7. Public Housing
7
PUBLIC HOUSING
The 1940s incarnation of the diner was very different from its current form as a sort of hipster coffee house where a lot of students from Northern Pines liked to hang out, but the exposed brick walls were the same, as were the tall windows that overlooked Aspen Street and showed the bare branches of the elms in the open space across the way. Because we’d come a little later than most of the breakfast crowd, who I assumed would be grabbing something on the way to work, we got one of the prime tables near those windows.
The redhead who’d seated us seemed to be taking on both hostess and waitress duties, and asked us if we wanted coffee while we looked over our menus.
Coffee sounded heavenly. I knew I’d need some caffeine to speed up my synapses and help me figure out the best way to approach the man at the newsstand.
Seth and I both placed our drink orders and picked up our menus. I’d already decided that I wanted pancakes — it was heavenly not having to worry about what kind of food I could fit in my corset — and probably a side of bacon, just so I could have a little protein with my meal.
The coffee came, and we ordered our food, and once the waitress was gone, I said, “I think maybe I should talk to the newsstand guy on my own.”
Although Seth didn’t exactly frown, I could tell he wasn’t too keen on that idea. “Why?”
I stirred some cream and just the slightest smidge of sugar into my coffee. “Because I’m pretty sure most men in this time aren’t going to be nearly as suspicious of a single woman approaching them about a man as they would the two of us asking questions.”
He picked up his coffee and blew on it, expression thoughtful. “You’re probably right. So, what’s your plan?”
“I’m going to tell the guy at the newsstand that I saw the Wilcox warlock drop one of his cufflinks on the sidewalk, but by the time I’d picked it up and went to follow him, he’d already hurried off. Then I’ll try to get a name and place of business out of him. We already know where he works, but the man at the newsstand doesn’t have to know that.”
Again, Seth was quiet for a second or two. “What if he asks you to give him the cufflink so he can give it to Mr. Wilcox? It seemed obvious to me that they know each other pretty well.”
I’d already thought of that snag. “I’ll have a cufflink because you’ll have given me one of yours.”
It seemed to me Seth had anticipated that I might ask him to make that sacrifice. “So, I’m supposed to wander around cufflink-less all day?”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “You’ll live. Besides, we passed plenty of jewelry stores yesterday. I’m sure we’ll be able to get you some replacements at one of them if we have to.”
He sipped some of his coffee. “All right. That should work.”
Our food came not too soon after that, and we settled down to eat breakfast, both of us probably all too aware of how time was passing. I didn’t have any reason to believe the newsstand guy wasn’t there all day, but what if he packed it in after the morning rush was over?
But because the diner was the kind of place where people weren’t exactly expected to linger, we were done and out the door in less than twenty minutes, me with my lipstick refreshed so I could do my best to charm the newsstand owner into handing over whatever information he might possess regarding the Wilcox warlock we’d spied earlier.
And the newsstand operator was still there, although I noticed he’d tidied up the small stacks of the morning papers that remained, a signal that maybe he was going to pack it in and, if not, take off for the rest of the day, at least leave for a bit so he could get an early lunch. I had no idea when he’d started work, but I’d read that back in the day when real newspapers were still a thing, the people who delivered them were up before the crack of dawn.
The man at the newsstand sent me a pleasant smile as I approached. Up close, he looked like he was maybe in his early forties, fair-haired, with the kind of skin that turned ruddy from exposure to the sun rather than becoming tanned.
“Can I help you, miss?”
I summoned my best smile, very glad that I’d taken the time to curl my hair that morning and make myself look every inch like someone who very much belonged in 1947. “Oh, I hope so,” I said. “I was walking along the street a while back and noticed the man who’d been walking in front of me dropped his cufflink. I would have given it to him right away, but I was already late for a breakfast date and couldn’t make the time.”
If the newsstand operator thought my story at all implausible, he showed no indication of it. “I’ll try to help if I can. I see most everyone who comes along this way. Can you describe the man who dropped the cufflink?”
“He was very tall,” I said, lifting one hand to indicate a height much greater than my own — and a good five or six inches more than the man at the newsstand, who wasn’t too much taller than I was. “And he had dark brown hair and was wearing a charcoal gray suit with pinstripes.”
The newsstand operator nodded at once. “Oh, that would have been Mr. Wilcox — Adam Wilcox. He works at the Northern Lumber company, which is just over on San Francisco Street.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” I said. “I was worried he might not work anywhere close to here.”
“No, it’s right there,” the man replied, pointing toward the big brick building less than a block away. Luckily, the doorway wasn’t visible from this angle, so I thought as long as I went in that general direction, he’d think I wasn’t doing anything more than returning the mythical cufflink to its rightful owner.
“Then I’ll go take it to him. Thank you so much for letting me know who he is and where he works.”
I flashed the newsstand operator a smile and then hurried off. The whole time, Seth had been standing on the other side of the street, keeping watch in case anything went wrong. When I began to walk toward San Francisco Street, he kept pace, and once I reached the corner, I went ahead and crossed to the other side, keeping up my part of the story that I was doing nothing more than going inside to return the lost cufflink to Adam Wilcox.
Once I knew I was past the line of sight from the newsstand, I crossed at the next intersection and met up with Seth.
“His name is Adam Wilcox, and he works at Northern Lumber,” I told him. “So we should try to look him up in the phonebook, too, just to see where he lives. I kind of get the feeling he’s harmless, though.”
My companion didn’t look too convinced. “I’m not sure you can call any Wilcox ‘harmless.’” I lifted an eyebrow at him, and he hastened to add, “Present company excluded, of course. I’m talking about the clan of the past, not your current family.”
I couldn’t take offense, not when I knew that was exactly what he’d meant. “It’s fine,” I said, then reached into my sweater pocket where I’d stored his cufflink. The amulet, of course, still resided in my dress pocket, since it had to accompany me wherever I went. Luckily, it seemed as though Seth had still been close enough to be within its field of effect even when across the street, since no Wilcoxes had appeared to demand what he was doing in their territory. “And here’s your cufflink. Thanks for the loan.”
“The man at the newsstand didn’t ask to see it?”
“Nope,” I said cheerfully. “He just wanted to help. And look — there’s a phone booth. Maybe there’s a phonebook in there.”
The booth was unoccupied, so I took a quick peek inside. Sure enough, a book identical to the one the hotel clerk had loaned us dangled from a little chain beneath the pay phone, so I hurriedly flipped to the section where I’d seen all the Wilcoxes listed just the day before.
“Adam Wilcox, 420 West Aspen Avenue,” I read aloud, while Seth pulled a pen out of his pocket and quickly jotted down the address on the same piece of paper that held the rest of our information on the Wilcox clan. “No wonder he walks to work — that’s not very far from downtown.”
Seth looked thoughtful. “Do you think he might be one of the men who helped Jasper steal Ruby?”
I hesitated for less than a second. “No. I mean, I didn’t get a very good look at them, but I got the impression they were a little older. Also, their hair was as black as Jasper’s, while this Adam Wilcox definitely isn’t that dark.”
If he really was Samuel’s great-grandson, was that slightly lighter hair a gift from his great-grandmother Grace, who’d been almost white-blonde? Maybe those genes had gotten diluted over the years, but I could still see how that branch of the family might not be quite as dark as the rest of the Wilcoxes.
In my time, there had been so many marriages to civilians and so much intermingling that, while the family still tended toward brunettes with brown eyes, we weren’t nearly as uniformly black-haired as the Wilcoxes in the past. Which was as it should be; even among the McAllisters, there were plenty like Seth who weren’t blond or red-haired at all, but a sort of mid-brown.
Everything came toward the middle eventually, I supposed.
But now we had another address we could look up in addition to Jasper’s. I stepped out of the phone booth and told Seth, “We can just keep walking along Route 66. When we get to Humphreys Street, we’ll cross over and cut up a block, and then we should be at City Hall.”
“Sounds good,” he replied as he looped his arm with mine.
Despite the traffic whizzing past on the highway, it still felt right to walk along next to him, to look at all the businesses we passed and remind myself of what they were in my time. The five-and-dime had turned into Crystal Magic, a fun New Age store, and that Chinese restaurant was now a vegan place, but some things were actually the same, such as the Irish pub, and, of course, the Weatherford.
City Hall looked very different, though, and was a big brick building rather than the series of sustainably sourced structures that occupied the same space in my day. It felt strange to have to go to the front desk to be directed to the correct place, rather than look it up on the automated kiosk in the lobby, but after the woman acting as concierge there told us we needed to go to the county assessor’s office on the second floor, I figured how we got the information didn’t matter so much as long as we ended up in the right place.
By then, it was almost eleven, well before we’d have to worry about everyone taking off for lunch. We’d decided it would probably be better for Seth to ask about the properties we were interested in, just because I couldn’t ignore the way people seemed to brush women aside in this era if there was a big, strong man standing nearby.
Well, at least I knew that battle had been mostly won by the time I came into the world.
He went up to the man working at the desk and asked about both Jasper and Adam’s properties. In my time, that information was a matter of public record and could easily be looked up on the internet, but I wasn’t sure whether things worked the same way in 1947.
Apparently, they did, because the clerk said he’d take a look and that we needed to give him a few minutes to go through the files.
“That was easier than I thought,” Seth said in an undertone as he stepped away from the desk and back to where I was standing.
“Usually, this stuff is available to the public if you know where to look,” I replied. “But I’m glad you didn’t have to explain why you wanted to see it.”
He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. “Why would anyone want to see property records? Seems like pretty dry stuff to me.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “If they’d asked, you could have said it was to clear up a property line problem — like a neighbor building their wall a few inches past where their actual property ended or something like that. In my case, I helped a couple of friends look things up when they wanted to verify that a house was really owned by the person advertising it for rent so they wouldn’t get scammed out of a bunch of money.”
Seth looked a little startled by that explanation. “That sort of thing really happens?”
“More often than you’d think,” I replied. Yes, my friends had lucked out, and the man renting the house up on Sullivan Avenue had turned out to be the real deal, but I’d heard plenty of horror stories from people who hadn’t done their due diligence.
The clerk returned, and Seth hurried back to the counter. Even I knew this was way before the invention of copy machines, so I wasn’t too surprised when the man handed over a piece of paper covered in quick, slanting handwriting.
“This should be everything you need,” he said. “Are there any other properties you need me to look up?”
Seth glanced over his shoulder at me, and I shrugged. Maybe we might need to return for something else, but I wouldn’t know that for sure until we had a chance to look over what the clerk had given us.
“That should do it for now,” he said. “Thank you for your help.”
“It’s no problem, sir.”
Precious paper in hand, Seth came over to me, and together we took the stairs down to the lobby.
“Now what?”
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” I said. “We’ll have more privacy there to see what all this says.”
Seth seemed amenable to that suggestion, because he folded the piece of paper and put it in his pocket before linking arms with me so we could walk the half-block to the Weatherford. Once we were in our room, he brought out the paper again and smoothed it against the top of the small table by the window.
I came close so I could read the dense handwriting in better light. According to what the clerk had written down, the house on Hutcheson Street had been purchased by Jacob Wilcox in April 1905, and appeared to have been handed down to his son and then finally to Jasper.
What had made Jacob want to leave the house where he’d spent his youth? Had he been living somewhere else after he came of age and gotten married? Had his wife been the one to ask for a new house, something possibly bigger and grander than the Victorian on Park Street?
If that turned out to be the case, I doubted she’d stuck around to enjoy it for very long. The primus’s wives of the past weren’t known for their long and healthy lives.
But I couldn’t worry about that right now. The main issue to explore at the moment was whether Jasper’s house contained any possible places where he might have stashed Ruby.
Even on paper, the place sounded pretty impressive. It was a little over four thousand square feet and sat on nearly an acre of land, and although we hadn’t been provided with blueprints or the architect’s elevation drawings or anything like that, I got the feeling it was more modern than the Victorian where Jacob had grown up, maybe Craftsman in style.
I really wished I could see it. However, even I knew that idly driving past Jasper Wilcox’s home without a clear plan in mind wasn’t a very good idea.
No mention of a basement or any kind of outbuilding. Was that because those weren’t the sorts of details the assessor’s office kept track of…or simply because they didn’t exist?
“There isn’t a lot of detail here,” Seth said.
He sounded disappointed, and I couldn’t blame him for that, not when I’d been hoping for some information we could really sink our teeth into.
“It’s a start, though. What about Adam’s house?”
That purchase seemed a lot more straightforward. He’d bought the place only two years before, in October of 1945. The date made me wonder if he’d served in the armed forces and had decided to buy a house after he was safely back in the States.
Then again, I had to think that Jasper wouldn’t be too keen about letting any of his relatives serve in the war. It sounded as though the McAllisters had made those sacrifices, but Jasper might have been more worried about making sure all the eligible males in his clan stayed out of harm’s way than caring about how patriotic they looked.
However Adam had ended up in his house, though, it looked like a recent purchase, not something he’d inherited from a family member. That happened all the time — people would strike out on their own after college or after getting married or any other life changes, and if they ended up inheriting property later on, they’d either move into it or sell it or keep it as income property, just like Margot had with the bungalow that was once Seth’s and had become my home base in Jerome.
Which meant we should probably focus on Jasper’s house.
“We can also try the planning office,” I suggested, and Seth looked up from poring over the piece of paper the clerk in the assessor’s office had given us.
“Why would we look there?”
Again, I was only going on what I knew of how these things worked in my own time and had to pray like hell they’d be valid in 1947.
“If Jasper — or his father or grandfather — made any improvements to the house that went beyond cosmetic changes, they might have had to file paperwork with the city. I know a friend of mine’s parents went through that in high school when they wanted to knock down some walls and then add a master suite on the ground level. But it’s hard to say what might be required now.”
That small demurral didn’t seem to affect Seth too much, since he immediately appeared much more enthusiastic.
“So, if Jasper or someone else who owned the house had done something like that, then the city would have the blueprints on file?”
“That’s my hope,” I replied. “But we won’t know until we get there.”
“Then let’s get going,” he said, and glanced down at his watch. “We’ve got about fifteen minutes before everyone goes to lunch.”
In my experience, a lot of civil servants were already mentally checked out way before they left for the noon meal, but I wasn’t about to quash Seth’s enthusiasm.
I reached for my purse and scooped it up.
“Okay, let’s go.”
It seemed I was probably a little too jaded, because when we got to the planning office, the older woman who was working there seemed just fine with our request, and in fact appeared almost perky as she went off to search through the stacks of blueprints and sketches in the shelves and file cabinets I could see just past the counter.
“We’re probably the most exciting thing that’s happened to her all day,” Seth whispered in my ear, and I had to fight the urge to giggle.
Most likely, he was right.
She came back a few minutes later with several blueprints rolled up in her arms and a file folder full of what looked like different sketches.
“Can I ask why you want to see these blueprints?” she asked, even as she laid them out on the counter in front of Seth and me.
Luckily, I’d noted the architect’s name in the upper left of the top blueprint, so a ready lie sprang to my lips.
“Oh, my husband and I just recently bought a house on Aspen Street, and we were thinking about adding on. A friend of mine suggested Mr. Harkins, so I thought we should take a look at one of his bigger projects.”
It didn’t seem as if the woman thought anything strange about that request, because she nodded at once.
“He’s very in demand. This work was completed almost six years ago, not long after Mr. Wilcox was married and had recently inherited the house from his father.”
I wondered what Jasper had done to the home, since even my brief glance at the blueprints had shown that the house looked to be quite large and not the kind of place that you’d think would need any additions.
“What was the scope of work, if you don’t mind me asking?” Seth put in.
The clerk glanced down at the blueprints. “It looks as though the master bedroom was enlarged and an en suite bathroom added. And there was also the studio.”
“‘Studio’?” I repeated.
Now the woman looked almost sad. If I’d had to guess, I would have said she was probably in her late forties, just like my mother, but her fussy pin-curled hairstyle and flat red lipstick made her look at least ten years older.
“Rebecca Wilcox was a very accomplished cellist, I believe. Mr. Wilcox built the studio for her so she would have a private place to practice.” The clerk paused there, then shook her head. “Poor thing only had a few years to enjoy it, though, since she passed away not long after she had Mr. Wilcox’s son Joseph.”
Joseph Wilcox, who would grow up to one day be Damon and Connor’s grandfather. I didn’t know much about him, although, according to everything I’d ever heard, his son Jackson had been one mean son of a bitch.
Not that I could really blame him. Dealing with an intergenerational curse that effectively made sure he wouldn’t have a mother to raise him would have made anyone cranky.
Otherwise, the tale was familiar enough. Back then, giving birth to the primus’s son was a guaranteed death sentence.
“How sad,” I responded, doing my best to sound as if I’d never heard the story before. However, since Seth and I were there to supposedly be researching a remodel for our nonexistent house, I didn’t think dwelling on Wilcox family history was the best way to handle the situation. “But Mr. Wilcox was satisfied with Mr. Harkins’ work?”
“Very,” the clerk said immediately, her suddenly brisk tone letting me know she was all too happy to move on to less fraught subjects.
“May I look at the blueprint a little more closely?” Seth asked.
“Of course, sir.”
She pushed the oversized sheet of paper across the counter toward him, and he leaned close, clear blue eyes scanning the layout of the updated and expanded bathroom and the studio Jasper had built for his cellist wife. It looked to be fairly large as such things went, a little over five hundred square feet and with its own bathroom. Rebecca Wilcox could have gone in there for hours to play if she’d wished.
The question was…had she? Just because I had every reason to take a dim view of Jasper and his methods, that didn’t mean he and his wife might not have had a few happy years together.
Until the fateful day she gave birth, of course.
“Thank you very much,” Seth said, then politely moved the blueprints a few inches closer to the clerk so it would be easier for her to pick them up and return them to their usual resting place. “That gave me a good idea of Mr. Harkins’ work.”
“His office is just up Leroux Street,” the clerk said helpfully. “I’m sure he or his assistants would be more than happy to show you more blueprints and the photographs he’s taken of his various projects. I’d say you should go look at Mr. Wilcox’s property, since it is quite a showcase — probably the finest example of Prairie architecture in all of Flagstaff — but he’s a private man and doesn’t entertain visitors very often.”
That nugget of information didn’t surprise me too much. Then again, even Connor and Angela, who were far friendlier than Jasper seemed to be, would have thought once or twice about letting people inside the big Victorian on Paradise Lane to see all the remodeling she’d done some twenty-plus years back after she inherited the house.
“We’ll see if we can talk to Mr. Harkins,” I said quickly. “Thank you again for all your help.”
Seth thanked the woman as well, and the two of us headed back outside. A few clouds had begun to gather, but I didn’t think we were too much at risk for snow.
Not tonight, anyway. After that, it was probably anyone’s guess.
“I suppose that was useful,” I said as Seth and I walked away from City Hall and in the direction of our hotel. It was about the time that most people would have been thinking of lunch, but since we’d eaten breakfast so late, I was fine with waiting until the regular rush had died down before we had our noontime meal. “But I’m not sure what we’re going to do with the information the clerk gave us.”
Seth paused on the sidewalk and glanced around. While I spied several people hurrying away from the building, probably on their way to grab a quick lunch before they had to get back to work, no one was close enough that they’d be able to hear what Seth and I were saying.
“I do,” he said, and although he didn’t quite grin, I could tell he was looking mighty pleased with himself.
“Oh, really? What’s that?”
Another of those pauses to ensure we wouldn’t be overheard.
Then he said, “That studio would be the perfect place for Jasper to be hiding Ruby. It even has its own bathroom, and it’s the kind of place no one would have any reason to visit.”
I wouldn’t deny that the thought hadn’t crossed my mind, but at the same time, I wasn’t sure Jasper would be willing to take that kind of risk. “And…?” I said. “We already talked about avoiding his property unless we had real proof that Ruby was there.”
Seth looked undeterred by my less-than-enthusiastic comment. “That’s before we saw the blueprints and I got a firm idea of the studio’s layout. Remember how I told you I could teleport myself to a place I’d never been just as long as I had some sort of drawing or sketch to go on?”
Reluctantly, I nodded.
I could already see where this was going.
Expression now one of sheer triumph, Seth concluded, “So all we have to do is blink right into the studio, grab Ruby, and go.”