Gold Fever (31 page)

“You think I'm the sort that's gonna be invited to drink fancy champagne and party on that boat?”

Assuming it was a rhetorical question, I kept my mouth shut. If Maggie were to be invited along, it would be to do the cooking and cleaning.

“White next,” she said, gesturing to the room behind the curtain.

“Have the police been around to question Irene again?” I asked once I'd put on the dotted white muslin afternoon two-piece and was again standing on the stool to be poked and pinned. White was the most dreadfully impractical colour in Dawson. If it rained, the streets were rivers of mud; if it didn't rain, dust and sawdust coated everything. But the white muslin was so pretty, I couldn't resist, particularly once Maggie suggested decorating the sleeves with rows of fine tucks.

“Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering. They were interested in her possible involvement earlier.”

“Well, stop wondering. Irene had nothing to do with the business of that jealous bitch getting herself killed. You can get down now. The blue isn't ready for fitting yet. Come back on Wednesday.”

If Irene and Maggie had been a man and a woman, I would have noticed the vast gulf between their personalities and how they lived their lives. But as they were two women, a condition of which I had no understanding, I didn't stop to consider that there was serious trouble in the relationship.

An oversight I would come to regret.

The following day, on my way to the shop to collect my new dress, I stopped at the Richmond. Martha was out with Angus, as usual, but Euila was in their room. She spent most of her day in their room, transcribing Martha's notes.

“I'm going shopping, Euila. Why don't you come with me? It's a pleasant day.”

Euila glanced over her shoulder towards the round table in the centre of the room, covered in a mountain of paper. I pushed past her. “Goodness,” I said, picking up one of Martha's notebooks. “What a lot of writing.”

She took the book out of my hand. “Martha doesn't like anyone to see her rough work.”

“I'm not surprised, considering what dreck it is.” Her eyes widened. “Euila.” I took the book back. “Why are you doing this?

From what I can see, Martha's work isn't fit to line a cat box. You're not transcribing her notes; you're taking them and turning them into wonderful prose. You should be writing under your own name.”

She sunk into a chair. “That's all right for you to say.” Tears welled up in her pale blue eyes. “I'm not fearless like you, Fiona. I can't go out among men in the streets, asking them to tell me their stories.” Euila blew her noise into a delicate lace-trimmed handkerchief.

“No,” I said. “Perhaps not. But you can find yourself a partner who complements what talent you have rather than pretending it's hers alone.” I grabbed a sheet of foolscap, packed with Euila's neat hand that was so much like my own. “This is good work. Very good. You deserve to get some recognition from it.” I waved the paper in front of her face.

The tight bun piled on top of Euila's head wobbled in sad disagreement. She twisted her hands in her lap and seemed almost to fade into herself. “I can't be like you, Fiona,” she said in a low, sad voice. “Fiona the Brave, Fiona the Adventurous, Fiona the Beautiful.”

When we were children, Euila and I, I had been the pretty one, the smart one, the bold one, the child loved by her parents. Plain, dull Euila had been nothing but the earl's daughter, which in the eyes of everyone on the estate had meant she was better than me. Now, here in the North, neither of us with parents or servants to provide a blanket of status?

“I have a business partner,” I said, after a long, deep silence, “because I couldn't possibly run the Savoy on my own. Ray Walker knows full well that neither could he. So we each take our half-a-skill and combine them into an amazing partnership.”

She looked up. A touch of colour crept into her pale face.

“You could do that, Euila. Find a good investigator who can't write worth a whit, and knows it, and tell him you'll turn his, or her, words into poetry. For half the credit. Heavens, you probably don't even need a partner. If you can't interview the men, don't. You've seen enough in Dawson, make something up out of it. No one need know whether it's true or not.”

A spark flashed behind her eyes. “In California and Seattle, they talk about nothing but the Klondike. I'm sure that's true everywhere. There would be a great interest in stories set here.”

“Think about it, Euila.” I stood up and gathered my gloves. “I'm going shopping. I'd love for you to accompany me; I've found the most incredible dressmaker.”

She mumbled something about no money for dresses. I pulled her to her feet. “So watch me try on mine, and write about it later. That is the amazing thing about Dawson. Next door to a shed selling cast-off mining equipment, you can find a dressmaker who wouldn't be out of place in the back rooms of Worth of Paris.

“I had a Worth gown once,” I said as Euila collected her hat. “If I told you who bought it for me, you'd recognize his name. It lasted through absolutely everything, until a drunken fool dragged me into a fight. The poor Worth was simply not made to withstand a bar brawl over a dance hall girl in a saloon in Dawson.”

Euila rarely said much, and on the walk to Maggie's, she was even quieter than usual. Thinking over my suggestion, I hoped. It must, I thought not for the first time, be dreadful to live a life that was almost wholly outside of your own control. If Euila failed to find a husband (and love be damned, suitability would be all that mattered), she would spend the rest of her days being passed around between one brother and another. And one resentful sister-in-law and another, no doubt.

Which made me think about Chloe Jones. Another woman desperately searching for someone to be her protector, someone to take care of her.

If the thing with Jannis hadn't panned out, or she'd discovered he didn't have quite the money he pretended he did, had Chloe thought she could get into Joey LeBlanc's good books? I assumed that Chloe and Irene had been more than close friends until Maggie replaced Chloe in Irene's affections. Had Chloe planned to get revenge on her former lover by revealing Irene's secret life to Joey?

Now that I was thinking of Joey LeBlanc… “Wait here,” I said to Euila. “I'll be right back.” I picked up my skirts and stepped off the duckboard.

Horses and donkeys were pulled to an abrupt halt.

“You, sir. A moment, if you please.” The man turned to face me. Unlike most men I might accost on the street, he did not looked pleased at the attention.

“Yeah?”

“Do you regularly lurk about behind the Savoy?”

“What the hell kind of question is that?” His clothes stunk to high heaven of cigar smoke, and crumbs of tobacco dotted the front of his jacket. His stubby fingers were stained yellow with nicotine.

“I've seen you before. Thursday before last. You were in the alley behind the Savoy Dance Hall in the early hours of the morning. May I ask what was your business there?”

“No, you can't.”

Now that I was talking to him, I wasn't all that sure this was the man I'd seen lurking in the shadows when I'd confronted Tom Jannis and Mary. I plunged on nevertheless, because I had definitely seen him in the company of another person of my acquaintance.

“Was Mrs. LeBlanc paying you that evening, or do you just like to hang around in dark alleys spying on people?”

It was unlikely this man had much experience in the criminal underworld. Instead of walking away with a laugh and a sneer, he remained where he was, while his eyes looked everywhere but at me. “I don't know what you mean.”

“Of course you do.” I stepped closer. “You know who I am. What's your name?”

“Black. Al Black.”

“Mr. Black, you were either asked to keep an eye on your employer's former employee or you wanted to demonstrate some initiative by doing so yourself.” As Al Black stood there, his eyes twitching, I decided he had probably never had a burst of initiative in his life. He was the sort of stupid low-life who could be counted on to keep frightened prostitutes in line. Confronted with a person, even a woman, with some backbone, he didn't know how to act. “Did you happen to pick anything up after we had left?”

His eyes continued to track activity on the street, and I realized he was worried in case someone saw him talking to me and reported back to his employer. I'd been wondering how to get him to talk and considered threatening to kick up a fuss by accusing him of attempting to rob me. Instead, I rested my hand on his arm. He looked at it as if it were about to bite him. “You found something in the alley, and you gave it to Mrs. LeBlanc. I'd like to know what it was. If you tell me, I'll walk away. If you don't, why, I'll congratulate you on a job well done, in a nice loud voice, and tell you that any time you have news for me you are welcome at the Savoy. Where, for you only, the drinks are always free.”

That got him. His face blanched. He snatched his arm away. A lady glanced at us as she passed, but otherwise we didn't seem to be attracting much attention. I, of course, knew how to change that.

He stepped into the shadows at the entrance to a dentist's office. I followed but ensured that I was placed between him and the street. He wiped his hand across his mouth. “I saw the bitch come out the back.” I suspected he intended the noun to also apply to me. “I was gonna talk to her, tell her to come back to Mrs. LeBlanc's, when he came out. He grabbed her, and she started fighting. I figured it was a nice situation. He probably wouldn't pay her, and when it was over, I'd tell her that's what would keep happening if she didn't let Mrs. LeBlanc look after her. But then you showed up, and she ran. She'd dropped something, or the man had torn it off, and I picked it up. It was a necklace, with a cross on the end. I figured I could give it to my girl.”

“You didn't give it to your girl, did you?”

“Told Mrs. LeBlanc what happened, and she wanted it.” I let out a deep sigh. It was all as I'd suspected. I backed into the street. “If I see you following me again, or anywhere near my property, I'll inform the police. Good day.” Euila was standing where I'd left her, looking quite lost in the sea of humanity flowing around her. If I didn't return, would she stand there all day, until someone told her to move? Poor Euila.

I dashed across the street. Several men lifted their hats and stopped in their tracks to permit me to pass. I gathered Euila up, and we continued on our way.

At Maggie's shop, I tried on the red gown and the white muslin dress and pronounced them perfect. Of course I didn't say that out loud; instead I found fault with the spacing of the tucks in the sleeves of the muslin and the depth of the décolletage of the red silk. Quite unlike a London dressmaker, who would have had a fit at being criticized, Maggie merely shrugged, reminded me that I'd accepted the fitting, and quoted me a fee almost as much as the dresses originally cost to fix the problem.

Graciously, I declined her offer. Maggie told me the blue dress would be ready in two days, and I proudly left with a large parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.

I treated Euila to tea at the Richmond, where I ordered the manager to appear and insisted that I not be served fish paste sandwiches.

They served us cucumber and, wondrously, watercress.

That night I was a sensation in scarlet silk.

Sadly, I hadn't found a shoemaker with the same degree of skill as Maggie had in dressmaking, and by the end of the night— also known as early morning—my feet were hurting.

Once I'd paid the dancers for their chits, I came downstairs, threw myself into a chair, kicked off my shoes and groaned.

Ray pulled up a chair and sat across from me. He picked up a stocking-clad foot, peeled my skirt back a few inches, and began to massage.

“Goodness,” I said, “that's wonderful. You must want something.”

His strong fingers dug into the fleshy bits on the soles of my foot and gently worked at the aches and pains. “Whatever it is you want,” I sighed in delight, “you can have it.”

Not-Murray carried dirty dishes out from the gambling rooms. We don't run a restaurant, but when a big spender looks to be about to leave in search of refreshment, we can have something brought out from the back in no time. That evening we'd had several big spenders.

The Savoy was perhaps the only dance hall in town that shut its doors when it wasn't a Sunday. When I'd started the business, everyone told me I was a fool to close for a few hours; the customers would leave and never come back, they said. I knew I needed to sleep sometime, and I like to keep an eye on what is happening in my own establishment. I talked Ray into seeing things my way, and rather than staying away, the customers flocked back through our doors promptly at ten a.m. when we opened. The temporarily forbidden fruit being all the sweeter.

“It was a good night,” I mumbled, closing my eyes, relaxing against the hard back of my chair and giving into the delightful sensations coming from my feet.

“A very good night,” Ray agreed. “That dress is what did it.”

“Did what?”

“Brought in the punters. Isn't that right, Jake?”

The croupier laughed. A whisky bottle opened, and liquid sloshed into glasses. Ray allowed each of the male employees one drink—on the house—at closing. Very generous, considering his miserly Scottish roots, but it kept the men loyal. “That it did, Mr. Walker,” Jake said. “Why I saw more than one man forget what cards he was holding when Mrs. MacGillivray walked through the room.”

“Fellow plopped down a bag of dust to pay for one drink and forgot to wait for me to weigh it up, he was so keen on following Mrs. MacGillivray into the dance hall,” Not Murray said.