6. Doppelgänger
6
DOPPELG?NGER
Seth and Devynn returned to their hotel room after they’d handed the phonebook back to the front desk clerk, since they knew they’d have much more privacy there. While he was glad that they’d found Jasper — and that he was living much farther from downtown than the Wilcox primuses used to, which could only be a good thing — he knew they were a long way away from tracking down the place where Ruby had been hidden.
“I doubt she’d be at his house,” he said, and Devynn nodded, then came over to sit down next to him on the bed. Having her this close to him made his blood thrill all over again, but he knew they needed to stay focused on the matter at hand and save those sorts of activities for once they were alone tonight and had done everything they could.
“I was thinking the same thing,” she replied. Her gaze moved away from him to the window, which framed the snow-dusted San Francisco Peaks and gave a stunning view of downtown. That downtown was much bigger than it used to be, the buildings now mostly brick and some kind of concrete block rather than the wooden structures they’d been in the 1880s, but the grid of the streets wasn’t completely unfamiliar.
Somewhere in the wooded hills that rose north of downtown, Jasper Wilcox’s home now lay.
A small trickle of cold moved down Seth’s back, even as he told himself not to be a coward. So far, it looked as though the combination of Devynn’s magic and the power of the amulet was hiding them from the Wilcoxes, or surely they would have been confronted by now.
“I think we should take a walk downtown,” she suggested. “Probably a lot of the shops will be closed because it’s Sunday afternoon, but we might still be able to see if any of the buildings there have the Wilcox name on them, or contain businesses that are connected to the Wilcox clan.”
On the surface, that sounded like a good idea, but….
“How will you even know whether a business is owned by the Wilcoxes?”
Her expression seemed far too confident, given the situation. “Because I know the biggest one — Northern Lumber Holdings — still belonged to the family until sometime in the 1950s. I guess after that point, some massive multinational corporation made them an offer they couldn’t refuse, and they sold it. But it would still be a Wilcox company in 1947.”
Seth realized he needed to remember that Devynn was half Wilcox and therefore had access to a veritable treasure trove of knowledge about the clan. Sure, she probably didn’t know everything, but even being able to see one of their businesses downtown and take note of its location and size would be worth something.
“All right,” he said as he rose from the bed. “Let’s go exploring.”
He had to admit that it was much more pleasant to walk in downtown Flagstaff in 1947 than it had been in 1884, thanks to the paved sidewalks and streets. No scent of horse manure hanging in the crisp air, either, which was another definite improvement.
As they walked, he took note of the various restaurants and shops they passed, thinking it would be good to return to those shops once they’d opened…and to have a place to take Devynn for dinner that was something other than the restaurant on the ground floor of the Weatherford. Not that it didn’t look as though that would be a pleasant place to dine, but still, he couldn’t help but remember how many times they’d been forced to eat at the restaurant of the Hotel San Francisco because they just hadn’t had too many options in 1880s Flagstaff.
“There it is,” Devynn murmured to him, inclining her head toward a handsome brick building across San Francisco Street. “Northern Lumber Holdings.”
The place was shuttered and dark, as they’d expected it to be on a weekend afternoon. Still, it looked impressive enough, with the ornamental stone moldings that surrounded the front door and the cornices adorning the roofline of the structure.
“Looks impressive,” he replied in a similar undertone, and she shrugged.
“My ancestors made a lot of money,” she said. “Actually, they still do, although now it’s all in real estate and trust funds and the stock market. My cousin Lucas’s gift is luck, so he handles the investments and basically makes a pile for all of us.”
She sounded so blithe and relaxed when she spoke about money, as if it had never been a real concern for her or anyone else in her clan. To be honest, the McAllisters had a similar setup, if on a much smaller scale.
Still, he couldn’t help being curious as to exactly how much money she was talking about.
A glance around told him no one was nearby, no huge surprise when only one or two shops were even open on this block.
“So…does your clan have stipends like the McAllisters do?”
She smiled. “Are you trying to find out how much money I have, Seth?”
The dancing light in her eyes told him she was teasing. Still, he answered her seriously.
“I would never ask a lady such a thing. It’s impolite to talk about money.”
Devynn laughed outright then, and reached over to give his arm a squeeze.
“It’s okay. It’s not like it’s a secret or anything — well, at least not to another witch or warlock. The amount’s bumped up over the years, but right now, we’re sitting at a little over ten thousand for our monthly allotment.”
For a second or two, Seth could only stare back at her.
Surely she didn’t mean that she got more than ten thousand dollars every month? What on earth did she do with all that money?
Before he could say anything, she continued, now looking more amused than ever.
“You have to remember that things cost a whole lot more when I come from. All the same, it is a lot of money, more than a good percentage of the population earns. Most of us still work, though, just because it would look strange to have a bunch of Wilcoxes living in expensive houses and driving fancy cars with no real visible means of support.”
He thought of the primus who had preceded Connor, the man who now ran the Wilcox clan, and how he’d apparently been a college professor. Did universities really pay that much?
Apparently, it had been enough to keep up the facade.
“What does Connor Wilcox do?” he asked abruptly, and Devynn smiled again.
“He’s a painter — a really good one. He has regular shows in Flagstaff and Sedona and even down in Scottsdale and Tucson, so he’s not exactly your garden-variety starving artist. And Angela, his wife, designs jewelry that’s sold in a lot of high-end boutiques. From the outside looking in, their lifestyle probably doesn’t appear too questionable to people, especially when you factor in how Connor inherited everything when Damon passed away…and how Angela inherited the big house on Paradise Lane from her great-aunt Ruby.”
As Devynn spoke those words, her smile faded, and Seth guessed she was thinking about his kidnapped cousin, hidden somewhere in the mountain town where they now stood.
They had to locate her prison, no matter what.
His hand reached out to take Devynn’s. “We’re going to find her.”
“Oh, I know,” she replied as her chin went up in the gesture he now knew all too well. “I guess it just sort of hit me all over again when I said her name.”
Since Seth had experienced pretty much the same reaction, he only nodded.
“All right, we’ve found Northern Lumber Holdings. Let’s see if any of these other businesses have some obvious connections to the Wilcoxes.”
As it turned out, there were two — one of them an office building that had a discreet brass plate near the entrance that proclaimed it had been constructed in 1932 through the generosity of the Wilcox family, who had donated the land and the building supplies.
Interesting. Although Seth knew he was still trying to get a handle on exactly which things had happened…and, more importantly, when they’d happened…in the years between 1926 and 1947, he was fairly certain that would have been right in the middle of the Depression, a time when most people would have been worried about hanging on to their houses and their businesses, and definitely didn’t have the capital to invest in a construction project.
Except the Wilcoxes had, going so far as to donate everything that might be needed so all the company in charge of the actual construction had to do was supply the necessary labor.
Well, according to Devynn, the Wilcoxes were absolutely swimming in cash, both now and in the future world where she lived. Even with her disclaimer about everything costing much more in her time, Seth couldn’t quite figure out how a person could possibly spend ten thousand dollars each and every month.
Was the rent on his bungalow very expensive? Did she drive a fancy car?
He had no idea, although she seemed so down-to-earth to him that he couldn’t really imagine her spending a lot of money on what she drove.
If they were very, very lucky, maybe one day he’d be able to find out.
The two of them found another building with the legend “Wilcox and Garnett” above the door, obviously a law office of some kind.
“That makes sense,” she said. “My family’s always been swimming with lawyers.”
“Where did they go to school?” Seth asked, genuinely curious. True, they’d passed what looked like a college on their way in, but he’d glimpsed a sign proclaiming it to be a teaching school of some kind, not the sort of place where you could earn a law degree.
She looked puzzled. “I’m not sure. I mean, in my time, Northern Pines is a place where you can get that kind of degree, but now?” Her shoulders lifted, and she went on, “I assume they probably did some sort of correspondence school to earn their certification. Besides, everyone trusted the Wilcoxes. It wasn’t as if the regular people here in town were going to think they were a bunch of shysters.”
Seth wasn’t sure exactly what a shyster was, but he had to assume it was some sort of charlatan. And yes, the nonmagical population in Flagstaff would have no idea that the Wilcoxes weren’t the upstanding, prosperous citizens they pretended to be, and instead a family of witches and warlocks who didn’t seem to have too much of a problem walking the dark side of the path if it got them what they wanted.
“I get your point,” he said. “But now what?”
“Now,” Devynn replied, linking her arm with his, “we’re going to backtrack to that five-and-dime we went by a few minutes ago. Every woman we’ve passed has hair that’s way more ‘done’ than mine, and that means I have to pick up some curlers and figure out how to style all this so I don’t stand out so much.”
Personally, Seth thought her hair looked just fine — she had it pulled back with a different scarf today, one in muted shades of green and rust and dark brown to go with her dress — but he had to admit that the women they’d seen definitely had more structured hairstyles, with different sorts of waves and curls.
Their hair had also seemed much shorter than Devynn’s, and he couldn’t help frowning. He loved her long, softly waving locks…the way they spread across the pillow as she slept next to him.
“You’re not going to cut it, are you?”
“Oh, no,” she said, in tones of such horror that he knew she was telling the simple truth. “I’m not going to go that far to blend in. I have to believe there were some women in the ’40s who didn’t cut their hair, just as I noticed there were plenty of women in your time who put it up rather than bob it.”
Seth had to admit that was true. A few of his younger, more progressive cousins had cut their hair chin-length to follow the trendsetters in the big cities, but a larger group of them had decided to do what Devynn had done while she was in his time and merely put their hair up in a low bun at the back of their necks to conceal how long it actually was.
“That sounds fine, then,” he said, even as he wondered if he should have kept quiet on the subject. After all, it was her hair…and her decision what she wanted to do with it.
But it seemed obvious enough to him that she had no intention of drastically changing those long locks that hung more than halfway down her back, not when they weren’t planning to stay here in 1947 any longer than they absolutely had to.
“Then let’s head back to the store,” he said. “Because it’s Sunday, I have no idea how long they even plan to stay open.”
“Right.”
His instincts had proved correct, because when they approached the shop, he noticed at once that the hours posted next to the door said that they closed at four on Sundays, which only gave them about ten minutes.
But Devynn was efficient with her purchases, gathering up several packs of curlers, a handheld hair dryer, hairpins, hairspray, a powder compact, and a flat cake of mascara. Because Charles had given him all the money and he hadn’t yet handed some over to Devynn, Seth ended up paying for everything, but that was fine. Whatever she could do to blend in more would only be a good thing.
Afterward, they headed back to the hotel, where she stored all her purchases in the bathroom and came back to the window where Seth stood.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said, and he raised an eyebrow.
“About what?”
“About where Jasper has Ruby stashed. I find it hard to believe that he would keep her at his place, but maybe if he has a basement or a guest house or something where the neighbors wouldn’t be able to spy her, then it might make some sense. The problem is, we have no idea what his house even looks like.”
Seth couldn’t help sending her a worried glance. “I hope you’re not suggesting we drive by there like we did the house on Park Street. We got lucky earlier today, but now that we know where Jasper lives…and that several other Wilcoxes live on that same street…I’m not sure that’s a very good idea.”
However, she only smiled. “We may end up having to do that very thing, but I thought we could try something different first. Do you think they might have the architectural plans for his house at City Hall? In my time, every new house has to have permits — as well as any house that’s getting extensive remodeling that involves moving walls around and stuff — but I don’t know whether that was the practice in the 1940s.”
“I have no idea,” Seth replied. “But I suppose that’s something we can check out tomorrow when the city offices are open. Unfortunately, I don’t know how much more we can do today.”
A certain glint entered her clear blue eyes, and she stepped close and twined her fingers with his. “Oh, I can think of a few things…if you’re up to it.”
His body stirred at her touch, and he pulled her to him and bent down to press a kiss against her lips. Voice a murmur, he said, “Oh, I’m definitely up to it.”
“Don’t you dare laugh,” Devynn warned him as she exited the bathroom the next morning.
He could never think her anything less than beautiful, but he had to admit that she did present a somewhat comical sight with her long hair bound up in those pink curlers.
“I won’t laugh,” he said gravely, even as his mouth quirked a little. “How long do you have to wear those things?”
Her shoulders lifted. “I honestly don’t know. I’ve never used them before. In my time, we use electric curling irons and flat irons, but I didn’t see anything like that at the five-and-dime. I used the dryer to get my hair to where it was just damp and then used it again after I put in the curlers, but I can tell it’s still not dry. Maybe another half-hour?”
That didn’t sound too bad. They’d awoken fairly early, only a little after seven, and even though they’d made love again before getting in the shower, it was now barely eight-thirty. Seth had no idea when the city offices opened, but even if they were now officially within business hours, he knew he and Devynn would have plenty of time to get breakfast and head over before ten o’clock rolled around.
Well, assuming her hair didn’t take forever and a day to dry.
She must have seen some concern in his expression, because she added, “But I’ll do my makeup and get dressed and everything while it’s drying, and then I’ll take it down at the last minute. It’ll be fine.”
“I’m not worried,” he said, and went over to her so he could give her a good, hearty kiss before she put that red lipstick on again. While he had to admit she looked beautiful in it, he still wasn’t thrilled with the way it got smeared all over his mouth anytime they did much more than exchange a light peck.
And with the way his body seemed to react to her whenever she was near, it was damn hard to restrain himself to a single chaste kiss.
After their embrace ended, she pressed her finger against his lips and smiled again before heading into the bathroom, where she could attend to the rest of her preparations. He was already dressed, so he went over to the window and pulled the draperies aside a bit so he could take a look at the streets below without allowing anyone to actually see inside their hotel room.
A much busier view met his eyes, which was about what he’d expected. People hurried to and fro on the sidewalks, intent on getting to work, and the streets, while not choked with cars, definitely showed much more activity than they had on Sunday afternoon.
Because he knew Devynn would be occupied for a while, he called out, “I’m going to head down to the lobby to see if I can get the address for City Hall.”
“Sounds good,” she replied.
He caught a glimpse of her leaning toward the mirror and brushing mascara on her lashes. Again, he wasn’t sure whether she really needed such a thing when he thought her eyelashes were already plenty long and thick, but he supposed that was just another part of trying to blend in and look like an ordinary woman from the late 1940s.
Except for the part where no one who looked at her could ever think she was even close to ordinary.
A different man was on duty at the front desk, which Seth supposed made sense. However, the new clerk was accommodating enough, and again handed over the phonebook so he could verify the address for City Hall and write it down on a piece of notepaper he’d brought with him.
After thanking the clerk and heading upstairs, Seth slipped back into the hotel room. Now Devynn was fully dressed and made up, although her hair was still in curlers.
“Did you find City Hall?”
He nodded. “Yes. The phonebook says it’s on Aspen Street.”
She didn’t seem particularly surprised by that information. “I guess it’s where it’s always been, although I know they built a whole new complex about twenty years ago. They probably didn’t want to move the place because they didn’t want people to have a hard time finding it.”
Seth supposed that made sense. “If it’s on Aspen, we can walk there, right?”
“Yes.” Devynn paused to put a hand up to her hair, as though trying to determine whether it was still too damp to take down. It must have met her approval, because she headed back into the bathroom so she could start removing the curlers and the hairpins that had held them in place.
He followed and paused by the doorway. It was fun to watch her take out the curlers one by one and set them on the counter, and to see the more structured waves they’d left behind. While her hair was still probably a little longer than most women in this era would have worn, it did look more polished, and he thought the new style would certainly help her pass muster.
“Did you want to head straight over to city hall?” he asked next, and she wrinkled her nose.
“No, I want to get some breakfast in me first. There’s a café just down Aspen Street that’s been there forever, so I’m hoping it exists in this time. If not, I’m sure we’ll find something else. We passed lots of restaurants yesterday.”
That they did. Still, he hoped the café she was thinking of was there, just because it would be fun to sit down in a place that had survived in the same location for more than a hundred years.
“All right,” he told her. “The sun’s out, so I’m not going to worry about an overcoat, but you might want to bring a sweater.”
“Already planning on it.”
Soon enough, they’d left their hotel room and taken the elevator to the lobby, where Devynn told him to turn right out the front door and keep going for another block. Just as they were passing an alley that separated two large brick buildings, however, her hand clamped down on his arm, and she murmured, “Oh, my God.”
“What is it?” he asked, alarm sending unwelcome tingles of worry through his limbs.
“Across the street,” she said in the same undertone. “It can’t be him… can it?”
As best he could, Seth followed the very small tilt of her head.
His stomach clenched.
The man was Samuel Wilcox.
But no, that was impossible. As far as Seth had been able to tell, Samuel had been right around thirty when they’d had the displeasure of meeting him in 1884. That would have made him in his nineties now, while the man across the street looked as if he might be twenty-eight or twenty-nine at the most.
And although he didn’t want to stare, he couldn’t help noting a few subtle differences — how the stranger’s hair wasn’t the same coal black that Samuel and Jeremiah — and Jasper — shared, but a dark brown a shade or two lighter. Also, as he talked to the man running the newsstand where he’d stopped, his expression was open and friendly, and he even grinned and clapped the newsstand worker on the shoulder as if in response to some joke.
Seth couldn’t claim to have known Samuel Wilcox very well — thank the Goddess — but he was fairly certain he would never have seen their former adversary behaving in such a jocular way with a civilian.
“The resemblance is crazy,” Devynn said. “But obviously, it’s not him. I guess I just sort of freaked out there for a moment.”
“I can understand why,” Seth replied. “This must be his, what…grandson?”
Her arched brows — now darkened slightly with some sort of pencil — drew together for a moment. “Probably his great-grandson. You know how people in witch clans tend to get married early.”
For some reason, that piece of speculation made Seth feel a bit better. Maybe in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter so much, but having the man across the street separated from Samuel by one more generation made him seem much less close to the not-so-pleasant ancestor who’d been their nemesis.
The man finished his business at the newsstand and continued along the sidewalk, heading toward San Francisco Street.
“Should we follow him?” Seth asked, and Devynn nodded.
“We’d be stupid not to,” she answered at once. “But we’ll need to stay on this side of the street — it would be way too obvious if we crossed now.”
Again, that observation seemed sensible enough. The two of them walked along, doing their best to carry on a conversation that had absolutely nothing to do with their real reason for being here in Flagstaff, commenting on the restaurants where they might like to eat, discussing when would be the best day to go visit the Grand Canyon, depending on the weather report.
As far as Seth could tell, the man wasn’t paying any attention to them at all. He nodded and smiled at several people as he walked along Aspen Street, showing all the confidence of a man in his element, surrounded by those who’d known him for years.
It wasn’t too surprising, considering Seth knew he felt just about the same way when he roamed around Jerome.
He had to admit that he wasn’t too surprised to see the Wilcox warlock cross San Francisco Street and enter the building he and Devynn had identified as the home of Northern Lumber Holdings. No doubt plenty of Wilcoxes worked there, keeping up the guise that they earned their money just like any regular civilian and weren’t instead sitting on vast troves of generational wealth.
Devynn paused with him at the southwest corner of Aspen and San Francisco. “Well, I suppose that’s that.” She slanted a glance up at him, her eyes taking on that dancing glint he knew all too well. “Unless you want to go inside.”
“Talk about walking into the lion’s den,” he replied, and she chuckled.
“No, I’m not sure I want to play with fire quite that much. But at least we know something about one of the Wilcoxes, and maybe after breakfast we can think of a few things to ask the man at the newsstand…as long as we’re not too obvious about what we’re up to.”
Seth had to agree that was probably a good plan. It seemed fairly clear to him that whoever the Wilcox warlock was, he dropped by that newsstand regularly on his way to work.
Which would seem to indicate that he must live somewhere around here, but that still didn’t narrow things down too much. Even the old neighborhood where Jeremiah and his siblings had once resided was within walking distance of the spot where he and Devynn now strode along the sidewalk, so that meant there was a fairly large area where the Wilcox warlock might have his house or apartment.
Still, they had one small piece of information they hadn’t possessed only a few minutes earlier, and Seth had to take that as a good sign.
“Absolutely,” he said. “But first, breakfast.”