Jan Burke - Dear Irene

“I’m sorry,” he said, following me. “I can’t seem to control my emotions these days. It’s humiliating. I’m not used to it at all.”

Well, the Banshee of the Press Room had no trouble understanding what that was like. I let go of his hand but kept walking at a brisk pace. He was forced to keep up with me. “You need to get some sleep, Steven. Your batteries are too run down to cope with everything that’s happened.”

Just then I noticed one of my shoelaces was untied. I stopped and bent to tie it, and became aware of someone watching us. From a car. A familiar car.

“Excuse me a moment, Steven. I need to embarrass someone.” I left him standing dumbfounded on the sidewalk and ran over to the car, just as the red-faced driver tried to start it up. I pounded on the window and he rolled it down.

“Pete Baird. What a surprise.”

“How’re you doing, Irene?”

“Pissed off, as a matter of fact. Since you’re willing to do your partner’s dirty work, I don’t suppose you’d mind being an errand boy. So here’s a message: you can tell your pal Frank that if he’s going to send his partner downtown to follow me around, he can-”

“Whoa! Wait a minute! Frank didn’t send me down here to watch you. It was my own idea. I swear it. He doesn’t know I’m here. And you damned well better hope I don’t tell him I saw you holding hands with young Studley Do-Right over there.”

“In the first place, you know I wasn’t ‘holding hands,’ not in the way you imply I was. In the second place, buzz off. This doesn’t concern you or Frank – and no, don’t give me a lot of bull about it. I’ll call Bredloe and tell him his boys are harassing me.”

“That would be a laugh. The Captain knows what a pain in the ass you can be.”

“Are you on assignment right now?”

He turned red again.

“I thought so. Have you ever done this before?”

“Tailed people? Sure…”

“No, I mean, watched me walk to lunch.”

His brows drew together. “What?”

But I had already reconsidered the question. Pete was working with Frank in other parts of town on the other days I thought I had been followed.

“You’ve gotta believe me, Irene,” he was saying. “It was my idea. Frank would kill me if he knew.”

I didn’t doubt that Pete would come up with something like this on his own. He was as loyal as an old hound to Frank, and notorious for sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. A fight between Frank and me would be all the excuse he needed. “I’m very fond of you, Pete, but sometimes you are a true butt itch. I’ll just stand here until you get yourself gone.”

He muttered something and pulled away. I waited until he had driven out of sight before I went back over to Steven, who was clearly puzzled.

“Who was that?”

“A secret admirer. Are you hungry?”

He nodded.

WE WALKED ABOUT three doors down and entered the world of Rosie’s Bar and Grill. Up until the moment we walked through the door, all I was hoping for was a chance to find out a little more about Rosie Thayer. I’ll admit that I was bringing Kincaid along to see if anyone there acted like they recognized him, although I was fairly sure he would have balked at having lunch there if he had been lying to me about not knowing Rosie Thayer. He was not the kind of man who went unnoticed.

But as soon as my eyes adjusted to the dark interior, I made the connection between E.J. Blaylock and Rosie Thayer. The place was empty, so it wasn’t the patrons that provided the clue. It was the decor. Rosie’s Bar and Grill was something of a shrine.

“Rosie the Riveter,” I said.

Steven apparently had the same thought. “Will you look at this place?” he whispered, as if he were in a church, not a bar.

The walls were covered with pictures of World War II vintage airplanes, of fighter pilots in leather jackets, of bomber crews standing alongside their planes. Interspersed were dozens of photos of aircraft factories taken in the 1940s, and lots of pictures of women workers in coveralls and scarves. Behind the bar was a poster-sized print of Norman Rockwell’s painting “Rosie the Riveter.” There were other posters of the same era here and there – “Loose lips sink ships” and other slogans abounding.

I remembered what Steven had told me the day before. Maybe Rosie Thayer and E.J. Blaylock’s mother both worked for the same aircraft company. But the photographs were from the war years, and Rosie Thayer was E.J.’s age. Too young to have worked during World War II.

“Most of the photographs come from Mercury Aircraft,” Steven said, moving closer to a cluster of them. “That’s the company E.J.’s mom worked for. E.J. was really proud of her mother’s war work. That’s one of the topics she wanted to write about – women war workers.”

I looked at a note written below a photograph of a woman making part of an aircraft wing: Bertha Thayer (Mom) working on aileron.

“Her mother…” I said. “Rosie Thayer is as proud of her mother as E.J. was of hers.”

Steven looked over at me, comprehension dawning. “Do these photographs have something to do with E.J.? With why she was killed?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you were asking about this bar when I called this morning. Now you tell me their mothers worked together. What’s going on? Are we here to talk to this Rosie Thayer?”

Before I could answer, we heard a man yell, “Be right with you,” from a back room. He made it sound as if it was a damned shame that we were going to make him wait on somebody.

“Calm down, Steven,” I said in a low voice. “I’ll tell you more later. But for now, just roll with it, okay?”

He didn’t act like it was the easiest thing in the world for him to do, but he nodded and followed me to a booth near the bar and sat down. A skinny old sad sack came shuffling over to us like he was on the fourth day of a forced march.

“What’ll it be?” he made himself ask.

I had checked out the “on tap” signs and knew I wouldn’t find it disagreeable. “A couple of your draught beers and menus, please.”

“Sure,” he said, as if it broke his heart. He shuffled off.

“So?” Steven said, as soon as the other man was out of earshot.

“I’m just following up on a lead.”

“You won’t tell me? I’ll give you a start, then. Mercury Aircraft. Mercury, Roman version of the Greek god Hermes. Messenger of the gods-”

“The god of commerce, manual skill, cleverness, and travel,” I finished for him. “I looked him up in my mythology books after you mentioned Mercury Aircraft yesterday. He’s also the god of thievery.”

“Maybe Thanatos worked there, too.”

“Maybe, Steven. That’s what I’m trying to say. Let’s see where it leads. I don’t want to play some guessing game, and I don’t want to talk about my theories in here. I want to ask the guy who works here a few questions. If you don’t think you can sit there calmly while I do that, tell me now and we’ll leave.”

He was quiet then. “Sorry. I’m just anxious to see her killer caught. You’ll let me know what you learn?”

“Sure.”

Old Happy Pants came back with the beers and tossed a couple of menus on the table.

“Before you walk off,” I said, “I wondered if you could talk to me for a few minutes about Rosie.”

He eyed us suspiciously. “You with the cops?”

“No, newspaper. This is Mr. Kincaid. My name’s Kelly. I’m with the Express.”

“Kelly – Irene Kelly?” For the first time, he smiled. “You the one who wrote about the witches?”

“The same.”

“I thought a couple of guys beat the crap out of you.” He seemed so happy about it.