Mittman, Stephanie (6 page)

"It
does seem the most obvious solution, doesn't it?" Kathryn asked while
Charlotte fought to keep the resignation from showing in her nod.

"I
could go to a hotel," Ash offered from the bottom of the stairwell,
obviously wishing as fervently as she that he were anywhere else.

"Remanded
to your brother's custody," she reminded him. Maybe Ashford didn't
understand the letter of the law, but she had a very clear picture of the next
few weeks, and in it the sun wasn't shining over Whittier Court.

"Well,
then, the couch is fine," he said, looking at the walls as if they were
already closing in on him. "Heck, it's a big house, Charlotte, and it's
yours. I certainly wouldn't want to put you out of your study."

"I've
no objection to you taking over the high room," Charlotte said, brushing
off calling the room her study, or the house hers. Kathryn had little enough in
life to call her own. Charlotte was not going to take the woman's house from
her just because she'd married her son.

And
if Cabot didn't need a study, why should she? "Really," she added,
wishing she felt half as generous as she sounded, and thrice as generous as she
felt.

She
couldn't help loving that high room, with its eight arched windows, two in each
direction. At every hour of the day there was something to watch—the sun
rising, playing on Lake Merritt, dappling the trees, and finally setting at the
end of the day. She loved taking down her hair up there and brushing it until
it glistened, then pulling it back into its bun to face the world. She loved
the lace curtains, and the flowered slipper chair she'd taken down from the
attic to set beside the windows.

"You'll
no doubt want me to remove a few of my things," she said, imagining the
wrong impression Ash could get from the condition she'd left his room in.
"But the room is yours, of course. I was only borrowing it while you were
away."

"You
aren't practicing your cigar smoking up there, are you?" Ash asked.
"Or have you other vices even Cabot doesn't know about?"

Kathryn
rapped her cane on the hardwood floor. "Don't you go teasing
Charlotte," she said, though Charlotte had the sense that he wasn't
teasing so much as he was accusing her of something. "I'm quite sure she
hasn't a single vice."

"Charlotte!"
Cabot's angry voice implied otherwise as he shouted her name from his office.
"Charlotte Whittier, get your corpus calossum in here at once and explain
this! I thought we agreed that your little Comstock case for Virginia Halton
was ancient history."

***

His
sister-in-law looked as though she'd been caught with someone else's fish on
her line.

"Charlotte?"
Cabot demanded. "Are you out there?"

"Coming!"

She
glanced down at the valise in her hand and then at the doorway, looking nearly
vulnerable for a moment despite the tight bun and the starched collar. Ash
noticed that when she wasn't carefully sucking it in, the woman's lower lip was
full—lush, even. And, at the moment, he thought it was trembling slightly.

"I'll
put him upstairs," Ash said, climbing the couple of steps and trying to
take the case from her hand. She hesitated, clinging to the briefcase handle
while his hands gripped the sides.

"Charlotte!"

Hesitantly
she released her hold on the bag. There was no question the lip was indeed
quivering when she called out to Cabot that she was coming.

Ash
remained on the stairs, watching as she straightened her shirtwaist, threw back
her shoulders, and lifted her chin before crossing the threshold into the
offices that had been built as part of the house when his father had begun the
construction years before Ash had even been born. Two offices, one for father
and one intended for son. His father would die all over again if he knew that
they now were for husband and wife.

Once
Charlotte was gone, he put the briefcase down with a quick promise to the bird
within. On flat, tired feet he padded through the foyer into the front
vestibule, unable to resist a quick look out onto the wide green lawn to
satisfy his curiosity. More than likely he'd have noticed on the way in if it
hadn't been for the damn peacock.

Naturally,
the old sign was there, just as he suspected. The back of it was still and
forever peeling, assuring him that it read as it always had: whittier and son,
attorneys-at-law.
Whittier and Whittier,
she'd said. He didn't think
that Cabot's wedding vows would have extended to the sharing of his little
empire. It wasn't like Cabot Whittier to share anything he felt belonged
exclusively to him.

"When
Cabot's interested in hearing who I suspect might have done it, send Rosa up,
will you?" he asked his mother, stooping to kiss the top of her head as he
passed her on his way to the stairwell.

"You
don't mind being back in the high room, do you?" she asked when he reached
for the briefcase that waited on the steps. "Other arrangements could
certainly be made if that room disturbs you."

"Of
course not," Ash said over his shoulder as casually as he could. He took
the steps two at a time, stopping at the second-floor landing for a quick look
to see what had changed. Seven eight-panel mahogany doors, all closed, still
lined the hall. On the papered walls that separated the bedroom doors were
portraits of his ancestors, many in judge's robes, some even complete with
wigs. A bench across from each painting allowed a resting place for the
contemplation of the Whittier roots.

That
was how his father had put it. The
Whittier roots.
The phrase always
left Ash feeling like the one rotten apple the family tree had produced.

In
the bag at his side the bird chirped weakly to remind him of its hunger.

Up
the second flight of stairs his old room waited for him. The curtains were
drawn and the sun streamed in, pointing to his old desk, the pages of an open
book flipping in the breeze, a hairbrush with a few dark strands set beside it.
The desk was still there, but now it was haphazardly redecorated with shawls
and feminine gewgaws and yard upon yard of lace. Even his dresser, where once
mighty soldiers fought battles over blocks upon which to stand, was covered
with a frilly runner. The lacy doily was nearly hidden by a collection of small
bottles, a mortar and pestle, and a stack of fresh clean cloths.

And
from the sounds coming from beneath his bed, it appeared that his
sister-in-law's feeding station was attracting more than simply birds.

Kicking
the door shut, he pulled back the chair from his desk, and started to set
Charlotte's satchel there. He stopped at the sight of a pair of ladies' cotton
hose that lay crumpled on the seat. Apparently his sister-in-law had made
herself quite at home in his old room. He held up one of the stockings, its top
banded with the same delicate edging that covered everything else in the room,
its ankle embroidered with intricate little flowers, and let it hang from his
raised arm. Nothing he'd removed from his own person had ever shown quite so
much shape.

But
a grown woman's foot couldn't be that small, could it?

The
bird shrieked at him and he dropped the stocking guiltily. "Well, she
shouldn't have left it around," he said in his own defense, placing the
satchel on the trunk at the foot of the bed. Upon opening it he found that the
bird, apparently angry at his confinement, had taken out his frustration on the
contents of Charlotte's Gladstone, ripping papers and decorating them with his
droppings.

"Where's
your lace collar?" he asked the bird, gently taking him out and cradling
him in his palm. "Or doesn't she let you wear it outside this room?"

She
was something, that Charlotte. Fooling the world into thinking she didn't have
a feminine bone in her body, tricking him into feeding her little runt of a
bird when his own parrot was probably starving to death. Moss Johnson's job was
strictly to be Ash's man in the warehouse, not on board the
Bloody Mary.
Had
it occurred to him, then, to go onto the ship and feed Liberty? He hoped so, or
the whole harbor would be deaf from the parrot's version of "Little Brown
Jug." Deaf and scandalized.

He
looked over the various bottles on his dresser, wondering what he was supposed
to feed the tiny thing in his hand. He really ought to be downstairs, helping
Cabot sort out the details of his return to Oakland. Of course, Cabot would do
it better than he could. Cabot had always done everything better than Ash ever
could.

The
way they told it, Cabot had been faster than the wind before the accident. He'd
probably swum across the bay in record time, though it didn't seem anyone had
ever bothered to clock him.

Now
the man had to settle for just walking on the water.

Rolling
on it.

***

"Charlotte,
this case is too dangerous, too controversial, for you to be taking on. You're
trying to build a career here, not change the world," Cabot said, throwing
the letters she'd received into the wastebasket.

"I'm
trying to do both," she said, digging the letters back out. "Women
have rights, Cabot, or they should have."

"Oh,
please," Cabot said, raising his hands in mock defeat. "Don't start
in again with your damn suffrage talk. If I have to hear about the
forward-looking territory of Wyoming one more time, I think I may just buy you
a ticket and let you go freeze your tail off out there for a month or
two."

"But
I don't see why if Wyoming allows women the vote, and to serve on juries and in
its courts, that the great state of California—"

"Charlotte,
we've been over this a million times. Wyoming precedent won't apply here
because it's not a state. When you've got a population of forty-two thousand in
the whole territory, you'd let the damn dogs have the vote!"

"And
do you put women and dogs in the same category?" she asked him, pacing
around the room rearranging whatever wasn't nailed down.

"From
what I've heard, they both have cold noses," Cabot said. "And they
are noisy and messy and they don't give you any peace."

He
sighed heavily and, pushing his papers aside, rested his elbows on his desk.

"We
don't have time for this, Charlotte. We've got to hire a private investigator
for the legwork and we've got to go over every shred of evidence with a fine-tooth
comb. I have a bad feeling this is going to be our toughest case."

"But
you're tired," Charlotte said, watching as Cabot rolled his head,
stretching his neck out first this way and then that. "Maybe we should do
this later?"

"If
we wait until I'm not tired, Charlotte, they'll have hanged my brother and
buried my grieving mother as well." He reached for his glass on the desk,
found it empty, and grimaced.

"I'll
get you some more," Charlotte said, hopeful for the opportunity to leave
the room and check on whatever had happened to the fledgling she'd left in
Ashford's care. If what Cabot was always saying about his brother was true, the
bird was probably already dead from neglect. And then there was Van Gogh, the
little one-earred rabbit she'd named for that poor artist Cabot's friend from
Paris had told them about, who'd no doubt left a welcome present right on Ash's
coverlet.

"Sit,"
Cabot directed her as she stood and reached out for his empty glass. "You
can make better use of your time researching the penal code than playing at the
domesticated little woman. Did you ask him if he had any alibi?"

Charlotte
set the glass down on the desk, careful to center it on the coaster the way
Cabot preferred. She pulled the servant's cord for Maria and then took her seat
again. Cabot's face was drawn; his fingers played relentlessly with the spokes
of his chair wheel. "Are you all right? It's not like you to snap at me
so."

"I'm
sorry, little one," he said, studying her with eyes that softened the
longer they looked. "Have I been a beast?"

"Grumpy,"
she admitted, shrugging it off. "Nothing that I can't handle."

"You're
a good girl," he said, returning to his papers and ignoring Maria so that
Charlotte had to once again get up, hand Maria the glass, and gesture for her to
refill it. When Cabot read, he didn't like the chaos of chatter, and it amazed
Charlotte how the staff could keep silent and anticipate instructions without a
word being spoken.

"His
alibi?" Cabot asked when Maria closed the door behind her. Cases were never
discussed in front of the servants, as well they shouldn't be. Charlotte
certainly wouldn't appreciate her private business bandied about in the back
halls. Not that she had any private business. Still, if she had...

"He
seems strangely vague on that," she admitted. "Apparently he was on
the ship all night, but he's not too sure who saw him. He mentioned something
about coming and going."

Cabot
smiled knowingly and shook his head. "I'll just bet he's not sure.
Probably doesn't even know her name or where he picked her up. We'll have to
get the investigator to find out where the hell he was. And who it was he took
back with him."