Grim Shadows

SIXTEEN

THE FOLLOWING DAY, HADLEY boarded a streetcar a little before noon. Because it was usually faster than calling a cab, she often took public transportation during lunch, so she knew her father wouldn’t suspect anything amiss. Lowe had called to suggest a meeting place; he had the list of names.

After changing cars that climbed in and out of thickening fog, she ended up at Fisherman’s Wharf and immediately spotted Lowe on the sidewalk, standing heads above hurried pedestrians flanking Jefferson Street.

They strode toward each other and met near a newsstand. She was breathing far too hard for ten paces—could she look any more eager to see him? Good heavens.

“You managed to sneak out,” he said, looking terribly pleased and terribly handsome in his long blue gray coat and matching fedora.

“I wouldn’t call it sneaking, exactly. I told Miss Tilly I’d be gone a couple of hours.”

“The best lies are half truths,” he quipped. “Hungry?”

“Famished.”

“Me, too. I’m taking you to one of the best places to eat in the city.”

She glanced around the wharf’s warehouses, lumberyard, and boats. “I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it. Do they serve lemon pie?”

He laughed. “No, but it’s on my list of favorites. Trust me. Come on.”

The scent of sharp ocean brine filled her nostrils as they made their way down the promenade. A row of Tin Lizzies and delivery trucks lined the curb to their left while fog-wreathed trawlers and seiners bobbed in the Bay on their right. “Did you take Lulu?”

He shook his head. “Bo dropped me off.”

“You know, I did wonder what would happen if you’d driven the motorcycle and it rained.”

“I’d get wet.”

She squinted at him and smiled.

“How’s the office?” he asked.

“It’s calmed down since yesterday.”

“Oh?” he said, the personification of innocence. “What happened yesterday?”

She lifted her mink coat collar to shield her neck from the nippy breeze. “Mr. Houston was rushed to the hospital. Word today is that he’s resting at home with four broken fingers.”

“You don’t say.”

“You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“This is the first I’m hearing of it,” he said cheerfully.

“So that wasn’t you I saw racing through the back door into the museum.”

“You know I never run out the back door, Hadley.”

“Of course.” She glanced at a trawler chugging closer to shore. “George didn’t say anything about me, did he?”

“A jackass like that? Who would bother listening?” He straightened his hat brim. “But I’ll tell you what, when you get your father’s position? The first thing I’d do if I were you is fire dear old George Houston.”

Hadley didn’t respond, just lifted her collar higher to hide the smile she couldn’t repress.

At the foot of Taylor Street, they strolled by wholesale fish stalls. Here, on the sidewalk over wood-burning stoves, peddlers stirred bubbling cauldrons of crab fresh off the boats and sold them to passersby for twenty cents each. But Lowe was headed to stall number eight, where an Italian couple was serving clam chowder. Dockworkers and a few middle-class businessmen sat at plain wooden tables with benches under a covered area. Lowe gave one of the diners a friendly wave and marched up to the counter.

“Lowe!” the pretty dark-haired woman said, coming around the counter to embrace him, kissing both his cheeks. “We saw your photograph in the newspaper. Struck it rich in Egypt, didya?”

“Not yet, but I’m trying,” he said, shaking the man’s hand across the counter.

“Famous archaeologist,” the man said with a grin. “Be careful—you might give your family a good name.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

The couple laughed, then Lowe introduced her to Rose and Nunzio Alioto. “They make the best chowder on the wharf,” he praised. “And they catch the second-best crab. Magnusson may not run as many crabbers as we used to before Volstead, but we still catch the sweetest Dungeness.” He winked at Mrs. Alioto.

“Glad to see your fame hasn’t gone to your head,” she said. “But as long as Winter keeps us wet, you can talk all the bull you want. You two want lunch?”

Lowe rubbed his hands together. “Chowder and beer. Extra sourdough on the side.” He glanced at Hadley. “Sound okay?”

“Sounds terrific,” she said to Lowe, then to Mrs. Alioto, “Thank you.”

Under the curious gaze of the lunching dockworkers, Mrs. Alioto pointed them to a lone table at the back and soon followed with steaming bowls of clam chowder, two paper cups of beer—supplied by Lowe’s brother, Hadley guessed—and a plate piled with sourdough rolls. “Monk’s boys have been putting the word out that he’s looking to talk to you,” Mrs. Alioto said in a quiet voice. “Somebody’s liable to tell him they saw you here today.”

“Just a little misunderstanding,” Lowe said as he set his fedora on the table and swept a hand over his hair. “If anyone asks, feel free to mention that you overhead me saying I was planning to call on him this week.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” She patted Lowe on the back. “Buon appetito.”

“What was that about?” Hadley asked once the woman had left.

He gave her a sheepish smile and repeated her words from yesterday. “A mistake.”

“Don’t tell me he’s planning to chop off your other pinky for stealing his wife.”

He chuckled. “No women involved, cross my heart. Now dig in.”

The creamy chowder was heavenly, the bread tangy and fresh. Lowe had been right to put the meal on his list of favorites—it might’ve been the most comforting food she’d had in years. And while they sat side by side on the weather-roughened bench and ate, Lowe pulled out a folded packet of paper, the top sheet of which was covered in typed columns.

“These are the names and addresses they could find. Over three hundred.”

“Dear lord. How are we going to whittle it down?”

He reached in his coat to retrieve a small black notebook. Tucked inside were his two canopic jar paintings. He placed the jackal-headed one on top. “Because I’ve cracked your mother’s code.”

“You have?”

“Don’t get too excited. Recognizing how she did it is only half the solution. Look here—each of her pictograms represents a letter. Since this was Mrs. Rosewood’s jar, I worked backward from that: this hash mark is a railroad track. Railroad equals ‘R.’ This circle that looks like a golf ball? It’s an orange—‘O.’” He pointed to the other pictograms, naming words whose first letters spelled out Rosewood. “She used three different pictograms for ‘O,’ which makes it more difficult.”

“But ‘Rosewood’ is only eight letters, and each jar has twenty symbols.”

“Placeholders. Those are the reversed pictograms, and the only ones repeated. See this one that looks like a stick with a lump on the side? The mirror-image version is on the other painting I have. I’m guessing some of the other placeholders are on your paintings.”

Hadley retrieved her share of the watercolors from her handbag and spread them out next to his. They studied the symbols together and identified all the reversed ones.

“Now we know the exact number of letters in each of the remaining three names. That helps. But it would help even more if we could compile a single list of the symbols along with any and all possible words associated with them. Because this symbol here looks like a moon, but is it ‘moon’ or ‘crescent’ or ‘boomerang?’”

Now she understood the difficulty in translating the names. While he redrew all the pictograms in his notebook, she helped brainstorm. Working with him was pleasant and natural, and she found herself laughing at his jokes and stealing glimpses of him. The faint impression his fedora had pressed into his blond hair, and the bump in his crooked nose. The way his eyes squinted into long blue triangles when he was thinking. The masculine grace in his corded hands as he unconsciously seesawed his pencil between two fingers while he thought.

It wasn’t until she marveled at the steely comfort of his shoulder butted against hers that she realized they were pressed against one another from shoulder to knee.

And to her surprise, she didn’t mind. Not one bit.

In fact, she idly wished other parts of them were pressed together.

• • •

Lowe was having trouble concentrating on the pictograms. Every instinct he had was shouting at him to pull Hadley into his lap and kiss the bejesus out of her. He doodled spirals on the page’s border and analyzed the logistics of having sex with her, right there on the bench. Would require balance, but he’d already run through three different positions and a couple of variations. As he was debating the possibility of bringing the table into it, she made a small noise.

“Trotter.”

“What?”

She stared at his list of dead people. “Henrietta Trotter. That’s one of Hugo Trotter’s sisters. The funeral director who was rumored to have killed his siblings.”

Lowe vaguely remembered the legend of Hugo Trotter. Police never could find evidence that he’d done anything wrong, but the man had made several jokes at dinner parties that he was planning to kill and cremate two sisters and one brother, and all three siblings died suspiciously, one by one, over a yearlong period.

“People said he talked to their urns as if they could hear him,” Hadley said. “This must’ve been the last sister, because he moved out of town after the earthquake. Which canopic jar has seven unique pictograms? Ah—the baboon. See if the symbols could possibly spell Trotter.”

“That’s . . .” Crazy, he was going to say, but after sorting through their word list, he picked out the letters with ease. “T-r-o-t-t-e-r. Helvete, Hadley—you think it’s possible?”

“He was known for having a strange sense of humor. Maybe he didn’t really kill them, but I definitely remember stories in college about him talking to the urns. Just to be sure, we should try to match up other seven-letter names, see if anything else fits.”

And they did, for nearly an hour. One name was off by only one letter, but nothing else matched exactly. They finally gave up and decided to investigate Trotter. “I’ll make a few calls and come up with a plan,” he said as he stacked the papers into a neat pile.

“Do I get half of the list?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at his busy hands.

Part of him didn’t want to let it go. The sensible part. The part that was slightly worried about Monk asking around for him at the wharf.

But another part of his brain—the part that had filled her up with bread and chowder just so he could lull her into letting him feel her thigh against his—remembered George goddamn Houston saying Hadley needed to be in control. And really, what was she going to do? Run off and track down the amulet crossbars without him and disappear to Mexico? She had as much of a right to be on this godforsaken quest as he did—it was her mother’s doing, after all. And if she was correct about this Trotter fellow, then that would make her instincts two for two. She definitely knew the macabre underbelly of the city better than he did.

He tore out his scribbled key to the pictograms and slid it in front of her, along with the list and the paintings. “All yours,” he said, grabbing his leather gloves off the table and tugging them on. “Just make sure you keep it all safe and locked up. No desk drawers, no obvious places your maid might find while cleaning. We can switch up every few days. Two pairs of eyes are better than one.”

She didn’t reply, just stared at the packet of papers like they might self-combust. Brown eyes widened as they flicked up to meet his. A faint thrill warmed his chest. God, he was a sucker, because there was nothing better than her features softening. He liked her unguarded. He liked her guarded, too. Hell, he just liked her.

It was past time for her to head back to work, so they bid the Aliotos good-bye and left Taylor Street, heading back up to where the streetcar had dropped her off. Half a block before they got there, the bottom fell out of the sky.

“Oh, no—my mink collar!” she cried as rain began beading on their coats.

Lowe hurried her toward the dry stoop of a nearby warehouse and squeezed into the alcove with her. The smell of wet pavement and Hadley surrounded him. A man could get used to that. He even thought he caught the grassy scent of lily—perfume, perhaps. Or maybe his memory of the night by the gazing pool was shifting things around in his head.

Just relax and enjoy being close to her, he told himself. Don’t get carried away and do anything stupid. Deep breath. Keep your coat buttoned and your hands to yourself. Do not think about sex gymnastics on a bench.

“Thank God you put the papers inside your coat,” he said, shaking rain off his hat.

She didn’t answer. Something gripped his arm. He glanced down to find her gloved hand there. When he looked back up, she was a moving blur—one that erased the small space between them. He staggered back against the alcove wall in surprise as her mouth clamped on his. Suddenly there was nothing but her wet lips on his and warm softness pressing against his chest.

Dear God, she was kissing him.

Wake up, idiot! Kiss her back!

He grabbed fistfuls of fur and wool and crushed her body to his, returning the kiss with equal ferocity. This wasn’t a repeat of the kiss in her father’s office; she actually wanted him. The difference was staggering.

A joyful pleasure rushed toward the base of his spine as slender arms wrapped around his neck. Closer? Gladly, yes. He pushed her against the alcove wall. She moaned, and he swore his heart shuddered. And as he sank against her, the kiss deepened from tight and frantic to open and slow and ardent.

Nothing existed but their warm bodies and the sound of the rain outside their shadowed alcove.

His tongue slipped between her lips, just once. Testing. Then he kissed the corner of her mouth. Slid his tongue in again. Kissed the other corner. Licked the salt from her bottom lip. And, Gods above, her tongue finally joined in, rolling with his. Dancing, exploring. Tasting.

And he wanted more.

He kissed her chin, her jaw, nuzzling his way into the soft ebony hair beneath the edge of her cloche, smelling both the citrusy brightness of her shampoo and the scent of her skin. Another moan. Fingers grasped the back of his neck. One hand ghosted down the front of his coat, planting on his chest. She was touching him! Glorious, absolutely glorious. He wanted that hand inside his coat, under his shirt.

And look how well they fit together. He didn’t have to hunch over to kiss her.

“Hadley,” he murmured, kissing her cheek, one eyelid, then the next—like he was some sort of erotic priest administering a blessing with his mouth. “Hadley, Hadley, Hadley.”

Christ, he was punch-drunk with arousal, his cock hard and heavy. He rocked his hips against hers, pinning her against the wall, and had begun taking his erotic blessing south of her neck when a foghorn’s bellow made her jump. She immediately shoved him away.

They stood a foot apart, breathing heavily, mouths open.

Her knees buckled. He reached out to help her as she slid down the wall.

She flinched away from his touch.

He lifted both hands in surrender.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she insisted in a hoarse voice, pushing herself back up. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Hadley—”

“Oh, there’s a taxi. I really must . . .”

“Are you sure?”

“I—”

“Christ, Hadley. That was—” Amazing. Sexy. Far better than he’d imagined.

“I should go. Please call when you’re ready to . . . Trotter, you know.” Then she darted into the rain and disappeared into the taxicab at the curb. The last thing he saw was her touching the backs of her gloved fingers to her lips as the car drove away.

• • •

Instead of heading straight back to work, Hadley took a detour downtown and darted down the sidewalk into a shop upon whose window was painted in fine script:

MADAME DUBOIS

LINGERIE COUTURE

A bell tinkled to announce her entrance. She strode between a wooden table displaying a fanned-out selection of silky tap pants and a canvas-covered mannequin to which a half-finished nightgown was pinned. As she approached a glass display counter, a plump middle-aged woman with a perfectly coiffed silver bob looked up and smiled. “Good afternoon, Mademoiselle Bacall.”

“Madame Dubois,” she said with a nod.

The back of the tiny shop was a riot of silk, lace, and colorful spools of glossy embroidery thread. Neatly folded negligées and stockings lined the shelves behind the counter. And on the glass counter, cream boxes were stacked near a roll of apricot tissue paper. Madame Dubois’s creations were the finest in the city. They were also Hadley’s most extravagant weakness.

The scent of rose powder wafted in the air as the Parisian expat seamstress leaned over the counter, a long tape measure hanging around her neck. “And what may I do for you? Special order?”

“Yes.”

“Wonderful! Your designs are some of my favorites. What shall it be today?”

Hadley’s heart fluttered faster than hummingbird wings as she unfolded a color page ripped from a recent museum exhibit program. Briefly wondering if this was how her mother had felt years ago when she’d approached the ceramic artist to commission the canopic jar designs, she smiled at Madame Dubois and said, “I’d like you to copy this . . .”