The Cincinnati Red Stalkings (22 page)

I
played all nine innings Thursday afternoon and didn’t remember one of them. The fact that I was allowed on the field at all was the only positive aspect to the entire day; it meant that I wasn’t on Judge Landis’s blacklist—yet.

My thoughts were occupied by the death of Rufus Yates and on what could follow from that development. I tried to convince myself that his murder might have nothing to do with me—he was, after all, in a line of work with a high mortality rate and might have simply been killed in a dispute with another hood. But I had the sense that his death was more likely related to the scheme to set me up. Yates was supposed to convince me to stop poking around, and I’d left evidence on his face that he’d failed. Maybe his partner in the scheme wasn’t confident that Yates could keep me from digging further and decided to kill him to keep his own identity a secret. Whatever the reason Rufus Yates had been killed, Detective Forsch was right: from Judge Landis’s perspective it might look awfully convenient for me that he died before investigators could question him.

When I got home after the game, Margie and Karl were both out. I put in a call to Forsch to see if there was any progress on the Yates shooting. He told me there were no suspects, but the assumption was that the gambler knew his killer and had let him in his apartment. Yates had been shot twice in the chest while sitting in an easy chair. There was no sign of a forced entry, and enough cash was in the room to eliminate theft as a motive.

After getting off the phone with the detective, I thought some more. Lately, much of Yates’s activity had been related to me: the break-in at my house, arranging the photograph outside Redland Field, the encounter in the alley. According to both Forsch and the colored bookie Spider Jenkins, Yates was never more than a hired hand. He must have had his fine paid by somebody who wanted him out of jail to do a job. Since his first task after getting out of jail was breaking into my home, I figured that stealing the note about Sarah was what he’d been hired to do.

I went over to the bookcase, pulled out
Life on the Mississippi,
and removed the piece of onionskin I’d tucked between its pages. I reread the words:

I began to wonder if perhaps I’d been looking at the message the wrong way.

Karl Landfors came in, lugging a bundle of groceries. I helped carry them into the kitchen, and noticed with dismay that they consisted mostly of Moxie. Karl was the only person I knew who liked the soft drink. He brought a bottle of it into the parlor and I grabbed a ginger ale.

“Take a look at this,” I said, handing him the note.

Karl gave it a quick glance. “You’ve shown it to me before.”

“Read it again. There’s no mention of
who
killed Sarah.”

He pushed up his glasses and reread the message. “So?”

“Maybe it’s not an accusation. Maybe it’s a confession.”

“By whom?”

“Ambrose Whitaker. He lied about where and when he got the ball, so he is covering something up. And let’s go back to 1869: he’d been at the Red Stockings’ homecoming banquet, and he was about the age of a player. Maybe he decided to impress a girl by claiming to be on the team.”

“If he was going to impersonate someone, why not one of the stars?”

“Too likely to be recognized. A substitute wouldn’t be.” As John Cogan had said about his recent impersonation of Dick Hurley:
It’s not like I was pretending to be Harry Wright.

“But if Whitaker wrote the note, why steal it back? Even if he changed his mind about having written it, he’d know that his name isn’t mentioned—there’s nothing to implicate him.”

“Maybe he thought it could be traced back to him because he was the one who donated the ball.”

“I don’t know,” Karl said. “Pretty halfhearted confession, if you ask me.” He frowned. “And why put it in a baseball? Good chance nobody would ever find it.”

“Maybe in his mind it didn’t ever have to be found. It could have just been something he had to say.”

“What do you mean?”

I hesitated. I’d known Karl for years, but never found it easy to speak with him about personal matters. “I’ve told you about my aunt and uncle that I grew up with.” He nodded. “Well, my uncle didn’t talk a whole lot except with customers at his general store, and only if the conversation was about baseball or politics. Never said much around the house. So after my aunt died, I was real surprised to find him writing a letter to her. I asked him about it, and he said he was telling her things he wished he’d said to her while she was alive. And it wasn’t the first one he wrote. He’d been writing a letter a week, and even put them in the mail, with just her first name on the envelope. He must have known they’d all end up in the dead letter bag at the post office, but he got out something he felt he had to say.”

“Like putting a note in a bottle,” said Karl.

“Right. Maybe Ambrose Whitaker did something similar, except he changed his mind and—” Another idea struck me that made more sense. “Or maybe he wasn’t the one who wanted it back. What if it was somebody who didn’t know there was nothing incriminating in the message?”

“Such as?”

“One of his kids, Aaron or Adela.” Maybe one of them wanted it back either to protect their father or to protect the family’s name—and business.

Adela had seemed a sharp businesswoman, the type who’d want to protect her interests. Aaron I knew almost nothing about, except that he apparently had no involvement with the family business. What was he involved with? And was it something that might bring him into contact with someone like Rufus Yates?

I told Karl what I knew about the Whitaker family and asked him to check into them further.

He looked like a hound dog about to hit the trail. Nothing a muckraking Socialist likes better than the prospect of digging up dirt on a “robber baron.”

Friday night, well after dinner time, Karl Landfors came home with his tail between his legs.

“No luck?” I asked.

“I spent all day looking into the Whitaker family, and
nothing.
” He tossed his derby on one end of the sofa and plopped down on the other.

“What do you mean ‘nothing’—there’s got to be some information on them.”

He looked around. “Where’s Margie?”

“Called a little while ago. She’s staying late at the zoo.” I moved to get up from my chair. “Got sandwiches if you’re hungry.”

Karl waved me back down. “The Whitakers are the kind of business people who give capitalism a good name,” he said with disgust. “Kills my appetite.”

“I’m sorry,” I said in mock sympathy.

“They pay decent wages,” Karl went on, “their facilities have the most modern safety features, they don’t employ children ... I just can’t find anything on them.”

“That’s now,” I said. “What about in the past? Nothing shady?”

“Nothing!” Karl spat the word. “Ambrose Whitaker worked hard as a young man, built the streetcar company that made him wealthy, and kept working hard to make it grow. Nothing illegal—well, maybe a little. To do anything in this town you had to grease the Boss Cox political machine, but he only made the minimum payoffs necessary to get things done. Never established real political ties. He had a good reputation—treated his workers fair, and supported several charities. A couple of years ago, he turned the business over to his daughter Adela and son Aaron. His health was deteriorating, and he wanted to pass it on.”

“What was wrong with him?”

Karl shook his head. “Don’t know. ‘Poor health’ is all that I’ve read about it; never saw any mention of a specific ailment. Anyway, brother and sister were supposed to share the business, but Adela is the one in control. She’s modernizing and branching out into new areas. She recently made a substantial investment in a company called Formica out near Chester Park.”

“And her brother?”

“Let’s just say that for the family to remain prosperous, it’s probably best that he leave his sister to run things.”

I thought for a few moments. “What about their personal lives?”

“Mrs. Whitaker—Ambrose’s wife—died about fifteen years ago. Adela has never married, although she’s had the same suitor for the past five years; I think she prefers to be independent. Same as her father had, she has a reputation for honesty and fairness. She even pays their female workers the same as the men. Stubborn, though, from what I hear, and a hard negotiator.”

“And Aaron?”

“Well, because he stays out of the business, I couldn’t find out as much about him. He’s married, two children. No mistresses that I heard of. He likes to spend time with other men. Hunting, fishing ... he has a horse ranch outside Covington. I think he fancies himself a country gentleman.” He spread his hands. “That’s all I have.”

“All right. Thanks, Karl.”

“If only there was
something
scandalous in their past,” he said wistfully.

I tried to console him that we might find something yet.

Aaron Whitaker wasn’t what I’d expected. I thought he’d be rich, spoiled, and perhaps a bit dandified. That’s not what I found when I ventured across the river into Kentucky to visit him at his horse farm Saturday morning.

He was outside the stable, working on the cinch of a finely crafted saddle that was resting on a fence rail. I hadn’t pictured him as the sort of man who worked with his hands, but his fingers were callused and his skin rough. Whitaker’s dungarees and red-and-black flannel shirt were well-worn. In both dress and build, he could have passed for a lumberjack. He was tall, muscular, with a weathered face and full orange beard.

The farm, south of Covington and bordering the Licking River, wasn’t a showplace, either. It was of modest size, with a small ranch house, a decrepit red barn, and a stable that was in better repair than the other two structures. Across the dirt driveway from the stable was a pasture where several magnificent horses grazed on the high grass.

“Are those racehorses?” I asked.

“My horses are for riding, not racing,” Aaron answered. “Give me the awl, would you?”

I handed him the tool. His answer was a disappointment. I’d wondered how any of the Whitakers would have contact with someone like Rufus Yates. Aaron seemed the best bet; if he bred racehorses, he might have known Yates from the tracks—and hired him to steal back his father’s confession. “I hear there’s a big demand for them,” I said. The racetracks had been shut down during the war so the animals could be used by the army for hauling supply wagons. Now the racing business was booming again.

“I get offers,” he said. “But there’s not enough money in the world to get me to sell my horses to the tracks. I’m not in the breeding business.”

“How much are you involved in the family business?”

“I’m not.” He looked up at me. “You said you met my father and sister. Didn’t they tell you I stay out of it?”

I admitted they had.

He jabbed the point of the awl into the leather. “I’m forty-four years old. I’ve never had a head for business, and I don’t suppose I’ll ever develop one. My sister does, and I’m grateful to her for it. She runs the company, I stay out of her way, and she keeps me on a salary that’s far more than I deserve.” He chuckled. “Hell, maybe I
am
worth it—if I got involved in the business, I’d be sure to lose more money than what she’s paying me.”

Aaron Whitaker sounded comfortable with the arrangement.

“Now,” he said. “You told me our family might be in some trouble. What is it?”

“I’m not sure exactly. But I’ve been hearing that there was a scandal some time ago that might come out.”