Jeanette was so astonished by Mary’s candor that she didn’t know how to react. She finally said, “And I am getting annoyed at constantly being lied to. Go ahead, make love to the man. I don’t care anymore. Because you just won’t listen to me one way or the other. You’ve made it entirely impossible for me to do the job your father hired me for.”
Mary started to reply, but Jeanette cut her off with a brusque wave of the hand.
“Clearly I cannot keep you on the straight and narrow. Quite the failure as a chaperone, am I. So, as soon as your father returns from his trip, I intend to tender my resignation. I’m grateful for his kindness, of course, but it just hasn’t worked out. If I can’t find other employment in Duluth, I’ll return to St. Louis.”
Mary looked stricken. “Don’t be silly, Jeanette. You can’t quit. I need a reliable secretary. We don’t need Father’s money. I can pay you exactly the same.” She paused. “And you won’t have to be my blasted chaperone anymore. Father can hire his own detective if he wants to keep tabs on me.”
After that last remark, Jeanette tried hard to maintain her serious demeanor. “I will agree to these new terms on one condition.”
“And that would be?”
“You must tell your father what happened this weekend with Mr. Roy. Everything.” Jeanette softened her voice. “John adores you. He doesn’t deserve all this disrespect and dissembling. You owe him some honesty, at the very least.”
“All right, I’ll tell him.” Mary sighed. “But I’m not sure what to say.”
“Why don’t you just tell him how you feel about Mr. Roy?”
Mary slumped down. “Easier said than done. I’m not even certain I know how I feel.”
Chapter XIX
Still feeling chastened by her cousin’s lecture and threat, Mary was up very early the next morning and out the door before Jeanette had even started eating breakfast. Sitting in her office, Mary mulled over the fix she found herself in. It was of her own making—she had let her infatuation with Edmond distract her from the work at hand. And she meant to redeem herself in Jeanette’s eyes. It wouldn’t do to let the woman quit. It wouldn’t do at all.
But even as Mary tried to focus on the problem of Quentin Pettyjohn and what she saw in his window, her mind kept wandering back to the California adventure Edmond had proposed. Though she supposed she ought to be flattered that he wanted her there with him, she felt resentful that he didn’t take her work seriously. If only he would let her manage his commissions. She knew she could find enough work in Duluth to keep him prosperous and close.
But what would she do, if she had to choose between her calling and Edmond? Shaking her head, she tried to put the matter out of her mind. Surely it wouldn’t come to that.
Her ruminations were interrupted when she heard Jeanette finally come through the door. Mary yelled a cheerful “Hello” and asked her to come have a chat.
“Sit down, please,” Mary said with a chivalrous gesture toward one of the client chairs. “I just want to review where we stand on our cases. First, did anything happen on Friday that I ought to know about.”
“Yes, indeed,” Jeanette replied. “Jiggs came in to show me his pocket watch, and quite handsome it was. He asked me to remind you that Mr. Osgood looked forward to having a few minutes with your father, as you agreed to.”
Mary grimaced. She had almost forgotten that she promised the man access to John MacDougall in exchange for the return of Jiggs’s treasured timepiece.
“And he told me he hopes that you can find Beansie, who still hasn’t turned up. The boy seems awfully eager to let bygones be bygones and get his friend back.”
Mary nodded. “I think I’ll start the Beansie hunt this morning with a visit to Mrs. Purcell’s soup kitchen. Did anything else happen while I was gone?”
“Well, as you know, I was here on Saturday as well as Friday. And that afternoon Detective Sauer stopped by. He said he hoped for answers today to the queries he sent to Chicago, Cleveland, and Cincinnati regarding the shady Mr. Ranko Kovac. He promised to stop by this afternoon with an update.”
“Wonderful! Mrs. Timmons will be so pleased to know the police are on the case. If I do say so myself, the excellent rapport I’ve built with Detective Sauer will give us quite a leg-up in future investigations.”
“Yes, indeed,” Jeanette said. “In fact, Detective Sauer and I were discussing that very same topic over dinner at Gustafsson’s Saturday evening. You know, talking about how often you two see eye-to-eye on criminal matters.” She paused and offered a coy smile. “Now if you don’t mind, I need to get my dear Remington going. I have a hundred envelopes to finish for Mrs. Hollister.”
Jeanette went back to her desk, leaving Mary in a minor state of shock. Detective Sauer and Jeanette went to dinner together? Mary was amazed he had worked up the nerve to ask.
And they talked about her?
Good grief! What in the world had they said?
* * *
Mrs. Purcell’s soup kitchen down in the Bowery on Michigan Street was squeezed in between a rundown transient hotel and a saloon. The good lady and her volunteers kept it running with contributions from all kinds of Duluthians—from those who could chip in a dollar or two to people like Mary, who had given hundreds. Mrs. Purcell’s clients ran the gamut from street lads like Jiggs and Gordo to poor families to unemployed workmen to the destitute elderly.
Mary arrived at about a quarter to ten. One of the volunteers fetched Mrs. Purcell from the kitchen in back.
“Miss MacDougall,” she said, wiping her hands on a towel, “so good to see you. Welcome. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Mrs. Purcell was a short, wiry woman with hair pulled back in a no-nonsense bun. Despite her petite size, she was known to adeptly handle cantankerous drunks who tried to push their way in through the front door. She had a strict policy that her guests be sober to take a meal there—not for reasons of temperance, but to preempt obnoxious behavior.
“I came to ask you about one of your regulars,” Mary said. “He’s gone missing and his chums have hired me to find him.”
Mrs. Purcell’s face went solemn. “I assume you mean Tavish MacKenzie.”
“Beansie.”
“I always call him Tavish. You can’t very well grow up properly and have everyone calling you Beansie. We’ve been quite worried about him, but the police, of course, won’t be bothered with a mere missing orphan. Friday night was baked bean night and Tavish loves his beans. He never would have missed it.”
“Do you have any knowledge of him engaging in thievery?”
Mrs. Purcell frowned. “Lord knows, poverty and hunger can drive anyone to extremes. But I don’t know of anything like that.” She shook her head. “Not Tavish. At least I hope not.”
“There’s one other thing. I know you have a Brownie camera and keep a scrapbook with pictures of the folks who come in. And I’m hoping you have Beansie in one of your snaps.”
Mrs. Purcell thought it over. “Probably in several. Sit down and I’ll check.” She strode off through the kitchen area and disappeared into the office in back.
From a bench, Mary surveyed the place. Long tables ran parallel to each other for the length of the room. Mrs. Purcell could feed upwards of fifty at a time. And in back was the open kitchen where the bread was baked, the beef and chicken roasted, the soup simmered, and the coffee brewed. Two volunteers were busy over a stove and a preparation table. A third was loudly stacking plates and implements for the lunch hour. There was also a diminutive figure pushing a broom back there, by the kitchen. Mary squinted hard and made out Gordo Sinclair hard at work.
“Gordo,” she shouted, waving her hand. He looked up and, recognizing her, grinned. He marched to the front, swinging the broom up on his shoulder.
“Miss MacDougall,” he said, “howdy. Whatcha doin’ here? You don’t need a bowl of soup, do ya?” He ran his free hand through that haystack of blond hair. His cowlick once again refused to stay down.
&
nbsp; Mary couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “Oh, no, I just came to get a photograph of Beansie. Mrs. Purcell has one in her scrapbook. Still no word from him?”
“Nope, sorry. Not a word. Like Bert said back at your office, it gotta be he took off with that lady friend of his and the cash from Jiggs’s watch. They could be all the way to Chicago by now.”
Mary informed him it was unlikely that Beansie and some female had run off together with only ten dollars in cash. “So, you volunteer here?”
“Only right to give back a little,” Gordo said, “considering how much of Mrs. P.’s food I eat. I sweep Mondays and Wednesdays. Now, if you don’t mind, miss, it’s back to work.”
Mrs. Purcell returned a moment later with a big black scrapbook. “I have three pictures of Tavish. Two of them are rather blurry, I’m afraid. He must have moved. The third is quite clear.” She put the book on the table in front of Mary and flipped it open.
Mary squinted at the snapshot that Mrs. Purcell tapped with her index finger. Four young friends. Standing in front of the soup kitchen like the Four Musketeers, shooting silly expressions at the camera. Mary recognized Jiggs on the left, with his exaggerated grin.
“There’s Alberto next to Jiggs,” Mrs. Purcell noted, tapping her finger on the little Italian boy. “Then Gordon—looking all full of himself, as usual. And finally, here’s Tavish on your right. A bit of an imp, Tavish, but we’re all fond of him.”
Mary focused on that last face for a few seconds. “Oh my goodness,” she pronounced slowly, putting her hand to her cheek.
“Are you all right, my dear?” Mrs. Purcell asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Mary blinked up at the woman. “May I please take this photograph for a little while? I need to show it to someone. Urgently.”
Chapter XX
The very brisk walk from Mrs. Purcell’s soup kitchen in the Bowery up the hill to the public library on Second Street took Mary only about twelve minutes. Panting a bit, she went through the doors of the handsome brown stone building, newly opened just a few months before. Then it was a quick climb up to the reference room to find a volume she earnestly hoped they had in their collection.
Behind the counter a librarian, silver-rimmed spectacles perched on her nose, put down the document she was reading and regarded Mary. “Good morning, miss. How may I help you?”
“Do you happen to have a world almanac? Not a new one. Something two or three years old would be ideal.”
“We have The American Almanac Year Book Cyclopedia and Atlas of 1900. Will that do?”
“Yes, just the thing,” Mary nodded.
The librarian went to a broad shelf off to her right and plucked out a volume in dark blue, with gold lettering on the spine. She handed it to Mary, who thanked her.
Ensconced at a small table by a window that looked out on First Avenue West, Mary opened the book to the index in back and found the page for Ostovia.
“Three hundred sixty-nine,” she said under her breath, leafing through the volume’s tissuey pages. The article on the Principality of Ostovia took up the bottom third of the page and provided information on the Ostovian economy, which was devoted largely to timber, farming, vineyards, and banking. “No photographs, blast it,” she swore under her breath. Then she thought to turn the page.
And there they were. Father and son. In a news photograph of some kind, standing on the steps of a church or a public building. From better days in the old country.
Prince Anton was in some kind of Ostovian folk costume, and was smiling and waving his ornamental cap to the unseen crowd behind the photographer. Nicolae, who looked about nine or ten years old, was in a miniature version of his father’s garb. He wore a big grin, lopsided to his left, with a pronounced dimple. He seemed a very happy lad. He could not have known the horrors that lay ahead.
Mary opened her bag and pulled out the snapshot of Beansie and his friends. She blinked, and looked back and forth between the two photographs.
“Detective Sauer has got to see this,” she muttered. She went back to the librarian, who was reshelving some books. “Excuse me, but might I check this volume out?”
The woman pursed her lips. “Reference books are not allowed to leave the building. You may, of course, come visit and use it any time.”
* * *
Mary, agitated and panting, rushed into the office with a brown paper bag under her arm. Jeanette was typing an address on a Twentieth Century Club envelope in her Remington. A box next to her was half full of finished envelopes.
“Heavens,” she said, looking up. “Where’s the fire?”
Mary threw herself on one of the chairs in front of Jeanette’s desk and tossed the bag next to the Remington typewriter. It landed with a resonant thud. “No fire. But I’ve had quite a jolt.”
“What is it?” Jeanette sounded suddenly concerned. “What happened? Are you all right?”
“I really want to tell you, Jeanette. I really, really do. But not yet. I need to talk to Detective Sauer first. But if I’m correct, I think I’ve stumbled onto a huge scandal.”
Jeanette couldn’t hide her curiosity. “Is it something to do with one of our cases?”
“Let’s just say if what I’ve uncovered is what I think it is, Moody Investigations could be on front pages all over the world.”
Jeanette’s expression soured. “It’s that business having to do with the poor dead Ostovian king.”
Mary glowered at her. “It’s poor dead prince. Ostovia’s a principality, not a kingdom. And for the moment, I don’t care to talk about it. Now did anything happen while I was out?”
Jeanette handed her a blue envelope. “Your dispatch from Miss Borrell just arrived.”
Mary grabbed the letter and the paper bag, and went into her office. Sitting down at her desk, she tore open the blue envelope and pulled out two folded pieces of stationery. Josie’s account of Ranko Kovac didn’t so much provide new information, as amplify what had been in her earlier telegrams. The man operated on the margins of Manhattan’s music world, feeding comely young things into vaudeville and off-Broadway shows. Instead of the singing ingénue roles they expected—on their ostensible way to the Metropolitan Opera House—most ended up in choruses and dance lines. Some, understanding their predicament, fled home. But others became companions to older, well-off men who had no intention of doing the honorable thing. Not a few girls’ lives had been ruined. None of that was illegal, of course, let alone criminal. Kovac knew how to skirt the law.
It would give Mary the greatest satisfaction if, somehow, she could help put that vile man out of business. But it was this morning’s epiphany that she ruminated about, until Jeanette interrupted her train of thought.
“Mary,” her associate said, standing in the inner office doorway, “there’s a young man here to see you. Says he needs to speak to you personally.”
Mary hopped up. “Well, let’s see who we have.” She marched out past Jeanette to see a dark-haired, olive-skinned fellow standing there, with a shoebox under his left arm. For a few seconds, she couldn’t place him. Then she remembered.
“Ah, Mr. Gino Rossi, the pawnbroker’s grandson,” she said. “Welcome to Moody Investigations.” She shook his hand. “Did you happen to recall something about the boy who sold you the watch?”
“I did, Miss MacDougall,” he said. “I came downtown to get some new shoes and thought I’d stop by.” He grinned and lifted up his left foot, displaying a glinting black patent leather Oxford. “You like ’em?”
“Very handsome, Mr. Rossi. Now why don’t you come into my office and tell me what you remembered.”
* * *
A little after two o’clock, Mary heard the outer door of the office click open. She jumped up from her desk and went out to find Detective Sauer. He and Jeanette were exchanging smiles, which disappeared the very instant they saw her. That dinner on Saturday must have been rather pleasant, Mary mused. But she had no time to speculate on their evolving
relationship.
“Good afternoon, ladies,” the detective said. “I have the pleasure of informing you that my old chum in Cleveland, Inspector Finnegan, has identified Ranko Kovac. The name, as you rightly suspected, Miss MacDougall, is an alias. His real name is David Brankovich. As a younger fellow, he ran confidence schemes around Ohio and Indiana. He had apparently been something of a musical prodigy as a lad, till he went bad. Finnegan’s sending me the most recent warrant on him. If we nab him, we’ll extradite him to Cleveland.”
Jeanette actually applauded. “Bravo, Detective Sauer.”
To Mary’s surprise, he smiled and took a little bow—a very un-Sauer-like gesture from the sober detective.
“Just doing what they pay me for,” he said with a shrug. “I spoke with Mrs. Timmons this morning and she expects him in town on Thursday to sign the contract and collect her share of the daughter’s tuition. And that’s when we’ll spring our trap.”
“Isn’t it wonderful, Mary?” beamed Jeanette, though her comment seemed more addressed to the policeman than her cousin.
“Mrs. Timmons agreed to my notion that I pose as the brother that she doesn’t actually have,” the detective said. “And I was wondering, Mrs. Harrison, if you would pretend to be her fictional sister-in-law.” He glanced over at Mary. “I’m afraid you’re rather too young for the role.”
Jeanette’s smile grew even wider. “Yes, of course, I’d be happy to play-act for such a good cause.”
“Excellent,” Mary said. Her cousin seemed to have overcome her antipathy to sleuthing, so long as a certain policeman was involved. “It sounds like you two have things well in hand. Now, Detective Sauer, could you come into my office? I need to speak with you about an urgent matter.”
Mary noticed that Jeanette looked a bit miffed to be excluded. It seemed risky to involve her cousin in the affair—given the potential for danger and scandal. Still, Jeanette deserved to know what the theft of Jiggs’s watch had possibly uncovered. It was time to brief her on the remarkable affair that was unfolding.
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