Sadie's Secret: 3 (The Secret Lives of Will Tucker) (3 page)

Two

April 1890

Chicago, Illinois

A
bsolutely not.” Pinkerton agent Sadie Callum shook her head, her mind made up. If only she could convince her supervisor.

“You’re still the lead agent on the case,” Henry Smith said. “And as such you are obligated to see this through to the end.”

“But I
did
see it through, sir. Will Tucker is back in the Louisiana State Prison with an additional ten years added to his sentence thanks to his escape. End of story.”

A nice speech, and yet one that had completely missed its mark. Henry’s expression gave that much away.

Will Tucker. Nemesis to two other Pinkerton agents and now, unfortunately, it appeared he would reprise his performance with her as well.

Sadie thought of the man whose face she’d studied carefully during the hearings almost a year ago. They had been required to address his escape and subsequent additional crimes. Nothing in what she saw told her Will Tucker was a man given to crime.

Unsettling, and yet wasn’t that what made him so good at what he did? Surely the women he duped had seen what she had: a man with some measure of culture and kind eyes of an interesting gray color that went green when the light was just so.

Tricks of the light, that shifting color, and yet Sadie would have given anything to paint him. Or capture him in a sketch.

But what emotion would she give to a man whose expression belied his personal behavior? A conundrum indeed, and the reason she was more a patron of the arts than a creator of them.

Henry shook his head, redirecting her thoughts. “Not so quick, Miss Callum. The story isn’t quite at its end. There’s been a complication.”

She let out a long breath. “I fail to see what sort of complication would require me to travel down to Louisiana and that awful prison again, especially when Mrs. Astor has asked for me personally.”

And on a case that held her interest like none other had ever done. A case where art was at its center.

“Mrs. Astor will either have to wait or hire someone else to see to the cause of her Rembrandt.” Henry removed his spectacles to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Simply put, our Mr. Tucker has continued to claim that the Pinkertons and the State of Louisiana have incarcerated the wrong man.”

“Of course he has. If the prisons of the world opened their doors and released all the inmates who claimed to be wrongly accused, we would have no need of jails or jailors.”

“Perhaps.” He put his spectacles back into place and then pushed a folder across the desk toward her. “However, this communiqué from the Metropolitan Police in London tells quite a different tale. You should entertain yourself by reading it and then return tomorrow to discuss your thoughts on the matter.”

Sadie looked down at the folder but made no move to accept it. Instead, she shook her head. “What does a London police agency have to do with an American jewel thief?”

“You have your reservations. I understand that. However, our agreement was that you would continue to represent the Pinkerton Agency in the Tucker matter until such a time as the case was closed.”

“Reservations,” she echoed. “Yes, sir, I do, and I think I’ve stated them clearly.”

There was more, much more, to cause her to protest returning to Louisiana, though she would not state those reasons now. Instead, she met Henry’s gaze across the piles of books and papers in a room very much like Daddy’s office back in River Pointe, Louisiana.

There, her father and five brothers made decisions that affected lives,
property, and the prosperity of the sugarcane enterprise and those in their employ. Here, Henry Smith did much the same.

He checked his wristwatch and then pushed back from his desk to stand. “Come back tomorrow at ten sharp and we’ll talk about it.” Before she could respond, he reached down to retrieve the file and handed it to her. “And read this, Miss Callum. Carefully and without prejudice.”

In any other situation, Sadie would have bristled at the statement. This time the words were warranted.

Though she accepted the file, she offered no response. Instead, she allowed Henry to escort her downstairs, where he insisted on having his driver deliver her to her hotel.

“Lincoln Park Zoo,” Sadie said when she was certain Henry had returned to his office inside the building.

“But Mr. Smith said—”

“He said you were to deliver me to my hotel.” She smiled and gave him a carefully practiced shrug. “And yet it’s such a lovely day. I enjoy the zoo and have so few opportunities to visit.”

She could tell he was struggling with the decision to comply with her request or obey his employer, but in the end her smile won out. A little while later she was at the zoo’s entrance.

What she had told the driver was hardly the truth, for she found the place dirty and smelly and not much different from a walk around the barn back in River Pointe. Today the sea lions were loose—at least, that is what the newspaper boasted—and the place would be filled with folks trying to get a peek.

All the better to hide in plain sight. And perhaps keep her brothers off her trail. For if they continued to meddle in her life, continued to try to keep tabs on her comings and goings, her days as an undercover Pinkerton agent were numbered. Aaron had already ruined a perfectly good stakeout just last month by walking up to her and identifying her by name. He had refused to say what he was really doing in Denver.

“Considering an interest in a copper mine my left foot,” she muttered as she pressed past the throng at the sea lion fountain.

More likely the eldest of the five rowdies she called brothers had drawn the short straw and was sent to find out just what their sister was up to.
Her cover had been shredded, and Kyle Russell, the other agent on the case, had to complete the investigation on his own.

Something Henry had never upbraided her about. But then that was just how he was, kind to a fault when it came to those under his protection. But even Henry’s kindness had it limits, and she suspected she had come close to reaching them.

Today’s weather was mild for April, a sunny day with a bracing wind that thankfully did not originate off the frigid north of the lake. Though she missed few things about her life back in Louisiana, the mild winters were definitely at the top of the list. The impossibly hot and humid summers went all the way to the bottom of that same list.

Gathering her valise closer to her side to avoid pickpockets—a habit borne of her Pinkerton training rather than a necessity here—Sadie looked up to see the redbrick building that housed the primates. There she found Uncle Penn waiting.

Pennsylvania Monroe III rested his bones against the side of the building, not one to sit when standing would do. Though his attention was given over to a newspaper, she suspected he had already spied her and was watching her approach.

The instinct to courting covert activities had apparently been grafted into the family tree when Aunt Pearl married Uncle Penn with the War Between the States not yet a memory.

Daddy always said Uncle Penn had come to the South to spy for the Yankees and carried off his sister instead. In his defense, Penn would say nothing beyond the statement that good sense trumped any other business, and marrying Aunt Pearl was both good sense and good for business.

“What news is so fascinating this day, Uncle?” Sadie asked as she moved into place beside him, linking her arm with his as she offered a bright smile.

“I could ask the same.” He nodded to the file under her arm. “And yet we both know I will not. So what say I escort a lovely lady on a walk? I know John and Victoria would love to see you again, and I’ve promised to stop in for tea.”

“I am amenable to a walk, but I must beg off on the visit.” She glanced at the file and then returned her attention to her uncle. “Duty calls.”

“And not another trip to the Academy of Fine Arts?”

She thought fondly of the institute that had cultivated the love of art
her boarding school education had begun. “I wish I could, Uncle, but not today.”

“Then I shall enjoy our brief time together, and perhaps I will convince you of the need to leave duty behind in favor of dinner with an ancient relation.”

Sadie laughed for the first time that day. “Dinner would be wonderful, but should I ever consider you ancient, please shake me back into good sense.”

He shrugged. “And yet I am. Now, see that you do not lag behind, young lady. I’m keen to get where I’m going without further dawdling.”

A short while later they walked past Newberry Library at Uncle Penn’s usual rapid pace to pause at the front steps of John Thompson’s lovely home on Dearborn Avenue. Whatever the connection between her uncle and the wealthy lawyer beyond their shared attendance at Amherst College before the war, Penn never elaborated, though he also never failed to pay a visit when he was in Chicago.

Grasping her hands in his, Uncle Penn indicated neither a willingness to release her nor any hurry in turning to climb the steps and see his old friend. Something in his countenance gave her cause to worry.

“What is it? You look troubled.”

“Not nearly as much as you will be when your father’s letter arrives.” He shrugged. “It’s likely waiting for you back at the hotel.”

She let out a long breath. A missive from home was indeed overdue. Her father generally penned something abrasive and loving in equal measure and sent it within hours of her departure. Oddly, she’d been here almost a week and heard nothing from him or Mama.

Neither had any of her brothers pestered her, be it with telegrams or calls. Thus, she expected a Callum man to jump out from behind a tree trunk or other hiding place at any moment to announce his deep concern for her welfare.

Or to demand she accompany him back home where she belonged. A statement that rarely produced the desired effect.

She centered her concentration back on Uncle Penn. “Then perhaps you would be doing me a service in preparing me for whatever Daddy’s planning to lecture me on this time.”

“I ought to. Really I should.”

He looked away as the lakeside breeze ruffled the ends of his graying hair. Once a redhead, his diminishing crown of glory, as he called his ginger curls, was fading and retreating faster than the Confederates at Pea Ridge. Only once had he made the statement in front of Daddy.

“No,” he finally said, “I’ll allow for the fact that Seamus Callum somehow came to his senses between the writing of my telegram and the sending of your letter.” Steely eyes met her gaze. “And I’ll leave it at that. Now, humor an old man and allow me to put you into a hansom cab. I’ll not have you walking alone no matter the training you have, understand?”

He punctuated the statement with a wink that made it impossible for Sadie to argue. He kissed her on the cheek and then helped her into the cab. “Virginia Hotel, Ladies’ Entrance,” he told the driver. “We will meet again for dinner, yes?” he asked Sadie.

“Yes, Uncle,” she said as she settled back for the short ride to Rush Street.

After paying the cabbie, Sadie cast a careful glance in all directions and then went inside. Striding down the gilded hall as quickly as she could manage and still project some air of respectability, she set her sights on the far end of the passageway. Stepping past the white marble statue of Nydia, the Blind Girl of Pompeii, she passed the guest elevators to stand at the broad semicircle of black marble that was the reception desk.

A few moments later, a packet of letters in hand, Sadie made her way up to her room with much less assurance, much less haste. For in the packet, addressed in the bold handwriting of her father, was a letter to Sarah Louise Callum.

The name he called her when no other name would suffice to contain his ire. Or, on far too many occasions, his disappointment.

Rather than wait, Sadie deposited the letters on the desk and settled herself in front of them. A woman of the world, she was, and a Pinkerton agent besides.

Sadie reminded herself of both things as she reached for her father’s envelope. And yet as she tore open the seal and pulled out a single page of vellum purchased by Mama at the best stationers in New Orleans, her heart pounded as if she was a little child.

Home, he demanded. A word. A sentence. A threat.

Home.