Murder in Burnt Orange (9 page)

Molly waved that away, her mouth firm again. “I think he will. It's not that that's eating away at me. His own son, Patrick!
My
son.” She bit her lip so hard it bled a little. She touched her handkerchief to her mouth.

“He's changed since I knew him,” said Patrick, trying to find a way to comfort her. “Bad associates...”

“He chose his associates.” Molly had herself under full control again. “He has made his bed, and he must lie in it. I won't turn him in to the police—not yet—but I will not, I will
not
allow him to harm his father anymore.” She paused. “Patrick, yesterday I went to Hilda and tried to make her promise she would go no further with this investigation. I suppose she told you?”

Patrick nodded.

“And I suppose she told you she made no such promise.”

He nodded again.

“I have changed my mind. Yet again. She will think I am as vacillating as a windmill.”

“That she will not. She knows you.”

“Well, then, tell her from me that I want her, I
need
her to find out anything she can. It will be difficult and very likely dangerous. You, of course, may have something to say about the matter. She's your wife, and it's your child she's carrying.”

Patrick shook his head. “I won't tell her what to do. I've made her promise not to do anything foolish, and to tell me before she does anything at all. Beyond that...”

“Patrick.” Aunt Molly looked at him fixedly. “You know the truth, do you not?”

“I—Aunt Molly, what do you mean?”

“Ah, Patrick, don't try to pretend with me. I've been able to see right through you since you were two. You know as well as I do that Clancy is in all this, in it right up to his fool neck.” Her voice was steady, but her face wore a mask of deep pain.

...the committee was assured...that Mr. Debs would be here on Thursday night [July 6], and that he would be in the convention on Friday....

—Minutes of the IWW Founding Convention, 1905

Patrick went home. There were things to be done at the store, urgent things, but first he had to see Hilda, hold her.

She met him at the door, unlocking it and rushing into his arms. They said nothing for a little time, then he held her away from him. She had been crying; her eyes were red and there were tracks of tears on her cheeks.

“How is he?” she asked.

“You heard, then.”

She nodded. “Aunt Molly had Riggs call me. Will he—he will not die?”

Patrick had tried to be cheerful with Riggs and Molly. With Hilda he could only be truthful. “We don't know yet,
acushla
. The doctor says he's comfortable, whatever that means. Honestly, Hilda, if nothin' else awful happens, I think he may be all right. He's strong and he's always kept himself healthy. But just now, there's no tellin'.”

“How did this awful thing happen?”

“Riggs didn't tell you that? Well, maybe he didn't know. It was Clancy—you might know. He was in Uncle Dan's office, and I was listenin' in the hall. Clancy was bein' just about as mean as he knows how to be, tellin' his father he had to let him stay at the house—”

“Why? Why would Clancy even want to stay there, after all that happened?”

“I suppose so he doesn't have to pay a hotel bill, for all he's braggin' about bein' rich. I don't know. But he does. But Uncle Dan said he couldn't, and he'd have to leave or go to jail, and then Clancy got all highfalutin and talked about the prodigal son, and said he wasn't leavin' town till he'd done some business.”

“What business does he have here?” Hilda sounded a little panicky.

“He wouldn't say, but he said somethin' about his ‘boss,' so I guess he's workin' for somebody.”

“He did not say who?”

“No. I guess he might have, maybe, but then Uncle Dan started gettin' really mad and then Clancy hightailed it out of the office and I went in and saw Dan was bad, and—you know the rest.”

“Clancy left the office? His father was maybe dying and he
left
?”

“That's Clancy for you. He never did think of anybody but himself. Hilda, if you're goin' to be all right, I've got to get back to the store. What with bein' closed two days in a row, we're goin' to lose a lot of business if I don't get meself busy.”

“Yes.” Hilda's mind was elsewhere. Patrick dropped a hasty kiss on her nose, patted her tummy, and turned to go.

“Wait. Patrick, you will ask questions at the store, yes? Because someone may know something. We must talk to everyone we can. Or—you must, and everyone else I know. I cannot.”

“If I have time, I will, I promise.”

“And one more thing. Can you stop at the police station on your way to work, and ask Sergeant Lefkowicz to come and see me?”

Alarmed, he turned back. “You're not goin' to tell him about Clancy? Because Aunt Molly said we weren't to turn him in.”

“I would like to tell him, but I will not if you say so. But I am going to tell him everything else. It is time for all this to stop, and for that I need the help of the police.”

If the matter had been less serious, Patrick would have smiled at that. The police helping Hilda, indeed! Probably the police would say that it was she who had, on occasion, been of some slight assistance to them.

But now was not the time to share the joke with her. “I'll find Lefkowicz for you,” he said briefly, and went back out into the rain.

The sergeant was tired when he showed up at Hilda's door, and more than a little wary. He was just going off duty, and although he had in the past had a good deal to do with Hilda, and liked her, some of those past dealings had gotten him into trouble with his superiors. And all of them, he seemed to remember, had involved his doing quite a lot of extra work. At the end of a day that had begun with a call to a domestic fracas early in the morning and had not improved since, he wasn't sure he wanted to listen to what Hilda had to say. He rang the bell with some trepidation.

No one had thought to tell him about Hilda's condition, so he was covered with confusion when he was shown into her parlor and found her on the couch, her feet up and her mid-section well in evidence.

“Oh—er—how do you do, Miss Hilda—that is—Mrs. Cavanaugh. I hope you are well?” His face, normally pale, was a fiery red.

“I am quite well, thank you, but the doctor has told me to put my feet up every day, now that we are expecting an addition to the family. That is why I asked you to come to me, instead of coming to you. I am sorry if it is not a good time for you.”

“Oh, no, ma'am, I don't mind—I mean, a lady couldn't come to the police station.”

Hilda had gone to the police station often in the past, but she smiled to herself. Certainly it was no place for a lady, especially not a lady soon to be a mother.

“Good. Sit down, please, and would you like something to drink? Coffee, tea, lemonade?”

What the sergeant really wanted after the day he'd had was something stronger, something to warm his rain-chilled body, but he didn't think it polite to say so. “Whatever you're having, ma'am.”

Hilda rang for Eileen and asked for tea for two, and whispered something to her. “Now, then, Sergeant,” she said when Eileen had gone to the kitchen, “I asked you to come here to talk about serious things. About train wrecks, and fires, and who is responsible for them. You have helped me so much in the past, and as you see, I cannot go out and find out things for myself.”

Lefkowicz blushed again and murmured something inaudible.

Hilda raised her eyes to the ceiling and made an impatient gesture. “Sergeant. I am going to have a baby. It is a normal thing, and nothing to be ashamed of, but society says I may not go out of the house, except to go to church. Also, my family wishes me to be careful, so I have promised. Now, we are friends. So you will please forget about my circumstances, and call me Hilda, and let me tell you what I know so far.”

“Yes, ma'am—Hilda.” He grinned in spite of himself. “If you don't mind my saying so, I congratulate you.”

“I do not mind, but the time for that is when the baby is here.”

Eileen brought in the tea, and Hilda poured it. To the sergeant's cup she added a splash from the decanter Eileen had put on the tray. Lefkowicz tasted it cautiously, sighed with approval, and sat back to await Hilda's pleasure.

“Now,” she said briskly, “it is about these train wrecks, especially the Twentieth Century one and the one at Studebaker's several days ago. I know that they were not accidents, but what do the police think about them?”

“I'm not supposed to talk,” he began, but seeing the menacing look in Hilda's eye, he changed tack. “I'm not
supposed
to talk about it, but I can tell you that we're not happy about either accident—either wreck, that is. Of course, we don't officially have anything to do with investigating the one in Ohio. The only reason we're getting any information about that one is that one of the men who were killed used to live in South Bend, and some of his family live here still. They're putting pressure on us to find out what really happened.”

“And what information do you have?”

“Well, you know the switch was left open on purpose. The newspapers got hold of that, first thing. “

“Yes, yes. And what else?”

“The Pinkertons are looking into just who was on that train. They figure there might have been somebody important that some gang was out to get. And so far they've come up with a pretty complete passenger list, and there were some important people, all right, but no one with real enemies, or not any they've been able to find.”

“What about the man from South Bend who died?”

“William Mackey, that was. He was a retired businessman who'd moved to Philadelphia and was going home after a visit to his family that's still here. Not active in business anymore, never was a big name. His family claim he didn't have an enemy in the world.”

“They would say that, no matter what,” said Hilda skeptically. “When someone dies, no one will ever say anything bad about him.”

“You may be right. But in this case, they very much want to figure out who was responsible for his death. I think they would tell, if they knew anything. I've talked to them myself, and I don't think they know any more than they've said.”

“Is anyone saying it might have to do with the union?” asked Hilda.

“What union?”

“I do not know! Any union. The railroad workers, perhaps.”

“Ah.” The sergeant looked closely at Hilda. “You're thinking of Eugene Debs.”

“I did not even remember who he was until a few days ago, but he might do such things as this, might he not? Or ask his union workers to do them?”

The sergeant chose his words carefully. “We try to keep an eye on Eugene Debs, you know. Some of his people get carried away, sometimes, but he himself doesn't go in for violence. There's a lot of good in him, you know, and he's a powerful speaker. He'd've made a great preacher. I heard him once, when he was running for president last time, and if he'd said the sun was about to set in the east, I'd've believed him. He's a spellbinder. But I don't think this kind of underhanded villainy is like him. Besides, he's been busy lately, organizing a new union. International Workers of the World, they call it. Their first meeting was in Chicago a week or two ago, and I think it may still be going on.”

“In Chicago. That means he was near South Bend.”

“Yes. But he was tied up in meetings.”

“Not every minute. And there are his followers. But we can prove nothing.” Hilda was dissatisfied, but accepted that, for the moment at least, she would have to put that part of the investigation aside. “What, then, has been learned about how the Studebaker wreck happened?”

“Not much. We're on that one, of course—it happened in our territory. But the Pinkertons are helping, because there've been so many wrecks lately. They're looking for a pattern of some kind.”

“So am I,” said Hilda grimly.

“We have witnesses who say that the train started speeding up as soon as it hit the grade just outside the Woolen Mills, and was going way too fast when it hit the curve coming into South Bend. Then just before it got to Studebaker's, somebody says he saw the brakeman walking the top of the cars, maybe trying to set the brakes by hand. But others didn't see him at all, so we don't know for sure.”

“Has someone looked at the air brakes? Patrick knows about these things, and he said if a line was cut, it would mean the train could not be stopped.”

“Hilda, there's not enough left of those brake lines to tell anything at all. That was a hot fire, with all the coal to fuel it. Whoever did this was smart. They knew there'd be nothing left to tell the tale.”

“And the brakeman is badly hurt, and the engineer and fireman are dead, so no one can tell us.” Hilda pounded her fist on the arm of the couch in frustration. “And there is one man who knew about what was happening, and he is dead, too.”

“A man who knew?” This was apparently news to Lefkowicz.

“Yes, did no one tell you? The man who was killed at the store—at our store, Sergeant—he told people he knew a lot about the wrecks and the fires. They are killing everyone who might tell anything. They are evil, and we must stop them!”

“Tell me everything you know about Bill Beeman.” Lefkowicz was all attention now.

So Hilda told him what little she knew, that Beeman had claimed “funny business” at the bank, that he had claimed Sam Black was connected with it somehow, that Black was back in town. “And he is not the only—” she began, and then made a little sound like a hiccup and closed her mouth.

Lefkowicz waited a moment before asking, “He's not the only what?”

“Nothing. I meant to say, he must not be the only one who knows something. Those who worked with Mr. Beeman at the bank, maybe, could tell you what he was saying.”

Lefkowicz was a good policeman. True, his work had mostly to do with wife-beatings, with fights at the local saloon when things got a little rowdy, with raids on the disorderly houses that were the shame of South Bend, and with tracking down the occasional runaway child or delinquent father. But he had learned to tell when people were telling the truth, and he was sure now that Hilda was holding something back.

“Are you sure that's what you were thinking?” He looked her straight in the eye.

“There was another thought, but I have forgotten what it was,” she said, returning his look with one just as determined. “And it does not matter. Has anyone talked to the people at the bank, where Mr. Beeman worked?”

“No. We didn't know about his claims. They might be nothing, you know. He was young. Maybe he was just trying to make himself important.”

“Perhaps. But Sergeant, we know nothing! You need to talk to Andy Mueller. He is the one who hears all the rumors, all the talk at the hotel. But I do not know how you are to go about it.”

“How I go about it? I go up and talk to him, is how I go about it! Or bring him to the station, if he doesn't want to cooperate.”

“No! You cannot do that! Andy is afraid, and he has reason. He will not even come here to talk to me anymore. He is afraid that he will be watched, that someone will think he, too, knows too much. Sergeant, people who know too much die!”

“Then what do you suggest?” His voice was just a trifle sarcastic.

“I have thought about this. Why do we not have a meeting of the Boys' Club? A party. A picnic, if the rain ever stops, in Howard Park, and you can attend, and Patrick, and my brother Sven, and all of you can talk to Andy and the other boys and learn all they know. You will not wear your uniform, of course.”