Fred snorted. “You expectin’ me to say any more.”
Nodding, Stinson pushed for details. “It might be wise. I’d be one who’d raise a drink to your marriage tonight in the Beer Garden. Let others know, you see.”
With thinned lips, Fred stared for a moment. He searched the other man’s face. The support he found there came as a surprise.
With his lips curving upward, Fred nodded. “Well, then raise a glass tonight, if that’s what you want to do. My bride certainly deserves any praise you want to give her.”
The sour livery owner actually cackled gleefully. Only practiced control stopped Fred from gaping at the sound. He couldn’t stop his eyes, which rounded in surprise he was sure at the older man’s words.
“Yes, sir! That will get Strong’s ire going. Since his older boy died, he’s had a powerful hate for you. Not sure but that your marriage will send him into an apoplexy. He was that sure he could use the woman and the baby against you.”
That grabbed Fred’s attention. “You heard him say that.”
Stinson patted the fidgeting horse before answering. “Yep. Too bad you aren’t a drinker. You’d learn more if you hung out at the Beer Garden.”
Fred wanted to dismiss what Stinson said. After all, it sounded like he was only repeating the words of a man too drunk to be reasonable. Such threats were never reliable, he mentally argued.
Strange, though. When had the snooty banker started visiting the tavern? That wasn’t like him at all.
“When was this?”
Stinson glowered at his assistant who finally arrived to take Fred’s horse to a stall. The young man lowered his head and whistled nervously as he led the animal away.
With a shake of his head at the boy’s retreating back, Stinson returned his attention to the sheriff. “Hmm. Seems to me it was Tuesday, so three days ago.”
Fred pounded a fist into his other hand. “The baby only arrived today. How would Strong know about it?”
The older man’s eyes narrowed. “Yep. Not the kind of trickster I want as sheriff.” A rare smile threatened around his mouth. “Think I’ll do a little campaigning tonight.”
Thanking him, Fred left the livery with his head full of possibilities. Had Strong paid the girl to give up her baby? If so, they wouldn’t be able to keep Blossom. It wouldn’t be the decent thing to do to a mother who’d been coerced into giving the baby away.
Maybe she really did want to be free from a baby that reminded her of a terrible act done to her. He and Lilah would be head over hindquarters happy to keep the little sweetheart.
The hand that pulled him into the dark alley came out of nowhere. He’d been distracted and trusting so the person easily grabbed him. Fred listened for the click of a gun’s hammer being pulled back. None came.
“Listen, sheriff. We’ve got trouble again with that white slaver.”
Releasing a shaky breath, Fred relaxed when he recognized the voice. Morrison, the Pinkerton agent, had returned. Even with the man’s bad news, Fred let out a low bark of laughter.
“Man alive but you scared me!”
In the dark, he heard the sound of Morrison’s tobacco juice hitting the ground. The man growled his reply. “Can’t trust your deputies and didn’t want anyone to see me back in town. This shaped up to be the best way to talk to you.”
That was the closest to an apology Fred would get. Even though the man couldn’t see him in the night-darkened alley, Fred caught himself nodding a response. That made no sense, but it gave him time to organize his thoughts.
Clearing his throat quietly, he spoke. “So, you were hired to follow another girl?”
“Miss Charity Melrose.” The low, gravelly voice sounded pained.
Pushing for details, Fred made a guess. “Not just another case this time, is it?”
The tight, strained tone allowed Fred to glimpse the importance of the girl to the man. “No, this one is my niece.”
Not bothering with a useless expression of sympathy, the sheriff suggested a plan. “I have one deputy I trust, and he was supposed to watch the depot yesterday. Let’s check with him.”
Fred moved down the alley and out to a row of houses that backed up against the town’s main street. In the dark, the click of Morrison’s boots behind him sounded eerie. Even though Fred wanted him to follow, the silent darkness gave the sound a sinister quality. Friday had definitely been too rough on Fred if his mind cringed at a colleague’s footsteps.
Moving to a small house at the end of the row, he avoided the front door and moved around to a side entrance. Tapping lightly, he waited for Morrison to join him. The man stayed in the shadow of a nearby oak tree.
Cully answered after the tenth knock, already dressed in his nightshirt. Recognizing the sheriff, he groaned. “No, don’t tell me you need me.”
Shrugging, Fred frowned. “Maybe. Did you see a girl come in yesterday on the train?”
From the darkness, Morrison whispered loudly, and Cully startled at the unexpected sound. “Black, curly hair and dressed in a violet traveling suit.”
Cully peered beyond Fred, trying to see who hid in the shadows. At the sound of Fred clearing his throat, he focused on his boss again.
“Yeah, a girl answering that description did arrive.”
That surprised Fred. Cully typically reported any new arrivals to him. He struggled to keep his tone neutral, hiding his anger. “Where’d you take her?”
He must not have done a good enough job concealing his emotion. Cully flinched before shrinking back a step into the lantern-lit room behind him.
“Hansen was already there with the girl. Told me she’d come to see him and not to tell his business to anyone in town.” Cully snorted. “As if I’d gossip like an old woman.”
Fred’s mind worked frantically to put clues into place. So Hansen was involved somehow with the white slavers. He didn’t strike Fred as the type of mind that could plan it, though.
“Okay, you don’t gossip. But, this is a crime so I need you to report where he took her.” Fred worded his command carefully. Cully was loyal and, if he thought of Hansen as a friend, he’d need to be ordered to say what he knew.
Cully scratched his head. “I can’t tell you where he took her. But, I know how they left the depot.”
Odd, but it was the only clue so Fred pushed for an answer. “Fine. How did they leave?”
The deputy’s mouth turned downward. “It was strange. They got into Mr. Strong’s buggy.”
The information didn’t make sense. With what Fred had observed, he’d dismissed the banker as a possible leader of the white slavers. Cully’s revelation echoed in his mind while he considered what he’d recently observed about Strong.
With very little regret, he ordered the deputy to get dressed. While waiting for him, Fred and Morrison stood in the shadow of the oak. He wished he had a suggestion for the detective, but no active brothel came to mind. With the recent Katherine Bushnell law, named for the woman who campaigned so strongly for its passage, forcing unmarried women into sexual acts had become illegal, at least in Wisconsin. That closed most of the cathouses near the lumber camps.
Or maybe they’d just hidden their activities. A possibility came to mind.
His hissed words in the quiet night rang loudly, and Fred softened his tone as he shared his plan. “Seems to me that someone will have heard about a place to go for their, uh, good time. We’d better send the deputy into the tavern to question a few men who would know.”
Though almost hidden in the darkness, Fred saw Morrison’s scowl. He waited to hear what the man was thinking. It didn’t take long for the detective to tell him.
“I’m wanting to have a look in Hansen’s house. Maybe he’s keeping my niece there.”
The note of desperation that escaped with those words surprised Fred. Something more than an innocent woman’s kidnapping was happening here. He’d be jiggered before he moved an inch without knowing the whole story.
“It’s true that Han
sen hasn’t been missing from town so he can’t have left to take her anywhere. But, he lives in a boarding house, and he can’t be keeping your niece there.”
In the silence that followed, Fred formed his question. In the end, his words slipped out like an accusation.
Anger flavored his quiet hiss. “You haven’t told me everything. I know that.”
When the other man stood mute, Fred reached his own logical conclusions. “Okay, so let me take a wild guess knowing the Pinkerton Agency like I do.”
Morrison snorted cynically. The sound didn’t stop Fred from laying out a possible reason for the girl’s arrival in Idyll Wood.
“She’s a young agent, recently joining the Pinkertons.” When Morrison didn’t declare him wrong, Fred went on in a low whisper. “She and her partner were meant to arrive on the same train, though not appearing to be together. Somehow, they were separated. The partner can’t find her and sent a telegram that brought you here.”
Rather than another dismissive snort, Morrison gave a long, tired-sounding sigh. “She had been coached and was supposed to stall when a man met her at the train. Her partner would then take over and coax the information we wanted from the person meeting her.”
“Where’s the partner?”
The detective stayed quiet. When he finally spoke, anger lent his words a choking sound. “The man fell asleep and didn’t get off at the stop. He’s probably back in Chicago by now, handing in his Pinkerton badge.”
Cully lumbered out of the house, slamming his door. The noise echoed like a gunshot in the quiet, moonless night. Amazingly, Morrison jumped at the noise. Fred knew him as a cool, controlled man and became concerned. An overly emotional man didn’t think rationally and would be a danger to those he worked with on this case.
He moved very close and bit out his words near the detective’s ear. “You need to sleep and get ahold of yourself. “I’m taking you to my wife’s home. It’s empty and will be a good place for you to lay low tonight.”
Near like he was, Fred made out the tightening of Morrison’s jaw. Still, the man bobbed his head and didn’t argue.
The deputy now stood close to them. Using his controlled, lawman tone, Fred gave Cully his orders. “Get to the Beer Garden and find out it anyone knows where Hansen has been or has seen him with the girl.”
Cully tipped his chin to show he understood and turned to leave. His boss’s voice stopped him.
A sudden thought made Fred add one more command. “Oh, and if you see Stinson, ask him if Mr. Strong’s buggy horse was sweating or seemed to have gone far the day Hansen used the buggy.”
Fred could always rely on Cully ferreting out information in the tavern. He was a regular there, anyhow. If Fred had gone into the place, everyone would stay mum, he felt sure, since he never visited there.
Quietly hissing, “Come on,” Fred led the other man up the dark street. A cloud shifted, allowing the moonlight to seep through briefly. In that moment, he glimpsed Morrison’s slumped shoulders and knew that the man worried about his niece’s virtue as much as her safety.
One thing nagged at Fred’s mind. Who, he worried, had been so sure he wouldn’t catch the leader of the gang? After all, someone had to have hired the Pinkertons. Morrison and his niece didn’t come here out of some sense of kindness.
It seemed that someone didn’t trust him to succeed. Was it Strong or the mayor? It made sense that Strong would want to prove he’d orchestrated the capture of the ring leader.
Of course, that meant Strong wasn’t the ringleader even though clues were starting to point in his direction. Something from that scene in front of the bank today continued to nag at him. Ledbetter’s expression while Strong tried to stir up the men around him felt wrong. Like someone else had suddenly inhabited the meek lawyer’s body.
The two-story house stood in front of them. Fred led the detective around the building to the backdoor. Up two steps, they crossed the wide back porch. Fred had never noticed that Lilah ordered her back porch to be built larger than the front one. Obviously, she planned to sit outside where she could have privacy rather than in the front, like most people, to watch the comings and goings of her neighbors. He liked that about her.
Before he left the farm, Lilah gave him a key and asked him to move his things to her home. Using that key, Fred opened the backdoor and led Morrison into the kitchen. With eyes used to the darkness, Fred spotted the oil lamp. With the matches hung on the wall next to the stove, he lit the turned-up wick.
Holding the lamp in front of him, he moved back to the detective. Using a no-nonsense tone, Fred asked, “Who hired you to come back to Idyll Wood?”
Morrison’s lips thinned. “I can’t reveal my client.”
Eyes narrowed, Fred waited, staring with cold determination at the other man. Morrison’s shoulders sagged. “I shouldn’t be doing this. But, I’ll tell you.”
Pausing to give a long, drawn-out sigh, Morrison wearily filled Fred in on the client. “The woman from the brothel hired the Pinkertons. I don’t know if it was a revenge thing or she just needs to know the man is caught.”
Fred arched an eyebrow in the weak light of the lamp. “Which woman? There were several at the brothel that night.”
The detective weakly chuckled. “But not one of them could afford to hire a detective. At least, none of them except for Miss Lilah Levitt.”
Chapter 8
The Election
She couldn’t put it off. After all, there was no chamber pot. Lilah had already looked under the bed. And, by the weak glow of her candle, she’d searched the corners of the room to find it.
With a sigh, she fitted her feet into her boots. They flopped as Lilah moved since she didn’t see a need to bother with the button hook. After all, she would just dart outside to the convenience and then return to bed.
At least, she’d return to bed until Blossom began to cry her soft wails. Already, she’d been up three times during the night with the baby. The little one seemed to eat about every two hours.
Myra thought Blossom wasn’t able to hold much yet in her stomach so she would nurse often. Definitely, the baby girl ate more often than Samuel, Myra’s own baby. Lilah had seen that with her own eyes.
While it made her blush, she’d been with Myra to help when the kind woman nursed both babies at the same time. Lilah needed to learn about feeding an infant, Myra had said. Myra also needed a second set of hands when the tiny baby finished eating before Samuel.
Sure enough, Blossom quit nursing after fifteen minutes or so. When even jiggling her didn’t wake the baby, Myra called Lilah to her. “Come and take your little girl. What a perfect moment to rock her so you two bond.”
Blossom’s nearly unfocused eyes looked up at her each time Lilah changed the baby. She seemed to watch her new mother when Lilah sang to her as she rocked Blossom to sleep or crooned sweet words while bathing the child with a warm washcloth. Myra felt sure Blossom was less than a week old and still too small for a tub bath.
Lilah just knew she and her claimed daughter were off to a great start. Tiptoeing past the basket where Blossom slept, she couldn’t resist a glance and held the candle high to see the perfectly formed miracle.
Yes, they were off to a great start, with Myra’s help. Lilah wished that she could say the same thing about her marriage.
Moving with care out the door of the first-floor bedroom, she mulled over the memory of her wedding that day. Fred claimed to need her and that was a far cry from loving her. Even if Myra later told her, “German men don’t need anyone. At least, not often. Fred’s admitting he needs you was quite a declaration.”
Wanting to groan at the memory of his sweet, tender peck on her lips, she worked to stay silent. She didn’t want to wake the house, after all. Myra had finished feeding Blossom within the last half-hour and needed to sleep.
Turning the key left in the backdoor, Lilah stepped out onto the porch that served as a mudroom for the family. Lifting her coat from the hook attached to
the back wall of the house, she slipped her arms into its cold fabric and shivered. She might have done better to race out into the cold wearing only Myra’s flannel nightgown. The others in this house must bring their coats inside to warm up before wearing them each day.
Careful not to let the screen door slap against the doorframe, Lilah moved out into the moonless early morning. Her small candle’s light barely penetrated the inkiness surrounding her. Focusing on only the few inches ahead of her, Lilah watched the ground so she wouldn’t stumble over a rock or clump of raised earth. The short walk took longer than she expected. By the time she reached the small building, Lilah all but danced from one leg to the other with her need.
Even so, she held the candle high inside the outhouse to check for bats or spiders. Satisfied, she made ready to sit down and realized she couldn’t hold the candle and lift her nightgown at the same time. A peg protruded from the wall where a person could rest a lantern. No candleholder sat in the building.
Unhappily, Lilah blew out the candle and laid it beside her. In the smelly darkness, she took care of her pressing need. Finished, she picked up the useless candle and opened the door to the blackness. Funny, she’d just walked safely to the privy, but that walk took on an eerie foreboding without her candle.
“There’s not a thing to be afraid of in the dark.” She reminded herself that the time right before dawn always was the darkest. It was why the inky black seemed to cling to her.
The quiet words sounded like a shout in the absolute quiet of the early morning. A woof from the farm dog answered her. Then it started barking and growling.
A sudden yip and whining alarmed Lilah. Rather than heading for the safety of the dark house, she moved in the direction of the poor animal.
In the murky gloom, she couldn’t see the dog and moved forward slowly toward the small cries it gave off. Something had hurt it.
Or someone! What was she doing? Suddenly, she realized the danger and knew she needed to get back to the house. It was like the Holy Spirit urged her to move. Holder would check on the dog, once she woke him. He could come out with a lantern and a shotgun.
Wistful in Wisconsin Page 7