No Quiet among the Shadows

by Nancy Herriman

  The men who visited this part of the city, wedged between the rowdy Barbary Coast to the north and the dark alleyways of the Chinese quarter to the south, didn’t need much of an excuse for drunken revelry, though.

  “Don’t see much going on.” Taylor patted down the pockets of his gray policeman’s coat in search of a cigar. Once he located one along with a friction match, he set it alight and puffed deeply. “Just the usual.”

  A horsecar stopped at the far corner, and several men in rough coats and caps climbed down. Headed for the saloons along Dupont or Jackson, no doubt. The doorkeeper at the Bella Union Melodeon spotted the men and waved them over. He shouted out a guarantee there’d be the finest show that evening with the best musicians and female performers the city had to offer. The men didn’t hesitate to step inside.

  “I wanted to be sure the noise was only firecrackers and not gunshots,” said Nick. The Fourth would bring all sorts of fools firing their weapons. Resulting in any number of innocent victims.

  Taylor crushed the spent match between the sole of his boot and the sidewalk bricks. “Aside from those boys there, it’s as quiet as it ever gets around here.”

  They’d found a new source of fun and taunted a Chinese man toting cleaned laundry to a nearby hotel, the queue of his long black hair swinging rapidly as he scuttled to keep away from them.

  “Doesn’t hurt to be sure.”

  “There’s been talk in the station, sir . . . Mr. Greaves, that the folks opposed to the latest Reconstruction talk are getting agitated and might cause trouble over the Fourth.”

  “Isn’t that grand.”

  Taylor slid Nick a sideways look. “Gotta make you mad, right, sir? That folks keep rehashing the war like it never ended.”

  Mad? Yes, he was mad. The rebellion had taken away too much. His closest friend. His sanity. But he needed to find a better use for his anger, since it was wasted on thinking about the war and men’s stupidity and all that he’d never get back.

  Nick reached up to rub the old wound on his left arm that had chosen that moment to ache. The war never does end. He was reminded of it every single day, even in a city thousands of miles away from the battles that had been fought. The death he’d witnessed. The surprise on the kid’s face—damn, he’d only been a kid—when he’d managed to pierce Nick’s arm to the bone with a bayoneted Enfield rifle.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said.

  Taylor chewed on the end of his cigar and glanced around.

  “Like I said, it was only firecrackers, Taylor.”

  Smoke from Taylor’s cigar swirled off on a breeze. “Maybe that’s all it’ll be this Fourth, sir. A nice, quiet celebration.”

  “Let’s hope so, Taylor.”

  Let’s hope so.

  Chapter 2

  Celia lowered her book to her lap and closed her eyes. As it was, she hadn’t really been reading the novel. She had been sitting outside in the shade cast by her neighbor’s house, hoping for a cooling breeze while her thoughts endlessly drifted back to Mrs. Wheaton.

  She ran her thumb over the wedding band she wore. For all their quarrels and hardships, her own husband had never sent her off to an insane asylum to be “cured.” Instead, their quarrels had encouraged Patrick to hop a merchant vessel and leave San Francisco. With each passing day, Celia struggled to recall the splendid blue of his eyes, the warmth of his voice when he was in a gentle mood. Moods that had been all too rare, for she had been tinder to his flint. The spark that had burned their marriage to cinders.

  The rear door of the house banged open, and Celia’s housekeeper strode through. A strand of her curling brown hair had sprung free from its hairpins. She busily attempted to tidy it as she descended the steps to the garden.

  “Ma’am, our neighbor is spreading tales again about that house on Kearney being visited by a bogle. Just the sort of thing that Mr. Twain used to like to write about in the newspapers.” Addie Ferguson shook her head. “The woman will be scaring all the bairns hereabouts. Which is just what I told her.”

  “A bogle?” asked Celia.

  “Ghosts, ma’am. Specters.”

  “Ah.”

  Addie bent to collect the glass, now empty of its lemonade, which Celia had taken outside with her book. “You should come inside, ma’am,” she said. “’Tis hot as black pudding this afternoon.”

  “I believe I shall.” She rose from her wicker chair and rolled her stiff shoulders.

  “By the bye . . .” Addie retrieved a folded piece of paper from her skirt pocket. “A messenger brought a note from that Mr. Smith.”

  The man she’d hired to uncover Patrick’s whereabouts when years had passed without a letter or a telegram. The man who had learned that her husband had been killed in Mexico last summer. Leaving her a widow. One more loss to bear—her parents, her brother . . . her husband. She had lost all opportunity to apologize to him, to reconcile. To be the wife he’d wanted rather than the wife she’d been.

  “Ma’am?” asked Addie, the lids of her hazel eyes closing about them in a squint.

  “Do not mind me, Addie,” she said. “My mind is wandering.”

  Celia took the note from her housekeeper’s outstretched hand. Mr. Smith’s message was brief and vague.

  “What does it say, ma’am?”

  “‘Got important news. Come by my office.’ That is all.” Celia turned the piece of paper over. The blank reverse was no more revelatory than the few words Mr. Smith had scrawled on the front. “I wonder what it means.”

  “Sounds like trouble, if you ask me,” said Addie.

  “I suppose we shall discover what his important news is when I go to see him.” Celia tucked the note inside her book and followed Addie into the house. “I should have time tomorrow.”

  “I’ll bring more lemonade for you and Miss Barbara,” said her housekeeper.

  Celia found Barbara in the dining room, seated at the table where she idly sketched flowers upon a sheet of paper.

  She looked up. “Your patient this morning didn’t like me, Cousin.”

  Celia set down her book and took a seat across from her. “How can you conclude that?”

  “I just know.”

  “Oh, Barbara.” However, she might be correct, and Celia had not been sufficiently observant. As much as her cousin would prefer otherwise, she could not conceal the ethnicity she had inherited and the scorn and abuse it regularly brought her. She carried signs of her English father, though, in the jut of her chin and the set of her shoulders. If only she laughed like he used to do.

  “I am sorry if she upset you,” said Celia. “She was very distressed, and I doubt she meant any harm.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  Celia sighed. One day she might learn how to be a proper mother to the teenaged girl she’d become responsible for.

  “I have an idea, Barbara. Perhaps Grace can come with us to watch the fireworks tomorrow evening at the Wells Fargo building.” Grace Hutchinson was Barbara’s dearest . . . only friend. “What do you say?”

  Her cousin’s expression brightened. “Even though I’m spending all of the next day with Grace and her family?”

  The Independence Day parade, the regatta, the main pyrotechnics display. Indeed. “I think it would be most enjoyable to have her company.”

  “Thank you. I’d like that.” Barbara’s smile was fleeting; it often was. “Are you still planning on going to see the fireworks with Detective Greaves on the Fourth?”

  “Those are our plans.”

  “What else are you doing that day? Going out to dinner? Maybe a picnic.”

  Celia blushed; she couldn’t help herself. “Do not make more out of our plans than is warranted, Barbara.”

  “Ah,” she replied. Perhaps Barbara was teasing. It was just as likely she was voicing her disapproval of Celia’s plans. A woman forced to wear widow’s weeds should not be out socializing with an unrelated man.

  Celia would not explain to her sixteen-year-old cousin and ward, thoug
h, the complexities of her relationship with her deceased husband. Celia had a right to some happiness, when she had found so little with Patrick. Even if she had to wear widow’s weeds while pursuing it.

  Barbara watched her closely; she often did, her eyes not missing much. She might be young, but she was not unobservant.

  Celia folded her hands, one atop the other to cover the wedding ring on her left hand. Why do I still wear it? How can I explain how I feel when I do not even understand myself?

  “My plans with Mr. Greaves shall not impact your day with Grace and her parents. Do not worry.”

  “I wasn’t worried.”

  Addie entered the room with a tray and two glasses of lemonade. “I’ve brought a glass for you, too, Miss Barbara,” she said, setting down the tray. “Och, it gets hotter by the day. A holiday to Calistoga to enjoy their swimming baths would be agreeable right now. Or maybe to the Pacific Ocean House for a dip in the water.”

  “We’ve no time for a trip to Calistoga or to the ocean, Addie,” said Celia.

  “Maybe one of your male callers could bring us some ice cream from the dining saloon on Kearney, Addie,” teased Barbara.

  Addie’s cheeks pinked. “I dinna ken what you’re speaking about, Miss Barbara. Male callers? I’ve nae male callers,” she replied, her brogue turning thick. It always did when she was flustered.

  “Barbara, please do not tease Addie.”

  The brass bell at the front door chimed tersely.

  Celia consulted the Ellery watch pinned to the waist of her skirt. “I am not expecting a patient.”

  “Maybe it will be one of my male callers,” said Addie, shooting Barbara a look.

  Barbara waited until their housekeeper was well out of earshot before continuing. “The delivery fellow from the butcher’s shop has been driving up and down past our house an awful lot lately,” she said. “I wonder what would happen if Mr. Taylor found out about him.”

  “Barbara, I hope you do not intend to tell him,” said Celia. “Mr. Taylor is an excellent prospect for someone like Addie.”

  “He’s a policeman, and policemen bring problems,” she said pointedly.

  A screech from the direction of the front door rescued Celia from responding.

  She scrambled to her feet and rushed from the room. “Addie, what is . . . oh, dear.”

  Out on the front porch, a pale Owen swayed against Addie. “Sorry, ma’am, I don’t mean to cause you trouble.”

  Celia pressed a hand to his forehead. He was hot with fever, and the area beneath his jaw was swollen. “You are ill. I am a nurse. And you know you can always come here.”

  He’d slipped into her life like a lost puppy in search of its mother. Celia collected the strays and the lost of the world. Owen. Addie. Her patients.

  Patrick.

  “Barbara, keep away,” she called back to her cousin, who lingered in the entry hall. “Owen has the mumps. And it now seems you shall be visiting Grace for longer than we had planned.”

  Barbara had never contracted the disease. She was safer away from the house.

  “Can I, Cousin?” she asked.

  “Yes, Barbara.”

  Addie propped a shoulder beneath Owen’s and wrapped an arm around him. “Och, laddie.”

  “How long can I stay at the Hutchinsons’? A week?” asked Barbara. “I mean, with Owen being so sick. It might take days and days for him to recover.”

  “Mrs. Hutchinson will have the final say, not either of us, Barbara,” said Celia. “You and I will not be able to attend the Wells Fargo pyrotechnics tomorrow night, though. I shall have to stay here.” And her visit to Mr. Smith in the morning would have to be delayed.

  “I don’t mind. Maybe Grace and her parents will want to go instead.” Barbara hoisted her skirts and climbed the stairs as quickly as her disfigured left foot would permit.

  Addie looked over at Celia. “No need to fret over me, ma’am. I had the mumps as a wee one.”

  “As have I.”

  Owen groaned. “Will I die?” he asked, his green eyes bleary.

  “No, Owen,” said Celia. “You will not die. Not if I can help it.”

  • • •

  How did someone find a missing woman in a city of over one hundred thousand souls?

  Especially when it looked like she wasn’t all that eager to be found.

  The women’s lodging house Nick had just visited made the fifth one that afternoon. And at each of those five, he hadn’t found anyone who admitted to knowing the missing woman, Corrie McHugh. Miss McHugh’s brother had posted notices in all the city newspapers asking Corrie to contact him. She hadn’t bothered. The fellow was convinced she was still in the city, though, and he’d made clear that finding her was a priority to the police. Maybe money had magically landed in Captain Eagan’s pocket to ensure that priority. Lord knew the captain wasn’t interested in locating the woman out of Christian charity.

  Nick lifted his flat-brimmed hat and dragged his fingers through his hair. He scanned Market Street, which stretched in either direction. Off into the sand hills where cows ate up what was left of the scrub and down to the bay, tall-masted ships bobbing in the water. The road’s broad expanse seemed unable to contain the mass of people and wagons and carts making use of the street. A steamer had arrived at the Pacific Mail Company’s port south of Market about an hour earlier, and hotel coaches with cases strapped to their tops trundled by, jostling for space. Just then, the one from Lick House rolled past at a clip, a birdcage perched among the luggage. The parrot inside shed feathers as the coach bumped over the rail lines embedded in the macadam. More people coming to the city. Some to stay, adding to the numbers. The ever-increasing numbers. Easy to get lost, in a town this big. Easy to never be found, if staying lost was what you wanted.

  Damn. Where are you, Miss Corrie McHugh?

  Your brother wants to know.

  “Can you move, mister?” A man in an apron was attempting to roll a barrel out of the hardware store Nick had stopped in front of. The fellow spat a wad of chewing tobacco onto the plank sidewalk at Nick’s feet. It landed as a glimmering pile of green. “You’re in the way.”

  “I’m moving on.”

  “Good.”

  Nick reseated his hat and started up the road. Behind him, the barrel landed with a thud on the bed of a wagon that had been waiting nearby.

  He studied the faces of the women he passed on the street. Some blushed at his stares. A few dimpled. Most ignored him, looking away in offense. Corrie McHugh’s brother had given a blistered albumen print of his sister to the captain, the image too poor to be of much use. He’d described her as brown-haired, brown-eyed, of medium build and with an alabaster complexion. Beneath the bonnets and crinolines, any number of females in San Francisco looked the same. Those who weren’t Chinese, of course, or warm-skinned women from Mexico or South America.

  The rolls of the Health Office hadn’t shown the death of a Miss Corrie McHugh. Although, as the coroner pointed out to Nick, some of the women found dead in alleyways never got the luxury of having a name attached to their bodies. He could be chasing a ghost. It was even possible the woman had left the city and simply decided to not tell her family where she’d gone and why.

  Just like his sister Meg had never explained.

  Nick dug through his coat pockets for a handkerchief, used it to blot the sweat pooling around his shirt collar, and headed to the rooms he rented in a widow’s house. His landlady—always alert to his comings and goings—met him at the door, the yellowish paper of a Western Union telegram held aloft.

  “You’ve received this, Mr. Greaves,” she said. Mrs. Jewett was plump and deceptively placid-looking, until her shrewd eyes locked on a person’s face. Like they were locked on Nick’s.

  “Good afternoon to you, Mrs. Jewett.”

  His dog heard his voice and proceeded to bark behind the door to Nick’s second-floor rooms.

  “Good afternoon.” She handed him the telegram. “You look tired. I h
ope you’re planning on getting some off-time from your job over the upcoming holiday.”

  “Police work never rests, Mrs. Jewett,” he said and climbed the stairs, ripping open the envelope.

  “Well, it should rest!” she called up after him. “You need to take better care of yourself.”

  “Why, when I’ve got you to fuss over me?”

  Nick paused outside his door. His dog snuffled excitedly through the gap at the bottom.

  The telegram was from his sister in Sacramento. The sister who hadn’t gone off and died.

  Not coming to SF. Cannot leave Father. He is dying.

  Please come home.

  —Ellie

  Nick crushed the telegram in his fist. He wouldn’t be going home. Not even for Ellie.

  And he understood Corrie McHugh’s split with her family better than he cared to admit.

  • • •

  “Of course I don’t mind having Barbara with us until Owen recovers.” Jane Hutchinson smiled at Celia’s cousin, affection warming her eyes. “Grace will be thrilled.”

  Celia looked over at Barbara, whose attention was fixed on the upper landing of the Hutchinsons’ staircase. “Thank you, Jane.”

  “Bee!” Grace, Jane’s stepdaughter, had heard them speaking. She burst onto the landing and scurried down the steps to the marble-tiled foyer, her skirts rippling, and crushed Barbara in her arms. “I didn’t think we’d see you until Thursday.”

  “I know!” said Barbara, her voice muffled by the ruffles of Grace’s pink dress.

  “See, Celia? Thrilled. Grace, do act like a proper young lady,” chided Jane. Her tone, though, was gentle; Jane could never be harsh. “Also, please greet Mrs. Davies.”

  Grace released Barbara and offered a polite nod of her head, her blonde ringlets swinging. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Davies.”

  If it were at all possible, the willowy girl had sprouted another two inches since she had last seen her a few weeks ago, her head now almost level with Celia’s.