Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(26)
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Daddy’s trial starts the day after next. I found out tonight—the inspector from Boston, he told me they’ve lined up a lawyer for him, a fellow named Hugo Black. I guess the inspector looked it up somehow, or asked around at all the right places to find out. He’s got a badge, and that’s basically as good as a key, when it comes to opening up doors.
I only just met him this morning, but I think I like him.
He says he was a friend of yours, and that’s why he’s come here. I don’t know if that’s true, exactly, but if he wants to help, I’m happy to have him. This inspector, he’s a round fellow, a little older than my daddy, I’d wager; and if you were to tell a Christmas story about him, you might say he was jolly. He dresses nice and he talks fast, and he seems very smart. He wears round black spectacles and shiny shoes. He carries a handkerchief that he uses to pat his face and neck all the time, bless his heart. It’s not very hot at all right now, but he’s a big man and I guess it’s too much for him—after spending so much time in New England.
He says it snows all the time in Boston. I bet it’s pretty. I’ve never seen any snow myself. Just in pictures.
Anyway, I met him down at Saint Paul’s when I went looking for Chief Eagan, who isn’t the police chief anymore. I invited him to supper because it sounded like the polite thing to do, and because I wanted to talk to him. It’s not every day someone shows up and offers any help, and we could use some friends right about now. Inspector Wolf isn’t from around here, and if he was friends with you, then he doesn’t mind Catholics. I thought maybe he wouldn’t mind a Puerto Rican, either, and I was right about that. I guess it’s different in the big cities.
(Pedro says it isn’t any different, not really. He says there’s good and bad in every place, no matter how big or small. I told him we were running low on good folks, as they kept getting murdered by the bad ones; he told me that we still had some left, and look—Boston had one to spare.)
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The inspector came over right when I told him to, at the crack of six o’clock. He brought a bouquet of flowers and joked that he’d tried to find a bottle of wine, but Prohibition had thwarted him. I laughed, and told him we’d had prohibition here longer than most anybody; they chased all that stuff out of town back in 1909.
Or they tried to. If anybody really wanted a drink, most everybody knew where to find one.
“That’s always the case,” he agreed. “In Boston, I can find any spirit in under an hour. We have some of the finest speakeasies in the nation, or so they tell me. Mind you, a friend of mine in San Francisco would argue. He insists they have the market cornered out in California, but I haven’t been there lately, so I can’t swear to it one way or another.”
He hung up his jacket with apologies, and I said he ought to make himself comfortable. I opened a window or two, to let the cooking warmth outside. He took a seat as near to the fresh air as possible, thanked me, and shook Pedro’s hand when he appeared.
“Inspector Simon Wolf,” he introduced himself like a gentleman.
“Pedro Gussman. Ruthie told me about you. Welcome to our home.”
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I made fried chicken and rice with gravy, corn bread and okra, and there was banana pudding for dessert. The inspector was very cheerful about the meal, and I could see how he came to such a comfortable size. I took it as a compliment that he finished everything, and cleared out the seconds when he was invited to help himself.
“It’s not that we don’t have good home cooking back east,” he said, ladling the last of the okra onto his plate. “We do, of course. But the flavors are different, the spices and the seasoning. Okra, for heaven’s sake—you can’t get okra in Boston. And it breaks my heart, because I fear I’ve already developed a deep-seated fondness for it. It simply isn’t fair, when earth’s bounty of deliciousness can’t grow all in one place.”
But over the pudding, the talk got more serious.
We needed time to build up to it, I guess. Murder is a hard subject for a getting-to-know-you chat. He started gently, pushing his plate away and placing his napkin on the table.
“You know, it’s been ten years since James Coyle and I first met. He was in New York for a conference, and I was there for . . . something else entirely. We were both snowed in, at the same hotel,” he said, so softly he might’ve been talking to himself. Then, a little louder, “We weren’t always very good about staying in touch—but we visited whenever the opportunity presented itself.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” my husband asked.
He thought about it a moment, and said, “Last October. He was passing through Boston for a few days, and I played tour guide. We ate at some wonderful places, took in some wonderful sights, and had some wonderful conversations. It doesn’t feel so long ago as that, but I suppose it must have been.” He sighed and removed his glasses, wiping them clean on his shirtsleeve. “For the last few weeks, I’ve been away from my office on a case . . . and I did not receive his letters until it was too late.”
My ears perked up. “Letters?”
“He’d been asking me to visit this fine city, but not on any pleasure tour, I’m afraid. His letters were primarily about the axe murders you’ve been experiencing . . . but his last one, that was different. He wrote about the Klan, of course, and its affiliate groups—and he mentioned a church as well. You know of it, I believe. You mentioned it this morning.”