CRANE

35

WHEN HETTY WALKED through the door, Oliver and Thomas’s conversation stuttered to a halt at the sight of her tub floating behind her like a duckling.

Both gawked at her, but Thomas jumped up in alarm, his chair scraping against the floor.

“Don’t.” Oliver put a hand on the other man’s arm. “Sometimes it’s best not to ask.”

Hetty went upstairs and found Benjy still asleep. Penelope must have succeeded in getting him to take a sleep potion, for Hetty was able to drag the tub across the floor without him even stirring.

Penelope wasn’t here, but there was a note left next to a half-empty vial of pale blue liquid:

If he wakes in pain, two spoonfuls. If he complains, one. And you get some rest. I will know.

Placing the note aside, Hetty busied herself with settling the items she took from the boardinghouse. In no time at all, each item had found a new home, whether in the wardrobe, a drawer, or in a stack on the nightstand. A few things she left in the tub, like their quilt, but nearly everything was tucked away.

As she stood there with her sewing kit in her arms, the memories she had pushed back returned with great force.

What mess there had been in their room could be blamed on the wind. But the knife was the only proof she needed for an intruder. It was also the reason Hetty had gathered their things with no attempt to return. That dress form was as tall as a person . . . and in low light could easily be mistaken for flesh and blood. Even if the intruder knew otherwise, though, the message was clear.

It was a good thing they weren’t home last night.

Hetty placed her sewing kit next to the healing tonic Penelope had left and reconsidered that sentiment.

It had been lucky they weren’t home, but this wasn’t much better.

Whether the enchanted sleep was responsible or not, Benjy’s face was peaceful and relaxed. When Hetty lifted the bandages, she saw that the healing salve had done its work. The sickly green veins around the wound had vanished, leaving only the mark where the candle had kissed his skin. She replaced the bandages with care, running her hands slowly along his face before moving away.

Settling on the foot of the bed, Hetty started sorting the slips of papers that had been locked away in Charlie’s box. Spreading them around her, she sorted them into little piles based on type: receipts, ticket stubs, notes, flyers, and newspaper clippings. The more she flipped through the pages, the pattern to Charlie’s bets became clear. While there was a rich variety of activity, he was most diligent in cataloging the boxing bets. In addition to the page that Hetty had first stumbled upon, other pages broke down the winnings of each week in more detail.

Hetty pored over those pages closely, studying how the lump sum of winnings broke into smaller amounts, with initials marked beside each cut. While the initials were different week to week—as were the numbers—one initial appeared like clockwork.

Hetty tapped on the looped B. It appeared on every boxing-related note, with the earliest date from late November. This was meant to be Benjy, but out of all the sums listed, his was always the smallest number, no matter how big the winnings grew.

She mentally calculated the difference between the money won in these matches and the amount that ended up in Benjy’s pocket. When she landed on the final number, she almost tossed the book into the wall. The gap between owed and paid was a chasm so gaping that if Charlie had still been alive, she’d have tossed him right into it.

How could someone who called them a friend do this?

This was more than selling the dresses that Hetty had made for his wife as a gift. This was more than leaving his tenants to live in squalor. This was stealing. And it did not matter if he had done it out of greed or because he was fending off creditors, or out of fear of losing his fragile freedom. He took money he didn’t even earn.

She moved to put the paper down, but there was no more space for a new pile.

“There needs to be a table,” she mumbled, staring at the stacks of paper that surrounded her.

“A desk would be better.”

Benjy sat with a pillow propped behind his head. He tugged at his bandage as he read the pages in his hand. More papers were piled next to him, but not how she had first arranged them but in a pattern that would only make sense to him.

“How long have you been awake?”

“Since you started going through these papers. What did you find?”

“Nothing that can explain what happened to you last night. Or that the lead you planned to follow meant you’d be taking a beating.”

His hand clenched around the papers. “That’s why I didn’t want you to be there. I was going to smoke out who’d collected Charlie’s bet, and I couldn’t throw the match with you watching.”

“It’s all fake,” Hetty grumbled, unmoved by this remark.

“Not everything.” His hand reached for hers. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure you are,” she snapped, but didn’t move her hand. “Why didn’t you tell me about the money?”

“I was embarrassed. Charlie cheated me to such heights that I thought it all a big mistake. I only found out by a slip of the tongue . . . and . . . Well, let’s just say there’s a good reason he was reluctant to talk to me the last night we saw him alive.” Benjy smoothed the wrinkled papers. “He thought paying me part of the money would fix everything.”

“And did he pay you?”

Benjy nodded. “I got enough to pay off some of our debts and the rent.”

That explained their landlord’s cheerier mood earlier that week.

“Good, one mystery solved.”

Benjy settled back onto the bed with a weariness that had nothing to do with his wound. “You’re not mad at me?”

“Not as much as I was last night.” She placed her hand on the bandage, pressing gently against his chest. “This makes it hard. I want to know why it happened.”

“It was the police.” He frowned. “They disrupted the match. I thought that’s what happened.”

“I don’t think it was them.” Hetty shook her head. “Isaac Baxter was there. He ran when he saw me, but I couldn’t chase him given the chaos that broke out. I think he did it.”

“Could have been someone else. Someone who placed a hefty bet on me losing. A few moments more and it would have been a knockout.”

“It better have been a knockout,” she teased, but he remained pensive.

“Baxter fits. But I’m not sure if it’s because we want him to fit or because it’s the truth.”

“He wouldn’t have run if he was guilty!”

“If he saw even half the glower you gave me, that would have been enough to send anyone running.”

“Well, you deserved it.” Hetty returned her attention to the papers strewn about. “All this boxing and you never made more than a handful of coins.”

“Charlie was always very good with money . . . usually parting people from it.” Benjy picked up the book with all of the betting notes inside. He patted the area next to him absently. Hetty slid over, sitting close enough to read the words on the page.

“These are debts he owed white bankers.” Benjy pointed to the names. “The initials mark which ones. This is a liquor tab at a saloon he frequented. These are the stores he borrowed from on credit. But this”—he tapped the corner of a page, where a triangle was sketched—“I don’t know what to make of this.”

“That strikes me as important.”

“I agree, but we have no way to answer the question.”

Hetty studied the sums amassed before her, all written in careful handwriting. Charlie spent long hours striving to make sure it was all correct. He was always precise like that. Always knew where everything was, even the things he was uncertain about.

“He was making money for something, not just to pay back debts,” Hetty said. “He already had so much. Yet he wanted more, even when he had plenty.”

“He always saw freedom as the things he owned and the comforts that came with them.” Benjy dropped the book, turning his head toward her, moving close enough that he brushed against her. “What happened today?”

“Why do you think something did?”

Without his eyes leaving hers, he pointed to the tub sitting in the middle of the room. “This doesn’t belong here.”

“Someone broke into our room.” Hetty quickly described what she had found, skipping over nothing, though she saved the detail about the knife left in the dress form for last. Sitting next to him, away from the boardinghouse, the whole thing seemed like one of her stories: distant and hardly able to touch her now. “The knife was a message.”

“An effective one,” Benjy added. “We’re not going back there.”

He said this as if expecting she would argue with him. She had no arguments. Hetty didn’t fear that the intruder would come back or even bring harm, but it tarnished her feeling toward the room and the comfort she often felt within its walls. It wasn’t the best place in the world, but it had been theirs.

“Oliver doesn’t seem to mind us staying for a while,” Hetty said. “Although he might soon change his mind.”

Benjy chuckled. “What did you do?”

“I just asked a few questions. A man came by to bury the unidentified body, and it turned out to be his brother. I might have been a bit rude since it was the same man who got you fired over a wagon, Preston Stevens.”

Benjy sat up as if lightning had struck overhead.

“The owner of Elmhurst Cemetery. The dead man is his brother?”

This was a question not meant for her to answer.

Benjy shifted papers on the bed, upending the neatly made stacks until he found a card, and he thrust it under her nose.

“ELM four twenty-four,” Hetty read.

“Or Elmhurst Cemetery on April twenty-fourth. I knew the numbers were a date, but the shortening of the name threw me off. I never thought it to be the cemetery. I never connected it to Charlie. Why would I? The cemetery owner’s brother . . . Well, that means a great deal left uncovered.”

Instead of explaining the importance of this discovery, Benjy rolled off the bed and went to the wardrobe for a change of clothes.

Hetty picked up the paper he’d dropped. Elm, she thought, tapping Charlie’s handwriting.

Just like Benjy, she’d had a flash of insight, but it did not rouse her to leap from the bed like he had. Charlie had said something about elm that night he’d tried to talk to her, the night before he died. If she hadn’t cut him off, had let him speak, would he have said Elmhurst? If he had, would she have listened? Cemeteries were hardly something Charlie had ever involved himself in, so it would have caught her attention. She might have listened. Would Charlie still be alive if she had?

No, not likely—because there was still far more about his death they didn’t know, and a single conversation playing out differently couldn’t have saved him.

Benjy pulled out their lantern and lit it, and Hetty knew she couldn’t stop him from leaving. Nor would she. They were close, and now was not the time for further delay.