Haunting Jordan (5 page)

“Ssshhh!”
Eleanor glanced over her shoulder. “You can’t make statements like that in public.”

“Why not? You know it’s true.”

Eleanor stiffened. “My reporters have already determined that the fire started in a house of ill repute. May they all reap what they sow!”

Hattie raised an eyebrow. “You sound like a temperance lecturer.”

“And what of it? John Gough and his disciples have much to say that is worth listening to.” Eleanor’s voice had risen, and several in the crowd nodded their agreement. She looked gratified, as if the fire were proof of her belief that the waterfront was populated by the devil’s own.

Hattie shook her head but dropped the subject, knowing it was futile to think she could change Eleanor’s mind.

Mayor Payton’s buckboard clattered to a halt behind them, its matched pair of bays wild-eyed from the smoke.
Short and barrel-chested, Payton struggled to control the lunging horses.

“We need every able-bodied man!” he shouted, his silver handlebar mustache streaked with soot. “Customs House and City Hall are threatened!”

Hattie turned to Charlotte. “Go quickly and rouse Tabitha.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Eleanor spat as Charlotte dashed off. “Women like us don’t go to the waterfront—not if we want our reputations to remain intact.”

“Nonsense,” Hattie replied. “I need to check on my sailing crews, some of whom could be trapped inside burning buildings. They’re my responsibility now.” Though she felt a twinge of foreboding, she kept her voice confident. “We’ll be perfectly safe. The police are standing guard throughout the area.”

“But think what you’ll be subjecting the girls to!”

“They’ll be fine—I’ll be there to chaperone them. And it will be an excellent learning experience for them, helping those less fortunate than themselves.”

Eleanor huffed. “This is outrageous behavior for a widow so recently in mourning.”

“No one will think ill of me if I go down to help.” Hattie stared Eleanor down. “Will you do nothing, then?”

“I’ve dispatched a reporter and photographer to the scene. I have no intention of personally mingling with the criminal elements.”

“Many of those
criminal elements
are men regularly invited into the better homes in this town, men who don’t
admit to having their hands dirtied by the proceeds of the very saloons and brothels they rail against.”

“Talk like that will not endear you to your neighbors,” Eleanor admonished in a low voice.

Charlotte and Tabitha ran toward them, buckets in their hands. Resolute, Hattie turned her back on Eleanor and went to meet the girls by the buckboard, taking hold of the extra buckets.

“Help us up,” she ordered the man sitting closest to them.

* * *

H
UGE
, glowing cinders flew overhead as the wagon rolled to a stop in front of City Hall. Across the street, flames shot through the roofs of several two-story wooden buildings, and the window frames of others were already smoking. Every few moments, Hattie heard the sound of plate glass shattering. It was hot, so hot that even from where she sat, her dress felt on fire next to her skin.

Men begrimed with smoke and soot dragged boxes from City Hall, while policemen pulled furniture from the adjacent courthouse. The town’s new hose cart stopped next to their buckboard, pulled by a huge, black draft horse and several runners. Firemen raced to unwind the hose.

In front of the Green Light, a man in a preacher’s frock coat held up a Bible and cried, “This fire was visited upon us by the wrath of God!”

A policeman headed in his direction, looking irritated.
Good
, Hattie thought as she climbed down.

Her first order of business was to find her manager, Clive Johnson. “This way, girls.”

They ran toward the harbor, their long skirts dragging through blackened puddles of water. Men rushed past them, shouting at them to get out of the way. As they rounded the corner, Hattie thrust out her arm to stop Charlotte and Tabitha.

Fire roared the length of the block. Dozens of half-dressed women stood crying in groups on the beach below the wharf, their white chemises now soot-streaked and torn, their hair falling in disarray around their faces. Others ran to the water’s edge with buckets, then back to fling water onto the burning structures. Sailors dragged crates of corn liquor from a burning saloon, while more men used axes to break the front windows of the general store and retrieve clothing and tins of food.

“Those women aren’t dressed,” Tabitha said in a low voice, glancing nervously at the prostitutes. “And the men …”

“Never mind that now.” Hattie folded back her mourning veil so that she could see better.

Dear God
.

At least a dozen buildings were completely engulfed. Next to where they stood, flames ate through the huge, white block letters of the words Stable and Livery painted on the wooden plank siding of a building. Hattie heard
the screams of horses still trapped inside their stalls, then saw several lunge from the smoke-filled interior.

“Get back!” She yanked the girls out of the path of the horses.

Two men ran from the building, fiery beams crashing behind them as the structure collapsed.

Hattie took a calming breath. She scanned the crowd on the beach, spying Clive Johnson standing among them. “Wait here,” she told the girls.

As she approached, Johnson, a portly man of average height, thinning hair, and unexceptional features, exclaimed, “Mrs. Longren! What’re you doin’ down here?”

“Checking on the status of my sailing crews. I trust you’ve ensured they are safe?”

He gave her an odd look, then shrugged. “I reckon.”

“Please locate them and verify their safety. Order them to assist in the firefighting, if they aren’t doing so already. And send someone out to the ships immediately. Have the first mates bring the skeleton crews onshore to help fight the fire.”

He shook his head. “I ain’t leavin’ the ships unguarded.”

She controlled a flush of irritation. In recent weeks, she’d come to expect his attempts to undermine her authority, but they still rankled. “And if we don’t halt this fire,” she countered in a sharp tone, “there won’t be any boardinghouses left standing to shelter the crews who sail those ships. Now do as I say.”

Without waiting for a response, she turned her back on him, pretending not to hear the derogatory comment he made under his breath, then searched the crowd for
someone in authority. Her gaze landed on an older woman of imposing height, dressed in a midnight blue gown of the finest silk and brocade, standing ten yards away.

Walking over, she touched the woman’s shoulder. “Excuse me!”

The woman turned. Upon closer viewing, her features, though not beautiful, were arresting, and she exuded an air of authority. Her makeup was smudged, revealing lines caused by years of hard living, but her eyes were sharp and alert.

After looking Hattie up and down, she frowned. “Can’t you see we’re busy? We sure as hell don’t need some temperance lecturer underfoot!”

Hattie stood her ground. “I’m Hattie Longren, and those girls”—she pointed—“are Charlotte Walker, my sister, and her maid, Tabitha. We’re here to help.”

The woman ignored her outstretched hand. “So?”

Hattie hesitated, then turned toward the crowd on the beach. “Ladies!” she shouted. “Form a line between the bay and the saloon. Two at the shore, handing full buckets up the line, and two at the front, emptying them. We can pass the empties back down the same line.”

The prostitutes stayed where they were, afraid to follow her instructions until the woman jerked her head and said grudgingly, “Do as she says.”

In no time, they were tossing water on the flames now pouring from the front door of the saloon. But they might as well have been pouring it on a teaspoon at a
time—the fire devoured the water without so much as a hiss.

The woman stood next to Hattie at the front of the line, sweat creating dark patches on their dresses as they worked. After the third time Hattie’s hands brushed against the woman’s, she turned to give Hattie an assessing look. “I’m Mona Starr, proprietress of the Green Light.”

Hattie’s eyes widened. Port Chatham’s most notorious madam. Hattie had heard it whispered that without the philanthropic efforts of the woman standing next to her, the town couldn’t boast about its grand opera hall, or even its new courthouse. Rumor was that Mona Starr also stood between her girls and any man who would abuse them—that prostitutes lined up to work under her patronage.

“I don’t imagine hoity-toity types like you should be touching my kind,” Mona observed.

“I’m not worried.” Hattie took an overflowing bucket from her, slopping some of it down the front of her dress.

Mona looked surprised, then pursed her lips. “You must be Charles Longren’s widow.”

“Yes.” Hattie noticed men hauling crates of liquor down the block. “Where are they taking those?” she asked, pointing.

“The tunnels.”

Intrigued, she followed their progress. Before his death, Charles had related stories of sailors imprisoned in underground caverns until shanghaiers could negotiate
their passage on the next ship leaving port, and of young girls, kidnapped and sold into prostitution.

Shivering, she turned to search for Charlotte and Tabitha, relieved when she located them farther down the bucket line, near the beach. The chief of police—a somber, intimidating man named John Greeley who had been outside City Hall when they’d arrived—now stood next to Charlotte, his expression watchful and …proprietary, Hattie realized. She frowned.

Mona glanced in the direction of her gaze. “Don’t you worry about your girls—Greeley will keep them safe from harm.”

“Charlotte is so young.”

“Many of my girls are younger.”

Hattie shook her head.

“Your husband was a customer at the Green Light for a time.” At her stunned look, Mona laughed. “Honey, you’d be surprised who visits my girls. I train ’em good, and the men can’t resist. They just don’t get the same kind of attention at home.”

“You must be mistaken,” Hattie said firmly.

Mona studied her for a moment before handing over an empty bucket. “Charles Longren wasn’t a nice man.”

Hattie stiffened. “I beg your pardon? My husband was well regarded.”

Mona hesitated, then shrugged. “My mistake.”

Hattie would have pressed the point, but a man who stood observing her across the street on the beach caught her eye. Tall and slender, he wore his evening clothes with a casual elegance at odds with his surroundings. Two
burly, rough-looking men stood on either side of him, their expressions watchful. The man dipped his head in acknowledgment, staring steadily at her, a slight smile curving his lips.

“Who is that?” she asked, suddenly uneasy.

Mona spared him no more than a glance as she tossed the next bucket of water. “He owns a hotel and some boardinghouses down here.”

Hattie tried to place him. “I think I’ve seen him before—perhaps at a dinner at someone’s house.”

Mona shook her head. “If you do run across him, you’d best steer clear, you hear?”

Two prostitutes burst from the front door of a brothel on the far side of the saloon, falling to their knees and coughing. Hattie ran over to pull them to safety. She heard a scream and looked up. A woman stood in the second-story window, frantically jerking at the iron bars trapping her. Her eyes pleading, she slid from sight. Impulsively, lifting an arm to protect her face, Hattie darted inside.

Lung-searing heat and thick black smoke instantly enveloped her. Pulling her cloak over her head, she worked her way up the stairs, holding her skirts away from flames licking at the risers. She found the woman in the front room, crumpled below the window. When she shook the woman’s shoulder, she stirred and moaned, then coughed.

“Come with me!” Hattie shouted, helping her to her feet.

They crept back along the wall to the stairs, Hattie’s
arm around the woman’s waist for support. Chunks of burning roof crashed around them as they stumbled down the steps and outside. The woman collapsed on the front porch, her eyes rolling up into her head.

“Hattie!” Charlotte cried, starting forward, but Greeley grabbed her arms.

Hattie doubled over, coughing and slapping at the flames eating the hem of her dress. She tried to drag the unconscious woman away from the flames, but the woman was heavyset and limp, a deadweight.

“Help me move her,” Hattie rasped to the other prostitutes.

All three of them tugged, but at best, they moved her a few feet at a time. Fire exploded above them, hot glass raining down, and the women screamed and ran. Hattie locked her hands around the woman’s wrists. Using her own weight to drag the woman backward, she stumbled and fell into the mud, only to rise and try again.

Large hands gripped her waist, picking her up effortlessly and setting her down several yards away. The man she’d seen across the street stood facing her. His fingers radiated warmth through the fabric of her dress, but his eyes were as pale and cold as the water in the harbor on a cloudy day. “She’s not worth it,” he said. “Come away, before you get hurt.”

“I’m not leaving her!”

He studied Hattie for a moment. “Remy, Max.” He jerked his head at the woman. “Carry her over to the beach.”

The two bodyguards picked up and carried the
woman, dumping her none too gently on the sand twenty yards away. Hattie glared at the man still holding her. “Tell your men to have a care, sir!”

He merely shrugged as if her response amused him.

She stepped away, but before she could reach the woman, a large man wearing a work shirt and overalls walked over and knelt down to examine her.

“I’ll take care of her,” he said quietly. Smoothing the woman’s hair out of her face, he placed gentle fingers against her neck, feeling for a pulse.

The man in evening attire seized Hattie’s arm and led her several yards down the street, his bodyguards flanking them. Then he stopped to face her.

“You shouldn’t be down here, Mrs. Longren. This is no place for a woman as fine as yourself.”