Murder in the City of Liberty

by Rachel McMillan

  He stuck out his chin a little and nodded as if to assure himself that he had it all under control. Then he sought out Reggie and Errol in the crowd spilling over the lawn near the diamond.

  It was in this moment, this phase, that he recalled what Blaney had said about seeking out the corn dog seller. He wondered if the evening’s scheduled game would be postponed.

  “Absolutely not,” one of the uniformed officers said when he casually asked, rejoining the throng. “What good would it do? This poor fellow was disposed of in the locker room—no need to stop an entire franchise because of it. Especially because we have no idea what happened.”

  Hamish wasn’t sure what to think of that. It bothered him, sure. But business was business. After all, his cousin’s nightclub opened (to unbelievable crowds) the day after a corpse was discovered.

  The fellow’s name was Ted Quinn, and he scrubbed at his kiosk. Hamish had seen him several times before. Always protected from the late afternoon sun by an umbrella.

  “You see everyone who comes and goes,” Hamish said. “Do you remember seeing a tall, redheaded man?”

  Ted didn’t say anything. Rather, he spent a moment studying Hamish intensely. When he looked to Reggie his eyes softened, but just a bit.

  “I see a lot of people,” he said evasively. “I’ll save my answers for the police.”

  Reggie and Hamish exchanged a look.

  “Are you all right?” she asked after they were out of hearing distance.

  Hamish nodded. “As all right as I can be knowing a sixteen-year-old kid was killed in a baseball locker room.”

  “Hamish!” They both turned at the sound of Rob Reid’s voice. “Thanks for coming. Parker is a client of yours. You have every right to come with me.”

  Reggie turned to Hamish, eyes bright, and they followed the officer to the crime scene.

  * * *

  Reggie wondered what the ladies served from her mother’s silver tea set might think if they knew she was in a men’s locker room. The sun slanted through slight windows, the pungent smell of cleats and unlaundered towels tickling Reggie’s nostrils. Police officers milled about. One kept an eye on the door as a trickle of reporters streamed to the slightly open doorway. News moved fast, and Reggie could hear the thrum of movement before she saw a conglomeration of figures at the slightly open doorway.

  She knew she was studying the commotion over her shoulder to keep from what was drawing Hamish and Reid nearer. No matter how Reggie hankered after adventure, she would never grow accustomed to murder. She grabbed Hamish’s elbow and looked up and over his shoulder at the lifeless figure of Toby. He looked so young—as if he were sleeping and she might shake him awake.

  “It was someone who led with their left,” Reid was saying. “Judging by the intensity of the blow to his head.”

  “Reid!” The trio turned at a voice from a cop Reggie didn’t recall seeing outside.

  “Sir!” The way Reid straightened and responded led Reggie to believe the man facing Reid was of a much higher rank.

  “Boys outside say this isn’t your jurisdiction. What are you doing across the river?”

  “You want the truth, sir?”

  “Don’t try my patience.”

  “When I heard word I came because I was worried that some of the men would write it off as an accident. Or just an unfortunate result of a fight.”

  “And that is what it is.” The officer stepped around them and stared at the body. “An unfortunate, tragic waste of life. There was no one at the scene, was there?”

  “The boy’s uncle found him.”

  “Parker?” The officer removed his cap. “Temper on that one.”

  Reggie gripped Hamish’s arm to keep herself from lunging at the officer. She could feel the shudder from Hamish’s shaking hand even from as far up as his bicep.

  “Sir, he was devastated.”

  “And you let reporters in?”

  “They’re not reporters. The boy’s uncle is their client. They’re private investigators.”

  The cop looked them over. “I thought I knew every investigator in the city by sight.”

  Reggie removed her grip from Hamish’s arm. “Regina Van Buren.” She extended a hand, which he did not take. “And this is my partner, Hamish DeLuca.”

  The officer cocked his head. “That’s a familiar name.” He studied Hamish intensely. So intensely, he didn’t look over when the coroner and a medic arrived and Reid began speaking to them softly. “And a familiar face,” the officer continued. “Involved in that business at the Flamingo with Luca Valari, weren’t you?”

  “Yes. Wrong place at the wrong time. I assure you that everything we investigate is aboveboard.” A bit of a ripple in his voice, left over from his earlier episode, stalled Hamish’s sentence.

  “Mr. Parker has been the victim of a series of unfortunate pranks,” Reggie said.

  “Well, several fistfights on the field. Some with his own teammates. What do you expect?”

  The officer moved past them outside and said over his shoulder, “This was an unfortunate accident. Nothing premeditated.” He pushed through the mill of reporters, bulbs ready and flashing through the opening. Reid was leaning over the body and joined them several moments later after removing everything from Toby’s trouser pockets before the coroner’s initial examination.

  Reggie swallowed a sour taste in her mouth. The last time she and Hamish were involved in the death of an innocent person, the police treated it as an unfortunate accident. She knew it wasn’t coincidence, but rather that she had stepped into a world where justice had a lot to do with where you came from and what you owned.

  “That was Tucker,” Reid said, joining them, indicating the officer who had just left. “Maybe I didn’t just let you in because Parker’s your client.” Reid scrubbed his hairline. “Maybe I let you in because I figured that is what would happen. It’s why I am here in the first place. Lots of accidents around here.” He looked at Hamish pointedly. “You know that from your time at your cousin’s club.”

  “Murder is a by-the-way when there are so many bigger things at play,” Hamish said. “What’s that in your hand?”

  Reggie followed Hamish’s sightline to a piece of paper loosely clutched in Reid’s fist. He unfolded it and passed it to Hamish, who turned slightly from Reggie as his eyes wandered over the lines. It looked like an inventory of some sort. She made out just a few words before he refolded it.

  Something ending in “-uze” and another word that just read “clus.” Writing in the margins, a hand that seemed oddly familiar. In broad strokes. Not completely educated with the skill of a Vaughan Vanderlaan but with the same type of pen Vaughan would use.

  “We’re going to treat this as a murder investigation,” Hamish told Reid, speaking for both of them.

  She didn’t mind—she was about to say the same thing.

  Reid gave a quick nod. “Let’s all get out of here, shall we? None of us are here with any jurisdiction.”

  The officer may have put it on record as an accident, but that didn’t stop reporters from asking a dozen hungry questions. They elbowed past them, a small chorus of “No comment” layering the loud and pressing questions.

  Reggie stared up at the sun once they left the field and were on the sidewalk, bordered by beautiful, safe houses with the beautiful, safe sounds of almost-evening.

  She blinked at its blinding rays and straightened her shoulders. She had found a corpse before at the Flamingo Club. She was an investigator (at least trying to be an investigator). Her bottom lip shouldn’t wobble (it was); her throat shouldn’t scratch with oncoming tears (it did).

  A delayed reaction to the lifeless body of a sixteen-year-old boy silenced forever by a brute of a punch.

  Reggie shivered. Shivered some more. Reid had left them for his police car. So the world was just her and Hamish and sunlight and houses. They crossed an empty street.

  “I’m walking you home,” he told her quietly.

&nbs
p; Chapter 10

  Cluster. Fuze. Shell. Carbine. Toby was carrying a manifest for munitions with Luca Valari’s handwriting in the margins.

  “We’ll want to talk to the coach,” Reggie said unevenly. “Winston. I heard the men back there talking about him.”

  “Let’s not spiral ahead until tomorrow.” Hamish’s hands were in his pockets as he examined her. He could see Reggie trying—and failing—to blink the scene from her mind. He wondered if she had gotten a close look at the paper before he folded it up. She would know Luca’s handwriting as well as he did from her time as his cousin’s secretary. He would have to show it to her eventually as part of their investigation . . . but he wanted a head start.

  “The Sons of Liberty used to meet here,” Reggie said as they passed the Warren Tavern, sign swinging with the slight breeze, revelers spilling onto the street.

  A revolutionary gathering. Men with ideals. Thoughts. Rebellions.

  “Reid said whoever killed Toby led with his left.” He flicked a look at Reggie, who nodded silently. “Walt Bricker is left-handed. I don’t know why I focused on that, but I did. The first night I met him, he was peddling pamphlets with his left hand. When we saw him at the Top Hat, I noted his left hand was his dominant one. I centered in on that.”

  “Probably to have something to focus on so you wouldn’t shove him into a wall?”

  “That’s me,” Hamish said ironically. “Always wanting to shove someone into a wall.” He forced a chuckle, then stepped back. “But I wanted to with him. That smug look. His horrible ideas.” He fingered the manifest in his pocket. “We should go to one of the Christian Patriots meetings.”

  That paper. Safe in his pocket. Luca. His cousin had some less-than-savory connections, sure. But Bricker was so crass. So uncouth. Luca would turn up his nose at the man’s blue-collar voice and scuffed shoes. Would play friendly but not get involved with him. Walt Bricker within an inch of Luca Valari might rub off on his reputation. But if Bricker killed Toby . . . Toby, the kid who wanted to be a batboy. Toby who wanted to go to Cincinnati. Who was kind and awkward and uneven. Excited to cross the foyer of the Parker House Hotel. Hamish’s heart sank.

  And if Bricker killed Toby because of something to do with Luca, why leave the kid’s pockets unturned? Or had he just missed that? Heard someone coming?

  Hamish blinked away the rest of the questions uncorked in his mind at the sound of sudden tears beside him.

  They passed the tavern and its patrons. Hamish stopped her with his hand alongside a white picket fence.

  “Reg?”

  And at the small entreaty, a bundle of hiccups and sobs was in his arms. He anchored her a moment, always deliciously finding that his own tremors and shakes stopped when grounded in her.

  She fit. Oh, did she ever fit. He had never thought much about height until learning that he could tuck her head under his chin. He had never thought much of lips until learning what the stray strands of hair at the top of her head tasted like as he pressed his mouth into them.

  She withdrew after a second. A moment. A millennium. Her watery eyes cocooned in smeared liner looking up at him. She might kiss him. Not on the cheek or the ear or the chin, but truly kiss him, as the stars announced their first arrival overhead and another amateur mystery was tucked in their pockets.

  She almost (there were too many almosts) did. Her lips were over his jawline and then up over his cheekbone in a soft trace. Part of him knew it was his job to turn his head and the tide and meld their mouths together. But he was too surprised and her touch was too marvelous. He tasted a tang of the salt of her tears.

  It had been a horrible day and she had seen a horrible thing.

  Hamish DeLuca may not have been bred in her world of fine china and crystal. But he was still raised to be a gentleman. He straightened, cricked his shoulder, and disengaged. The world suddenly a winter morning and him stepping out of bed with no socks on the ice-cold floor.

  He saw her to the edge of her boardinghouse. Waited until she jogged up the steps to her door.

  * * *

  Nate had retired when Hamish walked through their front door a half hour later.

  He put the kettle on and retrieved Notre-Dame—the copy he kept in the sitting room, an edition in a far more pristine condition (being a recent present from Nate) than the well-loved one on his bedside table. He focused on finding all of his favorite scenes: the one that the film version Reggie spoke of completely ignored. As a detective, and certainly as a lawyer, he was interested in human nature, and he supposed the most he could expect of a night like this—the tragic story of Quasimodo and Esmeralda, outcasts to Paris’s elite, clashing with the views he’d heard spouted from Dirk’s shared pulpit—was another looking glass into the many complicated and often hate-infused depths of humanity. He leafed through Notre-Dame, landing on a page with an underlined quote: “His judgment demonstrates that one can be a genius and understand nothing of an art that is not one’s own.”

  Hamish shut the book. He sprinted toward the front hall telephone. He called the operator and asked to be transferred to the Parker House Hotel.

  There was no Valari registered with the hotel when he asked the front desk.

  “Has anyone with an Italian surname stayed there recently? Within the past week?” Hamish ran his hand over his face at how stupid the question sounded once out of his mouth.

  “Several, sir. I will need you to be more specific. If—”

  “A Mr. Hult,” Hamish tried, using Luca’s Swedish stepfather’s name. “Did you have a Mr. Hult there?”

  “He checked out two nights ago, sir.”

  Hamish clicked the receiver. Luca was in Boston.

  Luca was back and he had almost kissed Reggie. Again. Quasimodo . . . Quasi. Almost. Too many almosts.

  Hamish fixed a cup of cocoa quietly and then returned to the sitting room, which currently was an eruption of Nate: in piles of papers.

  Nate always treated him with the utmost respect. He figured that pursuing any leads he found in hopes of helping his friend would abolish the guilt of prying. Besides, if Nate truly had things to hide, would he leave them in the sitting room, on the bookshelves and sofa, piled beside the fireplace?

  Hamish tiptoed over the carpet and gently lifted a pile of papers. Some were in folders, one glossy and of a larger size than the others in the uniform pile. Hamish carefully pulled it out and smiled. An Action Comic featuring Nate’s favorite, Superman. Then, of course, a few longhand ideas for the Jewish Advocate in Nate’s hard-to-read hand.

  He discovered a Christian Patriots pamphlet tucked in among the other contracts and papers as he worked through the accordion, and he wondered how Nate could stand keeping that filth. Then wondered if there was a reason he needed to. Everyone went to Nate. If men of Dirk’s conviction were beginning to sniff around the North End, he would want to be prepared. To know before anyone else what people were up against.

  He recalled a conversation he had with one of Mrs. Leoni’s friends, trying to help her understand a particularly troublesome contract. “There are two ways to look at this. One is through the lens of a detective’s eye.”

  The girl looked up then, eyes sparkling. “Like Winchester Molloy or Sam Spade?”

  “Exactly. The other is through the eyes of the law. The law is more sure. Detection is all about instinct and a few hunches, but the law draws you back from your hunches so even if you tumble over into something uncertain, you land on solid ground.”

  Hamish tried to believe what he’d said while looking through Nate’s correspondence.

  He fingered the edge of a note of thanks from Hal at the Old North. Hamish pieced together the reason for the unending thanks. A couple had been evicted from their flat and Nate ensured they found temporary accommodations. There is so much of his city I do not see, Hamish thought.

  “You think it is unfair, sure,” his father had told him, recalling the backbreaking work he did digging up tracks at the roundhouse in Toronto bef
ore he found employment as a muckraking reporter in his youth. “But considering where you came from and the opportunity you still think you will find, you accept it. Without choice. Unions were dangerous. They meant the possibility of a strike. A strike meant you starved. Some of us didn’t have the luxury of those kinds of principles. You cannot judge people too harshly, Hamish. They may want to fight against the men controlling them, but they probably want to feed their families more.”

  Hamish leafed through more papers until his eyes snagged on one. “E. Parker. March. Job—nephew. Rang Kelly.”

  The fireplace crackled its defense. He was happy he had the foresight to toss a match and spark it alive. “Sometimes,” his father had always said, “you need to recognize that life will throw a line drive at you. And you have two choices. You can duck in fear and cower. Or you can hit it straight on. You have the choice to react or to anticipate. Use your power to blast that ball out of the field. Trust me. Anticipate.”

  “Hamish! What in . . . Get away from this.” Nate was sleepy-eyed, robe sloppily tied around his pajamas. “Honestly.”

  “This is about Errol Parker. This has to do with my case. You said you knew nothing about it!” Hamish was angry. Too angry. But Toby was dead and Luca was in the city and Nate was standing there looking like the friend he knew while building a larger wall of secrets.

  “Hamish, I have my reasons.”

  “Do you trust me?” Hamish spoke at a lower decibel, tucking his hand behind his back, partly to hide the slight shake.