A Dying Note Read online

  Inez shook her head.

  It was not worth the risk.

  She slid the sealed note to one side on the table, determined to return it to young Mr. Monroe at the first opportunity. He would have to deliver it himself.

  Young love needed to prevail without her help.

  Love.

  After a hesitation, Inez pulled out her silver pocket watch and set it by her coffee cup. The watch ticked, invariant, reassuring. She turned it over, opened the back, and twisted it around with one finger to view the portrait of the man wedged in the circular opening.

  Reverend Sands, her paramour from Leadville, stared somberly back. Justice B. Sands, the man who won her heart, held it with infinite patience and passion throughout the long, difficult year of 1880.

  The last time she had seen him was a year ago, as he was departing Leadville. He had wanted to stay, to stand by her during those difficult times, but Inez pushed him away with desperate pleas for him to leave, leave, leave so she could focus on wresting a divorce from her recalcitrant husband. The truth of the matter was, faithless though Mark Stannert was—and none who knew him would deny that was the case—if Inez’s affair with the reverend had been brought into court, all her carefully laid plans to contrive a way out of the marriage would have ended in disaster.

  So Reverend Justice Sands had moved on, first taking a temporary post in Wyoming, and then another, shorter stay in the Dakotas, and then most recently…

  She tried to call up the cancellation stamp on his last letter, and failed.

  Montana? Minnesota? Someplace far north and far away.

  Inez touched the tiny image, which captured his serious mien, the hint of danger signaled by a tightness around the eyes, an alertness in the posture. She mused how the ticking watch that accompanied the photograph, marking time, was so like the man who sent it. Constant. Present. Dependable. Never wavering. All he required was a letter now and again, a small winding, to keep the mechanism alive and moving. If she stopped the winding, stopped writing, would his letters, like the watch, slow down, and eventually just become silent? Is that what I want?

  She rested her forehead on one hand, still gazing at the photo.

  The truth was, she didn’t know.

  Not any more.

  She snapped the watch shut and prepared to go downstairs and start her day.

  Settled in the store’s back office with the sign on the front door still turned to CLOSED, Inez pored over a neat stack of invoices and receipts, making payments, placing entries in the ledger books. A small parlor stove provided modest heat against the coolness of the morning, and a warm trickle of pleasure ran through her as she totaled the profits from the previous month.

  When she’d taken on managing the store half a year ago, the books had been a mess. Nonexistent. Nico Donato had no idea where the finances stood and, oddly enough, didn’t seem to care overmuch. It was part and parcel of his laissez-faire attitude toward the business, an attitude that only worsened as Inez took on more responsibility and he focused his attention on command musical performances for the rich and famous. Or rich and infamous, as the case might be.

  If things keep moving in this direction, I shall own half the store by this time next year. After that, who knows? I might be able to convince him to sell it outright to me, lock, stock, and barrel.

  The metallic slide of a key in the back door interrupted her musings. Only two people had keys besides herself and Nico, who never showed his face before noon unless absolutely necessary, so Inez made a little wager with herself.

  Would it be John Hee, the purveyor of many of Nico’s Oriental “curiosities” and official physician for busted stringed instruments and damaged woodwinds? Or Carmella? She guessed Carmella, who often dropped by early in the day bearing some of the Italian pastries that Antonia had grown fond of.

  Carmella burst through the back door, her hat with its effervescent purple feather slightly askew, face flushed and fresh from the outdoors. With great drama and without preamble, she announced “Zeppole!” and deposited a napkin-covered basket atop the stacks of papers on Inez’s desk. The scent of hot fried dough, with the powdered sugar on top providing sweet undernotes, was too seductive to ignore. Inez set her pencil down and lifted a corner of the napkin to examine the pastries snuggled inside.

  “I made enough for you and Antonia, and any favored clients today. Antonia loves them so much, it would be a shame if I only baked them for Saint Joseph’s Day.”

  Giving in to temptation, Inez reached for one of the pastries and, being careful not to scatter powdered sugar on her somber gray and black ensemble, took a tentative bite. A crunch through the fried exterior released the sweet dough inside. Melting in its warmth and lightness, the taste exploded in her mouth. “Carmella, you should open a bakery. These are irresistible.”

  Carmella beamed, then frowned. “You know what Nico would say to that. If it were up to him, I would stay at home, twittering like a bird in a cage, baking, baking, baking until I explode!”

  “You are being a trifle overdramatic,” said Inez. “You are hardly a prisoner. You go out and about to lectures and the theater with other young women—as is only proper. You help with the store. In addition to being a baker of irresistible delectables, you have a natural talent for creating window displays and the advertisements we place in the newspapers. Your brother may seem a bit stern, but I know he is as appreciative of your efforts as I am.”

  “Oh! That reminds me!” Carmella opened her large reticule and pulled out a neatly wrapped bundle. Untying the string, she spoke with words that flew as fast as her fingers. “I picked these up on the way here. They are new trade cards I designed and had printed at Madam Fleury’s, to help advertise the store. Nico and I, we arranged them as a little gift for you. A surprise. We hope you are pleased.”

  She handed one to Inez. The large rectangle of heavy ivory-colored stock was the size of a cabinet card. One side sported a bluebird perched on an Oriental-style vase holding roses, ferns, and other greenery. A wave of notes emitted from the bird’s open beak, wrapping around into a scroll. The address was at the bottom, and at the top…

  Inez raised her eyebrows. “It appears the store name has expanded somewhat.”

  Rather than “D & S House of Music and Curiosities,” the printed store name began with “Donato & Stannert.” Inez flipped it over.

  The reverse included the expanded name of the business, in bold, slightly Italianate script, followed by text that extolled the virtues and eclectic merchandise available in this “premiere house of musical instruments, sheet music, and merchandise, including curiosities and imports of an Oriental nature” and concluded with a reference to “repairs to a variety of instruments conducted promptly and on the premises. Satisfaction guaranteed.”

  “Yes!” Carmella sounded like a teacher praising an astute student. “It was Nico’s idea. You are as much a part of the business as he is. You have done so much for the store, he readily admits that. He wanted your name as clearly identified as his. In fact, he insisted. And he is even talking about changing the sign over the door.”

  Carmella carried the cards and the basket of pastries to the round mahogany table in the center portion of the back room. The room, which ran the width of the building, was partitioned into thirds with the office at one end and a glassed-off area for music lessons at the other. To make room for her basket, Carmella pushed aside an overflow of invoices and a case holding a clarinet with bent keys that was awaiting repair. “You are like family to us, Inez. You and Antonia. I don’t know how we limped along before you came.”

  Inez didn’t know whether to be flattered or concerned. The cards, slipped into orders and handed out individually, would enhance the visibility of the store and increase return business. But still, having her surname printed prominently in black and white, or rather in black and a robin’s egg blue, made her queasy.
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  She had not divulged much about her previous life to the Donatos or indeed anyone in San Francisco. No one knew she was part-owner of the Silver Queen Saloon along with her ex-husband, nor that she was a silent partner of a high-end parlor house, both in Leadville. And she had most certainly not divulged that she was personally responsible for a number of deaths, all well deserved, in her estimation. But others might not see it that way. Too, Stannert was an unusual surname. Spelling it out on the trade card made her feel conspicuous when all she desired was to remain unknown.

  “Very nice, Carmella, I am overwhelmed and grateful for your brother’s vote of confidence—and yours too, of course, ” said Inez, thinking a talk with Nico was in order.

  She would have to tread carefully. On the one hand, be appreciative and acknowledge her part in making the business thrive—after all, it would only buttress her position here as time went on—but also indicate, modestly and self-effacingly, that she preferred to stay in the background. It wouldn’t be hard to convince him that he should continue to occupy center stage as the “public face” of the store. If nothing else, perhaps she could forestall a change in signage, at least until her half-ownership was official.

  Carmella turned her attentions back to the pastries. “Eat, Mrs. Stannert! Have another! You are thin as a rail. I should cook more, and be plying you with zeppole, svogliatella, cannoli, cornetti alla marmellata. Men, they like women with a little more to them.”

  Inez blinked, thinking how fast Carmella swung from being a naïve, relatively sheltered young woman to talking like she was Inez’s formidable Aunt Agnes, always clucking, always plotting. And the inconsistencies! Railing against the tyranny of men one moment, then turning face-about faster than a merry-go-round to chide Inez for showing not the slightest interest in re-marrying.

  Carmella persisted, “You can be so charming when selling pianos, an organette, music boxes, or even a box of woodwind reeds, Mrs. Stannert. If you put your mind to it, you could find another husband. Aren’t you close to the end of your half-mourning? You have been in black, gray, and lavender since you arrived. It is time. You should be wearing vibrant colors now—green! Blue! Burgundy! Green especially would bring out the hazel in your eyes.”

  Inez decided to put an end to the discussion. She brought the basket to the big table, saying, “Carmella, you sound as if I should go about turning over rocks in search of someone who can accompany me to the plays or musical arias. I am quite comfortable with my life as it is. Antonia, the store, the music lessons I provide, they fill my time and are all I need right now.”

  There were also her side agreements with women like Mrs. Nolan, determined entrepreneurial women—laundresses, milliners, bakers, printers, dressmakers—who needed “a little extra” to improve their businesses, and who found their way, by word of mouth, to Inez’s back door. But that was a part of her life she tried to keep separate from the Donatos, lest Nico think she was not giving “her all” to his store.

  Inez continued, “I have no desire to, as you say, ‘find’ another husband.”

  Carmella’s fine black brows swooped together, like bird wings. “Is there no one who agrees with you? Of all the men who come through here,” she added hastily. “Gentlemen of fine breeding and refined tastes, do you not see how much they admire you?”

  Inez turned and stared at her, dumbfounded.

  The only men who came to mind were Carmella’s admirers—Jamie; Jamie’s boarding-roommate, cornet player Otto Klein; woodwind virtuosos William and Walter Ash; a few others. All single, all young, all obviously enamored of Carmella. Well, there was also pianist Thomas Welles, about her age, in his thirties, but he was happily married with four children. Or, it would be happily, he intimated, if the money were more forthcoming and the work more steady. Rounding out that group was Roger Haskell, forty-ish, odd man out as the publisher of a small, vociferously pro-labor newspaper, who had a special affinity for the music scene. He and Inez shared a healthy respect for each other, but that was as far as it went. Besides, Haskell smoked the vilest cigars in existence. Aside from that, there were the clients Nico sent to the store. Husbands looking for a piano for wives or daughters, or the occasional manufacturing or agricultural magnate, ushered in personally by Nico, who were interested in his Oriental “curiosities.”

  Inez must have looked as blank as she felt, because Carmella threw up her hands with a sigh. “Never mind. On Saturday, I noticed the flowers in the display area were wilting. I shall go clear them out.” She swept out of the back room, shaking her head, apparently dismayed by Inez’s obtuseness.

  Inez started back to the desk and her accounts, only to jump as someone hammered on the back door with a heavy fist. Then, the shouting commenced. “Mrs. Stannert? Mr. Donato? Anyone in? Please, it’s Otto. Otto Klein. It’s urgent!”

  Disconcerted, Inez hurried to the door. She barely unlocked it before it flew open. Otto Klein, square of face and body, stood outside, sweating in his good black suit, carrying his cornet case, and, Inez noted with alarm, wearing the black armband of a mourner.

  “Mr. Klein, what is wrong?”

  “Frau Stannert. It’s terrible.” He pulled out a black-hemmed handkerchief, removed his hat, and mopped his brow. Even though the morning was cool, his thin blond hair was plastered to his head and he was breathing hard, as though he had run some distance.

  “I’m sorry, I had no idea where else to go. The others, I know not where they live.” His voice cracked. “It’s, it’s Jamie Monroe. He’s dead! Murdered!”

  Chapter Three

  “No!”

  The scream of denial erupted behind Inez, followed by the crash of shattering glass. Inez whirled around, heart pounding.

  Carmella stood in the passage between the back office and the showroom, face paled to ivory, hands to mouth as if to trap a torrent of words that threatened to pour out. Petals and stalks of withered flowers and shards of a Chinese vase were scattered at her feet, water from the huge vase now spread on her skirt and across the floor.

  She removed her hands. “It cannot be.” Her voice, almost a whisper, held a symphony of disbelief, a plea that it not be real.

  Otto blurted, “Verzeihung, Fraulein Donato,” then gamely pulled himself out of his native tongue. “I am sorry, Miss Donato, I did not know you were here. Perhaps it is not Herr Monroe.” He looked helplessly at Inez, as if expecting her to do or say something.

  Inez moved to Carmella’s side, careful to avoid the broken pottery, and put an arm around the young woman’s shoulders. From there, she began to recover and consider. Otto was prone to exaggeration and jumping to conclusions, then blurting out whatever was in his mind without thinking it through. “Mr. Klein, please, back up. Is it, or is it not Mr. Monroe? It must be one or the other.”

  He stepped over to the chaos on the floor and bent to pick up one of the larger pieces of porcelain. “Forgive me, I perhaps spoke in haste.” He retrieved one brown and dripping stalk and gathered three petals, their violet color stained brown with time. “Early this morning, a body was found in Mission Creek channel by Long Bridge. One of the longshoremen in the area, Sven Borg, who was there when the police came, saw the body and thought it might be Jamie. This Mr. Borg knows him from union meetings and came to our boardinghouse, asking for Jamie. Since Jamie and I room together, the landlady told me to talk to him.” He looked beseechingly at Inez. “Mr. Borg said I should go to the police station, find where they took him, and go see if I can tell whether it is him or not. So, it may not be Jamie at all. I haven’t seen Jamie since early yesterday.”

  Inez tried to recall the last time she had seen Jamie Monroe. It was three days ago, Friday, in the store. He had been trying to convince Otto and the others to attend some labor union gathering or other on Sunday. “We must organize! It’s the only way we will ever get paid as professionals, the only way we will be taken seriously!”

  Pianist Thomas W
elles’ short “Tried. Failed. Twice.” had been followed by newsman Roger Haskell’s acidic, “Sorry, Monroe. I guess you musically inclined fellas just don’t have what it takes.”

  Rather than dousing the ardor in Jamie’s light blue eyes, these responses had only seemed to set his determination afire. He’d pointed at Welles and said, “And that’s the problem! You, Nico, all the ‘old guard.’ You tried and gave up! And now, you are settled, complacent. Secure. But we—” his arm swept around to capture the Ashes, Otto, and the others, all of whom were lounging and listening— “We are the newcomers. We are trying to make our lives here, just like you did, and be viewed as the professionals we all are, and be paid a living wage for our efforts.”

  Inez recalled that the others, who had been listening, had shifted imperceptibly as he named them, as if to duck his fervor and inclusive embrace. Otto, in particular, had looked terrified.

  The memory, still fresh, released an unexpected flood of alarm. Could the union meeting have something to do with his death?

  Now I’m the one jumping to conclusions.

  Inez glanced at Carmella’s stricken face, her eyes glimmering with suppressed tears. Did she believe Otto’s story? In any case, those tears, her obvious distress was all the proof Inez needed that indeed Jamie was more than just “Mr. Monroe” to the young woman.

  “Carmella, come sit down.” Inez steered her away from the sharp bits of pottery on the floor to the table. Carmella sank onto the chair, her gaze fixed on Otto.