P. Alderman - Haunting Jordan

“Come on, Tabitha!” Charlotte said, dragging the poor girl up the stairs. “We must begin at once!”

“Don’t remove any gowns from my closet without my express permission,” Hattie called after them as they scurried up the stairs, then shook her head. She’d be lucky to have even a fraction of her wardrobe survive the week. She dropped onto a hall chair to remove her muddy boots.

“Ma’am.”

Hattie looked over to find Sara hovering by the kitchen door, wearing a troubled expression and wringing her hands.

“Yes, what is it, Sara?”

“If you could come to the back entrance? There’s someone who needs to speak with you.” Sara’s eyes were wide and afraid.

Perhaps Frank Lewis had already sent someone with word of the information he’d sought. “For heaven’s sake, Sara, whoever it is, send them in. And bring me some tea, would you please?”

Sara shook her head with vehemence. “I’ll not take that chance with your reputation, ma’am. This person should not enter our house. If she hadn’t been so insistent, I wouldn’t even have announced her arrival.”

She? Hattie frowned, intrigued. “Very well, though sometimes I think you worry far too much about my reputation. I’m fairly certain it’s irredeemable at this point.”

She rose from the hall chair. After the day’s work in the garden, her muscles protested the sudden movement, but she followed Sara down the hall and through the kitchen to the back door.

Mona Starr stood on the back stoop in the encroaching twilight.

“Mrs. Starr!” Hattie said, shocked. “Please, come in! I’m ashamed that my housekeeper left you to stand outside.”

Mona shook her head, glancing around, clearly uneasy with her surroundings. Though she was immaculately and expensively dressed, her expression conveyed distress. “I’ve come to ask your aid in a matter of some urgency. If you would be kind enough to follow me out to my carriage?”

“Of course,” Hattie replied, even more curious.

“I wouldn’t have come at all if the situation weren’t so grave.”

Hattie stepped outside, shushing Sara’s protests. “Don’t worry, Sara, if the woman abducts me, you can call Chief Greeley to my aid within moments. Nothing will happen.”

She hurried through the gathering darkness behind Mona’s quickly retreating figure. When she rounded the stand of trees at the back of the yard, separating the garden from the alley beyond, she came upon an elaborate carriage drawn by a matched pair of bays. Mona waved her over to the open carriage door.

Hesitating, Hattie wondered what she was getting herself into and whether there really was cause to be concerned for her own safety. She shook her head over her own foolishness. This woman had no cause to harm or abduct her—she’d been listening to Sara and Greeley far too much. With a firm stride, she walked over and peered inside, then gave a small cry of distress.

Frank Lewis lay on the floor of the carriage, unconscious, his face so bloody and bruised she hardly recognized him.

Chapter 10

JORDAN slowly became aware that someone was standing on the porch. Now was not the time for interruptions. Hattie had never mentioned that Frank had been attacked!

“Look, if the room bothers you that much, I can take the bed in …” Her voice trailed off when she saw Jase on the steps, looking tired. Tom stood behind him on the sidewalk. “Oh, hey. Sorry, I thought you were movers.”

“You know, some folks consider hanging the porch swing before sitting in it,” Tom observed with a grin.

“Where’s the fun in that?” she quipped, stacking the diaries and books and rising to her feet. The dog raised his head long enough to scope out the situation, then went back to sleep. A nap in the sun apparently trumped human companionship.

“Got any more of that?” Jase asked, pointing to her mug.

“Sure.” She led the way down the hall to the kitchen. While she reheated the espresso machine, she motioned for them to sit down. “Late night?”

“Closed around three A.M.” Jase rubbed his unshaven jaw. “A few extra musicians showed up, and they all jammed until the wee hours. My no-longer-twenty-something body is feeling the effects.”

Tom turned a kitchen chair around, straddling it with his arms resting along its high back. “You’ll survive once you count up the night’s receipts. And the music was damn good, I gotta say. Keep it up and you’ll become the premier location for live jazz in Port Chatham.”

“A mixed blessing,” Jase muttered, then gave Jordan a grateful smile when she handed him his cup. “Which reminds me, whoever you served that bourbon to by the front door never paid his bill. I found the drink after closing—it hadn’t been touched.”

“Damn.” She stared at Jase, dismayed. “I knew that guy was trouble. I should’ve kept a better eye on him.” And she should’ve asked him whether he worked for Drake, but she didn’t say that out loud.

She paused while pulling the next shot of espresso, frowning. Why would a cop skip out on a bill? That didn’t make sense.

“The money isn’t the problem,” Jase assured her. “It just had me curious. Did you get a good look at him?”

She described him, but he didn’t ring a bell with either of them. “If he shows up again, I’ll find out who he is.”

Jase shook his head. “I don’t want you confronting him. Just point him out and let me handle it.”

She shrugged. If he was who she suspected he was, and if she saw him lurking around the house today, she’d ask him to produce identification. “What’s a ball-peen hammer used for?” she asked, thinking about the pictures she’d seen in the home repair book.

“Metalworking,” they answered in unison.

Jase added, “You don’t have any metalwork on this house. Why do you ask?”

She explained that she’d seen a picture of one when she looked up hand augers, the supposed weapon of choice for bludgeoning in 1890.

“You had a chance to look at my great-grandfather’s diaries?” Tom asked.

“Not yet, though I was able to read a few pages over breakfast from his memoir about the murder investigation. And Holt Stilwell approached me with some papers last night after I left the pub.” She caught Jase’s frown. “I handled him, don’t worry. He gave me what turned out to be portions of Michael Seavey’s diary, which I was reading when you arrived. Seavey indicated that Clive Johnson, Hattie’s business manager, was the one who started the fire on the waterfront in 1890, and that he’d helped Johnson by covering it up.”

Tom raised his brows. “Interesting.”

“Yeah.”

She handed him an espresso, then turned back to pull another one for Jase. While they’d been talking, the Goth kid had delivered two dish packs of her china and kitchen utensils to the center of the room. She finished Jase’s espresso, then slit open the dish packs with a box cutter, so that she could hunt for the plates, mixing bowl, and pans she’d need to fix everyone breakfast. She’d bought supplies at the grocery store the night before, in anticipation of today’s crowd.

“According to Eleanor Canby’s editorial, which it now appears she may have been pressured to write, the fire originated in a brothel,” she said, placing her griddle on the stove to heat while she pulled the ingredients for buttermilk pancakes from the cupboards and fridge. “Hattie may have been right all along—she believed the fire had been deliberately set to send a message.”

“What kind of message?” Jase asked.

“Don’t know, I haven’t read that far yet.” She pulled a pint of fresh, local strawberries and a package of organic bacon from the fridge, setting the bacon on to fry. “The rest of today’s a lost cause, what with the movers here. I won’t get back to my research until tonight at the earliest.”