Cole climbed the stairs leading to his apartment and loosened his tie knot, smiling. Having been weighted by unspoken words and punctured by regret, his heart hadn’t been this light and whole in years. As for Elissa? She might have walked into work this morning on Kendrew’s arm, but for most of the day, she’d been on his. And it would remain that way if he had anything to do with it.
His Spark.
Whispering a prayer of thanks, he unlocked his apartment door, shouldering it open. Movement stirred in the early evening shadows.
A man.
The guy’s back was to Cole, hunched over the desk that sat under the window.
“Hey!” Cole dashed after him.
The intruder scrambled over the desk for the open window, papers scattering, the piece of furniture rocking from the movement and falling over. Cole hurtled the coffee table, side-stepping the desk, and reached the window. The man bounded down the last of the fire escape and leapt to the alley.
Cole sprinted out of his apartment and pounded on his cousin’s door across the hall. “Sterling! Get out here!” He didn’t wait to see if his cousin was in but rushed down the steps, jumping the bottom six.
“What’s going on?” Sterling called from upstairs.
“Come on.” Cole charged out the front door, off the porch, smacking the concrete. The wind threw its airy blast in his face, but he knew these streets with his eyes closed. He dashed in the direction the man had retreated. It led to Fifth Avenue, where the intruder could easily slip away. Cole glared down the busy thoroughfare. A man on a bicycle zipped by. Several men puffed cigars outside the hat shop. The postman jaywalked across the street, but—
A hand clapped his shoulder. Cole spun with his fist clenched and ready.
Sterling.
He blew out a ragged breath.
“Forget about me so quickly?” Amusement lit his cousin’s eyes, even while his mouth held a firm scowl.
“A man broke into my apartment.” His chest burned, though he wasn’t sure if it was because of the biting air in his lungs or the sorry fact the blasted guy had escaped.
Sterling’s gaze swept the area. “No luck finding him now.”
Businesses he could have ducked into lined the avenue. And most likely he’d snuck out the back door of one of them. Confound it.
“Did you catch a glimpse of him?” A bead of water trickled down Sterling’s temple. His hair was flattened to his head. Wet. He must’ve just gotten out of the shower when he’d heard Cole’s pounding.
“Not really. He had a lean build. Black clothes, with the jacket collar flipped up and hat pulled low. I think his hair was dark. Nothing substantial.” He kicked a piece of garbage out of the way. “Let’s get back inside. If you catch a cold two days before your wedding, Sophie will murder me.” He scanned the road again. Was this the same man who’d broken into Mom’s kitchen last week? The one on the hunt for alcohol?
“What about Jeffrey Shelby? Think it could’ve been him?” Sterling’s suspicious tone threw Cole’s train of thought off its rails.
“Why would Jeffrey break into my room?” Cole tugged open the front door to the complex and allowed Sterling to enter first. “Think he’s the vengeful sort and mistook my room for yours? Wanting to vandalize it as he did Gibson’s Drug Store?”
Sterling rubbed the turn of his jaw. “That’s possible. He refused to answer any questions without his lawyer present.” He smacked the railing as they trudged up the steps. “The only information he told me was that his father’s death shocked him, and he turned to the bottle for comfort. Not those exact words, mind you.” He rolled his eyes. “Let’s check your room and see if the intruder left anything.”
“The man who broke in was lean. That rules out Jeffrey. No way that stocky man could lose that much poundage in a day.” Cole turned the light on, assessing the living room and adjacent kitchenette. Hopefully, the intruder had been careless. He grimaced. “It’s probably the same guy who stole the case of wood ethanol. On the hunt again.” Cole crouched by the overturned desk, inspecting the scattered papers for something foreign. Nope. All his.
Sterling leaned out the window with incredible skill for a man of his stature. “Nothing on the fire escape.” He shrank through the opened space, standing to full height. “My gut is telling me this has something to do with the new will that’s gone missing.”
“Why would anyone think I have it?” Cole scowled and righted the desk.
“Because you were in Shelby’s office last night.” He eased the window shut, drawing closed the curtains. “Those two brutes saw you. We don’t know who they’re working for.”
“But how’d they know it was me? Where I live?” Realization struck like a punch to the gut. “Someone’s trailing me.”
“Most likely.”
Dread clawed Cole’s chest. If he was being followed, then Elissa could be too. She could be in the sights of the killer. “Can you set up a patrol at the Tillman residence?” If not, Cole would camp outside her front door.
Sterling gave a tight nod. “Consider it done. Did one of those men at Shelby’s office match the guy you just saw?”
“No. One was porky, and the other looked malnourished.” But neither height nor build mattered when carrying a weapon. Cole’d be sure to stick close to Elissa. “Dr. Sheffield’s stature seems the same. Think he could be angry because he wasn’t getting any more charity checks? Did Shelby’s old will designate funds to Sheffield?”
“The doc’s not even mentioned. He’d have no reason to hunt for the new one.” Sterling grunted. “Plus, I questioned him right after you told me about your suspicion. He had seven hundred alibis for the night of Shelby’s murder. He was speaking at a convention in Erie.”
“That excludes him.” Cole palmed the back of his neck.
“You say the intruder had dark hair. Be more specific, brown or black?”
“Black.”
Sterling gave a tight nod. “I’m thinking you’ve just met the elusive lab assistant. Matthew Young.”
The wind subsided, but a howling chill echoed in the hollow of Elissa’s gut as her heels clicked on the charred sidewalk lining Garson Street. She squinted against the noonday sun at the skeletal remains of the Halloway Building.
Why had Mr. Shelby come here that tragic night? Was the Halloway Building the mysterious headquarters he’d spoken to Cole about? She only had her lunch hour to discover all she could. After that, Father might become concerned. Elissa tugged her collar higher, deflecting the slight breeze.
The city had ordered the building’s demolition to begin next week, due to the hazardous conditions the fire had wrought. This was her only chance to find a clue, a lead for her article.
She slipped on leather gloves as she skimmed the area. Except for some charred wood scraps, most of the debris from the explosion had been cleared. Stepping over a sooty plank, she made her way to the door Mr. Shelby would have gone through the last day he was alive. She tested the knob. Locked.
She could scour the grounds in hopes he’d dropped something the police hadn’t found, but if Sterling was anything like Cole on a pursuit, she was out of luck.
Her heart quickened at the thought of Cole. She wasn’t sure how to label their relationship. Holding hands and kissing had pushed them past the boundary of friendship, but the idea of being a couple again tested her courage. She blew out a noisy breath. The man was proving, even in his absence, to be a distraction.
She had to find her story. She had the same alphabet to work with that Cole did, right? This was her opportunity to prove she could piece together the puzzle of letters to fashion a masterpiece worthy of attention.
Elissa walked methodical lines around the building, her gaze pinned to the scarred pavement. After thirty minutes of straining her eyes, she decided her idea was a flop. Besides the soot swirling the air every time the breeze kicked up, she had noticed nothing.
A muffled cough yanked her attention from the blackened building to the adjacent corner. A man huddled in a weather-beaten doorway. His bleak clothing almost blended into his ashen face. His pack, torn and threadbare, lay to his side.
A hobo.
He coughed again, tightening his gray-whiskered jaw, and succumbed to a vicious bout of wheezing. The man needed water or something to coat his throat. She reached for the lozenges in her purse and froze. What if the man was dangerous? What if this was an act to bait her to give him aid, only to assault her? She shook her head. After proofreading scores of articles about Pittsburgh’s crime-life, she’d allowed her reasoning to become darkened with fear. It was one thing to be cautious and another to be callous to the needs of others.
The stranger held his ribs with another fit of coughs, and Elissa walked toward him, fishing in her purse for the throat drops. She calculated her distance and stopped a good ten feet from the man, who was now hunched over.
Her fingers squeezed the circular tablets, while her brain suggested she toss them at the scrawny fellow and dash off. But the sag in his posture while he focused on the spit-stained ground made her take another step forward.
She took a calming breath. “Hello.”
The man flinched.
“I’m sorry for disturbing you, but I have something that may help.” She held out her hand, and the man’s gaze softened. “I’ll set them here on the walk if you’re interested.”
He gave a frail smile.
She pivoted toward the road, ears sharp in case the man intended to make his move.
“What’s your name?”
Turning, she cleared her throat and acknowledged him with a small smile. “Elissa.”
He straightened and cracked his neck to one side then the other. “Thank you kindly, Elissa.” He stooped and picked up the lozenges. “It’s nice to know decent people exist nowadays. Especially around this place.”
“Quite welcome.” She offered another warm smile, contemplating. “Have you lived around here for a while?”
“Several months.” His eyes lowered while his blackened fingernails worked to unwrap the medicine. “Can’t say my lodgings are ideal.” He jerked his head toward the doorframe from which he just stepped. “But, at least from my view, you witness a lot of dealings. Some good.” He lifted up the lozenge as a reference. “Some not so good.”
Her pulse quickened. “Were you here the day of the explosion?” She pointed to the charred structure to her left. “Such a tragedy about Mr. Shelby.”
“Maybe I was.” He shrugged. “Maybe I wasn’t.”
So the nice old hobo wasn’t as artless as he appeared. She possessed only a five-dollar bill hidden in case of an emergency, and this qualified. “Any information you have would be helpful.” She retrieved the cash from her purse.
The man’s back straightened. Five dollars could feed him for three weeks. Four—if he was frugal and didn’t waste it in seedy speakeasies. He sucked in air through his teeth, making him cough again.
She waited until his breath evened enough for him to speak.
“So happens that before the explosion, I saw a finely dressed man talking to a woman. She was a pretty woman from what I could see. I was camped over there.” He pointed to the neighboring alley. “They argued a bit, and the guy let his temper out on her. Gave her a nice slap on the cheek. She called him a few ugly names and got into her car and drove off.”
A woman? Mrs. Shelby? Elissa’s brow wrinkled. The hobo had mentioned an attractive woman. Did that mean she was young? Mrs. Shelby was in her late sixties, and while the woman wasn’t bad-looking, Elissa wouldn’t label her a beauty.
And had the man she argued with been Mr. Shelby? Or someone else?
“What happened to the man? Did he leave too?”
The hobo’s gaze slid to the money in her hand. She didn’t want to get too close to him, but she didn’t want the money carried away on the breeze either. A “No Parking” sign stood six feet away. Elissa folded the money and tucked it into one of the holes in the pole. There.
With a smirk, she stepped away. “Now. About the gentleman you saw? Can you describe him? Like was he tall or short? Old or young? And what became of him?”
He grinned. “Like I said, he was nicely dressed. His suit was all pressed, and he was wearing one of them fancy hats with a satin band. I couldn’t see his face too well, but he didn’t look too old. He was nice-sized. Tall. A bit on the thicker side. After he slapped the woman, he took off ’round the back.”
Elissa tried to keep her heartbeat at a normal pace, but it spiked regardless. This was huge. Finally, a lead!
He stepped over to the sullied sign, withdrew the money, and stuffed it in his frayed coat pocket. “Fell asleep after that and got woken up by the loudest boom I ever heard. The place was in flames, and junk was everywhere. Then came the sirens, and I decided to move on out for a spell.”
“Thank you, sir.” Elissa beamed, and the man looked at her as if she’d sprouted five heads. “You’ve been most obliging.”
He laughed. “Don’t waste those fancy words on me, kiddo. But you’re welcome.”
She nodded and controlled her steps, walking a few blocks east in hopes of catching a cable car. The man’s description eliminated Daniel Shelby. The inventor hadn’t been tall and had definitely not been thick. More average height and lean. Could this mystery man have planted the dynamite? Set a timer to explode for when Mr. Shelby was inside the building?
High-dollar suits, a beautiful woman, and an irrational temper? According to the gossip column, all of those factors added up to one man.
Jeffrey Shelby.