Parlor Games (20 page)

“Oh, tell us a story,” Sue Marie said, coming to life on the lower bunk.

He leaned his shoulder against our cell. “Hmm. Well, last year we had a fellow in here who kidnapped a baby girl and tried to get the father to hand over a sack of gold for her.”

I widened my eyes and gripped the bars. “What happened? Did you save the baby girl?”

“It took some smart police work, but they got the little girl back. The crook’s over in Alcatraz now.”

“Alcatraz?” I poked my face against the bars. “They don’t put girls in Alcatraz, do they?”

“Nah, just men.”

“What’s going to happen to us, Benjamin?” Sue Marie asked.

I glanced over my shoulder, took in the dreamy-eyed look she was giving Benjamin, and frowned with disapproval. I didn’t trust her to handle this. She must have gotten the message, because she slumped back against her pillow.

“Can’t tell,” said Benjamin. “Don’t get many girls charged with theft.”

“And it was all a big misunderstanding,” I said. “It’s not right we’re here.”

“Then what were you doing with his wallet and cuff links?”

I looked steadily into his face. “He planted those things on us.”

His eyes got as big as silver dollars. “Why would he do that?”

“Think about it,” I said. “If we had robbed him, why would we fetch a doctor when he passed out?”

He shook his head. “Well, I sure am sorry. I suppose the judge’ll get it all sorted out.”

I latched woeful eyes on him. “That Guatemalan has money coming out of his ears, and he wants us locked up.”

Benjamin screwed up his face. “No foreigner’s going to get away with that.”

“But he is, Benjamin,” I said, remembering my father telling me that a man’s name is the sweetest sound to his ears. “We’re being railroaded.”

“Why would a coffee seller want you in jail?”

I looked down at my feet and shuffled them on the cement floor. Raising my head, I motioned Benjamin closer and said in a soft voice, “You can’t tell anybody, Benjamin.”

“Tell what?”

“The reason.”

“Why not?”

I reached my right hand between the bars and clutched the folds of his coat arm. “Because my life—and my friend’s—would be in danger.”

He cocked his head. “Well … all right, then.”

Standing statue-still and pleading with my eyes, I let the words break out in a fury, as if they’d been sealed up against their will. “He and I were engaged. When I found out he has a wife in Guatemala, and one in New York, too, I called it off.”

“Really?”

I pursed my lips and nodded.

He swallowed, as if trying to get the truth down, and then said, “You have to tell the judge.”

“No.” I reached my other hand through the bars so I could grip both his arms. “He told me if I ruin his reputation I’ll pay with my life.”

Benjamin looked down at my hands.

I clenched him tighter.

He cupped one of his hands over mine. “You really think he’d kill you?”

Sue Marie started crying. Finally, she remembered how to act.

“I know he would. Benjamin, you have to help us.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Please, you’ve got to let us out. If we don’t get out of San Francisco, we’ll never be safe.”

“I don’t want you to get killed, but I’ve got a job to do.”

I sank to my knees and ran my hands over his hips and down his legs. Circling my arms around his calves, I looked up at him through the bars. “Our life is in your hands.”

He crouched down and took my hands in his. “I got it. I can tear up the booking sheet.”

“Oh, God bless you, Benjamin,” I said, standing and reaching out to stroke his cheek.

He smiled, undid the keys from his belt, and opened the cell door, mumbling, “A bigamist. If that don’t take the cake.”

“Thank you, thank you,” I said, throwing my arms around him and then stepping back and looking up into his eyes. “Benjamin, could you destroy our photographs?”

Sue Marie grabbed my arm. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“Oh, no,” he said, swinging the cell door closed. “That’d be impossible.”

“Never mind that,” said Sue Marie, yanking me forward.

A door banged from the front of the precinct. Benjamin stiffened and perked up his ears. “Somebody stopping on his beat. Quick, this way.”

Benjamin motioned us to follow him, and we headed down the corridor toward the back of the cell block. “Here. The transport door.”

When we reached the door, he gripped the knob and hesitated. “Say, you weren’t pulling my leg, were you?”

I flattened my back against the wall beside the door, ready to spring out. “No. And I’ll tell you one more thing: Juan Ramón doesn’t even run a legitimate coffee business. He’s a spy for Spain.”

Sue Marie and I vamoosed out of the Tenderloin precinct station, out into the wee, dark hours of morning. The city’s lumpy landscape lay before us, spotted with the blinking lights of gas lamps. We made a beeline for Lillie Winters’s house, our feet pattering over the damp brick streets and echoing against eerily quiet buildings.

We fetched a ladder from the carriage house, and Sue Marie climbed it and let herself into her bedroom. From the top step of the ladder she dropped her suitcase to me. We put the ladder away and hurried over to Juan’s apartment to retrieve my suitcase. Then we hustled down to the docks, keeping to side streets all the way. We walked the length of the docks, nosing around for a quiet corner, and settled behind a row of empty shipping bins. With suitcases for pillows and coats for blankets, we slept until wakened by cawing seagulls.

Business hours could hardly come soon enough. Once the port offices opened, we booked passage on the only ship sailing that day,
the
Emperor of Peking
. I can’t say as I relished the prospect of journeying to China, but with larceny charges hanging over our heads and the police likely keeping an eye out for us, we had no alternative. At least we had enough money for the crossing and, I hoped, a new start in Shanghai.

THE TRIAL
GIFTS GIVEN AND PROMISED
MENOMINEE—JANUARY 24–25, 1917

W
hen court resumed, Sawyer began by querying Frank about communications between herself and me.

“The Baroness wrote you many letters and telegrams from 1913 to 1916, correct?”

“Yes.”

Sawyer walked back to the plaintiff’s table, retrieved a paper, and strode up to Frank with it. “Is this a letter she wrote to you in December 1913?”

“Yes.”

“Your Honor, may I read this?”

The judge nodded.

The slightly stooped Sawyer positioned himself before the jury box, his bow legs spread like those of a broken-down cowboy. “The letter, gentlemen, reads: ‘My dear Frank, I cannot tell you how pleased I am at the renewal of our friendship. All these long years I have missed your entertaining ways and delightful companionship. We do have great fun together, don’t we? I never again want to lose that. I’m so glad you agree that we need never again part. Now, I intend to sail to London for the New Year and want you to join me. We can take the train to New York together and celebrate New Year’s Eve there first. Say you will, please. Daisy can take care of the particulars. Your loving friend, May.’ ”

Sawyer deposited the letter at his table, and walked back to Frank. “And did you celebrate New Year’s Eve in New York with the Baroness?”

“Like it was the end of time.”

“Was liquor served at this party?”

“Liquor is served at all May’s parties.”

“And did you indulge?”

“Yes, against my better judgment. I’d sworn off liquor altogether after May and I quarreled in 1903.”

“And what was the result of your drinking?”

“I was sick as a dog the first part of the crossing. Needed the doctor on board to attend to me.”

“How did the Baroness take this?”

“She came around to my room often and took some meals with me. She offered to be our purse holder and suggested we pool our funds. So I gave her my six hundred dollars in cash and a check for fifteen hundred dollars in stock dividends. Soon after we landed, she said the money was gone, so I had to wire home for more.”

“Miss Shaver, yesterday you mentioned a gift of pearls. When and exactly how did this come about?”

“It was 1913, while we were in London. I remember this clearly because it was shortly after the Baron’s death. Even though he and May had been apart many years, she was suddenly shot through with sentiment, which made no sense, because she’d told me years before that she never loved the Baron. Anyway, she claimed he had given her thirty-five prize pearls that she’d always wanted to make into a necklace. Daisy intended to give her fifteen more pearls, but May told me that, due to the significance she attached to the pearls, such a gift would mean more coming from me. So I gave her fourteen thousand dollars in stock shares, and she selected fifteen pearls, which cost ten thousand dollars.”

“And did you ever see the leftover four thousand dollars?”

“No,” said Frank, pointedly fixing her gaze on me.

Alvah Sawyer changed his line of questioning at this point, shifting the focus to Daisy Emmett, which prompted Judge Flanagan to empty the courtroom of the jury and spectators for the rest of the day. The lawyers and judge proceeded to argue the legal ins and outs of including Daisy and my two brothers in the lawsuit. Sawyer claimed they were all accomplices in a conspiracy. But my attorney argued, first, that there was insufficient evidence of any conspiracy, and, second, that bringing them into this case would confuse the jury as to who was on trial and whose conduct was at issue. In the end, the judge ruled that they could be tried separately if, depending
on the outcome of this case, a grand jury determined that their involvement warranted it.

We recessed around 4:30 p.m., leaving me time to mail out the new baby gift for my dear friends Helen and David O’Neill, a young Chicago couple whom I had introduced. The darlings had just had their first baby, and I’d ordered an engraved sterling-silver rattle to commemorate the joyous occasion.

The next morning, Frank ascended to the witness stand for a third round of testimony. She was not only getting her day in court—she was getting several long and drawn-out days. I hoped she found all the attention edifying. The townspeople certainly enjoyed the show. Each day the crowds hoping for seats grew larger, and this morning many had to be turned away, which no doubt upset them after they’d trekked to the courthouse in such frigid weather as had blown in overnight: It was minus four degrees at eight this morning.

But the crowd of sixty who did get seats probably regretted wasting their time, for Sawyer and Frank spent the morning wading through envelopes of bills and papers—bills for hotel expenses in Menominee; bills for my mother’s illness and burial; expenses for Daisy’s room in a Paris hotel; drayage and freight bills; tailors’ bills; and papers recording all manner of such petty Menominee household expenses as milk and bakery items. Every chance he got, Sawyer worked in questions like “So the funds to pay for this were obtained by fraudulent representation?” or “Were you led to believe you would be paid back?”

My attorney objected quite often. Judge Flanagan finally agreed that this exercise had run its course and directed Sawyer to compile the items under consideration. Sawyer proposed to break the list into three categories, which he claimed would account for every penny of the $106,252 requested in the suit.

Goodness gracious, I almost felt I should apologize to the poor spectators who had given up a warm hearth to listen to all this tripe. But, then, this pesky trial is dragging out much longer than necessary, even with the judge urging Sawyer to condense his examination at every turn.

I believe, however, that the spectators who chose to remain for the afternoon enjoyed themselves.

“Miss Shaver,” said Sawyer after the lunch break, “the Baroness sought your help with a wide array of living expenses, correct?”

“Oh, yes, even when we weren’t together, I heard about her finances.”

“Would you please read these two letters from the defendant, starting with the one on top.” Sawyer handed Frank two sheets of paper.