Grim Shadows (Roaring Twenties) (14 page)

The front door opened and a halo of dark curls bounded into the automat. A toddler. Very pretty, with a plump face grinning above a coat buttoned to her chin. She flew into Lowe’s arms, and he lifted her into his lap, smiling just as big.

“Stella,” he said. “My favorite girl. All healed up from your fall?”

The girl didn’t respond, but when he bit the tip of her nose, she opened her mouth and grinned some more.

Hadley glanced up at the man approaching the table. He had the same dark hair as the girl and was dressed in a plain suit and coat. A pleasant face. Kind.

“Got here quick,” Lowe said to the man.

“Streetcar was almost empty, and we were already on our way out to the Japanese Tea Garden.”

“To see the koi fish?” Lowe asked the girl, waving his hand like a fish tail swimming through water.

She nodded.

“If the weather holds, that is,” the man said. “Might rain.”

Lowe poked his head around Stella’s curls. “Hadley Bacall, this is Adam Goldberg.”

She stood. He was a few inches shorter than her, but many men were. She started to hold out her hand to shake, but realized her gloves were in her coat pocket, ruined by the griffin’s beak. She canted her head instead. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Goldberg.”

“Adam, please, and you, as well.” Between two blinks, his gaze discreetly swept up and down her figure. “Lowe’s mentioned you.”

“Has he?”

“You’re the curator.”

“Yes.” She gestured toward a seat. “Won’t you join us?”

He hung his hat and sat next to Lowe as the girl looked up at Hadley. “This is Stella, my daughter.”

“Hello,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

The girl didn’t respond.

Hadley was terrible with children. She tried again. “What’s that you have in your hand? A windup cat?”

No answer.

Her father spoke in her stead. “Lowe brought it back from Egypt.” He turned to Lowe and said, “All week, it’s been either the cat or Raggedy Ann.”

“
Farbror
Lowe did a good job,
ja
?” He wiggled the cat before speaking to Hadley. “Adam and I are old friends. We grew up together.”

“And you work together now?”

“On occasion,” Adam said.

“What exactly do you do, if I may ask?”

Adam’s eyes flicked toward Lowe’s. “Whatever harebrained thing he needs me to do.”

Lowe turned Stella around in his lap to face the table. “In my family’s business, it pays to have trustworthy people to make things disappear for short amounts of time. Think of Adam as the troll under the bridge.”

“Troll?”

“Dragon!” Lowe said with a merry chuckle. “I meant a
dragon
guarding treasure.”

“Better.”

“Anyway, he keeps things safe. He’s holding on to the base already. He’s agreed to stash all of it.” Lowe slid the handkerchief-wrapped crossbar across the table. “Just as we discussed.”

A thousand doubts went through Hadley’s mind. Where did this man live? Where was he “stashing” the amulet pieces? What was stopping him from selling them off to someone else?

Lowe’s thigh knocked against hers. “Your father told me to keep them safe. Adam is very, very careful. And ten times more trustworthy than me.”

She gave Lowe a sidelong look.

“Okay, a thousand times more trustworthy.”

“That’s better.”

Adam laughed. “She already knows your con artist ways.”

“Oh, I think there’s another word for the kind of artist he is,” she said, suppressing a smile. “And it starts with bull.”

The men’s hearty laughter surprised her. Stella, as well, who grinned along with them like she was in on the joke. Hadley glanced at the windup cat on the table.

“I have a cat, too,” she told the girl. “He’s black, just like yours.”

The girl still didn’t answer.

“She can’t hear,” Lowe said in quiet voice.

A prickling, warm embarrassment trickled through Hadley as she looked between Lowe and the girl’s father. “I’m . . .” What? So sorry for the father? For the girl? Making a faux pas?

“She’s an excellent lip-reader, though,” Lowe said, smiling down at the girl. “And she’s learning how to use sign language.”

“Mostly she’s learning to stomp her foot and shake her head,” Adam said, giving Hadley a kind smile she didn’t quite feel she deserved. Stella banged the cat on the table and made a gruff noise. “Like that,” Adam said. “My wife passed a couple years back, so it’s just the two of us. She could probably stand to learn some feminine manners.”

“Absolutely not,” Lowe said, winding up the black cat. “Feminine manners are overrated. You stomp your foot all you want,
sötnos
.”

A rush of emotions welled in Hadley—tenderness for the father and his daughter. Pity, too. And something else: a nagging envy for the easy companionship and bond Lowe shared with these people, and a longing to have the same.

Watching Lowe hold the small girl tore something loose inside Hadley. This was real and good. He cared about them. Trusted them—and they trusted Lowe.

And for no real logical reason, she decided at that moment, she trusted him, too.

AFTER LEAVING LOWE AND
Adam that afternoon, Hadley spent the rest of the weekend studying her mother’s pictograms. She didn’t hear a peep out of her father regarding the fallen chandelier at the museum party, which was fine. But he was the last person she wanted to see when she walked into her office on Monday. Having telephoned his house yesterday to get word about his mood, she’d discovered from his staff that he seemed to be in fine spirits. Father’s cook said he was singing to himself. Apparently he’d received a telephone message from a Mr. Magnusson that brightened his day.

She wasn’t sure why this bothered her. Lowe had told her he’d need to inform her father about finding the crossbar. Father was, after all, paying Lowe to hunt them down. And she was not supposed to know about it, so there was nothing to do but step aside, no matter how much this grated her nerves.

But now that she had to sit in front of his desk and listen to him rattle off all the reasons why Lowe was the best fit for his replacement, she was feeling less bothered and more insulted.

“I must say, you’re taking all this well,” he said after a long speech. “I’m glad your anger from this weekend has subsided.”

“It was just the shock of it.” In truth, her nails were biting into her thighs while she tightly controlled her feelings, for fear the Mori would attempt to murder the man again.

Unseeing eyes stared off over her shoulder. “Well, I’ll admit my role in this. I should’ve told you before the dinner, but my mind was on other things. And no father wants to disappoint his daughter. I was a coward, and I’m sorry. Truly.”

An apology? From the great Dr. Bacall? She was tempted to look around the room to see if he was talking to someone else. Instead, she took a deep breath and ate crow. “I’m sorry for losing control. I didn’t mean for it to go that far.”

“I feel certain you didn’t. And I hope you won’t hold a grudge against Mr. Magnusson. If he’s appointed in my position, I’m certain he’d recognize what a tremendous talent you are. And perhaps something could be arranged for you to be interim head when he’s out in the field.”

Interim. Hadley rolled her eyes. Whatever feelings were stewing inside her over Lowe, she would hold him to his promise to turn down the position, and whether her father liked it or not, she would be sitting behind his desk come February.

“I hold no ill will toward Mr. Magnusson.”

“Excellent to hear, darling. If you are to be working closely with him in the near future, it would be best for both of you to be professional. I know it’s difficult sometimes. Maybe it would help to focus on your upcoming seminars to keep your emotions under control.”

“Yes, that’s probably wise advice.” She’d be sure to relay it to her heart and brain, which were conspiring together behind her back to conjure up very unprofessional thoughts and feelings about Lowe.

Fifteen minutes after Hadley returned to her office, Miss Tilly’s pretty face popped inside the doorway. “Oh, you’re done meeting with your father. I wasn’t sure how long it would take—he said no interruptions, so I told your visitor you weren’t available.”

Her heart leapt. “What visitor?”

“Mr. Ginn.”

Oh. Oliver. After their parting at the Flood Mansion, she wasn’t sure he’d call on her so soon. And it made her a little nervous that he did, because pieces of their conversation about her specters came back. “Did he say what he wanted?”

“No,” she said, handing Hadley a small parcel. “But he was terribly disappointed that he couldn’t see you. Wish I had someone pining over me like that. He asked me to give you this.”

When the secretary left, Hadley opened a hastily scribbled folded note slipped under the parcel’s string.
I hope you find chapter four enlightening. I have more information whenever you’re ready to talk.

Inside the brown wrapping was a small leather book. Not printed, but written in longhand.
Beliefs of the Arabian and Egyptian People
. A date—1895—but no author. A quick flip through the pages revealed the content of the chapter in question: Ifrit Spirits of the Djinn.

Thick pencil underlined several passages.

In Arabia, a rebellious class of infernal spirits said to be made of smoke and ash . . . some think they live underground, but others believe they are summoned from a netherworld.

Underworld. She turned the page.

They bear a striking resemblance to a kind of spirit feared by Egyptians, the
Sheut
, or “shadow” . . . one of five parts of the human soul. Magical folklore explains the origins of the creatures as being created by Set, who separated
Sheuts
from 1,000 dead souls as they navigated the Egyptian underworld,
Duat
, realm of Osiris, and later loosed them in the Egyptian desert. Now considered an Egyptian version of the Grim Reaper myth, these spirits’ purpose is to harvest intact living souls and drag them into the underworld.

Grim Reapers. Where did Oliver get this? Who wrote it? Hadley had never heard of the shadow being separated from the other parts of the soul in Egyptian lore. Though, she had to admit that it sounded a bit like the Mori specters. But how did Oliver associate the two things after seeing her specters for a few seconds? Part of her wanted to ask him, and another part—a part reinforced by her father’s admonitions over the years to keep the Mori secret—wanted to return the book and cut off all contact with the man.

Voices in the hall and a familiar booted gait dragged her out of her thoughts.

“If you don’t mind, I’m just going to say a brief word to Miss Bacall while you let her father know I’ve arrived.” Lowe’s blond head appeared in the doorway, soon followed by his long body. He was back to his smart leather jacket and held a herringbone flatcap in his maimed hand.

Good lord, he was dashing. Just looking at him made her heart cartwheel madly. Was he this handsome on Saturday? Surely not.

“Miss Bacall,” he said with a curling smile.

“Mr. Magnusson. What a nice surprise.”

He glanced over his shoulder into the hall then strode to her desk as she stood. “Is it?” he said in a lower voice, eyes glinting with a half-hidden infectious kind of teasing cheerfulness.

“Is it what?”

“A nice surprise to see me.”

She felt herself smiling and had to work to stop. “Perhaps it is.”

His own smile widened into a stunning grin. Her stomach fluttered so violently, she pressed a palm to her middle, as if she could physically calm it.

“Why are you here?” she whispered.

“Your father left a message. I have some errands to run, so I thought I’d drop by and speak to him in person while I . . .” His gaze strayed over her top and skirt. “Well, while I saw you,” he said with a wicked slant of one brow.

Desire leapt up inside her, hot and sudden. She shifted uncomfortably and struggled to keep her breath steady.

He glanced over his shoulder again and leaned closer. “My contact should have the list tomorrow. Would you like to meet somewhere for lunch and review it against our canopic jar paintings?”

“Yes,” she said, far too eagerly. She cleared her throat and tried again, more softly. “Yes, that would be agreeable. Fine. Good. Sure. I probably can.” Oh, God. She sounded like an idiot.

A loud
whap!
flew from the door, courtesy of her coworker, George. His irritating morning greeting consisted of smacking the doorframe with his briefcase—something that never failed to make her jump in her chair and tempted her to send the Mori down the hall to wallop him on the head with the damned briefcase.

“Who the hell was that?” Lowe asked.

“My biggest mistake,” she answered as Miss Tilly’s heels clicked toward her office.

 • • • 

During his brief visit with Dr. Bacall, Lowe gave him a pack-of-lies tale concerning the hunt for the crossbar pieces. Not only did he leave Hadley out of it, but he also concocted a completely different path for his search. No books of poetry, no canopic jars, no Columbarium, and no Gloom Manor. Lowe was simply deciphering a set of symbols and following where they led. Bacall was overjoyed just to have Lowe working on it. And Lowe would be overjoyed to take the man’s money.

But at the moment, he was more interested in the younger man who’d passed by Hadley’s office. A “mistake,” she’d called him. Lowe intended to find out exactly what she meant by that. So after telling Dr. Bacall he’d show himself out, he strolled the maze of hallways until, in a quiet corner, he found a connecting corridor that led into the museum proper. A small office faced it, and the nameplate next to the open door said George Houston. Lowe ambled inside.

The man in question leaned against a file cabinet, looking into a small mirror as he ran a comb through dark hair. A cigarette dangled from his lips. He was tall—not as tall as Lowe, but probably a couple of inches over six feet—and his body looked as if it sat behind a desk all day doing nothing.

“You must be Mr. Houston,” Lowe said.

“That’s right.” The man set his comb down and looked up. “Oh, yes. Dr. Bacall’s golden boy,” he said, giving “boy” extra emphasis before blowing out a cone of smoke. “Suppose it could be worse. At least I won’t be working for a woman.”

“Miss Bacall mentioned you.”

Houston’s eyes narrowed. “Did she? In what context?”

Lowe loosened his posture and gave a causal shrug, attempting to lure the man into dropping his guard. “Just mentioned you worked for her.”

“
For
her?”

“With her,” Lowe corrected with a causal shrug. “I can’t remember. Didn’t say much, but she’s hard to read. Not exactly bubbly.”

Houston chuckled. “No, B.L.B. isn’t a charmer.”

“Pardon?”

“Bad Luck Bacall. That’s what we call her. You’ll understand if you end up working here. She’s a walking tornado of destruction. Wherever she goes, chairs break, books fall, light bulbs pop, and people end up in the hospital. You’d do well to stay out of her way, because if there’s a chance for something unlucky happening, you can bet she’ll be in the room.”

He hadn’t expected to hear all this, but if the idiot was leaking information like a busted tire, Lowe might as well help him along. “Is that right?”

“You were at the dinner party—could you believe that chandelier?”

“Yeah, that was something, all right.” Would’ve been nice if Houston had been sitting under it instead of him.

Houston shook his head and ashed his cigarette on the floor, ignoring the ashtray sitting on top of the file cabinet. “I swear to God, as soon as it fell, I thought of her. We used to have one of those Safety First signs that said ‘This department has worked
blank
days without an accident’—you know the ones with the black box where you chalk in the number? We painted B.L.B. over the top of it and used it every time something busted around here.”

Lowe pretended to laugh. Goddamn arrogant little pissant. No wonder Hadley kept to herself. If the office was filled with pigs like this, he hoped she broke every chair in the building.

“I went to college with her. She wasn’t as bad back then, but she was still a walking beacon for chaos.”

“Stanford?” Lowe asked.

“Yep.”

Lowe joined Hadley’s comment to Houston’s story, taking a guess. “She said someone in college was a ‘mistake.’ That you?”

“Mistake?” Houston chuckled and opened the top drawer of the file cabinet. “She liked it well enough.” He made a dismissive noise. “And if you want to know the truth, she came to
me
. Offered to pay me to screw her.”

Lowe’s false front momentarily dropped.

“No kidding,” Houston said, as if they were best buddies. “She said a man could pay a prostitute for sex, so why couldn’t a woman pay a man? See, that’s her fixation—she always has to have control over a situation. Once she loses that control? Forget it. She goes cuckoo. Terrible temper.”

Lowe grunted vaguely as anger rolled over him in waves.

Houston thumbed through files with one hand as he stubbed his cigarette out with the other. “Anyway, if she said it was a mistake, that’s her problem for lifting her skirt. I enjoyed myself. I mean, come on. Have you gotten a look at the ass on her? Now that’s something to—”

Fury blotted out good sense, and Lowe finally snapped. He shot forward on a growl and savagely slammed the file cabinet drawer shut on the man’s hand. Bone cracked. Houston cried out. Lowe released the drawer, and the curator fell back, holding out his injured hand in horror.

“My fingers!”

Indeed. At least three were broken, judging from the grotesque way they bent back at the knuckles. Bright red blood pooled in his palm. Tears of pain flowed as he grimaced and hollered again. “I’ll have you arrested, you lunatic!” he bit out between sobs.

“What’s my last name?” Lowe said. “Heard of my family? Go on, have me arrested. I dare you. In fact, I dare you to tell the entire museum that this wasn’t a self-inflicted accident.”

Realization flooded the man’s face. He said nothing in response, just stumbled backward and shuddered violently while cradling his hand.

Lowe tugged on his cap and headed toward the door as people stampeded toward Houston’s office. He reckoned he should be able to slip into the museum corridor before anyone saw him. “And if you say another crude word about Hadley—one fucking word—I’ll break more than your fingers.”