The White Feather Murders Page 20
“You think I want to spend the rest of my life at the Hogtown Herald, Mrs. DeLuca?”
“I suppose not.”
“It’s always been a perfect ruse. I can move around. No one suspects me of doing anything. I’m smarter than they think too. And polite. Timid.” He shot a look at Merinda. “DeLuca would leave his Cartier Club minutes in a drawer in his desk. And despite all his careful organization, if a telephone call came from his wife that he had forgotten supper or that his young son was running a temperature, forcing him home early, he would sometimes forget to lock that drawer. I confess to orchestrating ways to get him out of the office. I started reading about how all of you reformers were redirecting your thoughts from curing tuberculosis to monitoring our new British war agent. By that point we had already developed a bit of a connection. Then I went to Milbrook’s office to interview him, and some politician he is. He immediately started talking about his first days in office and how he would commission a report on Spenser’s conduct. He always thought we were too lenient when it came to monitoring Spenser’s shipments.” He transferred the gun to his other hand and scratched his neck.
“So you killed him,” Merinda summarized with a quick glance back to Jem.
“He made me think he had more on Spenser than I thought he had a right to.”
“Then Alexander Waverley?”
“The Globe was fine as long as it was in Montague’s pocket, but Waverley was going rogue. I knew he was plotting something. I knew because I read the changing tone of the articles.” He laughed. “I suppose I was more engaged in journalistic competition than I had right to be. He really enjoyed running pieces on Carr. Carr’s job was to ensure we were ready for war. And I was making sure we were ready for war. Some people were readying themselves by throwing their lot in with the conflict. I was ensuring we had the resources.”
“Very selfless of you, I am sure,” Merinda said, scowling.
Skip shrugged.
“Why the white feathers?” Jem asked.
“I think most of the police are incompetent. They just follow Tipton around. Then there was that lout, St. Clair. It was something I heard him say on assignment in the Ward one night, preaching on about the glorious war against the Boers. I decided if I was going to keep everyone off my trail, I should make it a bit of a game.”
“A terrible, deadly game,” interpreted Jem.
“But some are bright. Even Jasper Forth. I wanted to give him a bit of a run about.” Here Skip’s eyes shone on Merinda. “And by him, I also mean you, because you know you are smarter than most of the lot of them.”
“Strange your complimenting me.” Merinda shifted her weight, feeling the familiar steel of her gun against her light cotton shirt.
“You have foiled every plan I have ever had.” He looked between them. “I thought you would have caught on by now. But even though you’re brighter, you must still have your blinders on. So expound, Merinda Herringford. I have time.”
“I don’t care to expound,” Merinda said calmly, even as the wheels in her brain instinctively chugged.
Skip moved the gun from Jem’s side to her temple and pulled back the hammer. “I think you care to expound on this.”
Merinda, flustered, stared at Jem, who was calmly terrified and then blinked at the reflection of the sun through the grated windows, which flowed over the green of the tile in a sickly emerald glimmer.
“All right.” Merinda squeezed her eyes shut. “Skip McCoy, the photographer who has a broken plate. Skip McCoy, the Hog photographer who knows the tunnels and traps of Toronto. Who bored me several times with urban legends about a tunnel built from underneath the bank and exiting at Massey Hall…” Merinda opened her eyes and stared, the rhythm of her realization picking up pace. “Skip McCoy, who could easily have been involved with Spenser and Montague in a gambling ring that—”
“That you mucked up, thanks to your trailing after things that are none of your business!”
Merinda’s eyes opened wider. She saw Skip now as if encountering him for the first time, and the longer she stared at him, his white knuckles straining on the pistol he held to Jemima’s head, the curtain peeled back further. “The night of the Emma Goldman rally!” she continued. “I was at the Hog, and I saw a maple syrup requisition form, and… you were involved. You were involved with Spenser somehow, ensuring that the anarchists got their explosives and you got a cut.”*
“There are so many hidden nooks and crannies at the Hog,” Skip explained easily. “I doubt even DeLuca has ever gone up to that rickety old attic.” He shrugged. “Spenser needed another ally.”
“And now… munitions,” Merinda concluded.
“I didn’t just wake up one day and decide to be involved. I built a trajectory, and somehow you found a way to stop all of my payments.” He shook his head. “In a million years I never suspected you would be the one in Chicago.”
“We weren’t there for you!”
“Of course not. This is peripheral. But then I decided to play with you. Because I could easily have just knocked each one of these men off. But it was more fun if you trailed me. Sometimes DeLuca would quote that silly guidebook of yours. Wheaton something or other. Something about how there is a part of the criminal that needs recognition.”
Skip turned to Jem and watched her for a few moments. She breathed slowly, the slight movement through her parted lips flickering the tendrils grazing her cheek. “Then Mr. DeLuca started sniffing around. The night after the ultimatum, he told McCormick and me that he was going to start redeeming Milbrook’s name. I knew where that would lead.” He smiled at Jem. “Nothing would have set Mr. DeLuca further off course. I didn’t plan on killing you. I just thought I would distract him for a bit.”
“In that much we were right,” Merinda grumbled, mostly to herself. Then, “Mouse!”
“You sent those urchins trolling around Carr. But that was a by-the-way. At that point, I wanted to do everything I could to make the most impact.” He shrugged again.
Merinda looked at him and then to Jem. If she reached for her gun, Skip would do heaven knows what. Jem still had a loose grip on the walking stick, but Skip followed Merinda’s eyes and ripped it out of Jem’s hand, flinging it across the tile.
“So I suppose you’ll drown us in an empty pool,” Merinda decided.
“Even after everything, I like you, Merinda. I always have. We have had such a good rapport. The interviews. The photographs. We’re the same in so many ways.”
“How?” Jem wondered aloud, even as Merinda shrieked, “I am nothing like you!” Jem had rarely heard her friend so moved.
“Are you not? You work for your own self-interest. Your promotion. To keep your little detective business chugging away. You do it for the game and the pursuit. And as much as I want my paycheck and ticket out of here before my conscience, or what is left of it, shoves me in the army, I enjoyed this game with you.” He focused on Jem. “She’s so quiet.”
“You have a pistol pointed to my head,” Jem said, shakily. “There’s little I can say or do.”†
“You’ve never been as much fun as your friend here.” Skip nudged the gun emphatically. “You’re still learning how to play detective, but in some ways you are strides ahead of her.”
Merinda scowled. There it was again. Playing detective. Even Skip thought it. Was she just some part of ironic justice and solutions she stepped into? Now, playing detective meant that a strange and angry photographer, someone as much a part of her Toronto landscape as Big Ben at City Hall or the Wellington, was pressing the barrel of his gun to Jemima’s temple. Her eyes flittered over the pool. She had no way out. No Plan B. “So you got me to expound on your brilliance, Skip,” she said after a moment, the first prickles of entrapment encircling her. “How does this end?”
“It could end with me shooting Jem. But I’ve spent enough time with DeLuca to know that is the usual trajectory of these stories. Jem needing to be rescued! Jem in peril!” He snickered. “She’s good
collateral, wouldn’t you say?”
“I would say you’re a foolish and horrible human being.”
“And I would say that may be true.” Skip waited in the stretching silence for Merinda to do something.
Could she run and draw his fire, distracting him from Jem?
Then she could reach into her pocket and extract the pistol.
“We seem to be at a standstill,” he said. “I’ll let one of you—”
“Jem,” Merinda stomped on Skip’s sentence.
“Merinda,” Jem said simultaneously
“Oh, shut up, Jem! You know it has to be you.”
“I can’t…” Jem shook her head.
Merinda thought and she thought and she thought, and if the only answer was Jem leaving this wretched place and escaping through the tunnel and back to the safety of the house, then that was the only possible scenario.
“You’re not Sherlock Holmes at all. Loving something more than yourself.”
Merinda narrowed her eyes at him. “Cracker jacks! Take that gun off her and point it at me. And don’t you dare go back on your word. You can have me, but she goes free.”
“Merinda!” Jem attempted.
Merinda shot her a look. “You know and I know that this is the only way this can end, Jemima. You have people who need you.”
“I need you!”
“It’s not the same.”
Skip nodded. “And she keeps quiet.”
“Or what?” Jem’s voice was tremulous.
“You have a husband you adore and a little boy.” Jem shuddered as Skip swerved back to Merinda. And with his turn he transferred the gun from Jem’s temple to Merinda’s. The final adventure. Merinda supposed she should have anticipated a moment where she had stepped too far. But she confessed to herself even as she anticipated his clicking the trigger that it was an infuriatingly dull way to go.
More infuriating still because Jem was not turning and running as promised. Rather, she was inching nearer.
“Jemima,” Merinda said between clenched teeth. “Run far away!”
“You have to let me hug her goodbye,” Jem told Skip calmly.
Skip looked between the two of them. “I know she keeps files and picklocks in her vest. And an ivory-handled pistol.”
Jem opened Merinda’s vest and showed the file to Skip. She pinched it between two fingers and tossed it across the tiles. “And her picklocks!” Skip instructed. Jem obeyed and passed them over. Skip skipped them over the tiles so that their echo ricocheted across the pool.
“I love you so much, Merinda,” Jem said, her arms encircling, a whisper of her breath against Merinda’s bobbed hair. “You are my very best friend.”
Merinda shifted uncomfortably. Even seconds from death, she wrinkled her nose and assumed Jem knew precisely where the flap in the back of her vest exposed the pistol they had earlier procured. “There, there,” she said.
And as Jem backed away, Merinda noticed a considerable weight lifted from underneath her vest even as Skip pressed the muzzle of the gun harder against her temple.
“Goodbye, Merinda!” Jem started a slow move toward the door. “I will uphold your sacrifice and honor you for what you have done in order to send me back to my family.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Skip exclaimed.
“And I shall always regard you as the best and wisest woman I have ever known.”
“You sound ridiculous,” Skip continued. “Leave before I shoot both of you.”
Jem turned toward the door before backtracking slowly and shoving Sir Henry’s pistol into Skip’s spine. “You’re stupid, Skip McCoy.” Skip recovered quickly and shoved her away, swinging his own gun in the air and expelling a shot as she kicked him. Merinda pounced on him, wrestling for the weapon and momentarily grabbing it. She clung to it even as he recovered and grabbed her around the neck, pressing the gun to her head again with renewed dedication. “You shoot me, Jem, and I will kill her.”
Jem slowly rose and extended her arm, the sinews of her muscles tight with a new energy. She expected to see a flutter of fear across her friend’s face, but Merinda was merely amused. She watched, she encouraged, she nodded. Jem saw the brightness in her friend’s cat eyes. She wanted Jem to do it. She wanted Jem to draw on everything that was within her and steal a moment and become the heroine of this story.
Jem inhaled. Threaten and point. She just had to adjust her gaze, shut one eye, and compensate with the invigorated focus of the other. Jem saw where Skip ended and Merinda began, and there was but a slice. There was a good chance she could miss. Skip gripped Merinda tightly. Jem held out the gun, took a fluttering breath, and pulled the trigger.
At first she couldn’t look, pressing her palm over her eyes. Then, slowly, she unclutched her fingers, assuming the weapon would clatter to the floor with the movement. Instead, it clung to her index finger.
“Jem!”
Jem’s eyes flew open with a wave of nausea. “Did I kill you?”
“Jemima!” Merinda—a very much alive Merinda—crossed over from where Skip was slumped on the tiles, the blood draining from him.
“Jemima!” Merinda said one more time, closing the space between them. She held up her shirt and Jem’s eyes rounded at the graze of the bullet on the sleeve. “You are one cracker jacks shot!” Merinda flung her arms around Jem’s neck and pressed her nose into her shoulder. “The best shot in all of Toronto.”
“I suppose it’s not enough to just threaten and point,” Jem said dazedly.
“I suppose not,” Merinda said with a chuckle, pulling her friend closer.
* The careful reader familiar with The Bachelor Girl’s Guide to Murder and A Lesson in Love and Murder will recall these instances.
† Other than review mental images of her perfect life with a man who spoke in voice equal parts chocolate and moonlight, a little boy whose slightest smile constricted her heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Herringford and Watts* contribute to the war effort. Lady Adelaide and Sir Henry Pelham offer particular commendation. The white feather murderer has met justice at last, thanks to the considerable efforts of Toronto’s celebrated lady detectives.
An excerpt from the Globe and Mail
Merinda expressed her delight with a sound caught between a giggle and a snort. “I knew that muckraker would be good for something someday.”
“Ha!” said Jem.
Jemima thought Ray’s attention to their efforts in the Globe showed a bias not befitting a journalist of his new caliber, but he was adamant that much of his success was a result of his paying particular attention to the bachelor girl detectives on their first case four years previously.
But beyond the bold print of the dailies, the world was changing before her. Anytime Merinda strolled passed Big Ben at City Hall, the bell’s toll startled her.
When Jem passed her the paper for her own inspection, she tossed it aside. She was in a lousy mood. Jasper was leaving, Mouse was still in the hospital under careful observation, and even rifle practice couldn’t distract her. Skip was dead, the mystery solved, and yet there remained a portentous shadow that something was off-kilter. That while they had been able to stop Russell St. Clair and keep Skip from harming anyone further with his skewed view of justice and revenge, a darkness hovered.
Indeed, when a message boy arrived with a pristine, cream-colored envelope bearing the insignia of City Hall, Merinda ripped it open and read the note within it aloud to Jem. The sheet of paper bore Mayor Tertius Montague’s gold-embossed and overly designed monogram.
“He wants to see us?” Jem said, her eyes wide.
“I highly doubt it’s to give us the key to the city.”
At the appointed time that afternoon, they alighted outside City Hall and stared out at the commotion spread over the span of green. There were kiosks and banners, recruiters standing sentry, and women who recognized the duo, looking up from their careful formation and offering waves and small salutes in solidarity.
“I’m nervous,” Jem admitted.
Merinda chuckled. “Oh, please! We have encountered far more imposing foes than Tertius Montague!”
They reported at a desk on one side of the grand foyer. Upon direction, at the very end of the corridor, they arrived at Mayor Montague’s large suite of offices. His name was set in gold font not unlike the embellishment of his signature.
Montague’s secretary’s was perched behind a desk. “His Honor will be with you presently.” Her voice was clipped.
Jem and Merinda waited. The toe of Merinda’s brogan impatiently tapped on the linoleum. The secretary emitted a vehement “Hush!”
Jemima was taking in the walls around her: the photographs and framed news clippings, the campaign slogans, the unending promenade dedicated to Tertius Montague’s pomp and power.
Finally, the heavy door to his personal office creaked open, and they were admitted into his bower.
The first thing Jemima noticed was the incredible view. Huge windows provided a large cityscape of Osgoode Hall and beyond to University Avenue. Beyond the manicured trees and bushes, however, was the persistent thought that this grand Gothic structure stood sentinel while garishly facing the Ward. A dissonant chord clashing against the poverty and squalor stretched in City Hall’s boisterous shadow.
“Mrs. DeLuca, Miss Herringford.” Their names seethed through Montague’s clenched smile. Merinda had never actually seen him up close. He wasn’t as large as she’d anticipated. Maybe that was because he always found a platform, podium, or even staircase on which to ascend.
He motioned for them to sit, and seconds later they occupied the leather wingback chairs in front of his large desk.
“How do you do?” Jem’s voice warbled slightly. She folded her hands in her lap.