The Detroit Electric Scheme (4 page)

He stared at me frankly from across the desk and shook his head. “You know, when I look at you, I see your mother.”

Though he and my mother got on well, I don't think he meant it as a compliment. She and I were similar in many ways—wavy dark brown hair and slightly recessed brown eyes, prominent cheekbones, thin nose, reedy build, and a melancholy personality. My sisters favored my father more than I did.

He pursed his wide lips. “Take the Victoria back to the garage and go home. Stay home.”

“What about John?”

“They'll be moving him shortly. Mr. McFarlane and I will get everyone together at the beginning of the day to tell them what happened. Quash the rumors before they start.” He sighed. “Poor Elizabeth. The police giving her this news . . .”

“I'll tell her,” I said.

He met my eyes again. “Are you sure?”

I nodded. Maybe this would begin to repay my debt.

“Did Cooper have many friends here?”

“I don't really know.” Elizabeth had broken off our engagement in August of the previous year. John began courting her around Christmas. Since then, I had avoided him as much as possible. “Probably the security men.”

After graduating from Michigan in 1908, Cooper went to work for the Employers Association of Detroit, the company that helped manage security for area manufacturers. Their primary job was to keep the peace, which meant keeping the unions out. John made sure they stayed out. He was a natural for the job—big and tough, yet friendly and gregarious. He inspired loyalty in his people and was more than willing to wade into a fight when necessary.

I helped him get the job. I also introduced him to Elizabeth.

“All right,” my father said. “Go. I'll tell everyone you're putting the Victoria through its paces in preparation for tomorrow.”

I had walked to the door before I realized what he said. “We're still doing the mileage test?”

“If the weather's right. Everyone's ready. Mr. Crane has those Edisons cooking.” His eyes narrowed. “And Baker's advertising their world record on the cover of this week's
Automobile
magazine. We need to put an end to that.”

Now I saw the man who had built this company from nothing.

 

I wiped the rain off the maroon leather seat of the Victoria, climbed on, and headed toward Elizabeth's parents' house on East Jefferson. The first hint of daylight struggled to break through the heavy cloud cover, and the wind still whipped a cold rain into my face. Like my father's roadster, the Victoria had an open cabin and wasn't pleasant to drive in this weather, although the fixed roof offered a little protection from the rain.

It wasn't yet eight, and that meant there was a chance Elizabeth's father would still be home. I didn't want a confrontation with Judge Hume this morning, so on the way I stopped at Schenck's Automat to grab some coffee and kill some time. Even though the restaurant was crowded, the cashier quickly exchanged my quarter for five nickels, two of which I popped into slots in the glassed wall in front of me—one for
a slice of coffee cake, the other for a coffee cup, which I filled from the nearby spigot. I took my breakfast to one of the long white lacquered tables in back, occupied only by a pair of businessmen hunched toward each other, involved in some earnest discussion, straining to hear over the clanks of plates and a hundred competing voices. I sat as far away from them as I could and took a sip of coffee.

Elizabeth would be brokenhearted, distraught, possibly hysterical. Because her fiancé had been murdered.
Her fiancé
.

I slipped my brown calfskin wallet from my jacket pocket and opened it. Behind my library card sat an ivory-colored piece of paper, the creases beginning to tear from my incessant folding and unfolding. Leaving the note inside, I returned the wallet to my pocket. I didn't need to read it. I knew it by heart.

Dearest Will,
it said in Elizabeth's flowing hand,

I've decided on six—boys, girls, I don't care, though I do so want you to have William III to carry on the family business. I know you will be a wonderful father to our beautiful children. We are going to be the happiest family ever!

Love and Affection Always,

Lizzie

When I began working at Anderson Carriage, she sent notes to my office, at least one or two a week, some silly, some serious. All of them, though I didn't realize it at the time, showed how much she loved me. I'd thrown them away. This note I found on the floor behind my desk drawers a couple of months after she broke off our engagement.

I took a gulp of coffee and sat back in the chair. The last time I had been to Elizabeth's house was in March, when I'd made a drunken attempt at getting her to take me back. I shook my head at the memory, such as it was, filtered through the haze of a massive quantity of bourbon. I'd staggered to the Humes' and found Frank Van Dam's red Oldsmobile Palace touring car at the curb. That meant John was there. Frank was John's best friend and one of his employees at the EAD. I marched up the steps to the porch and used my fist to hammer away at the door.
A few seconds later, John threw it open. Frank stood behind him, another hulk, nearly as big as Cooper. I demanded they remove themselves. They refused. I shouted over them, proclaiming my undying love for Elizabeth, then took a swing at Cooper. My next memory is of him dragging me like a rag doll down the sidewalk and dumping me out the gate. I'd cursed John and all his progenitors at the top of my lungs.

My next thought roiled my guts. I had threatened him.

I'd said I was going to kill him.

Elizabeth and her parents might have heard. Frank Van Dam had definitely heard. But surely they would know it was the empty threat of a drunk.

I was an idiot to go back there. Elizabeth hated me and had every reason to do so. But I'd promised my father I would tell her about John, and it was possible she'd know who wanted him dead. I had to go.

At nine o'clock, I limped the remaining three blocks in the rain and climbed the wide stairway to the front porch of the Humes' spacious yellow and white Queen Anne. Alberts, an older man who served as the Humes' butler and chauffeur, answered my knock on the paneled wood door. His gaunt face was a blank canvas, betraying no reaction to seeing me after so long. He took my coat and hat, and in a formal voice asked me to wait in the parlor.

I warmed myself at the large stone fireplace while I waited, breathing in the aroma of wood smoke mixed with furniture polish and disinfectant. It hurt just to be within the cheerful green-papered walls of this room. Elizabeth and I had spent many happy hours here during the nearly four years we courted, most times under the watchful eye of her mother. The other times, when her parents were gone, had been even happier, until the last. I shook my head to clear it. I had to think about Elizabeth.

“Will?” Elizabeth's normally clear alto was husky. “What are you doing here?”

I spun around and stood for a moment in shock. Elizabeth was thin to the point of emaciation, with haunted green eyes peering out above
hollow cheeks. Her long blue skirt bunched underneath her belt, and the white plaited shirtwaist hung about her like a windless sail. Her curly auburn hair, normally swirled into a glorious chignon, hung dull and lifeless over her shoulders. She looked more like an impoverished immigrant than the daughter of a wealthy jurist.

And it was my fault.

I took a deep breath and gathered my wits. “Elizabeth, please, sit.”

She stepped lightly as if the soles of her feet were injured, and perched on the edge of the straight-backed white sofa. I reached out to take her hand, but she pulled it away.

“What do you want?” Her voice was lazy, words drawn out like she'd just awakened. Her china-white face was a frozen mask. She was still beautiful, to be sure, a Gibson Girl with delicate features contrasted by sensuous lips, but the look was gone. Her eyes, which had always spoken of a hidden knowledge she alone possessed—a confident look, arrogant even—now stared back at me blankly, half open.

“I'm sorry to have to give you this news.” I stopped, still searching for the words, the phrases that might cushion the blow. Finally, I just said, “John is dead. He was killed at my father's factory last night.”

Her eyes widened, and she slumped against the back of the sofa. “Dead? But . . .”

“He was crushed in a hydraulic press. It doesn't appear to have been an accident.”

“He was murdered?”

“Yes.”

Her head slowly tilted toward me. “Did you do it?”

“What? No. Why would you—”

“Then who did?” She closed her eyes and nestled into the sofa.

“I don't know. Whoever it was seems to have gotten away. . . . I wondered . . . Do you have any idea who could have done this?”

“No.” Her mouth opened and closed, like she was rehearsing a response. “Why would anyone want to kill John?” She sat up and looked at me again. “Thank you, Will. I appreciate you telling me.”

Though she was acting strangely, I was encouraged by her lack of
enmity. I reached out again to take her hand. This time she let me. “I'm so sorry, Elizabeth. For John, for everything. But there's something else. He called me last night. He said you were in trouble.”

With no inflection, she said, “Trouble?”

“Why would he say that?”

“I don't know.”

It was obvious she was lying. “Please. Let me help you.”

She pulled her hand from my grasp and stood. “You should go.”

“But, Elizabeth—”

“Will, go.”

“I think you may be in danger. Please.”

She turned and began to walk from the room, each step slow and careful.

“I'll go.” I stood. “But please, let me help. God knows I owe you.”

She stopped at the doorway and looked back at me. The faintest trace of a smile crossed her lips. “I know. But I don't need your help. Just go.”

 

I drove the Victoria to the Detroit Electric garage. A canary yellow extension brougham pulled out from the overhead door in front of me, a white-gloved “chaser” at the helm. That would be Mrs. Capewell's automobile, the first stretch Detroit Electric sold and certainly the only time canary yellow had ever been special-ordered. When the brougham passed, I pulled into the garage and drove back to the elevator, exchanging greetings with the chasers. This was everyday life and a welcome respite. The events of the past ten hours faded from scarlet to black-and-white.

Mr. Billings, the day manager, shouted over the commotion, “Ford! Mrs. Ford!”

The first “Ford!” made me jump. I glanced around, but no one seemed to have noticed.

A chaser grabbed the keys off the board and ran to Mrs. Ford's green Model C coupé, an elegant automobile that to all appearances was an
opera coach without the horses. He removed the charging cables, started it up, and pulled out of the garage.

It had been one of my father's first big successes in the automobile industry to sell Henry Ford an electric for his wife. She had many reasons to drive a gasoline car, not the least of which was Mr. Ford's temperament, but it was humorous to think of Clara Ford starting a Model T, or any gasoline automobile for that matter—engaging the hand brake, setting the spark and throttle, hand-cranking the engine until it started, hoping it wouldn't kick back and break a wrist (or, in a twist of irony, cause “Ford elbow”), then racing back into the auto to reset the spark and fuel before the engine stalled. Few women would even consider performing such unladylike activities.

I eased the Victoria onto the elevator, rode with it to the second level, and pulled off to the side. The garage was loud—metal banging on metal, shouted conversations, the grinding hum of the air compressor. Detroit Electrics in various states of repair filled most of this floor, and mechanics were at work on a number of them. I nodded at one of the men while turning the corner into the rotten-egg stink of the battery room, the realm of Elwood Crane, Anderson Carriage Company's battery expert. Never was a man so aptly named. He was nearly six feet tall and perhaps 120 pounds, nothing but two arms, two legs, and a grin.

Elwood, wearing a welder's mask and thick rubber gloves, was leaning over the acid tank against the back wall and didn't see me come in. I waited for him to finish pouring a bottle of sulfuric acid into the tank. “Elwood, I've got the Vicky for you.”

He pulled off his mask. “Does your head hurt as much as mine does?”

I nodded. He had no idea.

“Joe called in sick today. I thought he had a stronger constitution than that.” Elwood laughed and began peeling off his gloves. “Oh, I meant to ask you last night. Did you hear Ford's putting a magnetized rear axle on the new Tin Lizzies?”

“What?”

“Yeah, so you don't lose all the parts that fall off.” He cackled and waved me to the opposite corner of the room. “Feast your eyes on these.” He pointed at two stacks of Edison batteries on his special charging bench. “Best I've tested yet.”

I had to smile seeing the Edison nickel-steel batteries—a row of narrow steel boxes—tucked into wool blankets atop the bench, their battery connectors hooked to a pair of red and black cables hanging down from the charging board.

Elwood and his crew built Detroit Electric's lead-acid batteries, so it was in his best interest to dislike Thomas Edison's latest invention, but he was probably more excited than anyone else. To most people these boxes would have been ugly or utilitarian at best, but Elwood gazed at them through the shimmering mist of love. “These beauties will put us in high gear,” he said.

“And it's about time.”

“You ain't just a-whistling ‘Dixie' there,” Elwood said. “What's it been, ten years since Edison started promising he'd have them ready any day?”

“Hopefully it'll be worth the wait.”