Chapter 2
In order to understand how things got scary and crazy unpredictably fast, I need to backtrack a little. It all began a few weeks before the fateful New Year’s Eve party, in the early part of December. On the heels of my crime-solving activities with Duncan, there had been a lot of press coverage about me. This didn’t sit well with Duncan’s bosses, and as a result, he was suspended and ordered not to associate with me. This might not have been a huge issue but for two things. One, I had invited Duncan into my bed as well as into my life by then, and we were in the process of exploring the potential behind our relationship. Letting go of that wasn’t easy.
And two, I had discovered I liked this crime-solving stuff. I relished the chance to do something good with my synesthesia. It had been an albatross around my neck for most of my life—sometimes almost literally so. Whenever I grew nervous about exposing it, or revealing it to someone for the first time, it triggered an uncomfortable strangling sensation around my throat. When Duncan came into my life and gave my quirk a valuable use, my synesthesia started to feel more like a superpower, a strength I could be proud of and no longer needed to hide. That feeling was strangely intoxicating.
Duncan and I stayed apart during the three weeks he was suspended, waiting to see if he would lose his job. When he returned to work, we returned to our relationship, but we kept it under wraps, sneaking around like a couple of love-struck, underage teenagers. The Capone Club enabled me to continue my crime-solving activities without Duncan’s help—at least no help anyone knew about other than a few, trusted members—and we probably could have gone on that way for a long time, waiting out everyone’s interest in me and my involvement with the police, Duncan in particular.
But I had drawn the attention of someone else, someone other than the press and the police bigwigs. This someone was waging a letter-writing campaign of fear and terror against me, and setting deadlines that, if missed, would result in the death of someone close to me. Lewis Carmichael had been murdered before I got the first letter as proof of how serious the writer was. And when I missed a deadline recently because I misinterpreted the clues in one of the letters, my bouncer/bartender Gary Gunderson had been killed. His death was particularly bitter for me, not only because I felt responsible for it, but because Gary had once put his own life on the line to save mine.
Along with the deadlines imposed by the letters, there was another caveat: I was not to involve the police—particularly Duncan, who was mentioned by name—in the solving of the letters’ clues. The only thing I was supposed to use was what one reporter referred to as my “special senses.” That meant no use of modern-day forensics or police investigative techniques. Duncan and I found a way around that, too, by meeting on the sly and setting up a friend of Duncan’s who also happened to be a cop working an undercover assignment as my new beau. Malachi “Mal” O’Reilly came from a construction company family, which made him the perfect candidate for infiltrating a local construction company suspected of bribery, shoddy work, and other offenses. His work hours also made him the perfect candidate for assisting me in some of my investigative efforts as I strove to solve the puzzles in each of the letters. The fact that he was a cop was initially known to only three other people in the bar besides me: Cora Kingsley, a forty-something, single, redheaded, man-eater who owned her own IT company, and the Signoriello brothers, Joe and Frank, two retired insurance salesmen in their seventies whom I have known all my life. These three people were also the closest thing I had to family now that my father was gone.
Duncan’s clever idea to use Mal would have been great except for one small glitch. I found myself genuinely attracted to the man, an attraction that proved mutual. We had yet to act on it, but my mind and my heart were a muddled mess.
On the day after Christmas, Mal and I set out to follow up on the latest clues about the letter writer, which had included beer-soaked paper and a small key that one might use for a diary or a jewelry box. Written at the top of the key in nearly invisible clear nail polish was a pound or number sign, followed by the numeral 1.
It took us a while to figure out the meaning behind this clue, but we eventually decided it had something to do with Pabst beer. Since Pabst was no longer brewed in Milwaukee—though rumors were circulating that they might return—the only significant landmarks I could identify were the historic Pabst Mansion, the home commissioned by Captain Frederick Pabst in 1890, and the Pabst Theater. Since the time deadlines in previous letters had been closing times for the venues where we found the clues, we made the assumption that the same thing held true with this particular letter. Based on that, we focused our attention on the Pabst Mansion. The structure sits on what was once a small, bucolic hillside but is now in the heart of downtown Milwaukee, surrounded by commercial buildings and the Marquette University campus. Guided tours of the house are given throughout the year, but for a couple of weeks around Christmastime, the public is allowed in for self-guided, albeit supervised, tours to see a renowned and extravagant display of decorations.
Duncan had originally collected the key that had come with the letter and taken it with him to have it examined for any evidence we might have missed. He had someone in the police lab who was willing to run things for him off the books, and he told this person that his sister was being stalked and he was trying to find out who it might be. But on Christmas Day, he joined me and a few trusted others—Cora, the Signoriello brothers, Mal, and Cora’s current paramour, Tiny—for a private celebration. It was during our afternoon dinner that I figured out the meaning behind the letter, and Duncan returned the key to me at that time, informing me that no other evidence had been found on it.
I opened up the bar later on Christmas, and Duncan hid away in my apartment for the duration of the evening and into the night, allowing us to share some rare but treasured time together. But in order to avoid detection in case anyone might be watching, he had slipped away in the wee hours. I awoke the next morning with his side of the bed empty and a note by my coffee machine that he’d call me later.
After showering, dressing, and grabbing a quick bite to eat, I’d headed downstairs to help my oncoming staff get the bar open by eleven. Mal had shown up shortly after I opened the doors—an arrangement we had made the day before—and the two of us headed out shortly thereafter.
So it was that I, armed with my tiny key and with Mal at my side, approached the Pabst Mansion just before noon on the day after Christmas. We purchased two tickets and began our tour at the stately front entrance. Given the size of the place, and the fact that I had no idea exactly what I was supposed to be looking for, I figured it could take us a couple of hours to go through it unless we got lucky early on. Complicating things was the cast I had on my left leg and the crutches I had to use to get around. I’d had a car accident on my way to the Public Market—the destination indicated by clues in the letter I had misinterpreted. That accident had broken bones in my leg and cost Gary Gunderson his life.
We entered the mansion through its massive front door and found ourselves in a huge foyer complete with its own fireplace and an old-fashioned bell service center for calling servants.
“Fascinating architecture,” Mal observed, studying the intricate wood carvings in the foyer and the painted coves in the adjoining dining and music rooms.
“The architecture might be at its finest, but the décor is ostentatious,” I said.
Mal shrugged. “That’s the way they did things back then. If you had money, you flaunted it. And at the time, this sort of intricately carved woodwork, along with richly painted ceilings and walls, were a sign of wealth.”
The house, despite its overly ornate décor, was a beautiful specimen. There were hand-carved moldings and trim in every square inch of the place, and each room had its own theme and individual architecture. The doors separating the rooms were giant slabs of wood hung with humongous hinges, and each side of them sported a different carved design to match the décor of the room it was in once the door was closed.
I managed well enough for a while, enjoying the details and historical anecdotes provided by the various guides positioned throughout the place, and observing the painstaking restorations being done by the historical preservation group that had saved the mansion from destruction in 1978. It was fortunate that the home had been bought and used as a residence for the archbishop by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. For sixty-seven years after the Pabst family moved out, it served as home to a host of archbishops, priests, and nuns, who left most of the original details in place, though they painted over much of the décor. Removal of that paint allowed the original details to be revealed in all their original, ostentatious glory, everything from hand-painted ceiling designs to silk wall coverings. It was a slow, arduous process that was still ongoing, and I imagined the restorers must have experienced a thrill each time they exposed some of the underlying treasures.
Sensory overload is an ongoing, persistent threat for me. I’ve spent a lot of years and effort learning how to dampen the effects some environments have on me, and I’ve gotten relatively adept at it. I had to if I wanted to survive and stay sane. But there are still times when new places or experiences overwhelm me. As detailed and ornate as everything on our tour was, I managed well enough with my vivid and effluvious synesthetic responses until we got to the captain’s wife’s sitting room. Apparently, Frederick Pabst’s wife, Maria, had a close and fervent love affair with the color pink. Her sitting room was a pink nightmare that made me feel like I was trapped inside a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. For some reason, all that pink triggered a synesthetic overload of smells, visual manifestations, and tactile responses.
“Too much,” I said, closing my eyes and rubbing at my temples. “It gives me a headache.”
Mal put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m with you on this one,” he said, steering me in a different direction. “Fortunately, the room is roped off, so I doubt what we’re looking for is in there, unless the letter writer wants us to get arrested during this search.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” I grumbled. What we were looking for, we guessed, was some kind of small box that our key would fit.
“Let’s move on,” Mal said. “I want to see more of this architecture.”
“You shouldn’t be focusing on the architecture,” I said in a mildly chastising tone. I kept my voice low so I wouldn’t be overheard by the other people touring along with us. “Remember why we’re here.”
“I know, I know,” Mal admitted. “But I can’t help myself. It’s hard to stay focused on the task at hand.”
As we made our way through the various rooms, I found those words as applicable to me as they were to Mal. Maybe more so. It was a struggle to stay focused because of the many conversations going on around us, and the voluminous, colorful arrays of Christmas décor. Every minute or so, I reminded myself of our original goal and tried to look for something the key might fit, something that didn’t appear to belong, or if it did look like it belonged, something that could easily be lifted. Yes, I was resigned to becoming a thief if necessary, but I justified this decision by reminding myself I could be saving a life by stealing. And if I found the item I needed, odds were it would be something someone had slipped into the décor rather than something that originated with the house. I couldn’t be sure of this, however, which is why both Mal and I were wearing bulky coats and he was carrying a large satchel. Since the house was plenty warm despite the cold outside air, this didn’t make our task any less arduous. I was sweating beneath my coat, and this fact triggered reactions all its own.
We tried to take our time and be as thorough as possible, and this garnered us some odd stares from other tourists and the guides who were stationed throughout the house whenever we looked under or behind furnishings. This also made us some of the slowest-moving people, and our lingering was eyed with suspicion. We hung for a long time in Frederick’s study as Mal admired the coffered ceiling with its dark, thick, oak beams framing painted German proverbs and the intricately carved, built-in cupboards, each with its own secret latch to release the door. At the start of the tour, we had been instructed not to touch things or take any photographs, but whenever I had a chance and the guides’ attention was focused elsewhere, I shifted things on shelves and tugged open drawers, looking for our objective.
We struck out in the study and moved on to the second floor, where we toured bedrooms and baths. Mal got down on his hands and knees a couple of times to peek under furniture and beds while I stood by, serving as sentry. Though we tried not to be too obvious and to do our spying when other people weren’t around, there was enough of a crowd going through the place to make it impossible at times.
A little over two hours later, we reached the end of the tour without finding anything that looked like something my key would work in. I felt a niggle of panic setting in.
“There’s still the gift shop,” I said to Mal, as a guide directed us toward an exit that led into it. “Maybe it’s there.”
“And if not?”
“If not, I don’t know where to go or what to do next. Maybe we got it wrong again. Maybe we’ll have to hit up the theater.” My mind resisted as I thought about what would come next if we failed: the death of someone I knew. “It has to be at the gift shop,” I said with a tone of desperate hope.
We entered the small area, which was attached to the house but was an add-on to the original structure. It had originally been built as an open-air pavilion for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago back in 1893, an expo where Captain Pabst, the beer baron, had had the honor of serving his beer and his beer only to the millions of attendees.
Built from polished terra-cotta and embellished with a beautiful art-glass dome, the pavilion served as a display of the Pabst family fortunes and Frederick’s dominance over his beer-producing empire. Once the fair had ended, Pabst had the structure dismantled and moved to the house, where it was rebuilt to serve as a summer conservatory. At some point, walls had been added to it, turning it into an enclosed room. Compared with the other areas of the house, this portion hadn’t been as lovingly and carefully restored. Peeling paint, hastily patched walls, and a general whitewash of everything set it apart.
There were two people behind the cashier desk near the entrance: a man and a woman, both of whom looked to be well into their eighties. They were busy waiting on other customers, and Mal and I settled into the queue that had formed. Mal grabbed a set of Pabst coasters so it wouldn’t look too strange to be standing in line. When we finally made it up to the desk, the woman, who was sitting on a stool, looked up at me with a tired smile stamped on her age-etched face.
“May I—” She paused, and squinted at me, and I saw a hint of recognition. My heart leapt. “Are you Mackenzie Dalton?” she asked.
“I am.” I smiled, trying not to look as anxious as I felt.
“I have something for you.” She slid off her stool and turned around, putting her back to us. It was curved and arthritic-looking beneath the cheery red Christmas sweater she was wearing. Slowly she tottered toward some shelves on the wall behind the desk, and with an audible creak, she bent over and removed a wrapped box from the bottom shelf. She shuffled her way back to us and handed me the wrapped package. “Someone left this for you the other day,” she said.
“Was it a woman?” I asked. We had good reason to suspect that the letter writer might be Suzanne Collier, the very wealthy and influential wife of Tad Amundsen, one of my regular customers and a member of the Capone Club. Tad was a trophy husband, a ridiculously handsome man who had owned a small business as a CPA before he met Suzanne. Now he provided tax, financial, and stock market services for many of Suzanne’s wealthy friends and acquaintances. As such, he regularly rubbed elbows with most of Milwaukee’s elite, although he had remained the same down-to-earth, easygoing, relatively humble person he had been before he married Suzanne.
The woman behind the desk shook her head. “No, it was a man, a young fellow. He said he had to leave town and knew you’d be coming here, and wanted to leave this for you. He gave me a picture of you, so I’d know you when you stopped by.”
“What did he look like?” I asked her, hearing the impatient sigh of the woman in line behind me, who was undoubtedly eager to pay for her items and get out rather than listen to me interrogate the old woman.
“He was average height,” the woman said. She paused, glanced at Mal standing beside me. “Shorter than him by a couple inches.” She looked away, gazing off into the distance. “Brown hair, brown eyes . . . nice smile,” she added, reminiscing with one of her own.
“Did he give you his name?”
The woman stared at me for a moment, brow furrowed. Then her face brightened. “Why yes—yes, he did,” she said, and my heart leapt again. “It was John Smith.”
My heart sank. I felt certain John Smith wasn’t the man’s real name. “Thank you,” I said, and then Mal offered up his coasters, which the woman dutifully rang up and bagged.
As soon as we were outside, I wanted to tear the package open. Mal must have sensed my eagerness because he put a staying hand on my arm. “We need to be mindful of any evidence,” he said, “even though we know there probably isn’t any.”
We knew this because there had been no evidence of any sort on any of the other packages or letters—no fingerprints, no fibers, nothing that wasn’t supposed to be there other than a stray bit of pollen in the misinterpreted letter that may or may not have been included intentionally. The letter writer had been extremely careful.
“I don’t want to go all the way back to the bar before I open it,” I told him. “What if it isn’t what we need? What if it’s just another clue to something else here on the property?”
Mal frowned at this, thought a second or two, and nodded. “Then we’ll open it in the car. I have some stuff in the trunk we can use to conserve evidence if need be.”
It was a compromise, a reasonable one, I felt. Mal’s car was parked several blocks away, so it meant a hike—not my favorite thing to do these days, thanks to my crutches and cast—but at least it was closer to the Pabst Mansion than my bar in the event we had to return.
The sidewalks were clear of the recent snowfall, making it easy going, but it was bitterly cold outside, with tiny but fierce tendrils of icy wind that snaked their way under our coats, down our collars, and through our pants. My cheeks were burning from the wind chill by the time we reached the car. Ironically, the stinging in my cheeks triggered waves in the air like one might see rising from the road on a very hot day. The cold on my skin made my mouth taste tart.
I settled into the passenger side of the front seat while Mal went around to the trunk and removed several paper bags, a box of latex gloves, and a roll of tape. We were wearing winter gloves already, and by the time he climbed into the driver’s seat, I already had the outer wrapping on the box loosened and had slid the box out. I handed Mal the paper, and he put it inside a large brown paper bag, folding the top of the bag over.
As Mal started the car, the heater came on full blast, meaning there was likely to be some fiber or dust contamination. Mal turned the blower down, as much because it was only spewing cold air at the moment as because he was trying to minimize contamination.
The box I held was plain cardboard with no markings, the kind you can buy at any shipping or mailbox store. It was closed with a single strip of tape down the middle of both the top and the bottom, though the bottom tape was a paper type, whereas the top piece was plastic. After examining it, Mal flipped the box over, reached over to his glovebox, removed a screwdriver, and opened the box on the bottom where the two flaps of cardboard met.
“The type of tape used to seal this thing closed on top is great at picking up fibers and fingerprints, so the less we disturb it the better,” he explained. He held the box out to me. “Be careful.”
I was. I raised the cardboard flaps to reveal a second, smaller, white box. Gently, I removed it and turned it right side up. It had a shoe box type lid on it that wasn’t taped closed, and like the outer box, it had no markings on it. I removed the lid and saw yet another, smaller box, this one made of wood. After handing the shoe box lid to Mal, who examined it closely before setting it inside the outer box, I reached in and lifted up the smaller box.
I held it over the shoe box and examined it. It was a decorative wooden box covered in a variety of geometric designs, and I was disappointed—and more than a little worried—to see there was no locking device on it. In fact, I couldn’t see any obvious opening.
“It’s a puzzle box,” Mal said. “I got one of those years ago as a birthday gift. They’re intricately carved so that the seams are virtually invisible. In order to open it, you have to figure out which parts of it move and in what direction and order.”
I removed my gloves and turned the box over in my hands, studying it.
“You should keep your gloves on,” Mal chastised. “There might be fingerprints.”
I shot him a look of skepticism. “You know as well as I do that there won’t be,” I said. “Whoever is behind this has been far too careful. I need to be able to feel it without the gloves in order to figure it out. Besides, if we do get lucky and find any prints, mine can simply be eliminated, right?”
Mal frowned but said nothing more on the matter. Instead, he went back to discussing the box. “These types of boxes can be very difficult to open, depending on the number of moves involved. Some of them open with only three or four moves. Others take ten or more. Maybe we should take it back to the bar and saw it open, because it could take forever to figure . . .”
His voice tapered off as I slid a small panel on one side a half inch or so.
“Wow,” Mal said with a grudging look of admiration. “That was lucky.”
“Not really,” I said, running my fingers lightly over the surface and then sliding another panel. “I can see and feel the subtle differences in the structure.” I found a third panel and pushed it up. Turning the box over each time I moved a section, I could sense the piece that had to move next. “This is kind of fun,” I said, moving two more sections. Three moves later, the box opened, revealing yet another smaller box inside. This one was metal with inlaid glass, and with a sigh of relief, I noticed it had a locking mechanism.
“You are freaking amazing,” Mal said. “And a little scary,” he added with a frown.
“This is easy for me,” I said. I put my gloves back on and lifted out the smaller box. “This is one of those times when my extra-sensitive senses come in handy.”
I fished the tiny key I’d been carrying out of my pants pocket and inserted it into the lock on the metal box. With a quarter turn, the lid sprang open, revealing a folded piece of paper inside.
“Don’t take it out yet,” Mal cautioned. “Let’s get it back to the bar.”
I nodded, familiar by now with the necessary precautions we had to take to ensure we captured any trace evidence or minute clues that might be inside the box or within the folds of the paper. Granted, we had already risked any trace evidence by simply opening the boxes and by my handling of the puzzle box without gloves. But some of the clues we’d encountered in the past had been tiny—a flower petal, a bit of pollen—and I didn’t want to risk missing a clue. I closed the lid on the box and slipped the key back into my pocket. Then I nested the little box back inside the puzzle box and slid the panels back into their original positions. Once I set this in the shoe box, Mal handed me the lid. I replaced it and then handed it all to him. He put it inside the larger outer box and then handed it all back to me.
“Let’s go,” I said.
As Mal pulled out, I held the box in my lap, feeling as if I was holding a ticking time bomb. To distract myself, I looked out my window and tried to focus on the passing scenery.
A few blocks from my bar, we drove past a restaurant, and I saw a familiar face among the pedestrians. “Mal, look, there’s Duncan.” I pointed to where he was on the opposite side of the street.
Duncan was standing on the sidewalk talking with a woman—a beautiful woman, with long dark hair, delicate features, and a tall, slender body.
“Want me to stop?” Mal asked.
“Sure.”
Mal turned on his blinker to move over toward a parking spot. I rolled down my window, prepared to holler at Duncan.
“Don’t call out to him,” Mal cautioned. “We don’t know who might be watching.”
He was right, and the blast of frigid air gusting into the car made the decision to close the window an easy one. We had taken many precautions over the past few weeks to hide the fact that Duncan and I were still seeing one another, just in case the letter writer was watching. It would be stupid to blow it all on a chance encounter.
I stared at Duncan, willing him to look our way as Mal maneuvered the car into a parking spot. The woman who was with Duncan suddenly flung her arms around his neck and kissed him. It wasn’t a chaste kiss either. She wrapped her hand around the back of his head, pulled his face toward her, and gave him a long, sensuous lip-lock.
I turned away quickly, feeling a stab of pain in my chest. The pain was an emotional reaction, I knew, but it felt very real, and for a moment I wondered if I might be having a heart attack. I shook my head, felt the pain dissipate, and looked across the street again. Duncan pulled away from the woman and placed both of his hands on her shoulders. He was saying something to her, and judging from the expression on her face, it was something nice. She gazed up at him all dreamy-eyed, a beatific smile on her lips. Her arms snaked around his waist, her hands lacing behind his back, and she pulled him closer. I looked away again, unable to watch anymore.
Mal hadn’t seen the romantic display because he had been focused on jockeying into the parking spot. As he turned off the car’s engine, I reached out and touched the hand that held the key. “Start it back up,” I said.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“I changed my mind. It’s too dangerous to contact him out here in the open. Let’s go back to the bar.”
Mal studied my face for a moment before turning to glance over at the sidewalk where Duncan had been. “Where did he go?”
I looked over at where he had been moments ago and saw that both he and the woman were gone. Where had they disappeared to? Had they gone into the restaurant? Or had they walked around the corner to the next street? “I don’t know,” I said with a small sense of relief.
Mal started the car up again, and after signaling and waiting for passing traffic, he pulled out. A few blocks later we were at my bar, and thanks to a bit of serendipitous timing, Mal secured a spot right out front. I placed the boxes inside one of the paper bags Mal had retrieved from his trunk and climbed out of the car. With my right hand, I wrapped my fingers around the handle of the paper bag, and then around the hand support on my crutch, and headed for the front door, the bag swinging and banging against my crutch. Mal shut the car doors—I’d left mine open—and scampered to catch up to me.
“Whoa,” he said as he came up alongside of me. “Let me help.”
He tried to take the bag from my hand, but I grumbled, “I got it” at him and refused to let go.
He reared back as if I’d slapped him, and I instantly regretted both my tone and my actions. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just the cold. I want to get inside where it’s warm.”
Mal didn’t try again to take the bag from me. I could tell from the way he was eyeing me that he knew something was wrong, but to his credit, he didn’t ask. He held the bar door open for me and followed me inside without another word. I knew he’d say something eventually but figured he’d wait until we were somewhere private. What was I going to tell him? The truth? He and Duncan were friends. Add to that Mal’s feelings for me, and it didn’t exactly make him an objective listener on the subject of my relationship with Duncan. It would be easy enough to lie and say it was something else bothering me—pain in my leg, or irritation over the letter writer, anything. But I didn’t like the idea of lying to Mal.
Then another thought occurred to me. He and Duncan were friends, and friends often share things about themselves. Maybe Mal knew who the woman was. Maybe he’d known Duncan was seeing someone else all along. Maybe he had been lying to me all this time by omitting this key information.
I decided a frank discussion was called for and figured I’d deal with it once we were alone. First, I needed to make sure my bar was running smoothly. It was early enough in the day that the crowd was thin. Most of the tables just inside the door were empty, but I knew there would be a handful of people—maybe more—upstairs in the Capone Club room. The day after Christmas isn’t usually a super busy day, but a lot of people do go out shopping in hopes of getting first dibs on some of the after-holiday sales, and that tends to bring people into the bar. By later this afternoon and into the evening, I expected a healthy crowd.
Billy Hughes, who is usually my evening and weekend bartender—hours that work well around his law school schedule—was on duty. My regular day bartender, Pete Hanson, was home sick with a stomach bug. Since Billy was on a break from school due to the holiday, he generously offered to fill in for Pete, pulling double duty that would end up giving him a fifteen-hour shift. My newly hired bouncer, Theodore Berenson, aka Teddy Bear, who also knew how to tend bar, was willing to put in some extra hours as well. Teddy was a friend of Billy’s who had recently been cut off from his extremely wealthy family because he opted to pursue an art degree instead of the MBA his shipping magnate father, Harley Berenson, wanted him to have. As a result of that, he had labeled himself the black sheep of the family, and he was desperate for employment and willing to work extra hours so he could make his own money. He was determined to prove to his father that he could survive just fine on his own, and his stubborn resolve was a definite boon for me. Teddy had prior training as a bartender, and between him and Billy, they managed the bar quite nicely. And Teddy’s huge size— six-six and about three hundred pounds—made him perfect for stepping in as a bouncer.
Both of them were behind the bar when we came in, and they acknowledged our arrival with nods as we entered.
“Hey, boss,” Billy said once I was within speaking distance. “Things are slow so far.”
“It will pick up later.” I looked over at Teddy. “Is everything going okay with you? Are you liking the job?”
“Things are going great,” Teddy said. “I love it here. Thanks again for hiring me.”
“You’re welcome. Let me know if you need anything.”
I headed for my office with Mal on my heels. Once inside, I set the bag on my desk, shrugged off my coat while balancing on my crutches, and then fell onto my couch. “I’m not feeling all that well at the moment,” I said. “Do you think we could postpone opening this until later?”
Mal eyed me with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism. Ironically, I’d spent more time with him, my fake beau, than I had with Duncan, my real one, so Mal knew me well enough at this point to know something was bothering me. I could tell he didn’t buy into my trumped-up excuse, but I hoped he’d accept it anyway and leave. No such luck.
He cocked his head to one side and pinned me with his laser-blue eyes. “What’s going on, Mack? You’ve been acting kind of weird ever since we saw Duncan.”
I stared at him, once again tempted to use a lie as an excuse because I didn’t want to tell him what was bothering me; it made me look like an insecure ninny. But it was what it was, so I decided to go for it. “Did you see the woman Duncan was talking to?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “I caught a glimpse, but I didn’t get a good look. I was too focused on parking the car. Why?”
“Why? Because she was gorgeous.”
“So are you, silly.” He said this as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Is that what this is about? Are you feeling a little jealous?” He huffed a small, dismissive laugh. “Just because Duncan was talking to a pretty woman doesn’t mean—”
“He kissed her, Mal. And not one of those friendly, old acquaintance or I’m your sister kind of kisses, either. I’m talking about a romantic kiss.” I looked away from him, not wanting him to see the tears I felt forming in my eyes despite my best efforts to quell them.
“You think Duncan is seeing someone else?” Mal said.
“What would you think?”
He didn’t answer right away. “I think it doesn’t sound like Duncan,” he said eventually. “He’s a pretty straightforward guy. And I know how much he cares for you.”
“That doesn’t mean he can’t care about someone else. Or that he hasn’t grown frustrated and bored with this sneaking around relationship we’ve had. Hell, I’ve been frustrated by it. Why wouldn’t he be?”
“I think you should at least give him the benefit of the doubt before you hang him,” Mal said carefully. “Maybe there’s a perfectly logical and innocent explanation for it.”
He was right, and I knew it, but that didn’t make what I had seen any easier to swallow. The two of us shifted awkwardly in the minute of silence that followed. Finally, I said, “I think I need some time to digest this, Mal.”
“And the letter? Are you going to wait on that?” The tone of disbelief—and yes, judgment—I heard in his voice made me shrink up inside. Like I said, he knew me well. He knew I wouldn’t be able to stand the curiosity nagging at me. Nor would I risk the lives of any of my friends over my own broken heart.
I squeezed my eyes closed and let my head fall back against the couch. “No, I don’t suppose we should wait on that,” I said with resignation. I lifted my head and looked at him. “But I don’t want to involve Duncan yet, either. Since he was with that woman, he’s clearly not going to be available now anyway. So let’s you and I do it. And I’ll get Cora. Does that sound reasonable?”
“Sure,” Mal said slowly after a second of thought, dragging the word out into nearly two syllables. I sensed he was carefully weighing everything I’d said, searching for some hidden meaning or trapdoor phrase, tiptoeing around my emotions.
“Good.” I pushed myself up from the couch and headed for the door. “Let’s go upstairs to my apartment and do it. I’ll call Cora when we get there. I’m sure she’s up in the Capone Club room, so it shouldn’t take her long to get to us.”
With that, I headed out of my office and down the hall to the door that led to my apartment. I didn’t look back to see if Mal was coming with me—I didn’t need to because I could hear him behind me: the gentle swish of his clothing, the soft-padded fall of his shoes, the light crinkling sound of the bag containing the boxes, the faint, rhythmic whoosh of his every exhalation. Even if I couldn’t hear those things, I could feel his presence behind me like a subtle pulling force, as if he were a magnet and I were made of metal. So far, I’d fought that feeling every time I sensed it, as if to give in to the pull of that magnet would be crossing a bridge that would burn behind me.
But after what I saw between Duncan and the woman on the street, I was beginning to rethink my caution. Maybe it was time to burn some bridges.