Chapter 24
Helen found the glass Cal had left on the countertop, a circle of leftover milk in the bottom.
She entered the kitchen at six o’clock wearing a green-and-white striped housedress, her hair pinned into its usual tight bun.
Fern had been awake for an hour already and had managed to make herself tea and toast. But she hadn’t seen the glass until Helen picked it up and frowned.
Ears burning, heart stuttering, Fern said nothing as Helen glanced at her. She brought it to the sink and said, “Cal finally showed up, did he?”
She knew her nephew well.
“He did. It was late,” Fern answered.
“Is everything all right?” she asked as she pulled eggs and milk from the monitor top and a Pyrex bowl from a cupboard.
They hadn’t discussed whether they’d tell Helen about their plans to leave the city. It struck Fern then that Helen would see the lewd pictures of her when they hit the newspapers. She hated to imagine what Helen would think of her then.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Helen stole another glance over her shoulder, this time a coy grin in place.
Cal’s aunt was a sharp woman, and without doubt, she could piece together what had happened last night between them.
Fern had stripped the sheet off the cot first thing and hand-washed it in a bucket she’d found in the storeroom.
A few drops of blood from that brief stinging pain when their bodies had come together lingered on the cotton, as did Cal’s cologne.
Fern helped with breakfast again, to whatever extent she could be of assistance.
Then, after awkwardly passing off her hand-washing of the sheet as a means of helping earn her keep, Helen showed her how to use the washer and wringer.
It wasn’t particularly pleasant dealing with the boarders’ clothes, socks, and underwear, but at least the work kept Fern busy as the morning wore on.
When Helen asked if Fern knew her way to the Central Library for her interview, it took a moment for the question to register and make sense.
The job interview. She had forgotten all about it, and now…
Fern wouldn’t be going. She and Cal were leaving the city.
Since she couldn’t say anything about their plans to Helen, she just nodded and thanked her.
Near noon, Fern got dressed in her best drop-waist dress, cloche, and rayon jacket, and left the house for her interview.
Instead of heading to the library, she went to Janko’s again and had a cup of coffee. Then, she filled the next two hours riding streetcars around the North Side.
Returning to Helen’s, she’d hoped to find Cal there.
He wasn’t. It had been hours since he’d left.
He must have been to see Hannah Levy by then.
If he was at the Lion’s Den now, it could take time to work his way into Rod’s office and nab the negatives.
When the photographs rolled in the papers, Rod wouldn’t know who had stolen them—he had plenty of men working for him, and of course, people came in and out of the speakeasy all the time.
Fibbing to Helen about the library interview felt like a betrayal, so she said as little as possible about it. When Helen didn’t ask anything more about it, Fern figured she’d guessed that the interview hadn’t gone very well.
By one o’clock, an uneasy knot had settled like cement in the pit of Fern’s stomach.
After Helen left the house to attend a luncheonette with a friend, Fern took out the telephone directory and looked up Hannah’s exchange again.
She didn’t want to go all the way to Janko’s coffeehouse again to make the call, in case Cal showed up while she was gone, but she’d leave a dime for Helen to cover the cost of the call.
Mrs. Levy answered the telephone after the third ring and asked Fern to wait on the line while she fetched Hannah. Then, a moment later, her bright voice came through. But what she had to say only made Fern’s worry sink its claws in deeper.
“He was here hours ago, first thing this morning,” Hannah told her.
“Did he say where he was going next?”
“The Lion’s Den,” she answered. “He said he was hoping to get there before Rod woke up. Listen, Fern, he told me the plan, and I just have to say how happy I am. Cal, he…he deserves this chance.”
Hannah and her family doted on Cal the same way Helen did. They saw something in him that they knew was absent within Rod. The capacity to love, perhaps.
“I think so too,” she whispered.
Hannah told Fern not to worry, that Cal could handle himself at the Den.
But as the afternoon stretched out, every passing hour stacked more and more weight on her chest. Something had gone wrong.
Fern knew it, and Helen was jittery too.
As they served the boarders their supper, Cal’s aunt dropped a dish of pickles, and her eyes kept darting toward the clock on the wall in the kitchen.
“Helen, is something bothering you?” Fern asked when they were at the small table in the kitchen, each of them picking at their own plate of ham and green bean casserole. It couldn’t have to do with Cal. Helen didn’t know to worry about him. She didn’t know their plan to leave Chicago.
Or so Fern thought.
Helen set down her fork, pressed her napkin to her lips, then sat up a bit taller, preparing herself. “The call that came in before supper. I told you it was the repairman for the monitor top.”
Fern nodded. After a brief phone conversation, Helen had said someone would be coming out to repair an annoying drip.
“It was Rodney, instead,” she admitted.
Fern gripped her fork.
“He asked if Cal had brought you to me,” she continued quickly. “I said no, but he didn’t believe me.”
“What else did he say?” Fern tried hard to remember Helen’s side of the conversation. She’d given mostly one-word replies.
“Just that he didn’t want you to know he’d phoned.”
Fern jumped to her feet, thighs catching the rim of the table. The plates and cups clattered.
“Fern, what’s going on?” she asked, bewildered.
“If he knows I’m here, then he knows Cal lied.”
“Cal lied to him? Why would he do that?”
Fern ran to the storeroom, the fork still clutched in her grip. She flung it onto the cot and dragged her suitcase out from underneath it. Her belongings were all still inside.
“Because my brother is the reason Eugenia is dead,” she blurted as she reentered the kitchen. “Rod and Cal, they wanted to hurt him by hurting me, but Cal changed his mind, and Rod…well, I think Rod’s furious about that.”
Helen stood at the back door, peering through the glass.
“What is it?” Fern asked.
“I should have told you earlier about the call,” she whispered. “I think there’s someone watching the house now.”
Fern stepped back, away from the window, fear drumming inside her ears.
“I have to get to Cal,” she said.
Helen shook her head and stepped away from the door too. “Not if he’s at the Den.”
Fern set her suitcase on the linoleum. “He’s in trouble.”
“Rod is my nephew, and I don’t think he’ll send anyone blazing in here to get you, but if you leave this house… Fern, I think you should stay put. Or we can call your parents and have the police come pick you up. They could bring you safely home.”
At the thought of that, her soul crumpled and ashed like a piece of paper over a flame. She’d chosen Cal. For better or for worse, she couldn’t give up on him. Or let him down by being a coward.
“No. No, I can’t.” Fern rubbed her eyes and tried to think straight.
She couldn’t stay here, penned in and waiting, while Cal was at the Den, in trouble.
Not that there was much she could do to help him, even if she was somehow able to get there.
But Helen was right—if Rod’s men were watching the back of the house, they were also watching the front.
As soon as she stepped outside, they’d close in.
Unless they didn’t recognize her as she stepped out.
“Helen, are any of your boarders trim and short?” Fern asked.
Ten minutes later, after convincing Mr. Justin Blake to hear out their request and lend Fern one of his suits, Helen pushed him into the hallway so Fern could change into his clothes.
“What about a hat?” Fern asked, already pinning up her long hair.
Mr. Blake—the same man who had kicked the swinging door in the other evening—reluctantly supplied a black fedora.
The reflection in the mirror when she stood before it was still far too feminine, and her scarred half was still visible.
“They’ll see right through the disguise,” she said, whipping off the hat in frustration.
“Who’re you dressing up for?” Mr. Blake asked.
“A few private dicks. They’re watching the house,” Helen lied smoothly, eyes catching Fern’s briefly in the mirror.
“If you walk out with a few of the others here, you’ll just look like you’re leaving for a night on the town,” he suggested.
It wasn’t a bad idea. He convinced another boarder, Paul, to accompany them out the front door and down the street to the nearest cabstand.
From there, she’d leave for the Den. Maybe there would be a way to get inside without being seen or having to give a password.
She didn’t know what she would do once she made her way inside, but if it took her closer to Cal, she could figure it out then.
Staying here was no longer an option for her.
Just before ten o’clock, Fern pulled the brim of her hat as low as it could go while still allowing her to see and joined Justin, Paul, and Helen in the front hall. She couldn’t bring her suitcase, but Helen slipped something stealthily into her borrowed jacket pocket.
“You might find a use for this,” she said softly. Fern placed a hand over the pocket and felt a cylindrical-shaped object. A money roll.
“It’s not mine,” Helen was quick to say. “Cal always makes sure I have a little set aside for emergencies.”
“Of course he does.” Fern’s voice quivered. She had no idea what would happen as soon as she stepped through the front door. The ploy might work. It might not. But she had to try.
Cal would come for her if she were in trouble. Fern had to do the same for him, and she wanted to, as reckless as that was.
They left through the front door, Helen warning them loudly in her matronly tone that they best be back in before midnight when she locked the door for the night, no exceptions.
They waved, Justin and Paul on either side of Fern as they ambled down the front walk.
Cars lined the curb up and down the street, though she didn’t see any that stood out in particular.
Maybe Helen had been wrong. Maybe no one had been watching the house, and this ploy was all unnecessary.
But as they turned onto the sidewalk, and Paul pulled a flask from his pocket, a car door opened across the street. A man stepped out and looked over at them, resting his arm on the dome of the car. It was a Buick, and it looked like the same one that had been parked at Tom’s farmhouse.
Fern grabbed the flask when Paul offered it and put it to her lips, pretending to take a swig.
If she did for real, her hacking coughs would have given her away.
Instead, she passed the flask to Justin and shoved her small hands inside her pockets, affecting a jaunty bounce in her step like she’d witnessed in Buchanan and his friends before.
With her pulse still pounding in her ears, she and the two men continued to move farther away from the boardinghouse without anyone intercepting them.
“He got back into the car,” Justin said after taking an easy glance over his shoulder before the cross street.
“That didn’t look like a private dick to me,” Paul said. He looked down at Fern. “Aren’t you running with Clean Calvin?”
She ignored him, thankfully spotting the cabstand ahead. “I’ll get your clothes and hat back to you,” she told Justin, thanking him again. And then, she flagged a driver and slid into the backseat, closing the door behind her.
There was no turning back now.