A Dying Note Read online

  “I have to keep my time away from the store to a minimum,” said Mrs. Stannert. “If you insist we meet daily—and given the paucity of time we have for our tasks, I agree we should—may I suggest the music store? I have an office area in back.”

  “Little pitchers have big ears,” countered Flo. “Isn’t that what got us into this mess to begin with?”

  “Antonia will be at school all the rest of this week,” said Mrs. Stannert. “Trust me, she won’t be listening at the keyholes again.”

  De Bruijn found himself thinking that he hoped to see Antonia again. He hoped to have the opportunity to explain what had happened in Leadville and convince the girl he was only here to help her, and not destroy the life she and Mrs. Stannert had built together.

  “Since you are the one with a schedule, then we shall meet as best works for you, Mrs. Stannert,” said de Bruijn. “If anything of an immediate nature arises, you can send a messenger.”

  “She can call on the exchange,” broke in Flo. “The hotel is on the telephone exchange and so is her store. Can you imagine? Why a music store? My boardinghouse in Leadville is on the exchange, but that makes perfect sense.” She batted her eyelashes. “One never knows when there might be an urgent need for an expert trouser-serpent tamer.”

  Mrs. Stannert set her coffee cup down forcefully on the saucer. De Bruijn was intrigued that despite her proper appearance, she seemed familiar with the crude slang for unmentionable parts of the male anatomy.

  De Bruijn folded his napkin and placed it beside his plate. “A busy day is ahead of us, then. Mrs. Stannert is going to try to find and talk with the longshoreman, Sven Borg. Mr. Borg recognized the body and seemed to know something of what the young Mr. Gallagher might have been up to. However, if the wharf environment proves too difficult to penetrate—”

  Flo snickered. De Bruijn ignored her.

  “—let me know as soon as possible, say, by this evening, and I will turn my attention in that direction. Meanwhile, Mrs. Sweet claims she can find a way into good graces of Mr. Poole, whose daughter was affianced to young Mr. Gallagher in Leadville before he came here to San Francisco.”

  Flo shrugged a shoulder, and dabbed at her lips daintily, before giving her napkin a little toss onto her crumb-scattered bread plate. “It should be easy. We know each other from Leadville. He knows I’m here. He and Harry almost had a pissing contest when they crossed paths at the hotel entrance when he arrived, and I was there to see it all. Poole has balls of brass, following Harry like that, and threatening him. In any case, with Harry gone, I’ll arrange to call on Poole today. I’ll weep a river about Harry’s mistreatment and claim how I fear for my safety. He’s always been a soft touch for a weepy woman or fainting female in distress.” She rolled her eyes. “If he has anything to do with Robert’s death, I’m certain I can pull it out of him.” She wiggled her shoulders seductively, lest they misunderstand her meaning.

  “I do not question your methods, Mrs. Sweet, if it is your choice to deploy them and you believe they will gain results,” said de Bruijn. He glanced at Mrs. Stannert, who had folded her napkin and slipped it under her saucer and now empty cup. “As for me, I shall begin with the police. Mr. Gallagher has assured me he spoke with the police chief, and they will cooperate fully with me. I shall gain the coroner’s report, see if the police intend on following up with an investigation. I will also make some inquiries as to whether Monroe had any brushes with the law.”

  De Bruijn noticed the waiter hovering, as if he was ready to pounce and clean their table. “Ladies,” he stood, and they did as well. “It’s time we begin our respective tasks. Wishing you the best with your endeavors, and I shall look forward to hearing from you at the end of the day.”

  He gazed at his co-investigators—a madam of an exclusive house of ill-repute and a saloon-owner-turned-music-store manager—and privately despaired. It would most likely fall upon his shoulders to solve the case while keeping Mrs. Sweet and Mrs. Stannert out of trouble and from harm’s way. At least Miss O’Connell was available and willing to lend an expert hand if called upon. That was a saving grace.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  When Inez returned to the store, she found Nico and Thomas Welles in deep conversation. Nico turned to her and said, “Everything is settled. Thomas and I are working out the details. He will be here this afternoon. You are free for now.” He waved her away and returned his attention to Welles.

  “I may not be back until suppertime,” she warned.

  “No problem, no problem,” said Nico, distracted.

  Inez went upstairs to change into a well-worn, no-nonsense walking suit and a sturdy pair of boots. If she was to walk around the wharves by the Mission Creek canal, searching for Sven Borg, and visit the Mays at their laundry on Berry Street, which was just north of the waterfront, she didn’t want to stand out from the working folks in the area.

  As she dressed, she fumed at Nico’s dismissiveness. When she had been trying to stay in the shadows, be anonymous, she didn’t mind his occasional directives. At least, usually. And, he had pretty much let her run the store as she saw fit. But seeing Nico and Welles in close ranks, discussing the day-to-day operations of the store no doubt—with no input from me!—she felt quite shut out. Almost as if he had waved her off saying, “Go on about your business, little woman, you needn’t worry about these matters.”

  She was overreacting, she knew. Things had been different at the Silver Queen Saloon in Leadville. There, she had been an equal owner. Here, it was a different story. He is the owner, not me. And until I am an equal partner in the business, I must either accept his attitudes or find ways to work around them. Those are my choices.

  Still, it rankled her.

  However, she now had time to investigate what had happened to Jamie Monroe.

  At least, time for the next week or so. And she would have to keep in mind that she was, theoretically, giving piano lessons.

  She walked down to Market and Third to catch a half-full horsecar and settled in for the short journey southward. They trundled down Third Street, two blocks away from Antonia’s school on Fifth—Inez wondered if the girl had truly gone to class that day, or if she was again playing truant. They passed shops, grocery stores, and saloons, strategically located on the corners. Lodgings of various kinds occupied the second floors, while cross streets sported densely packed two-story row houses. A sharp right onto Berry Street, and Inez disembarked at Fourth and Berry, just before Long Bridge crossed the Mission Creek channel. During the day, lumber-burdened schooners and barkentines vied with hay scows riding low under towering bales for passage through the narrow channel. They plowed through excrement- and garbage-laden water the consistency of mud, their crews cursing the orders that had brought them to “Shit Creek.” Those crews escaped as quickly as possible to the lowest of the low businesses lining the wharves or to the Barbary Coast.

  Inez had been in this dockside area twice before, both times in daylight hours. Once to the music store’s modest warehouse just off Third and Berry to examine a piano for a customer, and again to the Mays’ laundry when she initially negotiated a loan with the two sisters. The laundry was in the opposite direction from the warehouse, so she started walking up Berry toward the higher street numbers.

  As she passed Long Bridge, she wondered. What was Jamie doing there? Had he simply stumbled into the wrong people or was his death more insidious?

  Warehouses and receiving buildings large and small lined the water channel, partially hiding the various vessels and the piers that sent finger-like wooden platforms out into the garbage-filled water. On the opposite side of the street were the usual complement of establishments that depended upon the maritime environment and its workers. Several smithies, a wood turner, a couple of box manufacturies, door and sash makers, a stair-builder. Proliferating among them were saloons, corner grocery stores, restaurants, and lodging houses, all of which of
fered liquor and wine for sale, either openly or behind back curtains. She recalled that the laundry was next to a shabby, westward-leaning nameless saloon that also offered lodging. The whole business looked suspiciously like a crimp house where a man who came for a drink or a place to lay his head ran the risk of being shanghaied.

  It didn’t take her long to reach the Mays’ place. It was easily identified by the terse “Hand Laundry” sign above the door and a pile of bricks, stacked none too neat, against the new brick front. Random laundry implements were piled against an intact plank wall on the other side, including one scarred wooden tub and several badly dented metal tubs, and an impressively complicated but broken mangle that sheltered other smaller items under its shade. A murmur of voices inside assured her someone was at home. She knocked on the plank door, which shivered beneath her hand, and called out, “Hello? It’s Mrs. Stannert.”

  There was a silence, then the door flew open under the hand of Bessie May, young Patrick’s gray-haired, gray-eyed aunt.

  When the building had burnt, it was Bessie who had stormed into Inez’s office, still stinking of smoke, fire blazing from her eyes at the unfairness of the world. “As God is my witness, I stand here cursing Him for what He’s done to us. We are ruined, Mrs. Stannert. Ruined! We bought bricks with the money you loaned us to build another drying room. The money is gone, and we will need to rebuild the entire structure in bricks. And us, without insurance, because no one would cover us, being as the building is wood.”

  Inez had said, “How much do you need?” She knew they would pay her back every penny plus interest owed. So far, her trust in the Mays had proved out; they had never been late with a payment.

  Bessie gave her the eyeball. “We expected you earlier.”

  Inez did not take this abrupt greeting personally. It was just Bessie’s way. Bessie, the elder of the two sisters, had seemed to have snatched up all the fierceness of spirit, kicking the more tender, tentative emotions to Molly.

  “Business delay,” said Inez.

  Bessie apparently considered the equally terse reply as sufficient. “Well, come in then, out of the stink of the street. No doubt you’ll be wanting to see that your money’s been put to good use and not wasted.”

  The astringent smell of mint hit her almost like a physical slap as she stepped into the front room. A large stove, radiating heat, was positioned against the brick wall. Two laundry irons, which looked as if they must weigh ten pounds apiece, were coming to temperature on its broad surface.

  Inez ducked under the lines of drying pillowcases, towels, shirts, sheets, and ladies unmentionables and nodded a greeting to Molly, who looked up from where she stood, bent over a sheet on a long table, another substantial iron in hand. A counter to her left held a pile of wrinkled sheets. A counter on her right contained a stack of folded bed linens, neatly pressed and creased. She lifted the iron and examined the sheet in front of her. Half of it had surrendered its crinkles, forming a smooth ivory plane. She straightened her hunched shoulders, tucked a strand of faded red hair behind her ear, and said, “Morning to you, Mrs. Stannert.”

  “And good morning to you,” said Inez before Bessie peremptorily swept her away, to show her the back room, with its shiny new copper pots, and stainless-steel tub, and two stoves. This room had new brick walls on three sides. A single wood wall remained. “One more wall to go,” said Bessie proudly, “and we’ll be able to work on the rest of the ironing and drying room out front.”

  “What about your living quarters?” asked Inez. She knew they occupied a small set of rooms behind the laundry.

  “That will be last, if at all.” said Bessie. “The laundry first, so we won’t get fined again. If not for you, we would have been thrown into the street. Two hundred dollars!”

  Inez nodded. A city ordinance dictated that laundries not made of bricks were subject to fines up to a thousand dollars. Although Chinese laundries were the main target, that did not stop a local policeman from fining the Mays two hundred dollars for conducting their washing business in a frame building, even as the charred portion was still smoking.

  “You have done as I suggested?” asked Inez.

  “We pay the scum every week. He hasn’t done but wink and look the other way, as you said he would.” She spat on the floor and ground the phlegm into the board with a savage foot.

  Inez nodded. She had figured that, just as in Leadville, paying a small “tax” to the local law would guarantee they would look the other way as the building underwent its transformation from planks to bricks.

  “Patrick will be working on it this afternoon when the bricklayer arrives,” added Bessie.

  “Miss May, I am willing to advance you for more professional help. That would free Patrick for other chores,” said Inez.

  Bessie shook her head. “He has time for both. And he’s learning a useful trade where the color of his skin won’t matter a lick.”

  “But his music—”

  Bessie bristled, and Inez knew she’d strayed onto a sore topic. “If left to himself, he would play the piano day and night. We didn’t mind that he takes lessons from you on the occasional morning before deliveries, but now he’s after us to let him work at that place next door. It’s that old no-good drunken Irishman who runs the place, leading him on to play for pennies, when he could be learning a trade to make a decent living! I don’t like it. And I like it even less that we are living here by the wharves, where he goes walking after dark. Oh, he thinks I don’t know, but I do. It’s a good way to get oneself killed.” Her mouth tightened in disapproval. “We all agreed. Even Patrick. He’s going to be a bricklayer.”

  Somehow, Inez doubted that Patrick had much to say about it. If Bessie had made up her mind he would be a bricklayer, her sister Molly would have agreed and that had probably been the end of the conversation.

  The back door opened and Patrick entered, a bulging bag over one shoulder.

  “More sheets from Mr. Henderson?” asked Bessie. At his nod, she pointed to a table laden with two similar bags. “Put them there. He should change his flea-ridden linens more often. You can tell him I said so.”

  Something Bessie had said set the gears turning in Inez’s mind. “Thank you for the tour,” she said. “You are all doing admirably. Let me know if you need more materials or, as I said, an extra set of hands to finish the work. Patrick, would you walk me out? I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

  Patrick set down the bundle and turned to his diminutive aunt.

  She waved a dismissal. “Go, boy. But don’t dilly-dally once Mrs. Stannert is through with you.”

  Outside the building, Inez said, “Let’s walk a little.” She wanted to put some distance between them and the laundry, just to be sure they weren’t overheard. They crossed the street and began strolling past the warehouses and receiving buildings. Inez said, “Being a bricklayer is a noble profession, but you have a talent. I’d like to see you get a chance to use it.”

  He looked down at his hands, turning them this way and that. “If I could convince Aunt Bessie that there’s a living in it for someone like me, she might change her mind.”

  “I could perhaps help you find a position somewhere. At least, I could ask around.” She scrutinized him. There was something about the way he glanced over at the saloon. Something furtive and guilty. “Your Aunt Bessie mentioned the establishment next door. You’ve been offered a position?”

  “Uh.” He was blushing.

  She ventured a guess. “You are working there now?”

  He caved. “Just an hour here or there. Late at night, when the regular pianist has to leave early. And only sometimes.” He sounded desperate, pleading. “It’s the only way I can practice. And Mr. Henderson, he don’t mind the color of my skin. When he asked if I wanted to play more hours, I said sure.”

  “Your mother and aunt don’t know?” Inez was astonished that the seem
ingly transparent young man could be so devious.

  “I go for long walks at night.” He hung his head. “I just don’t tell them that I go to Henderson’s first.”

  “The place is called Henderson’s?”

  “It hasn’t got a name. Mostly folks call it Henderson’s or sometimes Three Sheets. As in three sheets to the wind.”

  “No doubt appropriate,” said Inez. “A question to you, then. Did you work there Sunday night?”

  “No’m.”

  “Did you walk that evening down by the wharf?”

  His gaze flitted left and right as if he was trying to decide what the correct answer might be, the answer that would get him in the least amount of trouble.

  “You were.” Inez confirmed. “Did you hear or see a disturbance? A fight or someone getting attacked?”

  Even though they were walking, something inside him seemed to freeze. She stopped and said, “Patrick?”

  He looked warily at her.

  “A friend of mine was attacked on Sunday night. You might have heard. He was pulled from the channel the next morning, on Monday.”

  “Who was it?” There was a thread of fear in his voice.

  “A pianist. Jamie Monroe.”

  Fear now drained his face.

  She stared at him, incredulous. “You knew him?”

  Patrick gulped. “Not much. Not really. He played at Henderson’s.” His words came out in a rush. “He worked late at night, and he’s the one I sometimes stood in for. That was him they found by the bridge?”

  Inez nodded.

  Patrick shifted from one foot to another. He finally said, “I did hear something. I was walking around down by the hay pier. I thought it was just a couple of sailors. They sounded angry. I figured, late at night, they’d probably had too much to drink.”