A Wife in Time (Silhouette Desire) (8 page)

“What are you complaining about? I’m the one who has to wear this ridiculous bustle,” Susannah grumbled.

“It was...
big
of you, I must say,” he returned with a grin and a telling look at her derriere.

She was tempted to whack his arm with her parasol, but didn’t want to break the lovely accessory, with its carved wooden handle. Besides, it served some practical purpose, keeping the sun’s rays off her. She was hot enough as it was, with so many layers of clothing on.

This was the first time she’d been outside in daylight since reaching this century, and Susannah couldn’t help looking around in amazement. There was so much to see! A street vendor stood at the corner, selling fruits and nuts from a handcart. A woman, with a homemade shopping basket over her arm, was looking over his wares. People seemed to move at two speeds—sweeping past or strolling along. There were plenty of dresses fuller than Susannah’s, but they were worn around the hems, and the colors seemed faded, reminding her that the South was still economically recovering from the Civil War.

The smells were as unusual a combination as the sights were: flowers, horse manure, and salty sea air. She heard a little boy laughing as he chased after a puppy in the nearby park.

Savannah seemed to be a city on the move; carriages, wagons, drays and buckboards passed by with every imaginable load—from ice to furniture. Without the distraction of concrete and asphalt, the city’s natural foliage became even more evident—the moss-hung oak trees, the palmettos, the magnolias and the delightful oleander bushes.

A slight breeze made the humid heat a little more bearable, but still left Susannah wondering how all these people survived the high temperatures without benefit of shorts or tank tops. Many of the men were wearing white suits, which helped deflect the sun’s rays. As it was, Susannah was grateful for her parasol and was amazed at how the mere act of holding it balanced against her shoulder made her feel like a Victorian lady.

“Okay, so now what do we do?” she asked Kane as they began leisurely strolling down the street.

“Return to the Whitaker house and get some answers,” he said.

“How do you propose we get in?”

“We could try knocking at the door.”

“At which time a servant will open it, and want to see a calling card. Somehow I don’t think that my business card or yours will be appropriate in this situation.”

“Why do I get the impression you’re not talking about my AT&T card when you’re referring to a calling card?” he noted dryly.

“These people were sticklers for protocol. I may not be an expert on the clothing of this age, but I can tell you that anyone who was anyone had a calling card with his name printed on it.”

“So we tell whoever opens the door that our calling cards were stolen along with our luggage.”

“And that we’ve asked a printer to make up more,” she supplied. “That might work.” She touched her garnet necklace, which lay on top of her blouse, for good luck. “Okay, let’s do it.”

They did, only to be told by the servant who opened the door at the Whitaker house that no one was at home. The servant also seemed to be fascinated by Susannah’s necklace, which he openly stared at before quickly catching himself.

“Where is Mr. Whitaker? It’s important that we speak to him,” Kane stated.

“We’ve come a long way,” Susannah added.

The servant paused as if trying to make up his mind about something. Then he said, “The master is at his law office.” He gave them the address.

When Susannah and Kane reached Hayward Whitaker’s law office, there was an impressive brass sign outside bearing his name. Inside was an outer office, but there was no one sitting at the large desk placed there. So they went on to the next doorway...and walked in on a man on the verge of embracing a woman with red hair.

“I’m sorry,” Susannah hurriedly apologized. “We were looking for Mr. Whitaker.”

“I am Mr. Whitaker.”

“Mr. Hayward Whitaker?”

“That’s correct.”

No, it wasn’t, Susannah thought to himself. It wasn’t correct at all, for Mr. Hayward Whitaker didn’t look to her like a man who’d lost his wife a mere month ago.

As if thinking the same thing, Kane whispered to her in an aside, “The plot thickens.”

“I
told you, I’m Hayward Whitaker. Now who the devil are you?” the man angrily demanded, his bearded jowls quivering like jelly. “And what do you mean by barging in here unannounced?”

“I’m sorry, but there was no one at the desk outside,” Susannah told him.

“Stevens, get in here!” Hayward bellowed. Going to the door, he looked at the empty desk and muttered, “Blasted clerk is never there when I need him.”

“I must be going,” his red-haired female companion said in a whispery voice. Grabbing hold of her extravagant hat, which was sitting on Hayward’s paper-covered desk, she made a hurried exit, leaving the scent of her tea-rose perfume behind.

Turning to face them, Hayward said, “State your purpose and be quick about it. I’m a busy man.”

Then his gaze landed on Susannah’s necklace and his face paled before turning as red as the garnets. “Where did you get that?”

Susannah lifted her hand to cover her necklace, as if fearing he’d yank it off her. How should she answer that question? That her great-grandmother had left it to her? That wouldn’t do at all. Deciding the best defense was a good offense, she turned his question back at him. “What makes you ask?”

“Because I happen to know that the design is a one-of-a-kind and was made by a jeweler in New York for my wife and a dear friend of hers.”

“And was that lovely lady that just left your wife?” Kane asked, hoping to throw the other man.

Hayward’s face darkened. “No, she is not. My dearly departed wife is...no longer with us.”

Sensing Hayward’s anger was about to explode, Susannah hurriedly said, “Forgive my husband for his crassness, Mr. Whitaker.” To Kane she said, “I told you of Mr. Whitaker’s loss, remember?” Once again focusing on Hayward, she added, “He never listens to me, unfortunately. We were very sorry indeed to hear about your wife.” Susannah didn’t have to fake the remorse in her voice, it was genuine. She did feel Elsbeth’s loss deeply, apparently more deeply than her own husband did. Is that why she’d committed suicide? Because her husband was fooling around with another woman?

No man is worth it, Elsbeth.
Susannah conveyed the message silently. In response she got the feeling that she was still cold, that she hadn’t even come close to solving the mystery yet. Meaning what? That Elsbeth hadn’t committed suicide, after all?

“You still haven’t told me where you got that necklace of yours,” Hayward said. “As I told you, it is a very unique design and it was of some special consequence to my wife. In fact, it was her last wish that she be buried in it.” The words were clipped, as if they’d slipped out unintentionally.

Susannah got goose bumps. Elsbeth had been
buried
wearing this necklace? Well, not this exact one, but the twin of Susannah’s great-grandmother’s. Elsbeth’s ghost must have recognized the necklace! That’s why she’d chosen Susannah to help her. “Would the dear friend of your poor departed wife to whom you referred earlier by chance be Mrs. Hall?” Susannah asked. She could see by the look in Hayward’s eyes that it was. “Because I’m very close to Althea Hall.” That much was true; after all, the woman
had
been her great-grandmother. “I admired the design and had a copy made.”

The man still looked suspicious. “The design was done especially for Elsbeth and her friend. The jeweler was supposed to destroy the mold.”

“I know that. Mrs. Hall and I shared the same jeweler. And as a favor to me, the jeweler made another necklace before destroying the mold, providing that I promised not to tell anyone. And here I am, spilling the beans.”

“Spilling the beans?”

“Just an expression,” she hurriedly replied.

“And your name is?” Hayward demanded.

“Again I must apologize. I don’t know what’s happened to my manners. My name is Susannah Ha—” A discreet jab from Kane reminded her. “Wilder. Mrs. Susannah Wilder and this is my husband, Kane. We’ve come from a long distance away to offer our condolences.” And to find out what really happened with your wife’s suicide, she silently added.

“I must say your manner is most peculiar. You use expressions I’m not familiar with and there is something about your conduct that is most out of the ordinary. Where exactly are you from?” Hayward asked.

“We’re from France,” Kane heard himself say. “That’s why we’re different,” he tacked on.

“France?” Hayward repeated.

Susannah could identify with Hayward’s incredulity, as she felt the same way herself. Where the heck had Kane come up with a comment like that?

* * *

“We’re from France,” Susannah mimicked once they were back on the street and away from Hayward Whitaker’s office. “I can’t believe you said that! Lucky for you I speak French. I knew my minor in French poetry would come in handy some day,” she murmured to herself.

“I thought I covered things just fine,” Kane retorted. “He bought my story about us meeting in Europe, that we were raised over there by American parents living in the French countryside.”

“But you tripped up big-time by not being able to speak any French,” she took pleasure in reminding him.

“I covered that by saying my heritage was Polish.”

“Sounded like you made it up to me. The story
and
the Polish words.”

“I’ll have you know that those were honest-to-God Polish curses my granddad taught me.”

“Great. Lucky for you Hayward didn’t know Polish.”

“If I was really
lucky,
I wouldn’t be in this fix with you,” Kane retorted. “So what did we learn from our little visit?”

“That he’s definitely not the grieving widower.”

Kane was about to reply when someone bumped into him before moving on down the busy thoroughfare. Instinctively checking for his wallet, Kane found it was gone. The thief, a kid of about nine or ten, was running off even as Kane took chase. “Hey, you, come back here!” Kane shouted.

Kane thought he was in good shape, but it was all he could do to keep up with the swift pace of the little pickpocket. He finally caught up with him a block later. Grabbing him by the back of his collar, Kane stopped the kid in his tracks.

“Give me my wallet, you little rug-rat,” Kane growled, shaking the boy to prove he meant business.

It was like shaking an orange tree. Only instead of fruit, wallets and billfolds dropped out of the kid’s jacket. As luck would have it, Kane’s wallet opened up when it hit the sidewalk, and his charge card fell out, hologram shining in the sunlight. Swearing, Kane quickly grabbed it and his wallet, stuffing both in the inside pocket of his jacket.

The kid’s eyes were as big as silver dollars.

“Listen, you little juvenile delinquent...” Kane began.

“Let the poor boy go, can’t you see you’re scaring him?” Susannah breathlessly interrupted as she finally caught up with them. Damn these long skinny skirts for making running impossible. Walking was hard enough. And the bustle contraption had to go. At least with those big hoopskirts you could lean backward and forward and get a little breeze going, or so her friend who did Civil War reenactments had told her. But the outfit she was wearing now was torture, or as close to it as she cared to get.

“Poor boy?” Kane repeated. “This kid is a thief. Look at all those wallets.” Holding the kid with one hand, he reached down to grab a handful of wallets, holding them up for her perusal.

“Wait a second. You’re Mikey, aren’t you?” She directed her question to the young boy squirming in Kane’s hold. “From the boardinghouse? Mrs. Broadstreet’s, uh, helper.” Susannah wasn’t sure what to call him. Servant? Boy?

“An’ what if I am,” the young boy retorted, sticking his freckled chin out and reminding Susannah of one of the kids from the old “Our Gang” series. The boy’s red hair and green eyes proclaimed his Irish heritage.

“I’m sure she wouldn’t approve of your current activities,” Susannah said.

“Then don’t be tellin’ her,” the boy replied.

“Perhaps we won’t if you’ll do something for us. What do you know about Mr. Hayward Whitaker?”

Mikey shrugged, his shoulders ending up near his large ears as a result of the hold Kane maintained on his collar. “That he’s a fancy lawyer. Word is his wife took a leap off the staircase. They say her ghost already haunts the place!” The boy’s voice lowered to a whisper with this last piece of information.

“You afraid of ghosts?” Kane asked.

“Naw,” young Mikey scoffed, with a nervous look around. “‘Tain’t a good thing to be talkin’ about the dead this way, though. Just in case.”

“You know anything else about Whitaker?” Kane demanded.

“How come you want to know?” Mikey said.

“Never mind that,” Kane countered.

“I don’t know nothing else. But I do know who could find out for you.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Ogilvie. He’s the best detective in Savannah!”

“Then I doubt we can afford him,” Kane muttered.

“Oh, he works cheap. I mean, he would if I was to say that you was friends of mine.”

“And I suppose we’d become friends of yours by overlooking this little pickpocketing incident, hmm?” Kane inquired.

Mikey nodded. “That’s right, sir.”

“In your dreams, kid,” Kane growled.

“Hold on a minute, here,” Susannah interjected. “I think we should pay this Mr. Ogilvie a call.”

“You would,” Kane said. “Here, take these wallets while I get a good hold on this kid before he takes off again.”

He handed over the half-dozen or so billfolds, larger than his—no doubt designed that way to accommodate the larger paper money of this time. One of the plainer billfolds opened up in Susannah’s hand, displaying a small picture of Elsbeth. Seeing her, Susannah’s heart went to her throat. Elsbeth appeared to be looking right at her and there was a connection so strong it made her catch her breath.
What are you trying to tell me?
she silently asked the likeness.

“Did you steal Mr. Whitaker’s wallet?” Susannah demanded.

Mikey forcefully shook his head. “If’n I’d have stole his wallet, I wouldn’t have needed to steal no more. His would’ve been thick enough all by itself for me to call it a day.”

“You’re calling it a day right now, and I’m calling the police,” Kane stated.

“Calm down,” Susannah advised Kane even as she looked through the billfold. There was a calling card in it. Gordon Stevens. “This billfold has a photo of Elsbeth in it,” Susannah told Kane.

“What’s a pho-to?” Mikey demanded, trying to get a look.

Susannah knew that photography was making its debut during this time period, although it did date back to the Civil War in experimental forms.

“Regardez la cam-er-a, s’il vous plaît,”
Kane murmured with a devilish and-you-said-I-couldn’t-speak-French grin.

“Knock it off,” she muttered.

Mikey stared up at them, wide-eyed. “I ain’t never met anyone like you two. Sir. Ma’am,” he belatedly tacked on.

“And you’re not likely to again,” Kane noted.

“I reckon not.”

“Mikey, who is this Gordon Stevens?”

“I can’t be thinking when this man is choking the very life out of me,” Mikey said with a dramatic gasp worthy of the stage.

“Loosen your grip,” Susannah told Kane. “And let’s bring Mikey over to that bench in the park across the street. We don’t want to gather too much attention, standing here this way.”

Muttering under his breath, Kane followed her suggestion, plunking the kid on the bench and keeping him there with a forceful hand on the young pickpocket’s shoulder. “Now tell us what you know about Gordon Stevens,” he ordered Mikey.

“I don’t know nothing about him, ‘cept that he’s Old Man Whitaker’s clerk or something like that.”

Stevens... Susannah recalled that Hayward Whitaker had bellowed that name when looking for his clerk.

“Don’t you think it’s strange that this Gordon Stevens would carry the picture of his boss’s dead wife around in his wallet?” Susannah murmured to Kane.

“No stranger than anything else I’ve seen in the past twenty-four hours,” Kane countered.

“My detective friend is real good at figuring out strange stuff,” Mikey said.

Susannah looked through the rest of Gordon Stevens’s plain black billfold, but found nothing else. Just some money, not a lot. No other keepsakes or clues. She briefly considered returning the wallet to the law clerk, but decided that would involve too many questions being asked.

“We’ve got to return these wallets and do it as quickly and unobtrusively as possible,” Susannah noted thoughtfully. “There’s a soldier over there, he seems official looking.” Actually the man’s gray Confederate uniform looked a little worn around the edges, but his demeanor was authoritative. “I’ll ask him how to find a policeman.”

“He
is
a policeman,” Mikey said. “You don’t want to go talking to him. You’re not from around here, are you.” It wasn’t a question.

“We’re from France,” Kane said.

“You eat frog legs?” Mikey demanded, seemingly intrigued by the idea.

“I prefer a cheeseburger,” Kane replied.

“A what?”

“Never mind,” Susannah interjected. “You two stay out of trouble while I turn these wallets over to the policeman.” Without waiting for Kane’s agreement, she made a beeline for the uniformed official. “I found these beneath that bench over there, officer,” she said, pointing to a bench at the opposite side of the park from where Mikey and Kane were waiting. She tried batting her eyelashes at the officer, but her hat fell down on her forehead. When she almost poked him in the eye with her closed parasol while handing over the wallets, the policeman seemed eager to get rid of her before she did him bodily harm. So much for her Mata Hari ways, Susannah thought to herself with a grin.

* * *

Susannah wasn’t sure what she was expecting Oliver Ogilvie to look like, but the reality surprised her. He was middle-aged, stocky, and fully bearded. He had bushy hair and thick eyebrows, but the accent and sharp gaze of Sherlock Holmes. She half expected him to say, “My dear Watson...”

Instead he said, “Well, then, Mikey, what have you brought me here?”

“Customers,” Mikey said. “They’re staying at Mrs. B.’s and they’re looking for information about Whitaker.”