Grim Shadows (Roaring Twenties) (4 page)

If she was forced to validate the piece’s authenticity and give a blind assessment on the spot, her education and experience told her that the object very well
could
be 3,000 years old—a priceless artifact, and a beautiful example of Amarna Period goldwork. Now, whether it actually opened a door to some mythical underworld was unknown, but something powerful crackled beneath the surface.

“If it’s real, my father wants it,” she finally said.

“I can’t just hand it over to you right now,” he said, reclaiming the amulet. “I’ll need signatures, people present, that sort of thing. And you and your father will want the Egyptian documentation.”

“You have it?”

“My uncle does.”

Dear God. How thrilling.

Nothing mattered but this. All the insults he’d thrown her way were forgotten. Every strange feeling he’d dredged up inside her. Whatever she’d endured had been worth it to secure this arcane piece of history. The knowledge that it would also secure her the job promotion she so desperately wanted was, as they say, killing two birds.

She slid the check across the table. “Consider this a down payment. I want your word that you won’t sell it to someone else. My father will give you the remainder when you meet.”

“Gentlemen’s agreement.” He stuck out his hand—the one still flaunting all its digits—but shook his head when she offered hers in return. “No gloves. Like a man would.”

Skin to skin? Not even the promise of the amulet could make her give him that. She avoided touching in general and skin contact at all costs. Beyond a few brief kisses at petting parties in high school and the loss of her virginity in college, she didn’t remember the last time she’d touched someone with her bare hand on purpose.

Within the space of one afternoon, this walking vaudeville act of a man had already touched her several times: his palm against her back when he was walking with her inside the station lobby; running hand-in-hand with her to catch the train; intimately pressing himself against her torn skirt. So much touching!

She supposed it was nothing to him—some people had no boundaries, after all—but it was something to
her
. “A gentleman would keep his gloves on,” she insisted, thrusting her gloved hand forward.

“Fine. If you don’t want it to be binding. There are special Man Rules, you know. Spitting, secret handshakes.” Smiling a crooked smile, he took her hand.

His grip was firm and steady. Warm through the thin leather. Rational thought abandoned her until she realized they weren’t shaking. Why weren’t they shaking? A small noise vibrated from the back of his throat. Her gaze lifted to meet his.

Just like that, he’d captured her eyes above, and her hand below. His thumb swept over the tender skin of her wrist, grazing her pounding pulse. A whisper of a touch, barely there. Barely a touch at all, really—it might’ve even been accidental. But the tingles that rippled up her arm didn’t care about distinctions.

She tore her hand away from his, back to safety.

“Mr. Magnusson,” she said, hoping she sounded less frazzled than she felt. “It appears we have a deal.”

LOWE DIDN’T PLACE MUCH
value on a gentlemen’s agreement. Any kind of agreement, really. Much like the rest of his family, he saw words like “law” and “binding” as boundaries to be pushed—loose suggestions, if you will. It made no difference if it was a handshake, committed to paper, or filed in a government office.

His agreement with Hadley was no different than a hundred others he’d given without intent to follow through, so he wasn’t sure why it made him . . . uncomfortable. Maybe it was her intense, too-serious personality that rattled him. Or the way she looked at him with those discerning, hawklike eyes of hers.

Or maybe it was because he actually felt guilty when she’d trusted his lying handshake against her better instincts. Why had she? Hadn’t he given her every reason
not
to trust him? He certainly didn’t trust her. The woman was too smart. Too rational. Too critical. He saw the wheels turning inside her Stanford-educated mind.

Which was why, while she made use of the compartment’s restroom, he tucked the amulet base beneath the pillow in his berth, as he’d done every night since he found the cursed thing. And like his previous nights spent on the train, he didn’t expect to get much sleep. So when he woke up the next morning, he was surprised to realize he’d slept the entire night. And she’d slept, too.

Oddly pleasant to see her stretched out on the opposite berth, still wearing her coat. Her sharp, long features softened when she slept. She was rather pretty. Strikingly so.

Regardless, he damn sure wasn’t selling the
djed
amulet to her father. If Bacall wanted it so badly, surely Lowe could find someone else to double the man’s offer. Pointless to think about, because even that wouldn’t be enough to cover his debt.

Big problems required creative solutions, and Lowe knew exactly what he was going to do to solve them. After he had a hot meal and a bath.

Talking shop with Hadley helped to pass time during the last leg of their journey. It was four in the afternoon when he finally stepped off the train onto the Twin Peaks station platform and breathed in San Francisco air. Home at last. Thank God.

“Lowe!”

His baby sister careened his way, her blond, bobbed hair swinging as she ran. She pounced on him like she used to when she was a child.

“Whoa, Astrid,” he warned, but when her arms went around his neck, he found himself unable to stop from lifting her straight off the ground and hugging her back with the same enthusiasm. “All right, all right,” he said, setting her back down. “Release me, she-demon.”

She grinned up at him, running her gloved hand over his whiskers. “You look like a vagrant,
älskade broder
.”

“I feel like one. And look at you! You’ve grown since the summer. Are you still just seventeen?”

“Last time I checked.”

“You’re wearing rouge now?”

“Maybe I am.”

“Mamma and Pappa would roll over in their graves if they knew.”

“I’m not a child, Lowe.”

He laughed. “I didn’t say it was unbecoming.”

Her nose scrunched up as she smiled. He slung an arm around her shoulder and kissed her cheek as another familiar face came into view.

“Bo Yeung,” he said, unhinging himself from Astrid to shake hands. The Chinese boy wasn’t really a boy anymore—he was twenty-one, all lean muscle and handsome grace. Once an orphaned pickpocket, Bo had been the trusted assistant of Lowe’s brother, Winter, for several years. When Bo wasn’t helping Winter with the bootlegging, he did some driving for the family and played bodyguard to Astrid. A well-paid one, at that: he wore a plaid newsboy cap and matching dark green suit that looked as if it cost more than Lowe’s entire steamer trunk of desert-friendly wear.

“She’s right,” Bo said, giving his hand a hearty shake. “You do look rough.”

“I’ve been through hell the last few weeks. I can’t tell you how good it is to see friendly faces.”

“I’d say the house has been quiet without you, but that’s a lie.” Bo had lived at the Magnusson house in the servant’s hall since their parents died in a car accident more than two years ago. Part of the family, really. But the way Bo was standing over Astrid—almost
too
protectively—and the way she was swaying nearer to Bo—almost
too
close—made Lowe think something had changed between them while he’d been in Egypt.

Interesting. Lowe loved a good scandal.

Astrid made a distressed noise. “What happened?”

“Oh, this? Didn’t I write you about it?” he asked as she lifted his left hand. “I lost it in a game of Five-Finger Fillet.”

“What?” Astrid and Bo said together before Astrid continued, “—in the world is that?”

“Knife game,” Lowe said, holding out his hand, palm down. “You put your hand on the table, fingers spread, and take the tip of your knife and stab between your fingers . . .
tap, tap tap!
”

“You are a liar!” Astrid squealed, horrified, but laughing. “Is it really gone? Is it a trick?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” He wiggled his remaining four fingers before lunging at her side to tickle her until she squealed some more, begging him to stop. “All right,” he said. “Enough of that. Are the two of you my entire greeting party? Where’s my big brother and this fictional wife of his?”

A cheerful voice floated over his shoulder. “Fictional? I thought you were the one with a thousand stories up your sleeve.”

He turned to find a small, heavily freckled woman in a red silk dress with an oriental collar. She flashed him a pretty smile and crossed her arms under a great pair of breasts.

“You must be the spirit medium.”

“I’m also your brother’s fictional wife.”

“Hello, Aida.” He started to shake her hand, then leaned in and hugged her. “For the love of God, you’re family now.” He held her at arm’s length to look at her. “Are you really having Winter’s child?”

“The doctor says I am.”

He hugged her again as she laughed. “God help you if it’s a boy.”

“Christ alive, don’t squeeze her to death,” a deep, melodic voice said at his side. His older brother, Winter Magnusson, the mighty bootlegger. At twenty-nine, Winter was Lowe’s senior by four years and twice as burly. Lowe accepted his embrace, clapping him on the shoulder.

“You look like death warmed over,” Winter said. “Don’t they have a barber in first class?”

Yes, but he was too paranoid to allow anyone near him with a straight razor. Not to mention the problem of his dwindling funds. “I’m thinking of growing a beard.”

“Not if you want to live in my house,” Winter said.

Married or not, Winter was still his same old dictator self.

Lowe was too tired to fight, so he turned his attention back to Aida. How in the world his brother, with his gruff attitude and scarred eye, had been able to attract a pretty thing like her was beyond Lowe’s comprehension. “Astrid described you perfectly in her letters.” As for the breasts, Winter had mentioned those in the longest piece of correspondence he’d ever sent to Lowe. It said:
I’m in love. Got married to a tiny, freckled girl with nice breasts and good sense. You’ll like her.
And then a telegram a month later:
You’re going to be an uncle.

She smiled back at him. “And everyone tells me you’re the luckiest man alive.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the porter helping Hadley onto the platform, like she was an invalid, or . . . Oh, that’s right. She was still officially on the run from her fictional husband. Better put the kibosh on that, as his friend, Adam, would say, before the story spread to his family’s ears. “Excuse me,” he told Aida, before rushing back to the porter. “Thank you for everything. I’ve got her now,” he told the young man, quickly taking her arm.

Just as quickly, she pulled away. “I can walk,” she muttered.

After giving the porter another five-dollar bill—his last—Lowe turned to find his family staring. Expectantly.

He cleared his throat. “Hadley Bacall, meet the Magnusson clan.” He hastily rattled off everyone’s names. “Miss Bacall and I met on the train.”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” Hadley muttered to herself.

“Her father works for the de Young Museum.”

“As do I,” she added.

“Right, of course,” he said, mildly flustered. Why didn’t he just say that to begin with? It’s not like anything scandalous had happened between them. Well, minus the ripped the dress; his eyes instantly angled toward her coat while his brain remembered the stitched peacock feathers curving over her luscious backside for the umpteenth time.

For the love of God, wake up, man!

“She’s a curator,” he managed to spit out. “The museum is interested in what I uncovered in the desert.”

There. That seemed to make sense to everyone. He struck his hands in his pockets and exhaled while Hadley politely elaborated on her undying love of mummies and the stories they told about the Egyptians’ diet and way of life . . . talk, talk. And his family acted impressed . . . Yes, yes. Good. Everything was normal and fine.

Until Bo spoke up.

“Do you have a car picking you up, or would you like a ride home?”

“I’ll just take a taxi, thank you,” she answered.

Then Winter had to insert himself into the conversation. “Bo will take your luggage to the cab stand, then.”

Luggage. Right. Time to invent another story. But Hadley was faster.

“Actually, your brother knocked my suitcase out of my hands in Salt Lake City during a knife fight, so God only knows if Union Pacific will find it.”

Lowe cringed. “It wasn’t exactly a ‘knife fight,’ per se.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” she said, her voice tarter than a Michigan cherry. “But during dinner on the train last night, when we were discussing you stabbing one of the thugs, I believe your exact quip was, ‘That’s what they get for bringing guns to a knife fight.’”

Oh, boy.

“A day in the life of a Magnusson,” Aida murmured as Winter’s face darkened.

Lowe wanted to drag Hadley aside. What happened to his partner in crime? She’d done so well in front of the porter this morning, and they’d spent the day chatting. He’d thought they were getting along. Now she was generating arctic winds strong enough to bury him under a snowy drift of resentment. What had changed?

He faked a smile in an attempt to charm his way back into her good graces. Or at least somewhere closer to her good graces than where he stood at the moment. “But, hey—I got us home in one piece. Mostly. Sorry about your luggage. And your dress.”

She stared at him for a long moment, and then said, “You have my father’s check. He’ll contact you about meeting up with him.” She bid a polite good-bye to his family, nodded to him, then strolled away as if he were the last person she ever wanted to see again.

Even then, he was unable to tear his gaze from the hypnotic sway of her hips as she threaded her way through the boisterous travelers thronging the platform.

“Christ alive,” Winter mumbled. “What on earth did you do to that lady?”

“Nothing,” he protested.

Nothing he wanted to, that is.

A slow-walking group of elderly nuns split up their group and obscured his view of Hadley. As they shuffled by, Winter whispered in his ear, “Monk Morales has been sniffing around the pier, looking for you. Word is you sold him a forgery. Some kind of miniature golden statue. An animal.”

Lowe scratched the back of his neck. “A crocodile.”

“You been working with Adam Goldberg again?”

Lowe grunted.

“God
dammit
, Lowe.”

“It wasn’t Adam’s fault—his reproduction was spotless. It was the fucking paperwork. Monk didn’t even notice the error. It was the person he sold it to.”

Winter’s eyes briefly closed. “Which is who?”

“No idea. It was a silent sale.”

“So what does Monk want from you now?”

“I think he wants his money back, but he might want my head, as well.”

“Why don’t you compromise and give him the real statue.”

Impossible to give what he didn’t have. The whole purpose of the forgery was to generate two sales. Lowe gave a polite nod to one of the nosier nuns as she passed.
Yes, Sister,
he thought,
you aren’t wrong to suspect the Magnusson boys of vice and lies. We are the reason people need to purge themselves in your confessional booths. Nothing to see. Move along.

Winter flexed his hand like he might be thinking about taking Monk’s side. “How much do you owe him?”

“I’ve got a plan, don’t worry.”

“One that doesn’t involve begging me for money?”

“Never begged you before. Don’t plan to start now.”

“Good, because my liquid assets this month are tied up in a new warehouse in Marin County, and I recently paid out Christmas bonuses to my people and—”

“
Ja, ja!
I said I wasn’t asking.” Not that he hadn’t considered it, but still.

The last nun passed by. Winter gripped the back of Lowe’s neck and whispered hotly into his ear, “Fix it with Morales. I’ve got a baby on the way. Don’t bring that shit to our doorstep.”

 • • • 

After leaving Lowe, Hadley spent several minutes calming her erratic feelings. Why she’d gotten so upset in front his family, she didn’t really know. But once they were gone, she put Lowe out of her mind and waited nearly two hours in the Twin Peaks lobby, hoping her lost luggage was on the 127. It wasn’t. So she filed a claim with the manager, listening to his secondhand account of the events at the Salt Lake City station. No one knew why the incident had happened and the police weren’t able to apprehend the gunmen. Maybe they’d follow Lowe here to finish the job.