Into the Whirlwind (24 page)

The Louis XIV chair he sat in was designed for appearance, not comfort. He stretched his legs and shifted on the hard seat. A glance at the oversized clock hanging on the wall indicated Mollie was ten minutes late. The fire had wreaked chaos on the public transportation system, so there could be a perfectly logical explanation for her delay, but it ratcheted his annoyance up even higher. Did she have any idea what it had cost him to abandon Louis Hartman in New York? Although Zack had succeeded in forcing the insurance company to make good on the eight-hundred-thousand-dollar policy for the loss of the building, well over half a million dollars in merchandise had been lost. He and Louis were in a pitched battle to make good on those policies, and in the middle of the high-wire act he was managing, Zack had gone racing home to Chicago on a personal matter. All to comfort Mollie.

Louis still hadn’t forgiven him, if the barrage of angry telegrams streaming in from New York was any indicator. Josephine Hartman had descended on his townhouse last night in a rage, suggesting he surrender his Yale diploma to her since Zack seemed to have lost interest in the pursuit of a legal career. He practically had to promise her his first-born child in order to soothe her ruffled feathers.

He inserted a finger beneath his starched collar, shifting it to sit a little higher. Mollie had better not be prowling up and
down Columbus Street, nosing into land prices. Two thousand dollars for a half acre was practically highway robbery, and he supposed she might have a legitimate bone of contention with him about that, but it was better than a protracted court battle. He had her signature on the deed, and Hartman was ready to rebuild. This deal was going to close today or he would turn the city upside-down until he found her.

The tinkling of a bell sounded as the door opened and Mollie walked inside. She glanced around the lobby until she saw him, her face as stony as it had been yesterday. Zack remained seated. If she intended to heap another pile of bad attitude on him, he wasn’t going to stand while she did it.

She stood frozen in the doorway, glaring at him across the expansive lobby. He glared back. If she wanted her two thousand dollars, she could cross the room and come get it.

At last she started moving, her stiff figure twitching in disdain. When she was standing alongside his chair, he forced a smile to his face. “Back to wearing braids? Pity.”

“Do you have my money?”

He flicked a glance to one of the clerks sitting at a desk on the far side of the lobby. “Mr. Tobbin will arrange the transfer. You are twenty minutes late.”

She glanced at the clock on the wall. “That must be the ugliest clock I’ve ever seen.”

“Spare me your professional musings, Miss Knox. The subject of clocks and watches is of zero interest to me. What I’d
really
like to know is what turned a beautiful, intelligent woman into such a foul-mannered brat. You give Sophie a run for her money.”

She leaned over until her face was inches from his. “Frank was right about you,” she said in a whisper that vibrated with rage. “Exactly when did you intend to tell me you won an eight-hundred-thousand-dollar insurance settlement?”

His gaze did not waver. “Never. It is none of your business.”

“Considering I own a quarter of the land that building sat on, I think it was a relevant detail, Mr. Kazmarek.”

He wished she would shut up. The woman he had idolized for three years was ruled by logic and rules and order. He wanted no part of the avaricious harpy standing before him. Still, he didn’t intend to spill confidential details to anyone who cared to wander through the lobby of a public bank. He leaned a little closer to her and kept his voice low. “Your name wasn’t on that insurance policy, Mollie. You never paid a dime for it, and you aren’t entitled to a dime of it. End of story.”

That seemed to take her aback. She had a legitimate claim to the land, but not a dime of the insurance policy Louis had been paying on all these years. She quickly regained her steam. “I trusted you when I signed that proposed bill of sale,” she spat. “You misled me about how much the land is worth. Fifteen thousand dollars is what I’ve heard, although some say as high as twenty. Not two.”

She had him there. The value of land on Columbus Street was soaring by the day, but a cloud hung over her deed. He stood and looked down at her. “Don’t fool yourself, Miss Knox. Two thousand dollars is the best you’ll get for that plot of land. No one in this city will touch it, because the title is questionable and it will be mired in the courts for years.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Is that what you tell your conscience so you can sleep at night?”

“Ahem.”

Zack swiveled to see Mr. Tobbin had joined them. Behind his spectacles, the bank clerk looked as uneasy as a fawn caught on the field of battle.

“Pardon the interruption,” Mr. Tobbin said, “but I have an appointment with the Board of Commissioners in twenty minutes.
If we wish to conclude the land transaction today, we need to begin.”

Zack gestured to Mr. Tobbin’s desk on the far side of the lobby. Mollie hesitated.

Zack decided to have no mercy. “Well, Miss Knox? What is it to be? You can have two thousand dollars in cash today or you can hire a lawyer, get in line at the state courthouse, and prepare to wait years for an uncertain outcome while your energy and resources dwindle away on the small chance you might score a few more dollars. Oh, and on the slim chance that you win in court, you will immediately owe Louis Hartman four thousand dollars in back taxes. Your choice.”

She looked angry enough to spit nails. “I’m selling,” she ground out. A hint of relief lightened Mr. Tobbin’s face and he gestured toward his desk. Mollie followed, but Zack snagged her elbow and pulled her to a halt. He needed to kill the parasite festering inside the woman he loved.

“As you sign those papers,” he whispered into her ear, “understand that this is
over
. You are making a good deal. A court case would suck your energy and finances dry, and you know it. This is the last argument we will have over that blasted deed.”

She jerked her arm away and followed Mr. Tobbin in the same manner she used to flit about Hartman’s store. Quick, brisk, and efficient. He had to admire that about her. Even while she wore mismatched clothing that had been pulled out of a donation bin, she carried herself with the dignity of a warrior queen. He grinned as he followed her. Life with Mollie would be an adventure, but one he had been anticipating for years. When two hurricanes came together, what could one expect? After this deal concluded, he’d take her out to lunch at the fanciest restaurant in the city.

Mr. Tobbin pushed a form across the desk toward Mollie.
“Here is the account I have set up to accept the transfer of funds,” he said in one of those soft voices all bankers seemed to have perfected. Mollie read the entire form before affixing her name to the line at the bottom. The scratching of the pen was the only sound in the silent bank.

And with a few scrawled signatures, the deal was complete. The funds were deposited into her account and she withdrew a few dollars for immediate expenses.

“Come on, Mollie. Let me take you out to lunch.”

She ignored him as she marched out the door. A blast of cold air smacked him in the face as he followed her. He pulled his coat tighter and flipped up its collar against the chilly wind, shouldering through pedestrians on the sidewalk to catch up to her. “What exactly are you mad about?” he demanded. “Did you think you could get a better deal by rolling the dice in court? Is that it? I never thought you were the sort of woman who would walk away from a magnificent relationship over a few dollars.”

The glare she shot him would have incinerated a lesser man. “Funny, I thought the same thing about you.”

Mollie skirted around a boy pushing a wheelbarrow of mattress ticking and hustled down the street, but Zack was blocked by a group of nuns crossing the path. He clenched his teeth until he could get around them and pulled up alongside Mollie. He enjoyed a healthy, air-clearing argument, and Mollie seemed game. She reeled around to face him and jabbed a finger at his chest. “You knew,” Mollie accused him. “You knew about that deed, and that was why you tried to buy my company and all its assets before the fire.”

Zack sucked in his breath. So, she had finally figured it out. He turned away, unable to meet her eyes. He’d hoped to carry that tidbit of damning information to his grave, but the game was up. “Fine, I knew about the deed,” he ground out. “I owe Louis
Hartman my loyalty, and knowledge of the deed was confidential information. I couldn’t tell you about it without breaking the law.” Besides, she got her blasted two thousand dollars, which was probably more than she would have won had she gone to court.

“Don’t hide behind fancy ethics. You would do anything to haul yourself out of the docks, and it didn’t matter who you needed to squash on your way up.”

He took a step closer to glare down at her. “I didn’t do it for the money.”

“I thought you were so straightforward,” she spat out. “Fish dumped on the desk, cutting deals with rowdy Irish gangs. I thought you were an honest man of business, but you’re only a jumped-up longshoreman. Look at you! Such fancy clothes and that ridiculous little blue finch you carry everywhere. You can pretend all you want, but you’ve got filth beneath your nails that will never wash away because you are still wallowing in the gutter.”

He flinched before he could mask his feelings. He’d spent a fortune on these blasted clothes and wasn’t going to apologize for working his way off the docks. She turned and darted between pedestrians to escape him, but he wouldn’t let her. Following in her path, he reached out to grab an elbow. “You can’t hurl that load of garbage and then scurry away.”

“Watch me.”

He pulled up alongside her. “I never took you for a coward, Mollie. Stay here and fight it out.”

Her mouth compressed into a hard little line, and every muscle in her face was tense. When they came to the corner where the streetcar picked up passengers, she was forced to stand and wait. A couple of women loaded down with sacks of vegetables and a newsboy also waited for the streetcar, but Zack didn’t care about the audience.

He leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Your eyes turn an even darker shade of blue when you are angry.”

She refused to engage, staring straight ahead. He kept pressing, determined to crack through her shell.

“I’ve heard that when black widow spiders are angry, they bite the heads off their mates. You look like you’d enjoy doing that now.”

Even that didn’t cause a flicker in her stony expression. The clopping of hooves signaled the arrival of the horse-drawn streetcar. Mollie waited for the shoppers and the newsboy to board, then she stepped up to the driver.

“The gentleman wearing the maroon vest is pestering me. Will you see to it he does not board the car?”

The driver tugged on a lever and shut the door in Zack’s face.

17

M
ollie withdrew enough money from the bank to pay her debt to Mr. Durant. Although Sophie’s father had insisted the money was a gift, Mollie wanted the debt paid and went directly to Prairie Avenue after leaving Zack on the street corner. The loan would nag at her until it was repaid, and she wanted her memories of the church and everything associated with it scrubbed from her mind.

Mr. Durant was with Sophie when Mollie was shown into the lavish parlor of the Prairie Avenue mansion. Poised on the end of a brocade-covered settee, Mr. Durant held a tiny teacup in his large hand while Sophie served him from a silver teapot. Two porcelain dolls, with identical teacups before them, were propped on either side of him.

“Miss Knox, you are just in time to join us for tea.”

Mollie would rather drink a cup of lye, but it would be churlish to refuse. She lowered herself onto the settee. She could endure precisely ten minutes of Sophie’s company before spontaneous combustion was likely to strike her. There were only four place settings, so Sophie took a cup from a doll wearing an embroidered dress so elaborate it had probably taken a seamstress a month to stitch.

“You have to set your cup down after each sip,” Sophie ordered. “Otherwise it is tacky.”

Mr. Durant laughed a little nervously. “Now, Sophie, Miss Knox may have her own style of drinking tea.” He took a little sip of the tepid tea. “Tell us how the watch business is progressing,” he asked kindly.

Mollie related a few details of how the work was commencing. Alice and Ulysses had finished their designs for engraved cases commemorating the fire and had constructed the templates. Her metalworkers were once again making the tiny screws and springs that were needed in the body of the watches. They still lacked a few supplies for making the casements, and there wasn’t enough work for Declan and Old Gunner, who had been moved to help at the new construction site on East Street.

“I don’t like Old Gunner,” Sophie said. “He smells bad, like dirty cigars.”

Mr. Durant cleared his throat. “That isn’t polite, Sophie. If we can’t say something complimentary about someone, it is best not to mention anything at all. We discussed this last week and need to make improvements in our manners if we are going to be invited to the Johnstons’ again, right, pumpkin?”

Sophie kicked the leg of the table. “I don’t care if we don’t get invited again. I hate the Johnstons’ house. I want to go back and live at the church.”

Mollie would have preferred a bout of indigestion over another hour of Sophie’s company, but she forced a polite tone to her voice. “We aren’t living at the church anymore. The temporary barracks built by the city are now open. Alice and I are in the women’s barracks, and it is very crowded. I don’t think you would like it.”

Sophie’s face darkened. She bunched her legs close to her chest, planted her feet on the rim of the table, and with one
mighty heave, pushed the entire table over. The silver tea set crashed to the floor, spewing dark liquid across the silk rug. “I don’t care. Playing with dolls is stupid. This house is stupid.”