Grave Phantoms (Roaring Twenties #3)(30)

Anger tightened her eyes. “Since when did you become the boss of me?”

“Since when did you stop caring about my opinion?”

Sulking, she turned her head and ran a gloved finger over her fogged-up window. After a long moment she said, “We never finished our conversation last night.”

Yes, he knew. He hadn’t forgotten for even a moment. “Mm.”

“Is Sylvia your girlfriend?” she asked calmly.

“I already told you. She’s just a friend.”

“Have you slept with her?”

He paused too long. He knew it, and yet . . . he didn’t know what to say. She’d never asked him anything so personal.

He slowed at a stop sign and turned the corner. The flooding was worse here, so he drove in the middle of the road to avoid pools of water. “I shouldn’t have brought her to Gris-Gris. I was . . . I don’t know. There was the wristwatch, but then you were going dancing, and I was confused. You always confuse me.”

“You always confuse me.”

He slanted a glance toward her face and restrained a smile. “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

“That depends,” she said, adjusting the fit of her glove. “Am I the chicken or egg?”

“I think maybe we’re both chickens.”

She snorted a little laugh and relaxed against the seat. “You might be right.”

Neither of them said anything else until he pulled into the Magnussons’ driveway. He put the car in idle and they both stared ahead.

“I guess I better be heading to work now.” He considered telling her that the nurse at the hospital had given him Mrs. Cushing’s address, but she’d want to accompany him if he admitted that he was heading over there to see what he could find out. The protective part of him worried that it wasn’t safe for her to be seen there. So he said nothing.

“Bo?”

“Yes?”

“Let’s what?”

“Pardon?”

“Last night you started to say something to me. You said ‘Let’s,’ and then Greta . . .”

The screen door on the side porch slammed. Winter was heading toward the car—probably wanting a ride to the warehouse. Bo cursed the big man’s timing.

“Never mind,” Astrid said glumly.

“Wait.” Bo grabbed her arm as she reached for the door handle. “Let’s pretend we’re other people. That’s what I was going to say.”

She stared at him for a long moment, lips parted, cheeks stained pink. His wildly beating heart felt as if it were trying to outpace the quick rise and fall of her chest. And as Winter strolled around the front of the car, she slid her hand over his for a fleeting, impossibly brief moment (soft skin, slender fingers, gentle squeeze).

It was the smallest thing.

It was everything.

Permission.

Bo squeezed her hand in reply, and then she let go and exited in a whirl of flowing coat and skirt. The last things he saw were the delicate lines that ran down the backs of her stockings.

—

Mrs. Cushing lived in a grand sandstone-faced manor overlooking the Presidio. An hour after dropping off Astrid, Bo stared up at the manor from his car and knew he had no chance of getting inside. An ornate iron fence and sculpted bushes blocked most of the home’s entrance from the street, and standing guard at the gate beneath a gated portico were two bulky men.

Were the guards just to keep reporters at bay? Bo didn’t know. He also didn’t see any automobiles. No license plate numbers to trace. No sign of anyone at all, except for the guards.

And yet.

One of those guards looked familiar. Bo pulled up to the gate and rolled down his window. “Little Mike?”

A tall, bald man leaned down and squinted into the car. “I’ll be damned. Bo Yeung,” he said with a wide smile. “What you doin’ down here, son?”

“Looking for someone. Thought you were working at Izzy Gomez’s speakeasy?”

“Still there. This is just a part-time job. Getting paid well to stand in the rain for five hours and tell reporters to hit the road. You here about the boat that was lost at sea? Heard it crashed into your pier.”

“That it did. The owner of the boat, Mrs. Cushing—she employ the two of you?”

“Supposedly, but we’ve never met her. Fella by the name of Dan hired all of us. Her houseboy, from the looks of him. He tells us where to show up, pays us under the table.”

“Ever see a man around here named Max?” Bo asked.

“Is that one of them boat survivors?”

Bo described Max, and the guard’s eyebrows shot up.

“Yeah, that could be one of them, but his name isn’t Max—it’s Kit Manson. Deadbeat gambler who used to stir up trouble at Izzy Gomez’s. Had a dope habit. Heroin, I think. Last time I saw him was more than a year ago, but when they brought the survivors in here, I could’ve sworn it was him. Tried to say something to him, but he didn’t remember me. Either it’s his twin brother, or whatever happened to them at sea really messed up his mind.”

“You don’t say,” Bo muttered. “Been a year since you seen this Kit Manson fellow . . . You remember where he lived?”

“He didn’t have a permanent place. Whatever boardinghouse or room for rent he could find that would take him until he stopped paying. Last time I saw him, he said he got an invitation to a secret club in Jackson Square. Said it was going to change his life, make him rich.”