about?” I yell over the music.
He startles and offers a sheepish smile. “Audrey.”
A feeling of betrayal jabs at my heart. Our thoughts used to be so aligned. “Thick as thieves,” Joyce would describe us. “Attached at the hip.” Now he has his world—Audrey and baseball and the lemony sunshine of California—and I have mine. Which is mourning Lydia, missing Lydia, and figuring out who killed Lydia.
In my peripheral, I catch the nanny breezing by us, and her name pops out of my mouth. “Annette!”
She whirls at the sound. Annette is older than me by a good five years, but she has the face of a girl—rosebud lips and wide eyes set in a heart-shaped face.
�
�I don’t know if you remember me, but my name is Piper Sail, and I was friends with Lydia LeVine, who—”
“I know who Lydia is.”
“I thought maybe you could help me. I’m trying to figure out what happened to her, and I think maybe David Barrow might know something, and that with you having recently been employed with the Barrows—”
Her face turns from blank to stony. “My boss doesn’t care for me jabbering during work hours.”
“It’ll only take a minute.” Behind her, a young, wiry boy wipes a table clean, loading the empty plates and glasses into a tub. “We’ll sit right there. And we’ll order drinks. And we’ll tip well, I promise. Bring us . . .” I grapple for the name of the only cocktail I know. “Two gin fizzes, please.”
She gives me a lingering look. “I can’t help you. I don’t know anything.”
“I just want you to answer a few questions. Please.” I play the only other card I can think to use. “You should see how devastated Cole is by the whole ordeal.”
Annette’s face flickers before going hard again. “I don’t know anything.” She turns her back to me and walks in a practiced way—all hips and clicking heels.
Walter holds out a chair at the empty table for me. “Is she coming back?”
“Yes.” Even though I don’t know that she is. “I ordered you a gin fizz. I hope that’s okay.”
“Nothing about this night has been okay with me, so why should it matter?”
It isn’t until I sit that I feel an unwelcome ache in my bladder. “I wonder where they keep the powder room in this place.” I crane my neck toward the entrance. “Think it’s on the other side of the bar?”
Walter shakes his head. “You’re not going to the restroom alone. Not here.”
I put on a sweet smile. “Walter, dear, I can’t take you with me. It’s frowned upon.”
But his scowl doesn’t loosen.
“I can’t help that I have to go, and I need you to save our table.” I peek at Annette. She’s chatting with the barkeep as she loads several drinks onto her tray. “If she comes back while I’m gone, try to keep her talking. Flirt with her. Whatever you have to do. I’ll be back as fast as I can.”
Walter opens his mouth, but I flee the table before he can argue. I squeeze my way through the crowd to the restrooms. The bathroom is full of girls checking themselves in their compacts and gushing about which men are the best dancers and who is going with who. I take care of my business as fast as possible, lather up my hands, and race out of there.
Straight into the thick chest of Mr. David Barrow. “Well, there you are, doll. I was looking for you.” His mouth smiles, but not his eyes. He leans close to my ear. “We’re going to walk over to that corner. You make a scene, and you’ll wish you hadn’t, do you understand? Now, smile and look like you’re happy to see me.”
Fear leaps to life in my heart as I paint on a smile. Does he know I came here looking for him? “Why, David. What a pleasant surprise.”
“That’s the ticket.” His hand is low on my back as he presses me through the crowd, toward a corner of the room that’s invisible to Walter. He edges me in, leans to the point his nose is just inches from mine. To the casual passerby, we are nothing more than a couple trying to steal a moment of privacy. “Rosie put you up to this, didn’t she? However much she’s paying you, I’ll double it.”
Rosie? I raise my eyebrows. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t be cute with me.” The words are a growl. “I’m not a man you want to mess with.”
“I wasn’t trying to be cute. I actually don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Doubt flickers in his eyes, and he draws back a bit. “Yes or no—Rosie sent you here to keep an eye on me.”
“I don’t even know who Rosie is.”
“My wife.”
Ah, of course. “And why would your wife ask me to keep an eye on you?”
“Annette said you were here to ask her questions.”
It’s all coming together now. Why Annette might have quit her nanny job so suddenly. Why Mr. Barrow would just happen to be a regular patron of the place where she works. He’s here for her. The thoughts make my stomach pitch, but I pair an indifferent shrug with a roll of my eyes. “You think I care at all that you’re having an affair? I’m here to talk about Lydia.”
“Lydia?” The pressure of his fingers on my wrists eases. “Why would you want to talk to me about her?”
There’s a part inside me that trembles with fear. That wants to run from this man, who might be capable of snapping me in half. But the other part of me—the part that insisted Mariano listen to me when Lydia first disappeared, that flirted with Johnny Walker, that would do whatever it takes to get answers about Lydia—won’t shut up.
“I wondered if you might tell me why you’re beating your son to keep him quiet.”
A range of emotions—fury, sadness, bewilderment—fly over Mr. Barrow’s face before he wipes his expression blank. “What would make you say that, Miss Sail?”
“I’ve seen his bruises.”
“As a father, I’ve got a right to discipline my son.” The words come through clenched teeth. His hands are once again tight around my wrists.
“You’re not disciplining. You’re silencing. You don’t want him to say what he knows. And why is that, Mr. Barrow?”
Mr. Barrow leans close, his beer-laced breath hot on my ear. “What good could come from Cole talking? I’m doing him a favor. No five-year-old needs to know just how nasty those Finnegan brothers are.”
The words send a shiver through me. “What do you mean?”
“It’s none of your business, girl. You keep sniffing around like you are, and you’re going to wind up just like your friend.”
“Well, if you don’t tell me what you know, I might just have to pay a visit to Rosie tomorrow and—” My whimper of pain is drowned out by the brassy notes of “Tin Roof Blues.”
His fingers press painfully into the delicate flesh on the underside of my wrists. “I told you I’d make your life miserable if you breathed a word of this to my wife.”
“I could do the same for you too, you know.” The words bleed with discomfort. “Let’s make a deal. You tell me what you know, and I keep quiet about you and Annette.”
“I don’t want to see any cops knocking on my door, you hear? You’ve got a real nice dog, I’ve noticed. Be a shame if something happened to him.”
My hands fist at my sides. It’s imagining Mr. Barrow with a black eye that enables me to paint on a smile. “I won’t send the cops your way. I just want to know what you know.”
He stares at me. In the shadows, his narrowed eyes seem black. “I’ll tell you what I know, but I don’t ever want to find you around here again. You got it?”
I nod.
“I was walking back from the train station, and I saw the car take off. An armored Model T, custom job. I might’ve known just from that, but the Finnegans . . . they’re as dumb as they are ugly. On the bottom corner of the door, they’ve got the two lions with the sword. And that red sticks out like a sore thumb. You can’t help but notice it.”
“I don’t understand. What does that mean?”
“It’s the Finnegan family crest. Look it up. They think they can be flashy gangsters like others have been and get away with it. They seem to forget—or maybe they just don’t care—that the flashy ones get gunned down. They’re idiots.”
I shudder. “Dangerous idiots.”
“But you’re a smart girl, right, doll?” His fingers seem to press even deeper into my flesh. I hold in a cry of pain. “You know that it’s in your best interest to keep this between us.”
A threat—that I better not see him within ten feet of Sidekick—sits on my tongue.
“Piper.” My name is sharp, like the rap on a snare drum, and Walter glowers at the two of us. “I think it’s time that we leave.”
David Barrow releases me and glares at Walter. “Yo
u’d be smart to keep a leash on her.”
“Let’s get out of here.” Walter’s fingers grasp my arm and pull me toward the exit like a disobedient child. “I think you’ve stirred up enough trouble.”
“If you want me to stop treating you like a child, then maybe you should stop acting like one,” Walter snarls as he pulls shut the car door. “Do you have any idea how scared I was at the table? Here I’m trying to help you out, and I find you cornered by that awful man.”
“I was getting information—”
“Somebody needs to tell you that you’re out of line, Piper.” Walter’s words roar out of him. “Your father is too ignorant, your brothers too distracted, and Mariano too smitten. You’re acting like what you’re doing won’t have real consequences, but it will, and I’m trying desperately to keep you safe.”
“I don’t need you to keep me safe!” It’s good that we’re alone in the car, because I can’t control my volume anymore.
“Yes, you do. Because you’re so far in this, you don’t even realize how dangerous it could be.”
The adrenaline from being cornered by David Barrow, from fleeing the speakeasy, has worn off, and my limbs set to trembling. Even when I curl my legs up under me and cross my arms over my chest, I can’t seem to stop the rattling.
“I know how you loved Lydia.” Walter’s voice has softened. “I understand it makes you crazy to not know what happened to her. But can’t you see how crazy it makes me to think the same thing might happen to you? I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”
I stare out the front of the car, at the people on the sidewalk busy laughing and talking. Out for a fun night in a city that teems with danger. “Do you remember a few years ago, when you ran into the fence chasing down a fly ball? And I was so mad at you for injuring yourself to make a play?”
“I do.”
“Do you remember what you told me?”
Walter shakes his head.
“You said that you didn’t know any other way to play the game except to give it all. To leave it all on the field.” I turn to him. “That’s how I feel about Lydia. I don’t know how to do anything else but leave it all on the field.”
The Lost Girl of Astor Street Page 21