THE DEVILS DIME (23 page)

Jess readied his pistol, turned the knob, and pushed the door silently open with his toe. The room was dark, with just the flickering glow of a lamp beyond a curtain at the far corner of the room.

His boots made no sound on the tattered Persian rug that covered most of the room, and Jess moved steadily toward the dim light. With his left arm he pushed back the curtain, then pivoted into the opening and crouched ready to fire.

Chapter Sixteen

Jess felt his mouth go suddenly dry, and he froze at the sight before him. Women’s clothing lay helter skelter on the floor around a huge iron bathtub. Small clumps of soap bubbles floated on the surface of the tub water, not nearly enough to conceal the form of the woman who’d fallen asleep there.

Jess swallowed, knowing he should look away. But his eyes traveled the length of her body. The beauty he’d imagined countless times was nothing like the stunning perfection immersed before him now.

The bisque of her shoulders blended into the white opal of her breasts and descended across ribs so clear he could count them. Her flat stomach rose and fell slightly with each breath, and what lay below took his breath away.

Jess whirled and fumbled his way back into the main room. The beads that ran along the top of the curtain pole clacked noisily and woke the sleeping mermaid.

“What? Who’s there!”

Jess tried to speak, but breathing seemed more important at the moment. Beyond the curtain he heard Addie scrambling out of the water.

“I...I have a gun,” she stammered. “And I’m not a...afraid to use it.”

“Addie! It’s me! Jess! Please, I’m sorry, I...I thought someone was robbing your father’s apartment. I’m sorry!”

Jess shoved his gun into a pocket and moved further from the curtain.

“Jess?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. Really.”

“Just...just a minute. I was...I was just changing. I’ll be right out.”

Jess dropped his hands and straightened out of his defensive posture. She didn’t know he’d seen her, didn’t know he could
still
see her perfect form silhouetted on the curtain.

Relief carried him across the room to sag into Ford’s easy chair.

“Need any help?” Now that he’d escaped embarrassing her he couldn’t help but tease.

“May I remind you that I have a gun in here?”

She was hurrying into her clothes, and he bit his lip not to laugh when she dropped her chemise three times before managing to step into it.

“Ah, yes. What kind of a gun is it?”

Jess heard her pull the plug and water began to gurgle down the drain.

“Ummmm, well, it’s...it’s a big gun, Jess. A very big gun.”

“Well, that’s good, Addie. Big guns are good. What kind of big gun is it?”

Addie swept through the curtain and stopped with her hands on her hips. “All right. So you caught me.” She tossed whatever it was in her hands toward Jess and he snagged it just before it hit the floor.

“This?” he laughed. “This was your gun?” He waved her hairbrush between them. “I suppose you were going to sneak up on your intruder and bristle him to death.”

“I’ll have you know that if I did, he’d think twice about tangling with me again.”

“I’ll just bet he would, Addie Magee.”

Jess watched her finish tucking her hair into a twist, wishing he could enjoy it more. But he still wondered why she’d worked so hard to avoid him today.

She smoothed the damp hair off her forehead and then planted both hands on her stomach. “Goodness, I didn’t realize I was so hungry.” She moved to the small kitchen galley and found half a cinnamon roll in the bread box. “Want some?”

Addie was quickly devouring the sticky bun and Jess knew her offer was less genuine than it sounded and shook his head.

“I had dinner.”

“Mm.” She nodded.

“Earlier.”

“Mm hm.” Addie lifted her brows and kept chewing.

“By myself.”

Addie stopped chewing.

“At the Captain’s Corner.”

Addie lifted a napkin to her lips and Jess saw understanding flood her face. She’d forgotten entirely.

“Oh, Jess.” A furious blush rose in her cheeks as she forced down the last bite. “I can’t believe I...well, I...how could I have forgotten? You must have been worried.”

“To put it mildly.”

“I’ve no excuse except that...that it was just the most horrid day. You can’t imagine!”

Addie had crossed the room and now stood nervously near him. Jess reached out for her hand and pulled her to sit on the arm of his easy chair.

“Want to tell me about it?” He held her hand and stroked it with the back of his thumb as she settled onto the overstuffed arm.

As her story unfolded, Jess watched the expressions cascade across her face. Confusion and anger at Hamilton’s betrayal gave way to fear and despair, and finally relief as she explained how her father had solved all her problems.

“And then my legs were so tired from walking all over looking for apartments that I just couldn’t resist soaking in a hot bathtub.”

Addie looked at the ceiling and shook her head slowly back and forth.

“My father came to my rescue,” she sighed, and turned her hopeful face toward Jess. “I just wish I could rescue him.”

“We will, Addie.”

A shadow of doubt flitted across her face, and Jess reached with both arms to pull her into his lap. “We will. You have to trust me.” He pushed the curling wisps off her forehead and she laid her head on his shoulder.

“I’m trying, Jess. Really. Just tell me what to do.” She brought her arms around his neck and Jess hugged her to him. The full weight of her in his arms had a rightness to it that suddenly stunned him and he squeezed her tighter. She must have felt it too, returning the pressure with a fierceness he’d not expected.

When he spoke it was barely more than a whisper near her ear. “We keep our heads, Addie. We follow every clue.” His hand stroked her temple as he spoke. “We get your father to help us if he will, and...” Jess lifted her head from his shoulder and put a hand on either side of her face.

“And what?” she whispered, her dark eyes penetrating his.

“We work together.”

Addie held his gaze and slowly brought her own hands to his face. Jess closed his eyes as she began to stroke his temples with her thumbs, the way he had done to her. Her lips pressed a long, tender kiss to his forehead, then to each cheek just below his eyes.

When she nestled into the crook of his arm and brought his mouth to hers, Jess answered with every ounce of promise his kiss could hold. Whatever he’d felt in their first impulsive embraces was suddenly replaced with an urgency, a wanting, a future he’d not known possible.

Addie tucked her knees into the chair beside him and pressed even closer. Occasionally they’d pull apart, just to look at one another, or speak some tender word. But neither wanted to leave the safe harbor they’d found in the old overstuffed easy chair.

Elsewhere in the city, the line between dark and dawn eventually began to form. But in the small room on the fourth floor of Sutton House, the line between two lives had begun at last to blur.

. . .

Not so many blocks away, Birdie Tabor fingered the bruises that were still visible from Deacon’s overzealous pinching the previous night. Enough was enough. She’d do this one last favor and then dump the bastard.

Birdie sighed and dragged her heavy trunk to the center of the room. One thing was for sure. The minute she told the cocky pervert she was through with him she’d have to leave town.

One by one she laid the expensive negligees Trumbull had bought her into the trunk. Cincinnati sounded nice. Yes. Trumbull would expect her to run home. To run back to Georgia. But she’d fool him and go west instead. To Cincinnati.

Birdie picked up the gabardine skirt that lay on the floor right where she’d stepped out of it. She’d never have to wear working girl’s clothes again, if things went well tonight.

She reached into the skirt pocket and felt around for the paper she’d stolen from the disgusting little morgue rat just that morning.

It wasn’t there.

She turned the skirt and felt in the other pocket. Nothing there either.

Panic began to set in as she checked the folds and looked on the floor of her apartment. The paper had been in her pocket all day until—.

Birdie blanched. She’d hidden it in the back of her steno book when she’d gone for lunch, just to make sure it didn’t fall out. Had she forgotten to put it back in her pocket when she left for the day?

Idiot!

She sagged onto the corner of the trunk and realized she’d have to spend one more day in hell. Deacon wouldn’t like it, but she’d go to work tomorrow as usual and bring the page home and hide it like she’d planned.

Then she wouldn’t tell Deacon where it was until he paid her the five hundred dollars she’d decided it was worth. It was a pittance to him, but for her it meant freedom. And the kind of wardrobe that would attract a
real
man.

Birdie laid the gabardine skirt on the bed and smoothed a wrinkle out of the white shirtwaist. At least it would be the last time she’d have to wear the little highnecked puritan blouse.

She smiled at the thought and crawled into bed. She had time for a nap before she had to meet Deacon. Cincinnati is good. Deacon would never find her there.

. . .

Chief Deacon Trumbull weighed the sandbag the henchman was about to use to test the gallows.

“Before long we’ll have the big guy himself down here. I’m counting on you to be ready, boy.”

The henchman stared back with a blank face.

“That so-called Samaritan, idiot. Magee!”

Recognition lit his face and the henchman showed his mouthful of cracked and missing teeth. “Count on me, boss.”

He dragged the sandbag to the trapdoor and dropped the hook attached to it over the noose. With the confidence of a man who knows his job well, the henchman deftly adjusted the height of the noose just enough to press on the condemned sandbag’s ‘neck’ without lifting it clear off its ‘feet’.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Deacon lit a fresh cigar and strolled across the platform. He looked the sandbag up and down, but saved his usual puff of smoke until a flesh and blood face stood before him.

Things had become too dicey to put the old man on trial. Deacon saw that now. That’s why he was here. Arranging the suicide of a depressed man who’d been shamed in front of his daughter.

He chuckled at the taunting last words he would fling at Magee before he dropped the trapdoor.

“Fear not, Magee. I know where your daughter is!”

Trumbull stuck the cigar between his gold-capped teeth and tripped the lever. The trapdoor slammed against the supporting planks with a blood-chilling ‘thwop’, something the Chief had purposely engineered years earlier. It meant little to the victim dangling from the end of the rope, but it made the horrific sound of a midnight execution echo up through the cell blocks and terrorize the inmates out of a sound sleep.

He watched the sandbag sway on the end of its rope and tossed a half-dollar to the henchman who managed to snatch it from the air in spite of his crossed eyes.

“You’ll get another when Magee’s done and back in his cell.” He paused and pointed a finger. “And make it look natural.”

Deacon adjusted his white tie and checked to see that he still had both gloves. Wouldn’t do to show up at the opera half dressed...or leave one behind here. He moved with a powerful stride toward the door, aware of the greedy man’s eyes on him all the way. That ghoul knew too much. One day soon
his
mouth would have to be sealed, too.