A STAY OF EXECUTION

Will returned home around suppertime and summoned Evie to his office. He sat stiffly in his chair, fidgeting with an unlit cigarette. The radio played softly.

“Evangeline, I shouldn’t have lost my temper earlier. I apologize.”

Evie shrugged. “Everybody gets sore sometimes.”

“It took me rather by surprise, I’m afraid.” Will lit the Chesterfield in his hand. He dragged on it, then blew out a thin stream of smoke. “Tell me more about this talent of yours.”

“It started two years ago, when the dreams about James began.”

“Your brother, James?”

“No. James the doorman,” Evie snapped, and instantly regretted it. The last thing she needed to do was to aggravate Will.

“There was no antecedent. I’m a curator and scholar. I must have sourcing,” Will said matter-of-factly. “How did you come to discover it?”

“The first time, it was a brooch of Mother’s. I wanted to wear it, but she wouldn’t let me. She’d left it on her dressing table, and I picked it up, but I couldn’t seem to work up the nerve to pin it to my dress. I kept turning it over in my hands, and I got the funniest feeling. The brooch felt warm. My hands warmed, too, and my palms tingled.” Evie paused. She’d wanted to talk about it, but now she felt exposed.

“Go on. What did you see? Were you privy to only an hour of the object’s history, or could you see back farther? Did it come on you as more of a feeling, a suggestion, or did you feel as if you were with the person, living that moment?”

“So… you believe me?”

Will nodded. “I believe you.”

Evie sat forward, hopeful. “It was just like sitting at the picture show, but a picture show where the projector light isn’t terribly strong. It was only a moment. I could see Mother sitting at her dressing table, and I could feel what she had been feeling when she’d worn the brooch.”

“What was that?”

Evie looked him in the eyes. “She wished I’d been the one to die instead of James.”

Will broke the gaze. “Mothers love all their children equally.”

“No, they don’t. That’s just what we all agree to say.”

“And that was the first time?”

“Yes. I tested it. Whenever I concentrated on an object, I could sense some of its history. It isn’t always in order. Sometimes the pictures I see are faint; other times, they’re stronger. I think when the emotion is strong, I feel and see more.”

“Has it gotten stronger, would you say? Or weaker?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t practiced it like the castanets,” Evie said. “Can you practice it like the castanets?”

“Have you met anyone else who can do what you do?” Will asked, ignoring her question.

“Are there others like me?”

“If so, they haven’t announced themselves. Have you told your parents about this?”

“It was hard enough telling you after what happened in Ohio. They think it was one of my little pranks.”

“Good, good,” Will said.

“Why are you asking all these questions?”

“I’m trying to understand,” Will said.

No one had ever said anything like that to Evie. Her parents always wanted to advise or instruct or command. They were good people, but they needed the world to bend to them, to fit into their order of things. Evie had never really quite fit, and when she tried, she’d just pop back out, like a doll squeezed into a too-small box.

“So no one knows,” Will murmured.

“Well, I did show off a bit at that party Theta took me to,” Evie said uncertainly.

“You did this at a party?” Will sounded alarmed.

“It was nothing important! Just telling people what they’d had for dinner or the names of their dogs when they were kids. Most of the people there were fried.” Evie was careful not to mention her own drinking. “It was only in fun. Why shouldn’t I?”

“Isn’t that what got you in trouble in the first place?”

“But that was Ohio! This is New York City. If girls can dance half-naked in nightclubs, I don’t see why I can’t do a little divining.”

“People aren’t afraid of half-dressed girls in nightclubs.”

“You think people would be afraid of me, then?”

“People always fear what they don’t understand, Evangeline. History proves that. I suppose if people were drinking…” Will didn’t finish his thought. “And you say you had one of these… episodes with Ruta Badowski’s shoe buckle?”

Evie nodded. “I saw a terrible room and a large furnace and the outline of a man, I think. But it was only a silhouette, a shadow. I can’t be sure.” She shook her head. “Do you think what I saw was related to the murder?”

Will’s expression was grim. “I don’t know.”

“Do you think I should tell the police?” Evie asked.

“Certainly not.”

“But why not? If it would help…”

“Most likely they’d think you were some sort of crackpot. Or worse—a fame-seeker trying to get her name in the papers. Terrence and I have been friends for some time. I know how the police think.”

“But if I could read something else from the murders, something belonging to Tommy Duffy, for instance…”

“Absolutely not,” Will commanded. “I don’t think you should touch anything having to do with these murders.” Will sprang up from his chair and paced the length of the parlor. Midway, he stopped to tap his ash into a tall silver ashtray beside a navy-striped wingback chair that looked as if it had never been sat in. It was as if Will’s coiled energy didn’t allow him to sit long enough to make an impression on the cushion. “We are going to catch our killer with good old-fashioned detective work, even if we have to go through every occult book in the museum’s library.”

“So… I can stay?” Evie asked.

“Yes. You can stay. For now. But there will be new rules. There will be no further cavorting in speakeasies. And you will be expected to help out around the museum.”

“Of course.” It was better than a train back to Ohio. And once she proved to Will how indispensable she was, he’d have to keep her on for the long run. “Thank you, Unc.” Evie threw her arms around Will, who stiffened and waited for her to withdraw.

In the doorway, Jericho cleared his throat and waited to be recognized. He dropped the late-edition paper on Will’s desk. “You might want to read this.”

“ ‘Exclusive to the New York Daily News, by T. S. Woodhouse. Museum Makes a Pentacle Killing,’ ” Will read aloud. He frowned and waved the paper about. “What’s this?”

Evie snatched the paper away and kept reading. “ ‘New York City, that bustling metropolis, is no stranger to violence. Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, and the rest of the Brownsville Boys of Murder, Inc., have kept the bodies piling up faster than the cops can take bribes to look the other way. But the Pentacle Murders have given even hardened New Yorkers the heebie-jeebies. Mothers won’t let their children play stickball on the streets after dark. Shopgirls spend their hard-earned dough on taxis straight home to their cold-water flats in Murray Hill and Orchard Street. The Sultan of Swing, Mr. Babe Ruth himself, has promised a five-hundred-dollar reward for information leading to the capture of the foul fiend. But in the midst of this Manhattan murder mania, there is one joint that’s raking it in—the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. That’s the Museum of the Creepy Crawlies to you folks in the know.’ Unc, the museum made the papers!”

Evie continued. “ ‘Their business is anything spooky, and anything spooky is good for business. On a recent Friday, this reporter witnessed a mob scene parked outside the doors of the old Cornelius T. Rathbone mansion near Central Park. That’s because the curator of the museum, Professor William Fitzgerald’—oh, Unc! That’s you!” Evie exclaimed. “ ‘… is helping the New York boys in blue figure out what makes this diabolical killer tick in the hope of finding him before he strikes again. He’s aided in his work by his niece, Miss Evie O’Neill, late of Zenith, Ohio, a comely seventeen-year-old Sheba who knows her onions about everything from witches’ coifs to the bones of Chinese conjurers. But when this reporter tried to get the goods on the hunt for a killer, the dame played coy. “I’m afraid I can’t comment on that,” she said and batted those baby blues. Fellas, start lining up. There’s more than one killer in this town.’ ”

Evie tried to keep the grin from her face. T. S. Woodhouse had come through after all.

“Evangeline, did you speak to this Woodhouse fellow?” Will demanded.

Evie’s eyes went wide. “Unc, I had no idea he was a reporter! He was a paying customer. I gave him the tour. When he started asking questions, I stonewalled him. He played me for a chump, that cad!”

“You have to be more careful. Develop a New Yorker’s skin.” Will tapped a second cigarette against the table, packing down the tobacco before lighting it. “Whatever happened to objective, truthful reporting?”

“Haven’t you heard? It doesn’t sell papers,” Jericho said.

“You’re so right, Unc. That Woodhouse is a rat. But he did mention the museum, at least,” Evie said. “Do you know what this means?”

Will blew twin streams of smoke from his nostrils. “Trouble,” he said.

The phone rang, startling them all. Will took the call, his expression hardening. “We’ll meet you there.”

“What is it?” Evie asked.

“The Pentacle Killer has struck again.”

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 600