A Deadly Affection (44 page)

“But don't you want to rest?”

“Of course she does,” Father said, tugging on my mother's arm. “Now really, dear, Lucille will be terribly disappointed if you're not there to see her off.”

“You're sure you'll be all right?” Mother asked me as he dragged her toward the door.

“Yes, Mother, I'll be fine,” I said with a sigh of defeat. “You go on with Father.”

I watched from the open door as they descended the snow-covered steps and climbed into the waiting motorcar. Father sat in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead, refusing to look my way. Maurice opened the throttle, and with a sputter and a jerk, the motorcar pulled away from the curb.

“Damn!” I said, slapping the doorframe as the motorcar zigzagged down the slippery street. I climbed down the steps and squinted after it, shielding my eyes with my hand. The snow already lay several inches deep. I watched a delivery wagon spin its wheels at the intersection, considering my limited options. Traffic would be a mess everywhere. The subway would be fastest, but the nearest station was all the way across the park. The El, I decided, was my best bet.

I ran back inside for my hat and coat—and found Katie standing by the coat rack, clutching my coat to her chest.

I came to a halt, watching the muscles work beneath her soft cheeks. “Katie,” I said slowly, “I have to do this, whether Father wants me to or not.”

She thrust the coat toward me. “And I'd be disappointed if you didn't.”

I grabbed her and the coat in a tight hug. “Thank you, Katie. I promise I won't let Father blame you for this.”

“Now, don't you worry about me. The day I can't manage your father will be the day I'm ready to meet my maker. You just get down to that station, and do what you have to do.”

I pulled on my coat and hat, yanked the front door open, and stopped short. Simon was climbing the front steps, his bare head covered with snow and his breath making steam clouds in the frigid air.

“What are you doing here?” I blurted out, wishing my heart wouldn't jump so at the sight of him. “Didn't you get my message?”

“Oh, I got it all right,” he said with a scowl, coming to a stop a hand's breadth away.

I stepped back involuntarily into the entry.

He stamped his feet and came through after me, planting himself on the entry tiles. “Your patient's off the hook, so you've no more need of me. Is that about right?”

“I thought you'd be glad to hear that the case had been solved,” I said, flustered by his reaction.

“Don't you think you could have told me in person?”

I felt my face heating up. “I wasn't sure you'd want to see me after…after what I accused you of last time.”

“A simple apology never occurred to you, I suppose.”

I bit my lip. What excuse could I possibly have given him for distrusting his motives a second time? Except, perhaps, that not being able to trust myself, I hadn't known when it was safe to trust someone else. Not even someone who, I realized now, may well have been the truest friend I'd ever had.

He sighed and shook his head, loosing a sprinkle of melted snow. “You know, I'm really not as complicated as you seem to think. I say what I mean, I keep a promise, and I don't hold a grudge. Maybe if you could get that through your thick skull, we could stop having these little misunderstandings.”

“That would be nice,” I croaked.

“That's settled, then.” He smiled—the same, crooked smile that used to make me go weak in the knees. It still had that effect, I was discovering.

Katie nudged my arm. I ignored her.

“So, tell me now,” he said.

“Tell you what?” I asked, for my mind seemed to have suddenly gone blank.

“About Mrs. Braun. Donnie wasn't very clear on the details.”

“Oh yes, of course. Well, I'm afraid it's a rather long and complicated story.”

“I've got time.”

Katie yanked on my arm.

“
What?
” I asked, turning to her in exasperation.

“The train,” she urged, jerking her head toward the door.

“Oh my Lord…” I swiveled back toward Simon. “I'm sorry, I can't—I just—” I shrugged helplessly. “I have to go.” I lunged around him, out the door, and down the steps, my leather soles slipping over the tamped snow. He must think me the rudest, most ungrateful person alive, I thought miserably as I started running toward the El. I could only hope that someday, somewhere, I'd have a chance to make it up to him…

“What train?”

I nearly tripped over my own feet as Simon materialized on the sidewalk beside me. Struggling to regain my footing, I answered, “Olivia's train. I have to talk to her before she goes.”

He loped along beside me, taking one stride for every two of mine. “You mean you're going to tell her?”

“If I can get there in time.”

“What about your father?”

“I just talked to him and told him everything,” I panted.

“What did he say?”

We had arrived at the intersection. I bent to catch my breath, propping my hands on my knees as I waited for a break in the traffic. “It doesn't matter what he said.”

He bent beside me to look into my face. “It doesn't?”

I shook my head.

He slowly straightened. “Well, I'll be damned.”

The policeman who should have been directing traffic was untangling two teams halfway up the block, leaving the intersection jammed with jockeying vehicles and making it impossible to cross.

“What time does the train leave?” Simon asked.

“Two forty-five,” I told him, peering across the street in frustration.

He checked his watch. “You're not going to make it.”

“Maybe not, but I have to try.”

He looked past me up the avenue. “I've got an idea.” He started backing up the sidewalk. “You wait here, all right? I'll be back in a minute.”

I squinted in the direction he was headed, wondering what on earth he had in mind. Barring a dirigible, I couldn't imagine anything he might bring back that could get me to the station on time.

“All right?” he asked again, still backing over the sidewalk.

“All right,” I finally agreed.

He turned and sprinted up the avenue, disappearing through a curtain of snow.

I was still standing on the corner several minutes later, chastising myself for ever agreeing to wait, when I suddenly spotted him riding a large gray horse down the middle of the two-way street, drawing a cacophony of horn blasts from the vehicles scrambling to avoid him. As he drew closer, I realized that the horse was my mother's mare, Cleo. Simon threaded her between a cab and a coal truck and pulled up in front of me.

“Oliver let you take Cleo?” I asked in astonishment. I would have thought our persnickety new groom would be immune to Simon's charms.

“Oliver didn't have a choice,” he said, extending his hand.

I grabbed it, and he pulled me up behind him. There were of course no pommels on the back of the saddle for a female passenger, so I had no choice but to throw my leg across. I hadn't ridden astride since I was a child. I'd forgotten how good it felt.

Simon turned the mare toward the park, nearly losing me as he swerved to avoid two women stepping off the curb. “You'd better hold on,” he called over his shoulder. I clasped my arms around his waist. The horse had been a brilliant idea; by traveling most of the way through the park, we would have a good chance of making it to the station on time.

As we trotted down Fifth Avenue to the park entrance, I felt the peace that comes from clarity of purpose, along with a heightening of all my senses. I was acutely aware of Simon's sturdy body beneath his cashmere coat, and the intricate workings of his muscles as he maneuvered the mare. I breathed in deeply, inhaling damp wool and horse sweat and gasoline exhaust. I'd never felt more alive. We entered the park and hugged the wall for a few blocks before veering right to follow the East Drive behind the museum. As I lifted my chin to look up ahead the wind caught my hat and lifted it into the air. I grabbed for it but was too slow. I turned and watched it tumble through the air behind me, letting it go, welcoming the sting of snow against my face.

Except for an occasional sleigh, the park was empty, eerily silent under the densely falling snow. I rested my cheek against Simon's back, lulled by the muffled thud of hooves on crystalline powder, watching trees and lampposts sail past in a gossamer blur. We cantered quietly uphill, past the mysterious hieroglyphs on the Egyptian Obelisk, now half-filled with snow, and back down the opposite slope. Familiar paths and rocks and benches had all disappeared, swallowed up by the storm, leaving nothing but the steady beat of Simon's heart beneath my cheek to anchor me.

A few minutes later, the twin peaks of the Children's Dairy came into view. I opened my coat to check my watch. “It's almost two-thirty,” I shouted. “Do you think we can ask her to go any faster?”

He bent forward and murmured into Cleo's twitching ears. “Hold on!” he cried.

Shortening the reins, he rose up in the saddle and let out a blood-curdling whoop. To my astonishment, Cleo responded like a Belmont Park thoroughbred. If Simon hadn't warned me I would have landed in the snow. As it was, it took every thigh muscle I had to keep my seat as she galloped the last quarter mile past the frozen pond and shot out of the park's southeast corner.

A slow but steady stream of vehicles was moving in both directions along Fifth Avenue. I closed my eyes as Simon aimed Cleo through the gaps between them and continued crosstown, weaving crazily through the slithering traffic before turning sharply to the right a few moments later. When I dared open my eyes again, we were riding along the rim of a vast depression, which I recognized as the excavation for New York Central's new electrified train yard. As if on cue, a steam engine shot out of the Park Avenue tunnel behind us and roared up alongside, billowing smoke and steam into the snow-spangled air. It raced us for several minutes, appearing to accelerate as it approached the train shed. Just when a collision seemed imminent, a brakeman emerged from the rear of the engine and released the coupling device. The engine broke away onto a side track as the cars behind it rolled into the shed with a screech of iron brakes.

We cantered on to the end of the yard and cut hard left toward the terminal. I checked my watch again; we were nearly there, with thirteen minutes to spare. I was about to crow into Simon's ear that we'd made it when we turned onto Vanderbilt Avenue and came to an abrupt halt.

A dense wall of carriages and cabs jammed the avenue all the way to the station entrance. Horses were snorting and police whistles blaring as coachmen and drivers jockeyed for position, trying to get their passengers to the trains on time. Barricades had been set up along the station side to create a reserved lane, making the congestion even worse on the rest of the roadway. As Simon was easing Cleo between the wheels of two carriages, a policeman pulled one of the barricades aside to allow an elegant Victoria into the lane. Simon angled Cleo toward the opening, following in the Victoria's wake.

The policeman saw him coming and waved him away, swinging the barricade back into place.

“Hold on,” Simon shouted to me over his shoulder.

I locked my fingers around his waist and pressed my face against his back, certain I didn't want to see what was coming. Simon shifted higher on Cleo's neck, pulling me with him as the mare surged forward and jumped the barricade, landing cleanly on the other side.

When I opened my eyes, the officer was running beside us, hanging onto Simon's leg. Simon shook him off and continued around the Victoria, down the lane toward the station entrance. The officer blasted on his whistle, attracting the attention of another policeman up ahead.

Simon pulled Cleo up short. “You'd better get off here.”

“What about you?”

“Don't worry about me. Just get to that train.”

I slid to the ground and hesitated, my hand on Cleo's flank.

“Go on!” he urged.

As the policemen converged on Simon, I turned and ran through the army of colored porters unloading luggage in the station's vestibule, into the crowded waiting room. There I stopped to get my bearings. Rows of high-backed benches filled the middle of the spacious room, illuminated by thousands of tiny electric lights that shone down from the beamed ceiling. Beyond the benches, to my left, a series of arched doorways led to the platforms. I hurried across the marble floor, past the ticket booth, and through the first door into the train shed.

I emerged onto a narrow concourse that ran perpendicular to the platforms and was separated from them by an ornate iron fence. Watery daylight filtered down from huge glass panels in the vaulted iron roof, landing on the dozen or so trains that were standing on the tracks. Some of these trains were attached to electric locomotives, suggesting they served the shorter suburban routes, while others had no engines at all, having been uncoupled from their dirtier steam locomotives in the yard. But none of them appeared to be outbound. Glancing up at the clock over the concourse, I saw that it was now 2:38. I had exactly seven minutes to find Olivia and deliver my news.

Sprinting to the far end of the concourse, I pushed through the door to the annex—and into another world. Here, the air was thick with smoke and cinders and the hiss of escaping steam. Hulking long-haul engines puffed restlessly at the end of each platform, shooting up plumes of flame-riddled steam as they waited for their overnight runs to begin. Passengers and porters and deliverymen were scurrying over the platforms behind them, pouring in from the station and its adjoining cabstand, hauling trunks and boxes and small children into the waiting cars.

I ran along the iron fence, straining to read each destination board as it came into view. Finally, at the last gate, I saw it—the 2:45 train to Chicago, stopping in Harmon and Albany before continuing west to Buffalo and beyond. The plush red carpet that was rolled out over the platform confirmed that it was the
20th Century Limited
, famous as much for its style as for its speed. Unlike the rest of the train, which was a dull Pullman green, the last car was painted the scarlet red of the Fiskes' livery. The gold insignia over the rear observation deck confirmed that it was the Fiskes' private car. I made it, I thought, pausing at the gate to squeeze the stitch in my side.

My relief at locating the train in time was immediately dampened by the sight of what appeared to be a farewell party in progress directly across from the Fiskes' car. Several dozen well-wishers stood around a table laden with food and flowers, sipping champagne from tulip-shaped glasses. Footmen in scarlet livery tended the table, while a trio of violinists played sedately a few feet away. Leave it to Lucille to turn a simple train departure into an occasion for public display, I thought in dismay.