“I’ll get them. And how about I poke around down by the wharf again, sir, rather than go back to have a look at Palmer right now? Maybe, with a little financial help, somebody’ll know who Roddy really is and where we can find him.” Taylor jingled coins in his pocket and grinned.
“Do I want to know how you managed to get extra money to throw around?” If Taylor were caught in a gambling den, he’d be thrown off the force.
“Nope, sir. You definitely don’t.”
• • •
“You will tell Mr. Greaves that my cousin believes she saw Mr. Palmer the evening Li Sha was murdered?” Celia asked the detective, who’d introduced himself as Tobias Briggs. She’d left the house despite Mr. Greaves’ admonition that she stay put, wanting to deliver her message in person, only to have her plans derailed by his absence from the police station.
“It is critical for Mr. Greaves to know that Mr. Palmer may have lied to him,” she said.
Detective Briggs eyed her. She’d seen him, briefly, at Li Sha’s funeral and did not care for his manner. At least he hadn’t stared too long at the bruises on her face.
“Will do, ma’am.”
“Thank you.”
She left the station and decided to walk home. People were out and about, enjoying the sunshine after yesterday’s rain, and she strolled among them up the road’s incline. Walking might help her reason more clearly over Barbara’s information.
Did Joseph Palmer’s claim he was not in San Francisco the night Li Sha died mean he’d killed her, or was there another explanation? Perhaps he’d been engaged in some other illicit activity that evening.
Celia moved out of the path of a shop boy wheeling a handcart as she continued up the hill. There was also what Madame Philippe had told her yesterday. Tessie had been looking for a suspicious man who worked near water. Mr. Palmer owned a warehouse near the harbor. But if Joseph Palmer was the smuggler who called himself Roddy, Mr. Lange would have been alarmed to spot him at Li Sha’s funeral.
Celia paused in front of a pawnshop. The usual items were on display—watches and guns and pieces of jewelry. She squinted. The locket on the topmost shelf looked like the one she had given to Mr. Smith, the locket containing the picture of Patrick so the man could show it while looking for her husband. Oh dear, Mr. Smith. You did pawn the locket, as I’d feared.
Suddenly she recalled another locket and realized she’d captured the memory that had been eluding her. She knew what was missing from the pile of items Mr. Greaves had handed over at Li Sha’s funeral—a silver locket. Celia had seen the necklace only once or twice, since it was usually hidden beneath the high collar of Li Sha’s dress. Li Sha might have sold the necklace in the days before she’d died, but Celia believed she wouldn’t. For some reason, the girl had been very attached to it. But what was so significant about the locket that Barbara had chosen to keep secret its absence?
Celia had never learned who’d given the necklace to Li Sha. It had been too costly for Tom Davies to afford. Mr. Lange would not raise unseemly questions by providing his employee with such a handsome present. Mr. Douglass? Mr. Greaves thought he was connected to Li Sha, but Celia’s observation of the man only ever indicated that he possessed disdain for the Chinese race.
Would Connor Ahearn have given a lovely necklace to a Chinese prostitute? He’d known Li Sha, but Mr. Greaves had claimed Mr. Ahearn hated her. And Celia could not speak for the mysterious smuggler called Roddy.
Which left one man. Joseph Palmer could certainly afford a fine locket. Barbara must have suspected Mr. Palmer had given it to Li Sha, or perhaps Barbara knew that he had. She might also have reasoned that its absence somehow connected him to the girl’s death.
Had Li Sha come to ask Joseph Palmer for money the evening he was supposed to be miles away? Had he wrenched the necklace from her neck, to remove the clue linking him to her, after he’d killed her in a rage? And the afternoon that Celia had encountered him on the street, he’d made certain to comment that Li Sha had sold all of her valuables. Had he done so hoping that if Celia had noticed the necklace was missing, she wouldn’t conclude the murderer had taken it off the girl’s body?
“And Tom,” she muttered, “told me plainly Li Sha had not sold all her gifts.”
He’d known, too, that Li Sha had held on to one item, but Celia had been unable to fit the various comments together. Until now.
Celia gripped the straps of her reticule. Had Joseph Palmer killed Tessie as well? And had he left those terrible warnings for Celia’s own family? He might have cleverly disguised his handwriting and left the notes, but to terrify Barbara so thoroughly and then to attack Celia . . .
But what if he hadn’t been after her, but after Barbara? Had he come to their house last night in a failed effort to silence her cousin, who knew too many of his secrets? No wonder Barbara had balked at the idea of going to the Palmers’ today. She must have come to fear him at last, and knew she was no longer safe from him.
Celia started to run toward home.
• • •
Celia hurtled through the front door. She threw down her reticule and sprinted up the staircase, her many layers of skirts tangling around her ankles.
“Ma’am, what is it now?” asked Addie, hastening into the entryway.
“I’ve remembered,” Celia called out, breathing hard from the dash up Kearney.
She rounded the banister and hurried down the hallway, pausing to catch her breath before tapping on the closed door to her cousin’s bedchamber.
“Barbara? May I come in? I need to speak to you urgently.” There was no reply. “Barbara?” she asked again, and opened the door. The bedchamber was empty.
Celia rushed back out into the hallway and down to the room Owen occupied. He lay deeply asleep and quite alone. She leaned over the balustrade. “Addie! Where is Barbara?”
Addie looked up at her. “She isna upstairs?”
“No. Did the Palmers come to fetch her?”
“No, ma’am. But there was that message that came for her right after you went to the police station,” said Addie. “Very secretive about it, she was, and wouldna say who’d sent it. She must’ve slipped out without my knowing.”
“We have to find that message, Addie. It might tell us where she’s gone.”
Celia returned to her cousin’s bedchamber as the housekeeper’s footsteps sounded on the staircase.
“Help me look, Addie. I am hoping she left that note here.”
Celia rummaged around in drawers and atop her cousin’s dressing table, pushing aside brushes and mirrors, a photo of Barbara’s father. Celia searched her cousin’s wardrobe, shaking out boots and slippers and hunting through pockets. Addie turned down the covers on Barbara’s bed and looked beneath the pillows, lifted the hair-and-spring mattress.
With a sigh, Addie let the mattress drop back into place. “Nothing, ma’am.”
Barbara had likely taken the note with her.
“Wait, is this it?” Addie bent to retrieve a crumpled scrap of paper from the dustbin. She smoothed out the creases.
Celia took the paper from her.
B—
You and your cousin have nothing to fear from me. Meet me at Union Square at two and I shall explain.
J
Barbara had gone to meet Joseph Palmer, who called the girl by her Christian name. A man with secrets whom Barbara had willingly protected in a naïve display of loyalty and affection.
Addie stared at the note Celia handed her. “What does it mean, ma’am?”
Celia glanced at the watch pinned to her waist—half two. She might already be too late to intercept them.
“I am going to Union Square to look for Barbara, and if she is not there, I will head to the Palmers’ house.”
“Now you’re off, too?”
Celia rushed back downstairs, Addie on her heels
.
“I need you to go to the police station and tell Detective Greaves or Officer Taylor—gad, I hope they are there now—that Miss Barbara has gone to meet Mr. Palmer at Union Square. She saw him here in town the night Li Sha died, and I am very concerned. Mr. Greaves will understand. Tell him where I’m going, as well.” He would be angry with her, but she could not wait for either his approval or his assistance. “And while you are there, also tell him I have remembered what was missing. A necklace.”
“But I dinna understand! Is Miss Barbara in danger?”
“I pray not, but she very well could be.” Celia collected her bonnet and shawl. Her silver letter opener winked at her from a parlor side table. She had left it there that morning after Addie had fetched the mail from the post office and Celia had separated private correspondence from the bills. Before events had begun to spin toward an inevitable conclusion, sucking Celia in like a maelstrom.
On a whim, she picked up the letter opener and tucked it into her pocket.
“And what are you thinking of doing with that?” Addie’s voice was growing strident.
“Nothing, I hope. But since we do not have that gun Mr. Greaves recommended and your cleaver’s too cumbersome—”
“Och! What is this world coming to?”
“Dangerous and dark things, Addie. Dangerous and dark,” Celia answered. “Now, please hurry.”
“Aye, I’ll fetch that detective. And pray for your fool head while I’m about it,” she said, and stormed off.
Celia closed her fingers around the narrow silver blade in her pocket.
Dangerous and dark things, indeed.
• • •
Celia leaned through the window of the hack and searched the paths and benches of Union Square. “Circle again,” she demanded of the driver.
“It’s your dime, ma’am.”
Dust scuttled across the square’s intersecting paths, and the chime of church bells echoed. A man and woman rose from a bench, and Celia’s hopes lifted for a moment until she realized they weren’t Barbara and Mr. Palmer.
“I would like to make a stop on Sutter, driver,” she said, giving him the address of Joseph Palmer’s office. It wasn’t far and Barbara might have decided to head there, if he had not shown up for their meeting.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Celia settled back against the seat and looked at her watch. Ten minutes had passed since she’d hailed the cab. Ten more precious minutes.
“Hurry, driver!”
• • •
After returning to the station from Lange’s, where he’d found no incriminating lump on the man’s forehead, Nick had just pulled out his desk chair and dropped onto the seat when Taylor charged through the door.
“You’ll never believe what I learned down at the Vallejo Street Wharf, sir.”
Nick raised his brows, waiting.
Taylor dragged over a chair and sat. “I was asking ’round about Roddy when I found a warehouse worker who’d been checking on a shipment that arrived the night Li Sha was killed. Well, he claims he was checking on a shipment. I’m thinking he was planning on adding to his income by pinching some of the goods and reselling them. Especially as happy as he was to take the coins I was offering—”
“What did he see, Taylor?” Someday his assistant would learn to get to the point.
“He saw a buggy that Monday night. A nice buggy with shiny red wheels, which was what made him notice it. It was nicer than most of the traps and wagons that come around the wharf.”
Red wheels. Where had Nick seen a buggy with red wheels before? He sat up straight in his chair. At Li Sha’s funeral.
“Even better, I got names of all the members of the Men’s Benevolent Association. And you’ll never guess who’s on it.” Taylor’s eyes shone with giddy excitement.
“I’m not in the mood to guess, Taylor!”
“Right. Well, Uhlfelder is a member, like he told us. But get this. Wagner’s a member, too. How ’bout that!”
Damn. Palmer. Eagan. Douglass. Uhlfelder. Wagner.
Knuckles rapped on the office door, and Mullahey poked his head in. “There’s a woman to see you—”
Addie Ferguson shoved past him. “I dinna have time for politeness, Detective Greaves, because you’ve got to help the mistress. She’s gone to Union Square, or maybe the Palmers’, to chase after Miss Barbara, who’s involved in some foul dealings with that Joseph Palmer.”
Nick stood and so did Taylor.
“She says I’m to tell you Miss Barbara has gone to meet with Mr. Palmer, and she’s worried because Miss Barbara saw him that evening and that you’d ken what she meant. Do you ken what she meant?” She wrung her hands while her gaze shot from Nick to Taylor. “And Mrs. Davies has gone on this chase all by herself, with nothing more than a letter opener as a weapon! And she said, she said she’s remembered what was missing. A necklace.”
She hiccuped a sob.
“Now, now, Miss Ferguson,” said Taylor, patting her shoulder.
Briggs strolled through the doorway behind them. “There you are, Greaves. Forgot to give you a message from a Mrs. Davies. Something about Mr. Palmer lying to you.” Miss Ferguson bawled louder and Briggs looked over. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Taylor, take Miss Ferguson back to the house,” Nick ordered, exiting the office. The Palmers had a buggy with red wheels. So long as Celia Davies and her cousin stayed out in the open, where there would be other people about, they should be safe. But if they both took it into their fool heads to go to the Palmers’ house, there was no telling what might happen.
“Don’t you want me to come with you, sir?” Taylor called after him.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got a lot more than a letter opener with me.”
• • •
Nick climbed the office building staircase, taking the stairs two at a time. He’d borrowed a horse and gone to Union Square, but neither Barbara Walford nor Joseph Palmer had been there. The next location to check was Palmer’s office.
He strode down the hall. Palmer’s clerk stood on guard outside the man’s office.
“Mr. Palmer is not in.”
“I think I’ll just check,” Nick said, pushing past him.
“Detective!”
The handle to Palmer’s office door turned in Nick’s hand, and he barged into the room. The smell of cigar smoke hung in the air, but the room was empty.
Nick turned to Palmer’s lackey. “Did a Miss Walford come here?”
“Her again? That woman who was here earlier was looking for her, too.”
“Do you mean Mrs. Davies?” Nick asked.
“She didn’t leave a name.”
“Where is Palmer, then? Where’d he go?” He was wasting valuable time here.
“He didn’t say. He got a message and went out. Two messages, actually. But Mr. Palmer didn’t tell me his plans. Just left.”
Nick bolted out of Palmer’s office and ran back down the hallway.
• • •
Barbara had not been at Mr. Palmer’s office, and Celia had directed the cabdriver to take her to the Palmers’ house.
The carriage rolled to a halt, gravel crunching. Celia had always admired the Palmers’ quiet location on the western edge of Clay Street Hill, with space—such a luxury—between their home and their neighbors’. She hopped down from the carriage and turned to stare at the Palmers’ house, with its broad pillared porch and deep eaves. If Barbara had decided to look for Mr. Palmer here, the isolated setting went from being admirable to being sinister.
“Please wait for me,” she told the driver, who sat hunched on his seat. She had no idea where else to search, though, if Barbara wasn’t here.
“You’re costin’ me fares, lady.”
“I shall pay you for your time.”
“Expectin’ you wil
l.” He paused to pucker his lips and spit an arc of tobacco juice onto the ground near her feet. “’Cause it’s a long walk back from here.”
Celia passed through the gate. There didn’t appear to be anyone about, and that included Barbara. The lace curtains at the parlor window were drawn open and the room looked empty.
Celia climbed the front steps and knocked on the door. “Mr. Palmer?” she called out, knocking again. “Barbara?”
There was no answer.
The cabdriver perked his brows when he saw her descend the porch steps.
“A few more minutes,” she shouted, hurrying over the flagstone path that flanked the side of the house.
No one was out back, either, not even the Palmers’ maid, Rose. Celia looked up at the house. Perhaps Barbara hadn’t come here after all.
Her gaze settled on the kitchen door and she noticed it had been propped open. “How odd.”
Inside, might she find conclusive evidence linking Joseph Palmer to Li Sha’s death? Or might she find Barbara, unconscious or worse?
I’m sure he wouldn’t hurt me. Celia hoped her cousin was right.
Celia drew in a breath. She’d need an explanation for what she was doing in the house. If she’d known she was going to be snooping around inside, she could have brought the umbrella Elizabeth had left in Celia’s vestibule stand and claim she’d wished to return it. Perhaps she should say she’d mislaid one of her tortoiseshell hair combs at the luncheon Elizabeth had hosted a few weeks ago. And she could claim that, when no one responded to her knocking, she’d decided to search for it on her own. The next reasonable question would be why she had waited so long to recover the hair comb. Perhaps no one would ask.
With a hasty glance around and seeing nothing more than a pair of finches fluttering among the shrubs and a pony cart wheeling by on a distant road, Celia sped across the veranda and through the door before she could change her mind.
“Hullo? Is anyone at home?” She rested a hand on her reticule and felt the comforting shape of the letter opener, transferred from her pocket, where it had managed to jab her thigh despite her crinoline. “Hullo? Barbara? Rose? Mr. Palmer? Anyone?” She listened for a response and got none.
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