Murder in Burnt Orange (14 page)

The child is father of the man....

—William Wordsworth, “My Heart Leaps Up,” 1802

The manhunt went on, but the focus had shifted. The police had stormed Sam Black's house as soon as Andy had told his story, but Sam wasn't home, and neither were most of his clothes and personal effects.

“Skipped town, by gum!” said Sergeant Lefkowicz, looking as though he would like to have used a stronger expression. “If that young nuisance Mueller had told us what he knew sooner, we'd have caught Black red-handed!”

The sergeant was sitting on Hilda's front porch, the day after Clancy had been found. If there was a breath of air to be caught, Lefkowicz hadn't been able to catch it. At Hilda's invitation, he had unbuttoned his heavy wool uniform jacket and loosened his collar, but sweat still poured down his face. He took another swig of the beer Eileen had brought out.

“But Mr. Black was not red-handed,” Hilda pointed out. “He did not kill Clancy. Andy said he came out of the house and found him dead.”

“Figure of speech,” muttered Lefkowicz. “Black knew a lot about it, even if his hand didn't strike the blow. Who knows but what he lured Malloy to the house so his accomplice could kill him? For sure Black lied to us about knowing where Malloy was, and we need to talk to him!”

“Yes.” Hilda fanned herself with a lace fan Patrick had given her. It was pretty, but the effort of moving it only made her hotter. She sipped at her lemonade. “Sergeant, why was Clancy killed?”

“Miss Hilda, I'm a whole lot more interested in who killed him, and I'll bet that Black knows—”

“Because, if we know why he was killed, we will be able to find out who did it. Who wanted him dead?”

“Well,” Lefkowicz began, and then hesitated. “Ma'am, seeing he was a relative of yours, I don't want to speak ill of him.”

“He was no relative of mine, and I did not like him. I do not think even his family liked him. They loved him, of course, but that is not the same thing.”

“No, I suppose it isn't. But you know as well as I do that there are lots of people in this town who didn't like Clancy Malloy, and a good number who had reason to want him kept quiet.”

“People do not kill because they do not like a person. Even hating someone does not usually lead to killing him. But to keep someone quiet... Sergeant, you are talking about politics, yes?”

“It was politics first got him into trouble, you remember. Politics and gambling.”

Hilda remembered. She had met Clancy at a time when his father, Daniel Malloy, was running for a county office. It was his first foray into office, and his last, as it turned out, but at the time he was eager to win the seat, minor though it was. His rival, Republican John Bishop, was killed during the campaign, which made Dan's victory hollow and tainted, and he had given up the seat shortly after the election.

But of course the worst blow the family had had to bear was Clancy's involvement in Bishop's murder. Apparently he was only a witness who had been kept quiet by a shrewd mix of threats and bribery, having to do with his gambling debts, but in the eyes of the law, and of his family, that amounted to criminal complicity.

And who was the man behind the scenes, the puppeteer who had so successfully pulled Clancy's strings?

“What,” asked Hilda, “has become of Mr. Vanderhoof?”

Lefkowicz took a deep breath and put down his empty glass. “Now, Miss Hilda, that's the kind of question you ought not to be asking just now. He's a slippery man, Vanderhoof, and the Pinkertons and the police would like to know what he's been doing these past couple of years. But he's a powerful, influential man, and he's got the reputation of not caring much who he hurts.”

“He hurt us. Hurt our family. Stole the money we'd saved to bring Mama and the others to America.”

“Yes, and your family wasn't the only one, not by any means. But he's not to be taken lightly, do you understand? You're not to try to find out anything about his affairs. Patrick and I have been friends a long time, but if I let you get mixed up with Vanderhoof, he'd never speak to me again, and that won't be the worst of it, either. I mean it, Miss Hilda. You leave Vanderhoof to us.”

It was far too hot to argue, and besides, Hilda badly needed a nap. She shrugged and asked the sergeant if he would like another glass of beer, in that unmistakable tone that indicated his answer should be no.

She was too hot and uncomfortable to sleep for long, though, and when she woke she thought about what Lefkowicz had said. At the very mention of Mr. Vanderhoof, he had become alert and wary. She was reminded of a cat scenting an enemy. His very hackles had seemed to rise, his figurative tail to bristle.

She had never had any intention of trying to trace Mr. Vanderhoof's movements, or find out what his activities were these days. Now, though...

There is a very old story about the woman who, having to leave her children alone for a time, gave them detailed instructions about what they were and were not to do in her absence. “And don't put beans in your ears!” Until she said it, such an idea had never occurred to the children, but of course when she came home every last one of them had to have the beans painfully removed.

Surely it wouldn't do any harm if Hilda were just to put out a few feelers. Sven, she felt sure, would be glad to look into the matter for her. He still felt keenly the loss of the four hundred dollars that Mr. Vanderhoof had taken from them. Even though the Malloys had kindly paid the transportation for the rest of the Johansson family to come to America, the idea of being taken in still rankled. Yes, Sven would be happy to learn what he could.

She wouldn't tell Patrick, though. He was all too apt, these days, to lay down the law about her activities. Besides, he often talked to Sergeant Lefkowicz, and she didn't want the policeman to know, either. Tomorrow, she would send for Erik and have him take a message to Sven. In that roundabout way, even the servants wouldn't know what she was doing.

She would have done well to remember what she so often said to others, that the servants know everything.

That settled, she turned over, placed herself in the direct stream of air from the electric fan, and fell asleep.

Patrick was late coming home from the store. “I had to stop and see Aunt Molly,” he explained when he had settled in the parlor with a glass of beer. “I've made most of the funeral arrangements, but I had to ask her about a couple of things, and she's fair distracted, what with Uncle Dan to think of, and Cousin Mary comin' in from Chicago on the evenin' train.”

The funeral was to be on Thursday. Hilda would not go to St. Patrick's, of course, but she did plan to attend the graveside ceremony. “For that is not in a Catholic church, and I can wear a shawl to cover up, even if I nearly faint with the heat.”

“I don't like the idea of you faintin', darlin'. Could you not stay in the carriage, close by? That would show respect, but you wouldn't have to stand in the heat. Or you could stay home. Aunt Molly said you weren't to feel you had to come. She understands, havin' had three herself.”

“And now she has only one daughter,” said Hilda. “Life is sad, Patrick.”

“That it can be,” he acknowledged, and finished his beer.

* * *

Hilda sent for Erik the next day, as planned, and he arrived in a combative mood. “And what's gonna happen to Andy?” he demanded as soon as he saw Hilda on the porch.

“What do you mean, happen to him? Do you think the police will do something to him? Do not be foolish.” She was feeling as tired and hot and miserable as she ever had in her life, and was very cross. “That is not why I asked you to come here. I want—”

Erik wasn't having a good day, either. A neighborhood dog had chewed the strap on his brand-new roller skate, a fact he hadn't noticed until the strap broke. He was skating down a hill at the time, and had skinned both knees and one elbow, and torn his pants. Mama would have plenty to say about that when she came home from work. And
he
was hot, too. “You didn't ask me to come,” he interrupted. “You dragged me away, and I was just about to go swimmin'. And I don't care what you want. Andy's scared stiff the crooks are gonna come and get him, and what are you doin' about it?”

It was like a blow to Hilda's solar plexus. She leaned forward on the porch swing so suddenly it nearly threw her off.

“I did not think about that. Oh, Erik, you are right! I must—I do not know what I must do.”

She sat back—sagged back—and looked so near tears that Erik was disarmed.

“Well, you don't need to cry about it,” he said, his voice dropping into the low, man's register that was becoming his normal speech. “Andy's okay, prob'ly, as long as he's at the hotel. It's comin' and goin' that scares him, 'specially comin' home at night. It's gonna start gettin' dark earlier pretty soon, y'know, and he has to work late sometimes.”

Hilda nodded. “Yes. But what—I thought he would be safe if he told what he knew in front of everyone.”

“He thinks they'll try to get him, though, just to teach him not to be a snitch.”

“Is this something he has heard anyone say, or is it just a feeling?”

“He says—” Erik's voice broke into its higher register again “—he says he hears people whisper things behind his back, but when he looks to see who's talkin', there's never anybody there.”

“What kind of things?” Hilda's mouth was dry.

“He didn't say. Just—mean things.”

Hilda looked at her little brother, her tears near the surface again. He was lying, and he knew she knew he was lying, but he wasn't going to repeat to his sister the words, the cruel, menacing words that Andy had heard flung at him by unknown voices.

Erik was becoming a man.

“What do you think we should do, my brother?” she asked him, and they both understood. She had called him “little one” for the last time.

“I had an idea,” he said, digging his toe against the wooden floor of the porch and shedding about five years of his new-found adulthood. “I don't know if you'll like it.”

“Yes?”

“I thought maybe Patrick could give him a job at the store, and maybe walk him back and forth every day. He doesn't live so far from here.”

Hilda considered that. “Patrick needs more help, I know, now that Uncle Dan is ill. Do you think Andy would like working at the store?”

“He's been wantin' to get a better job,” said Erik eagerly. “He's been sayin' there's no chance to make anything of himself as long as he's just a bellhop. He'd work real hard, I know he would.”

Hilda wanted to hug him, but she knew he didn't like it anymore. Even if she could have reached him, she thought ruefully, looking at her prominent bulge. “I will talk to Patrick as soon as he comes home. But for today, I will have Mr. O'Rourke meet Andy when he gets off work, and take him home.”

“Not in the carriage!” said Erik in alarm. “Because the crooks would know—”

“No, not in the carriage,” Hilda agreed. “He will walk to the hotel, and Andy will tell him where he lives.”

“I'll go tell Andy!” said Erik, ready to dash away.

“Wait! Erik, wait. I nearly forgot why I ‘dragged you away' from your swimming. I want to you ask Sven to come and see me. No,” she added, seeing the question trembling on his lips, “do not ask me why I do not go to him. This is something secret, Erik, and you must not tell anyone about it. Not even Andy. Will you promise?”

“Promise,” he said, in his new adult voice, and crossed his heart. “I gotta hurry, though, 'cause I gotta go find Sven for you, and then stop at the hotel before I go to work at the stable.”

“No time to swim today,” said Hilda. “I am sorry. Maybe tomorrow.”

But Erik was already out of earshot.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.

—Mark Twain,
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar,
1897

Sven was also hot and tired when he came to see Hilda, but Sven almost never lost his temper. He was the epitome of the calm, stolid Swede, the sort that others thought of as “dumb.” They could not have been more wrong.

He sat down heavily on one of the wicker porch chairs, so heavily that the chair creaked, and said, in Swedish, “You wanted to see me, my sister?”

“Yes, and I am sorry to keep you from your supper on such a day.” She poured some of the fresh lemonade Eileen had brought out, with a passing thought to the number of lemons they must be going through. Time was when a lemon, or an orange, was a rare treat. Lemonade was one little luxury for which she was deeply grateful.

“Yes, it has been a long day. The paint shop is very hot and close on such a day. There are fans, but the smell of paint is hard to bear.” He sipped at his drink, then held the cold glass to his temple.

“You have a headache. I will give you some powders, and then you must go home to rest. But first, there is a thing I would like you to do for me.”

Sven looked wary. Many of the people in Hilda's life were wary when she asked them to do things for her. “Yes,” she said to his unspoken criticism, “it is maybe a fearsome thing, but not I think so fearsome for you as for me. He does not know you.”

“Who does not know me, Hilda?”

“Mr. Vanderhoof. Always we dealt with his agent, Mr. Andrews, about getting Mama and the children here. Mr. Vanderhoof knows me, or he knows who I am, because of what happened later, but he does not know you.”

Sven's jaw worked. His cold blue eyes seemed to grow even colder. “And what is it you want me to do about Mr. Vanderhoof?”

Hilda lowered her voice. Across the street a sweating boy was mowing the lawn. The cicadas were buzzing loudly. She would not be overheard. “I want to know what Mr. Vanderhoof has done, where he has been, since he left South Bend. It was said that he left the country. I do not know if that is true, or just a story that was told to protect him.” She moved closer to Sven and spoke even more quietly. “He is an evil man, Sven, and I think maybe he still has colleagues here, political friends, who would do anything he asked of them. I think—I do not know, but I think—maybe he has been setting these fires, and killing people, and even wrecking the trains, for some reason of his own. Oh, he did not do these things himself, but I think maybe he has had other men do them.”

Sven heaved a great sigh. He was extremely tired, and his head ached badly. “My sister, you say these things, but you have no proof. Yes, Mr. Vanderhoof is a bad man. He is a thief, and he has killed one man, at least. No, not by his own hand, but by his bidding. But why would he do these things you now say he has done?”

“I do not know, Sven. I know only that he helped Clancy to turn bad. He used him. Then Clancy returned to South Bend, and now Clancy is dead—murdered. I think there is a connection. I do not know what it is. Will you help me to find out?”

Sven rose, ponderously. “I must go, Hilda. I will think on it. I do not like to accuse a man—even a bad man—with no evidence.”

“That is why we must find the evidence, my brother. Wait. I will give you something for your headache.”

He took the medicine, thanked her gravely, and trudged home, refusing Hilda's offer of the carriage. She had not gotten the pledge of help that she had hoped for, but she knew it was no use trying to coax or plead. Sven would do what he thought was right, and anything more that Hilda could say would have as much chance of moving him as of moving one of the old elms that lined the street.

And if she felt any slight qualms about breaking her implied promise to Sergeant Lefkowicz, or putting Sven in possible danger, she pushed them to the back of her mind, hoping they would be less troublesome there.

When Patrick came home a few minutes later, it was with Andy Mueller in tow. Andy was carrying a box so big he was almost invisible behind it.

Hilda was not best pleased. “Patrick,” she whispered, “what if someone is following him?”

“That's fine, lad,” said Patrick loudly. “Just set it down in the hall, and then go and have yourself a wash. The scullery's just off the kitchen. Then maybe Mrs. O'Rourke will give you a little somethin' to eat.”

When he had gone inside, panting a little under his burden, Patrick motioned to Hilda and they both went in to the parlor.

“Hush, now, before you say a word,” said Patrick, going to the sideboard to pour himself a whiskey. This was so unlike him that Hilda stared open-mouthed and obeyed his command.

He took a swig, sighed, and looked at Hilda. “All right, darlin', you want to know what's goin' on.”

“Yes!” Her tongue unleashed, she let it run freely. “He was not to be seen with you, not yet. If anyone saw him with you, it could be very bad. I had a plan, but it—”

“Things don't always work out accordin' to plan.” Patrick took another pull at his stiffener. “The boy's a bit muddled, but if I understand what he was tellin' me, Erik went to the hotel and told him there was maybe a chance of him comin' to work for me.”

“Yes, he was to say that, and to say that until I had a chance to talk to you about it, Mr. O'Rourke would come to the hotel and walk him home. After he went to work for you, then maybe he could come home with you. I did not think about how he would get home from here. I am so tired, Patrick.”

“I know you are, darlin' girl. So are we all, in this awful heat. Anyway, I guess maybe Andy didn't hear another word Erik said after ‘work at Malloy's.' Anyway, he came straight to me, in the middle of the afternoon. And he said he was followed.”

Hilda's hand went to her mouth.

“Yes. Now what was I to do? Tell me that. The boy was scared nearly out of his wits. So I brought him home, hopin' maybe that big box would hide him from anybody who wanted to know where he was or what he was doin'. It wasn't a wonderful idea, but it was the best I could come up with at the time.”

“Who followed him?”

“He didn't know. I don't know, meself, if it's true or if he was just so scared he imagined it. He reads those dime novels, doesn't he?”

“Yes, but—”

“And Sherlock Holmes and that sort o' thing?”

“But he is not—”

“All I'm sayin', darlin', is it could be so, or it could be somethin' he's made up out o' shadows.”

“You will not let me finish. I think it is true. But even if it is not, he thinks it is true, and he is very frightened. Patrick, I think we must let him stay with us for a little while.”

“What about his family?”

“We will have to let them know. I can send Mr. O'Rourke.”

“And what is he goin' to tell 'em? That their boy's been nosin' around for you and got himself in trouble with some nasty sorts? That he's seein' things that aren't there? Or what?” There was a hard note in his voice that Hilda had seldom heard before.

She said nothing for a moment. Then she swallowed and said, “You are right, Patrick. I have been foolish in some ways, and I have put the boy in danger. But now we—you and I, Patrick—must think of the best way to protect him. I think it is to keep him here with us. We can tell his mother that I need some extra work done at the house. But do you think that is what we should do?”

Patrick's anger melted. “Yes, darlin' girl, I do. I'm sorry if I sounded—well, I didn't mean to be scoldin'. You're doin' the best you can, I reckon. Let's get Andy in here and talk to him about it.”

They found Andy in the kitchen, eating cookies and drinking milk and talking to Mrs. O'Rourke as if they were old friends. Hilda was astonished.

“Sure, and it's good to have a boy around,” said the curmudgeonly cook. “I miss my own, now they're grown and gone. Did you want somethin', madam?”

“Yes,” said Patrick, since Hilda seemed once more to be struck dumb. “If you're done with your snack, Andy, we're wantin' to talk to you. He'll be back, Mrs. O'Rourke.”

Andy looked apprehensive as he followed them back to the parlor.

“It is nothing bad, Andy,” said Hilda. “Sit down. We have a plan—an idea—a—”

Patrick came to her rescue. “A business proposition to put to you, me boy. Now, we've agreed you're to work for me at the store from now on.”

“Yessir?” Andy had clearly not realized that the deal had been sealed.

“Yes. I can pay you a bit more than you were gettin' at the hotel, to start, but you won't be gettin' tips. So's you won't come out on the short end o' the deal, we thought—Mrs. Cavanaugh and I—that you might like to work for us here at the house for a little while, too.”

Hilda, without missing a beat, took up the improvised narrative. “You would help Mr. O'Rourke with the outside work, and maybe some work inside as well. I am—now that I am near my time, I can do little, cannot even carry anything very heavy. I would be very happy to have your help, Andy. But it would mean that you would have to live here for a time. Would that be hard for your family?”

“I'd be here all the time? And go back and forth to work with Mr. Patrick?”

Hilda and Patrick exchanged glances. This boy was no fool. “Yes, Andy,” said Hilda gently. “You would be with one of us all of the time.”

“I'll have to tell Ma.”

“It'll be all right with her, then? She won't be missin' your help around the house?”

“The others'll pitch in. It's summer, so none of 'em's goin' to school. It'll be okay. But I gotta tell her. Already she'll be worried 'cause I'm late.”

Patrick grinned at him. “Suppose I go with you, and we can get your clothes and bring them back. And meanwhile Eileen'll fix up a room for you.”

Hilda stood, with difficulty, and put her arm around Andy's shoulders. “Tell your mother you will be perfectly safe with us,” she whispered, and got a smile in return.