Sara Paretsky - Sisters on the Case

The problem with diamonds is that when a young lady sells one, she receives a lovely large amount of money, and in 1886 Chicago was filled to the brim with fashionable bonnets and delicious cakes and expensive Parisian scents-in short, as Shakespeare says, it was a surfeit of the sweetest things. So I knew that the money would have disappeared quick as a wink.

I had just come from St. Louis, where my darling little niece Juliet, not yet four years old, lived with my friend Hattie in a home that was pleasant but with a roof that was beginning to leak. As there were only five diamonds remaining of the ones Juliet’s father had left, I had resolved to keep them for her future use. For safekeeping I’d had them set into a cheap theatrical bracelet, interspersed with flashy paste jewels, to disguise their value. Oh, I know, rich people prefer to keep their valuables in bank vaults. But an actress on tour never knows when money might be needed, and if the diamonds are far away in a vault they aren’t much help. Besides, when men like Jay Gould decide it’s time for their banks to fail, everything disappears except for Mr. Gould’s share. The bracelet had proved much more convenient for me.

Not that I planned to use it, except of course as part of my costume. It was boom times in Chicago. Just a few steps north of the train station I saw the brand-new Home Insurance Building and lordy, it must have been nine or ten stories high! The April breezes were alive with the smells of the lake, the smokestacks, the bakeries, the stockyards, but to me it seemed the scent of money. I reckoned I’d soon be joining the ranks of the rich folk like Marshall Field and George Pullman.

There were a great number of shows playing, and in the normal way of things a few cast members would have succumbed to sciatica or a catarrh by now. But unfortunately, actors in Chicago all enjoyed superb good health that week. Even when I showed managers the Kansas City clipping calling me ‘‘Bridget Mooney, the Bernhardt of Missouri,’’ one after another informed me that replacements were not required.

Well, hang it, what’s a poor girl to do, when even her fellow actors conspire against her? To avoid having to pry one of Juliet’s diamonds from my bracelet, I was reduced to performing my comic impersonation of Lillie Langtry in a variety show at Kohl and Middleton’s Dime Museum, the one on Clark near Madison. That week the program also included a local pair of jugglers called the Flaming Flanagans and a troupe of ten trained Saint Bernard dogs. ‘‘Thoroughbred canine heroes!’’ said the advertisements. Shakespeare must have been thinking of a manager when he wrote, ‘‘He has not so much brain as earwax,’’ because the dogs received top billing, even though I was appearing in an olive green figured sateen dress with handsomely draped bustle that had once belonged to the rich and beautiful Lillie Langtry herself.

The giant dogs were amiable but slavered copiously. As we were preparing for the first show that afternoon, one of them drooled into the Flanagans’ box of juggling balls backstage. Johanna-the female Flanagan-fetched the huge dog such a whack that he turned tail and ran for his trainer. Her eyes blazing bright as the torches that she and her brother juggled at the finale of their act, Johanna advanced on dog and trainer. The trainer babbled confused apologies and Johanna quickly relented. ‘‘Oh, the dear puppy, I didn’t hurt him, did I?’’ She petted the animal’s massive skull, and I decided she had a warm heart after all.

My judgment was confirmed after the show, when she learned I was looking for lodging and promptly offered me a cheap bed. I was quick to accept, and Johanna looked pleased. ‘‘Good! You can share my room in my mother’s house,’’ she said. ‘‘Mutti charges less than a boardinghouse, and you won’t have to pay till we get our money.’’

As Kohl and Middleton paid very little, and not until the end of the week, this was welcome news to me. ‘‘Johanna, you are so very kind! Will there be space for my costumes?’’ I gestured at the trunk I’d had brought from the station.

‘‘Yes, at the foot of your bed.’’

‘‘But did you say ‘Mutti’? Are you German, then?’’ I asked. It was true that Johanna was blond and tall in stature, and looked more German than Hibernian despite being a Flanagan.

‘‘I’m half German,’’ she explained. ‘‘Da is Irish, but we haven’t seen him these fifteen years. And when my brother Peter and I went on the stage with our blazing torches, we thought ‘The Flaming Flanagans’ was a good name.’’ She finished removing the rouge from her cheeks, closed her box of paints, and said, ‘‘Let’s go, then. Peter’s off to the beer hall with his friend Archie tonight, and-oh!’’ She looked apologetic. ‘‘I forgot to say, I promised to call on my friend Mabel on our way home. Do you mind? Just for a short chat. You must come too, she’s ever so nice, and good at finding bargains, and we won’t be long.’’

‘‘I would be honored to meet your friend.’’

‘‘Oh, good! Here, let me help you get your trunk down the steps.’’

We pulled it out the stage door into the balmy April night. I hailed a porter, a hollow-eyed fellow in a yellow checked cap who gave his name as Peebles and clumsily bumped my arm as he lifted my trunk into his barrow. Then I hurried up Clark Street toward Johanna, who had strolled ahead a few steps toward the crowds spilling from the Grand Opera House. Suddenly a strong hand seized my arm. ‘‘Stop in the name of the law! Your kind aren’t permitted here!’’

I turned to see a man with a mustache and a derby hat. Despite his ordinary clothes he was wielding the weighted cane used by police detectives, so I said most politely, ‘‘Why, sir, I have done nothing wrong! I am but a visitor to your city.’’

He seemed taken aback by my excellent speech, as well he might be. My tutor had been the great actress Fanny Kemble. But he blustered on, ‘‘You’re new in town, that I believe, if you think you’ve done nothing wrong! Red hair, clothes beyond your means-you’re a tart!’’

Lordy, was there ever such an insult? True, my hair is red, and I was still wearing the dress that had been the notorious Lillie’s, but those are not good reasons to arrest a perfectly innocent young lady who only rarely is forced to resort to the line of work he mentioned!

Johanna had finally looked back and now came striding up, nearly as tall as my captor. But her voice was girlish as she simpered, ‘‘Why, Detective Loewenstein, what a coincidence! I was just taking my friend to meet your wife! Bridget, let me introduce Detective Jacob Loewenstein, my dear friend Mabel’s husband, and one of the finest policemen in Chicago. Detective Loewenstein, this is Miss Bridget Mooney.’’

Hang it, he didn’t seem such a fine policeman to me! But he had finally released me, and it appeared that I was about to call on his wife, so I followed Johanna’s lead and said loftily, ‘‘I’m delighted to meet you, Detective Loewenstein. It is indeed reassuring to know that you are protecting the citizens of Chicago with such zeal.’’

‘‘Yes, er, happy to meet you too.’’ He gave me a little bow, looking a bit flustered.

‘‘And how is your friend Officer Degan?’’ Johanna asked him.

Loewenstein answered, ‘‘I believe he is well, Miss Flanagan. As auxiliaries to Captain Bonfield, his unit is very busy these days.’’

‘‘As you must be, I’m sure! Let’s be on our way, Bridget,’’ Johanna said, sliding her arm into mine. ‘‘Mrs. Loewenstein will be waiting for us.’’

I looked to make certain that Peebles the porter was following and we joined the jostling throngs before the brightly lit opera house and courthouse. We crossed a drawbridge and continued on Wells Street. The crowds thinned as Johanna led me north to a handsome three-story corner building, adorned with a tower at the entrance. I instructed Peebles to wait and we ascended a well-kept staircase to the third floor, where the Loewensteins had their rooms.