City of Promise (53 page)

Dear God, how had they come to where they were now? At least
where they’d been until three days ago when she was snatched away. All unbidden, Josh seemed to see a parade of perhaps irrelevant visions of Mollie throughout the years he’d known her. The prim dark dress of her days as a Macy’s employee, the saucy hat she wore the first time he took her coaching, the ruffles and bows of her bridal dress as she stood beside him in Grace Church. Then, with a stab of intense feeling, the memory of how she’d come naked to their marriage bed. A tremendous act of trust and giving, exceeded only by the audacity of the purple chiffon frock she’d worn to Ebenezer Tickle’s wedding, designed quite obviously to flaunt his male prowess.
Only one leg, but he can get it over . . .

He knew he bore the blame for the deed that precipitated all that came after. Mollie lost their child and the possibility of any others because someone—Trenton Clifford, he was more than ever sure—wanted to harm Josh and thus hold Zac hostage. Now Clifford was the reason his wife had been abducted, and subjected to such terror and misery.

Josh did not shrink from those truths, but what of the intervening years, the estrangement that had sometimes bordered on overt hostility? Partly his fault as well, but also partly hers. How much? He was honest enough to know he couldn’t say. It was impossible for him to compare his absence of fatherhood to her loss of motherhood. He regretted not having an heir, but he didn’t fool himself that meant he knew what she felt.

He was undressed save only the bottom half of his undersuit, and he declined to remove that. Instead, as he was, he slipped silently and easily under the covers and into the bed beside her. Mollie sighed and moved a bit, then settled. Josh propped himself on one elbow and looked at her for a few long moments, seeing the way the veins traced faint blue lines in her temples, and how the pink of her cheeks looked normal now, no longer the feverish flush of earlier in the day. He bent over and kissed her forehead. She sighed again. Josh turned and lowered the wick of the oil lamp, watching the flame die and the glow
disappear. Then he put his head down beside that of his wife, sharing her pillow and putting one gentle hand against her breast, and allowed himself to sleep.

“Thirty-two Bayard Street,” Miller said, handing Josh a carefully drawn sketch. “As much detail as that daguerreotypist would have gotten. With a lot less chance of making trouble.”

The photographer had been Josh’s idea. Miller had discouraged him. “Don’t matter how many other pictures he takes, walking around with that big box and putting that cloth over his head . . . it won’t work. Not down in Mulberry Bend, Mr. Turner. I know someone who can do as well with a pad and pencil.”

That someone had improbably turned out to be Miller’s younger brother. “He’s a budding artist for sure,” Josh said, examining the drawing. “And you don’t think anybody spotted him?”

“Never said that.” Miller shook his head. “Course they spotted him. But everyone knows Joe’s my brother and nobody bothers him. He’s always walking around the city drawing things. Illustrations he calls ’em. Sells ’em to Leslie for his journal, sometimes the newspapers. So no one’s likely to have taken any special notice.”

Josh was not entirely sure that was accurate. Solomon Ganz, he was beginning to believe, had eyes everywhere. Josh, however, was more focused on getting information than he was in concealing his interest. He knew which house was likely the right one because the driver of the hansom that brought Mollie home had been able to describe it. “No number on the door, sir. And all my fare said was, ‘Bayard Street just near Mulberry.’ But I’m fairly certain the one where that gentleman went in and Mrs. Turner came out was third from the downtown corner. Looking north, I guess you’d say. Oh, and on the west side of the street. I’m certain of that.” Then, by way of a second thought, “Could have been the fourth house from the corner. Sorry, sir. I’m just not sure ’bout that part of it. Never seemed important until
after everything happened the way it did. And by then we was driving up Bayard Street as fast as Bessie could take us and I didn’t think about nothing else.”

“So it’s number thirty-two,” Josh said, bending over the sketch.

“That’s what Joe thinks. But he made a sketch of thirty-four as well.” Miller passed over another drawing. “According to Joe, thirty-six sells bread on the ground floor, and nobody said nothing about that. So it’s not likely, is it?”

“No, it’s not.” Mollie would surely have mentioned a bakery. “What about the roofs? Did he manage to see those?”

“Absolutely. Joe’s clever. Like I said.” Miller reached out and turned over both sketches. “Number thirty-five across the road is five stories, so he climbed up to the roof there. That’s what he saw across the street. Roofs of thirty-two and thirty-four. Respectively, like they says.”

“No beehives,” Josh said, examining the reverse sides of the drawings. “He’s quite sure?”

Miller shrugged. “Joe ain’t sure he knows what a beehive looks like. Me neither, come to that. I mean . . . here in the city . . . But he says he drew exactly what was there, and you can rely on that, Mr. Turner. Joe wouldn’t give you nothing wasn’t the straight stuff.”

“Yes, I’m sure.” It was nonetheless a disappointment. The beehives would have been positive identification simply because Frankie Miller was correct—they were not a commonplace in New York. There was, however, one other likely clue. “This boxy sort of structure here,” Josh said, pointing to one of the drawings. “What did he think it was?”

“Hard to say. Some kind of storage place maybe. Some four feet long and three feet tall, Joe reckons. That’s about the right size, ain’t it? For the way Mrs. Turner was kept, I mean.”

“Looks likely,” Josh said, flipping the picture over and checking on the identification written below the sketch. “And that would make thirty-two the right house.”

Miller nodded.

“I’ll try for a bit more confirmation,” Josh said. “Meanwhile, you push forward on the other fronts.”

Merely the way he let himself into her bedroom was, Mollie thought, different from before. There was a certain ease to it that had been lacking for many years. And when he sent Tess away with a kind word for her attentiveness, his manner expressed that same . . . Recovered intimacy? Yes, perhaps. She felt her cheeks flush.

Josh waited until Tess had left and closed the door behind her, then, “How are you feeling? Your color is high. Not feverish I hope.”

“Not a bit feverish.” His words, however, turned her a deeper pink. They had not been alone since the early morning when she opened her eyes to find him lying in the bed beside her. His hand was on her bosom and somehow during sleep she had laid her head against his bare chest. As if the past years had never happened.

He’d wakened soon after, kissed her forehead, and hobbled off down the hall.

“Glad to hear you’re improving,” Josh said now, sitting beside her on the bed.

Mollie was propped up on a number of pillows. She moved her bottom half a bit, giving him more room. The flush traveled down to her bosom, somewhat exposed because the warmth of the day had made her leave the top of her nightdress unbuttoned.

“Are you up to looking at something I’m sure won’t be pleasant?” he asked. And when she said she was, “Frankie Miller’s brother is an artist, however odd that seems. He went to Bayard Street and did these drawings for me. According to him the number of the house where you were kept has to be either thirty-two or thirty-four, because the only other possibility is thirty-six where the ground floor’s occupied by a bakery. You didn’t say anything about that.”

“I didn’t see it. The stairs led down to a hall and there was a kitchen behind me and a closed door on the right, as I told you.”

“And you heard voices behind the door?”

“Yes. Mr. Ganz and someone else. Maybe more than one other person. I don’t know. My only thought was to get away.”

“Indeed. Quite right too. But you’re sure it was Ganz you heard?”

Mollie shook her head. “No. Actually, I’m not sure at all. I just assumed so because I saw him in the doorway when we drove past.”

“Fair enough.” He handed her the two drawings, both with the front facades of the buildings facing up. “Can you say whether either of these is the house where they kept you?”

Her reaction was unhesitating. “This one.” She handed him back the drawing of number thirty-two.

Josh flipped the paper over. “This is the roof of that building as viewed from across the road. It’s entirely possible the structure we see there is where you were held. But there do not appear to be any beehives.”

“They are portable,” Mollie said. “I expect they’ve been taken away so as not to be evidence.”

Josh nodded. “My thought as well. But I didn’t know if it was practical, or even possible. Portable, you say? How do you know so much about bees?”

“My gardening journals and books often discuss them.”

“Of course. I should have thought of that.” He folded the drawings, tucked them into his pocket, then started to rise.

Mollie put a hand on his arm. “Josh, please. There’s something no one will tell me. Not Auntie Eileen or Simon or Tess. Why was I abducted? I presume there was some sort of ransom demanded. What was it?”

“The deeds to some lots I own.” He had expected to have to tell her, though perhaps not quite so soon. He had forgotten Mollie’s sharp intellect, the way she always went straight to the heart of the matter.

“Which lots? You must tell me, Josh. I have a right to know.”

“Yes, you do. All the Fourth Avenue lots my mother bought at the end of the war. Eighty-Seventh to Ninety-Fifth.”

“All the Fourth Avenue lots,” Mollie said quietly, “including our house and my garden?”

“I’m afraid so. Yes.”

“It was the thing he most agonized over,” Eileen said. “Signing away your garden to get you back. He thought it would destroy you. In the end, he agreed because he’d no other choice.”

“Dear God.”

Eileen glanced up from her embroidery. “He wasn’t doing it lightly. That’s exactly my point. You mustn’t think he was being hard-hearted because—”

“Auntie Eileen, what do you imagine Joshua has done for female companionship these past eight years?”

The question could hardly have startled her more. Eileen’s jaw dropped. Then she bristled. “Mollie, for such a clever girl as you’ve always been, you can sometimes be the most extraordinary fool. Given everything you’ve seen, how I brought you up . . . Surely you didn’t think that denying your husband your bed would cause him to take a vow of celibacy.”

“What did he do?” Mollie insisted, ignoring her aunt’s reproach.

“This is not the time to berate Josh for—”

“Did he have a favorite whorehouse? I know you know. It’s exactly the sort of thing you and Rosie O’Toole always find out about and discuss for hours.”

“I do not gossip about my prominent nephew-in-law,” Eileen insisted, then set her lips in a prim line.

“Rubbish. Not with strangers perhaps. But definitely with Rosie. Tell me. One of the Seven Sisters on Twenty-Fifth Street? I wouldn’t think all that pretension was Josh’s style, but I’ve sometimes seen him leaving the house in evening dress and—”