Chapter 11
Virginia looked around the parlor in the house Uncle Patrick and Miriam had bought together. “So what do you think, Miriam? Light blue?”
“Oh dear. I don’t know. Never had to pick a color before. Was always done by a landlord when I rented rooms and just did white in my last house. It was the cheapest.”
“I think the light blue would be perfect,” Sarah said. “I think wallpaper in the dining room would be nice, maybe with plenty of yellow to lighten it up on a gloomy morning.”
Just then they heard a scuffle outside. All three women hurried to the window in the front of the house overlooking the street.
“Mr. Turnbull!” Virginia shouted as two men beat him with fists until he dropped to his knees.
Virginia hurried to the door with Sarah, who stopped long enough to pick up a broken spindle from the banister that had been replaced by Uncle Patrick.
She and Sarah rushed out the door to the street, where the two men laughed and kicked poor Mr. Turnbull, not paying the least attention to either woman.
Sarah swung the spindle and connected with one man’s head, and he wobbled back against the carriage.
The second man charged Sarah just as a shot exploded.
He dropped to his knees and grabbed his arm. Virginia glanced over her shoulder and saw Miriam quickly reloading her gun and aiming it at the man still leaning against the coach.
“One move and you’re a dead man,” Miriam shouted, her gun aimed with steady hands at the man.
Virginia walked to Mr. Turnbull, past the man kneeling and in front of the one leaning against the carriage and bleeding from his ear. She knelt on the ground. “Mr. Turnbull. Can you hear me?”
“Yes, miss. I’ll be fine in a minute.”
Virginia helped him sit up, took the towel from Sarah’s hand, and began wiping his face. She heard shouting and lifted her head. Eliza, the Brown cook, was running as fast as her legs would carry her toward them, holding a cast iron skillet over her head.
“We’re fine, Eliza,” Sarah shouted.
Virginia looked up when she heard a police whistle, as did the man bleeding from his ear. He pulled the kneeling man to his feet and both ran off. Miriam tracked them with her gun and then dropped it to her side as a uniformed policeman ran toward them.
“That way,” Sarah shouted and pointed. “They beat this man.”
“Heard a gunshot,” the policeman said.
“There’s one of them with a shoulder wound,” Miriam said and held out her pistol, pointing it at the ground.
The officer glanced at Turnbull and took off at a run.
“He’ll never catch them now,” Miriam said.
“I don’t know about that,” Virginia said as she helped Turnbull to his feet. “One of them may have a concussion, and the other definitely has a bullet in his shoulder. You ladies may have slowed them enough.”
“I wonder if my brother has gotten close to the answer of why Timothy Sweitzinger was found in bed with a dead woman,” Sarah said.
“I wondered the same.” Virginia turned as a closed wagon rumbled down the street. “Here are the men with the wallpaper and paint. Are you all right with speaking to them yourself, Miriam? I want to get Mr. Turnbull home.”
“I’ll stay with you if you’d like,” Sarah said to Miriam. She turned to Virginia. “But who is going to drive your carriage?”
“What in the hell is going on here? Miriam! Why are you holding a gun?” Uncle Patrick said and walked directly to her.
“They beat poor Mr. Turnbull!” Sarah pulled him by the arm to where the coachman was leaning against the carriage, quickly telling him the story.
Virginia greeted the painters and introduced them to Miriam while Patrick helped Turnbull into the carriage. Patrick climbed into the driver’s seat and waited while Virginia climbed in.
“Wait until I get hold of that brother of yours, Sarah!” he shouted and hawed the horses. “Damn it all to hell!”
Phillip left the Wiest Cannery after putting in a short shift to cover for a manager with a sick wife.
He was exhausted by the time he rounded the corner on Wolfe Street near midnight, thinking about a quick wash and his bed, but strangely, there were lamps still lit in every window. He opened the door and stepped inside.
“It’s about damn time you decided to stop by and check on your family!” Uncle Patrick shouted.
“What happened? Where is everyone?”
“The womenfolk are safe thanks to some quick thinking and courage. Poor Alfred Turnbull will be laid up for a while, though.”
“You better tell me everything,” Phillip said and turned when Miriam stuck her head out of Uncle’s bedroom door.
“Miriam’s staying here until we’re married. She had to shoot a man today, and I don’t want her in her house alone.”
“Shoot a man?” Phillip repeated.
“And your sister clubbed the other one over the head. Get along to the kitchen. We can talk there.”
Phillip did not sleep much that night, thinking about two men attacking Turnbull, who was surely trying to stop them from getting to the women inside of Uncle’s new house.
He had been short-sighted and knew better from his past experience.
He should have put everyone on alert from the moment he started looking into Button’s murder.
He knew better. He would kick himself if he could.
He knocked on the front door of Virginia’s house instead of the kitchen door, just to appease her since he was thinking she might be as angry at him as his sister, uncle, and Eliza were.
He didn’t know what Jenny thought as she’d barricaded herself in her sleeping room and would not open the door other than to accept a plate of food from Eliza.
Phillip stepped in when Oliver opened the door. “How is Alfred?”
“Doing better other than fussing that he shouldn’t be sleeping in the house, that his bed is over the stables.”
“Poor patient, I’m thinking.”
“He doesn’t like being a burden. But Miss Wiest is insistent that she and her staff didn’t need to be going to the stables and climbing the stairs to his quarters to take care of him. That seemed to quiet him down,” Oliver said.
“She has a way of managing all the men in her life, doesn’t she? We don’t even realize it’s happening,” Phillip said and scratched his head. Just then Virginia walked down the stairs.
“What don’t you realize is happening?” she asked.
“I’m here to apologize. I did already this morning to Miriam, Sarah, and Eliza. Jenny’s holed up in her room.”
“Can you please send coffee, Mr. Oliver?” she said and went into her parlor.
Phillip followed and sat down beside her. “I am so very sorry you were placed in danger yesterday.”
“You didn’t place us in danger. Whoever is holding that poor Button girl put us in danger. I will say that Mrs. Dexter is a fine shot with a steady hand, and thank goodness for that!”
Phillip grinned. “Agreed. I would never have imagined it, but from Sarah’s telling, she was as calm as could be.”
“She was. I was in awe. She is a bit rough around the edges but was formidable when threatened. She’s a perfect fit for your uncle.”
“I’m also here to talk to you about my visit to Irene Littleman.”
“Oh?” Virginia straightened her skirts.
He smiled; he couldn’t help himself. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to write to her?”
“I’ve thought about a charity effort for homeless women and children for years and was very motivated by my stepmother’s story. And I thought Mrs. Littleman would be able to tell me, and eventually a board, the raw truth.”
“And you decided to have a letter delivered on the very morning I went to call on her.”
Virginia shrugged. “I think she may have insights that we never consider. And I thought it might play to her vanity to be asked, which could help your cause.”
“She was not willing to tell me anything. I was about to leave when she told me about your letter. She said she would tell me about Nora Button if I would guard her at this meeting you’ve invited her to. She doubts her man, Thomas, will be allowed in.”
“I may have hinted at that in the letter.”
“You are devious, Virginia. It’s one of the things I like the most about you.”
She laughed and glanced at him. “What else do you like about me, Mr. Brown?”
Phillip knew an invitation when it had been given. He pulled her close. “I like how you kiss best of all.”
Phillip was whistling a tune as he knocked on Wilma Selensky’s door.
He found her at home but barely awake. He was a lucky man, unlike Timothy, who still visited this widow on occasion.
Wilma was an attractive woman who kept her black hair shining, her clothing flattering, and her person clean.
But her age had caught up with her, and Phillip believed her drinking had too from what Timothy had told him recently. She was looking worn today.
“Wilma,” he said as she looked at him through the crack where she had opened her door.
“Brown? What are you doing here?”
“Can I come in? I want to talk to you.”
She shrugged and walked away from the door. Phillip followed her into a cluttered but homey sitting room. “It’s awful early to get enthused about a slap and tickle, and I don’t crawl into bed with just anyone, you know.”
“Oh God, Wilma. That’s not why I’m here. I need to talk to you about Timothy Sweitzinger.”
She tied her robe tightly and walked into the kitchen. “I need coffee.” She did not look him in the eye, he noticed, even as she handed him a mug. “What about Timothy?”
“Do you know he’s in jail?”
“Doesn’t everybody know? That’s all anyone in the neighborhood will talk about,” she said and took a long sip of coffee.
“Timothy told me he was here that night.”
“Did he?” She lifted a cat to her lap who’d been stretched out in the sunshine at her feet. She rubbed the cat’s ears and kissed its head.
“Did he say anything unusual that night? Act differently in any way?”
She shrugged. “Not that I noticed. Are we finished? I’m promised to help at the church and have to get dressed to go. I don’t want to be late.”
“Why won’t you look at me, Wilma?”
“What do you mean?”