THE DEVILS DIME (32 page)

“Come with me, Mr. Pepper. I want you to meet someone.”

Jess rose and followed Lizzie through the door into the little room off the parlor. Propped on pillows in a daybed angled near the windows of a sunny enclosed porch was a bald man of sixty or seventy. His eyes opened when the two entered and his face lit up as Lizzie moved around the bed and took his hand.

“Clarence, dear, there’s someone here to see you.” She turned to indicate Jess who’d moved to the other side of the bed. “This is Mr. Jess Pepper. He’s come to talk to you about Jeremiah.”

Jess looked at Lizzie and she winked at him and patted Clarence’s hand.

“I’ll just leave you two alone,” she said quietly as she carefully laid Clarence’s hand back onto the covers.

Jess wondered if she were as clever as he’d thought or merely senile. But if her houseguest had information about Jeremiah Leviticus Carnello, he was ready to listen.

He reached across the bed to shake hands with Clarence when Lizzie suddenly stopped and turned back toward them.

“Oh! How silly. I nearly forgot. Mr. Pepper, meet Dr. Clarence Haberman.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Addie’s knees were screaming by the time she’d recovered the rest of the missing coins from beneath the furniture. As she’d crawled around the floor she’d had to stop twice to slow her breathing when scenes from her morning run-in with Chief Trumbull flooded her mind.

She’d really cooked her goose, now. She couldn’t play with the orchestra, probably couldn’t even be seen outside the building, or Trumbull would know she’d lied to him. She was in a fine mess, all right. Somehow she’d have to work it to her advantage. Somehow she’d have to find a way to get her father out of jail, then they could both get out of town.

What in heaven’s name had made her go to his office in the first place? Waving a red flag in front of a crazy bull was something even she knew not to do. Now she’d called attention to herself, and barely escaped without pommeling the Precinct Chief .

She’d been so angry at Jess the night before, for the ugly picture he’d painted of everyone involved. But now she knew that Trumbull in particular had earned Jess’s low opinion. She’d railed at Jess, while he was simply trying to protect her from the sordid side of their dilemma. What would he do when he found out what she’d done? And what should she do until she could talk it over with him?

The idea of getting a hotel room further out in the city crossed her mind. Perhaps Trumbull would figure out she was living in her father’s apartment and—.

Addie’s thought was interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Just a minute.”

She scrambled up from her knees and checked her hair in the bathing room mirror.

“Jess?”

She hurried to the door and pulled it open. “Oh, Jess, I—”

Addie stopped babbling and stared at the man who filled her doorway. She’d seen him just that morning outside Deacon Trumbull’s office. Leering at her. Eyeing her in a way that sent shivers down her spine again just recalling it.

This time she would honor her instinct to run. She slammed the door and headed for the balcony. But his foot stopped the door and he had her by the arm before she was halfway across the living room.

He brought his other arm around and pressed a knife to her throat and spoke in a hoarse whisper. “You’re coming with me, Miss Magee. Quietly, understand?”

Carefully, Addie gave a small nod.

The coins she’d just retrieved from the floor jingled softly in her pockets as he dragged her rudely to the door. He dropped the knife from her neck and let her straighten up as they moved into the hall.

“Make a fuss and I’ll kill you. Understand?”

. . .

His plan had seemed good at the time, but now as Tad swept the air shaft between Sutton House and Talmage’s for the fourth time, he was wishing he’d thought of some other way to keep an eye on Addie.

He’d already found a cocoa tin and stowed a worn down pencil and paper in it ready to leave his first message for Jess. So far, there wasn’t much to report. She’d left on an errand this morning and had come back hopping mad. He could tell from the way she stomped up the stairs.

Now he’d just have to wait until time to go to work at the hotel, and then get the message to Addie after she played. He could have given her the message from Jess anytime during the day, but Jess must have had a reason to wait until after her performance.

Maybe that was it. Maybe he thought she’d worry about him and ruin her playing.

Tad decided Jess shouldn’t have worried about that. Miss Addie was too good to mess up over something like that.

At any rate, Tad wasn’t in any hurry to confess he’d used her three-wheeler without permission. Tonight would be plenty soon to face the music.

Tad looked up at the windows he’d opened on each landing so he could hear anyone going up or down the stairs. He checked each one, and just as his eyes moved to the window of the fourth floor landing, a man and woman passed it on their way downstairs.

He turned back to his broom and then paused. There weren’t any couples on fourth floor. He’d checked it out. Maybe someone had been visiting old Mrs. Blake.

Tad swept slower and slower, an uneasy feeling nagging at his stomach. Finally, he dropped the broom and ran around to the front and up the steps and was halfway to the second floor when the couple rounded the corner.

It was Miss Addie.

With some fellow.

Tad stopped and looked back and forth at the two.

“Oh! Hello, Tad.” Miss Addie was speaking to him.

“Hi, Miss Addie. I—” But Miss Addie interrupted him.

“Now, Tad, you’ve missed your violin lesson again.”

Tad scratched his head. He’d never taken violin lessons. Or even
thought
about taking violin lessons.

“No use thinking up another excuse, Tad. We’ll just postpone your violin lesson until tomorrow.”

This time Tad caught her lifting her eyebrows, asking him to play along. She was trying to hide it, but she was nervous as a cat in a water barrel.

“I’m sorry, Miss Addie. I’ll try to remember next time.”

“Well, your Uncle Jess is going to be very disappointed. Do you hear me? Now run along and tell him what a bad boy you’ve been.”

The two started walking downstairs and Tad backpedaled to the first floor landing and swung around the corner. He flattened himself against the wall and peeked back around as Addie and the man headed out the front door.

From this angle he could see that the man was holding Miss Addie’s hand behind her back, and just as they passed through the door Tad saw the unmistakable glint of sunlight on steel in the man’s right hand.

Tad knew what he had to do. He raced out the back door and trampled the hollyhocks as he dragged Addie’s pennyfarthing into the alley. He jumped on and zipped round the corner and pulled up in front of the building next to Sutton House just in time to see Addie and the man disappear into a hansom cab.

The horse moved away from the curb, drawing the carriage out into the traffic, and Tad eased his bike through the pedestrians and onto the street.

It wasn’t hard at all keeping up with them, since he’d had so much nighttime practice on deserted streets. This was almost boring they were going so slow.

The further they went, Tad began to wonder if he’d been wrong. Maybe Miss Addie was just joking with him. But she’d called Jess his uncle. And told him to run along and talk to Jess. She was trying to tell him to get word to Jess, he was sure of it. But what if...what if she actually thought Jess was his uncle?

There was only one thing he was absolutely sure of. If something happened to Miss Addie while he was supposed to be watching her, Jess would never forgive him. That and the thought of a knife pointed at her back was all it took to keep Tad moving.

. . .

The man in the bed lifted his hand slowly and Jess clasped it in a warm greeting.

“Doctor Haberman. I had no idea I’d actually find you.”

Haberman laughed quietly and gestured for Jess to take a chair beside him.

“I’ve been waiting for you twenty years.”

“How do you mean?”

Clarence Haberman shifted so he could look more directly at Jess. “I knew eventually someone would come looking for answers to what went on over there. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Most of the time that place has been a godsend for families who needed a place for their...special ones. But when Jeremiah was there, it went to hell in a handbasket.”

“That would have been around ’76?”

“The second time, yes.”

“What do you mean, the second time.”

Lizzie Chalmers slipped into the sunny sleeping porch and brought two glasses of lemonade and a pitcher to the bedside table. On the tray was the plate of cookies.

“Mmmm. My favorite, dear girl.”

Lizzie leaned over and kissed Clarence’s forehead and helped him sip the lemonade, then left as quietly as she’d come.

Clarence watched tenderly as she disappeared into the house and then continued.

“Yes, the second time. How much do you know about Jeremiah?”

Jess lifted his hands and shook his head. “Nothing, really, except he had a deformed right hand and he was institutionalized here.”

“Yes, well, that hand was the crux of it all. You see, Jeremiah was a twin.”

“Actually, that I knew. That’s how I found out about him in the first place. A picture of them that his twin’s daughter showed me.”

“His twin has a daughter?” Haberman raised his eyebrows.

“A very beautiful daughter. And talented. A violinist.”

“Ah, wonderful. Wonderful. Isn’t it grand when nature gives back so bountifully after it’s taken away so harshly?”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way, but yes, it is wonderful.”

“Ah, Jeremiah. His was a dark soul. You see, he never adjusted to the sight of his damaged hand. He was obsessed with perfection, and even as a small boy he could never attain it in the ways he wanted to because his hand just wouldn’t work.”

“Excuse me, Dr. Haberman, but the picture I saw had the little girl and little boy about...about age eight...with their parents and a baby girl, about two months. Was that the entire family?”

“Yes, yes, sadly it was. And that’s how Jeremiah ended up in our care. You see, his jealously was rampant. He was wicked and violent toward his twin in ways you can’t imagine, and she would always defend him when his parents caught him. That just made it worse. He hated her because in his eyes she was perfect, and he wanted to hurt her, misshape her, so she’d be like him.”

“I had no idea.” Jess wondered how Addie would react to this kind of revelation. “Go on.”

“There were a number of episodes, things that seemed to be accidents, a near drowning, one thing after another, until his parents brought him for consultations. By that time he was lost to his demons.

“I only saw his little twin once, but she was more of a little mother to him than his own mother. I believe she loved him in spite of what he did. She had the most wonderful brown eyes, not gray, like his.”

Jess could not have told eye color from the sepia portrait, but gray eyes confirmed what the women had told Addie about their attacker. That fact alone would get Ford one step closer to freedom.