Wicked

“Piffle,” Hannah said. “You’re a kind-hearted woman and a credit to your family. Now, while we wait for the pot to boil, why don’t I let you straighten up a bit? There’s a comb, fresh water, a cake of scented soap and a brush for your clothing in the other room.”

Before Lilly could object, she found herself being swept into Hannah’s bedroom and left to repair the ravages her flight and rescue had made on her person.

Hannah closed the door quietly behind herself and folded her hands at her waist. Deegan remembered the stance and wasn’t surprised that her fond smile was temporarily stripped from both her eyes and her lips. “Promise me you’ll return later and tell me all that’s happened to you, Digger,” she said sternly.

“That I will, lass,” he vowed quietly. “I’m sorry I stayed away so long.”

“You should be.” As the kettle began to steam, Hannah picked up a dish towel and lifted it off the stove. “Right now, seeing to Miss Lilly is more important than our catching up. I hate to think what would have happened to her if you hadn’t been at hand.”

“The bastard would have caught her,” Deegan said simply. “Do you think she actually saw this Belle killed?”

Busy pouring hot water into her teapot, Hannah kept her gaze turned away from him. “We’re in the Barbary Coast, Dig,” she answered. “Such things happen here. But, as to whether Miss Lilly witnessed a murder?” Hannah shrugged. “She certainly believes that is what she saw. I’m not as sure you believe it, though.”

Deegan stretched his legs out, digging his hands deep into his trouser pockets. “No,” he admitted, frowning. “I think she saw something atrocious happen to this Belle, but whether it was murder or not, I couldn’t say. Either way, I don’t like the idea of bringing the police in to investigate. You and I both know what they’ll do.”

Hannah nodded and put the now empty kettle aside. “Nothing,” she said, “although I can’t say that I blame them. They’re outsiders in the Coast.” She paused and fidgeted with the lace edge of the cloth covering her tray. “So are you, Digger. You’ve been gone a long time.”

Digger O’Rourke had been gone a good while, Deegan admitted. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t melt back into his old surroundings. Hadn’t he, out of habit, avoided stepping on every weak floorboard in the hall? The years hadn’t dulled his memory of what it was like to be part of the Coast, nor had time weakened the talents he had honed growing up there.

It was impossible to keep his lips from curving in a wicked grin. He hadn’t felt this alive in months. “Know this Belle, do you?” he asked Hannah.

She continued to fuss with the arrangement of things on her tray. “There are lots of women calling themselves Belle in the Coast. But I think I heard one of Karl Severn’s women say she was going to celebrate her birthday. Not many want to after a few years in the profession.”

It wasn’t only the prostitutes who tried to forget the day they’d been born. Once his mother died and he’d gone off with Trusty, Deegan had stopped remembering his own birthday.

“Severn?” he asked. “The name’s not familiar. Who is he?”

“Someone I’ve made it my business to avoid,” Hannah answered. “And so should you.”

“If he’s the same hound that was chasing our little wren, I totally agree with you,” Deegan said, then got to his feet. “Watch over her for a bit, will you, lass? I want to back trail Lilly and see what I can find.”

Hannah knew better than to try to dissuade him. “Be careful. If Miss Lilly did witness a killing, even bribing Otis, as I’m sure you did, will not keep a man like Severn from finding out who she is.”

“Then do me a favor, darlin’, and see if you can’t come up with a simple disguise for her to wear. I’ll get a closed cab and see her directly to her doorstep before I return, but she’ll still have to run the gauntlet from here to its cozy interior,” Deegan said, leaning over to kiss Hannah’s cheek. “I’ll be back before you can miss me.”

“Impossible,” she whispered, cupping his face between her hands. “I miss you already. Watch your back, Digger. I couldn’t bear to lose you twice in one lifetime.”

Hannah was worrying needlessly. If there was one thing Deegan had learned over the years, it was how to sidestep the devil. He had no doubt hell would be his just reward one of these days, but he was just as sure that he would be taking that inevitable trip in the far distant future.

There was a lightness in Deegan’s step as he took the stairs, and the memory of Miss Lillith Renfrew’s lovely eyes in his thoughts. She was an enigma—both an easily embarrassed innocent and a determined woman of spirit. It was amusing that Hannah had mistaken the wren for his wife. Odd that she had approved of Lillith for the role at first glance. As alluring as her eyes were, as stalwart as her spirit seemed to be, Miss Renfrew wasn’t exactly the type of female he fancied as a wife. He’d been pursuing wealth for so long that looking past a woman’s prospects to her virtues had never occurred to him.

Lilly was definitely a damsel worth rescuing simply for the thrill of the adventure, though. He had a suspicion that when she chose to award it, the brilliance of her smile would be a fitting reward for any man. She probably had a staid junior clerk saving his hard-earned coin in anticipation of a wedding day. She was that kind of woman, a proper little homebody.

Or was she?

What kind of woman left the safety of her obviously middle-class environment to tote a heavy, bulky camera and its plates into a neighborhood as notorious as the Barbary Coast?

Perhaps he would never know. He would find the unknown Belle, no doubt badly bruised but alive, and return to Hannah’s with a report on the prostitute’s welfare. After that, the memory of the adventure they had briefly shared would fade within a few days as they went about their daily routine.

He would be left with no reason to see her again.

Deegan wondered why that thought bothered him.

The breeze no longer felt as bracing when he left Hannah’s building and retraced his steps down the alley to the street. He paused a moment, listening for the telltale commotion that always followed the discovery of a body, whether dead or unconscious. He heard only the clip-clop of horses’ hooves in the street, the muted shouts of men in a nearby saloon, the clarion voice of Reverend Oliver Isham on the corner as he extolled the fire and brimstone that awaited unrepentant sinners.

Deegan would give the wren the benefit of the doubt. As Hannah had said, death by unnatural means occurred frequently in this neighborhood. Lilly had certainly been terrified when she’d nearly bowled him over earlier. He doubted she had traveled far in her flight. Chances were a soiled dove like this Belle would have stayed close to her crib rather than meet Lilly in the open. Deegan wished he’d thought to ask Otis if he knew the young prostitute’s direction. No matter how many answered to the name Belle, if the boy was anything like he had been at the same age, Otis not only knew where to find specific doves, he knew which ones catered to men with jaded tastes.

Deegan had almost reached the end of the block when he caught sight of the lanky villain Lilly had branded a killer. Severn, if Hannah had guessed right. The man lounged in the entranceway of the saloon he’d entered earlier. He had a glass of whiskey in his hand, but didn’t appear interested in drinking it. His gaze traveled the length of the street, lingering only a moment longer when he reached the corner where the street preacher harangued a small gathering of disinterested drunks. Deegan was relieved that Severn showed little interest in him.

Rather than move on, Deegan pretended an interest in the reverend’s sermon, all the while watching Severn from the corner of his eye. It was only when the harsh-faced man shrugged away from the bar door and stepped back into the saloon that Deegan continued on his way.

He nearly walked past the next alleyway before recalling it had once been a busy corridor for men in search of crib-heaven. The space between the buildings seemed narrower than it had in his youth, and the condition of the lane was such that Deegan doubted a woman of Lilly’s caliber had the stomach to make it the thirty feet or so to the rear courtyard.

Calling it a courtyard was glorifying what was little more than an air well. Three disreputable buildings backed onto it, but it was the one with the back stoop that he remembered as the entrance used to reach many of the women’s rooms.

Despite the fact that Lilly claimed to have seen a man murder Belle, then set out in pursuit of her, and that the fellow showed no sign of having left the saloon in the short time since Deegan had originally seen him enter it, there should have been a woman’s body lying lifeless and forgotten in the courtyard. There wasn’t one. Therefore, Belle had walked—or crawled—away from the scene.

If indeed this was the scene of the violent act. Deegan had no problem believing the culprit was Severn. The man sounded like the type to regularly beat the various whores in his stable.

“Hi, honey,” a woman called, leaning from an open window two stories up. “You looking for a little lovin’?”

Deegan nudged the brim of his hat, tilting it to the back of his head. “Sure am, sugar,” he shouted, his voice adopting the drawling tones of a Wyoming cowpuncher. “Yer name happen ta be Belle?”

“Is if ya want it ta be,” she answered, proving, at least to his mind, that she wasn’t the woman in question. “That the name of yer girl back home?”

“Nope. Name o’ the lovebird my brother can’t stop talkin’ about since he was in Frisco last,” Deegan said. “He even wrote her a poem. I got it right here ta give ta her.” He fished in his pockets as if looking for a scrap of paper. “Hell, I’ve got it here someplace. He says today is her birthday or something. A pretty girl named Belle. Ain’t a lot, I know, but do ya know a gal that might be her?”

He got his answer when the woman’s smile faded. “Don’t know any dove by that name,” she said flatly, before leaning back in and closing the sash.

This was definitely the right place. What had Lilly said of the alleged murder? Something about seeing Belle holding the cabinet card she’d just been given. Something about dropping it.

There were a number of puddles of standing water—not particularly untainted rainwater, either. If anything had been dropped, it had probably found its way into one of them.

Although he was quite sure Lilly had mistaken the crime, even without a body, he saw no evidence that a woman had been killed there recently, her throat slit. The ground was too muddy to show blatant signs of blood, and Lilly herself had said Belle didn’t fight, an action that would surely have left its imprint in the muck.

Then again, perhaps this wasn’t the site of the violence. Perhaps it hadn’t been fear that had driven the customer-hungry prostitute back into her room at the mention of Belle’s name. The woman could have simply hated Lilly’s Belle—or another woman called Belle—and wanted nothing to do with helping a john find a rival’s crib.

If only he didn’t hear the echo of Lilly’s words in his mind: I brought her a portrait…she dropped it.

He was a fool. Logic told him there was nothing to find, and yet Deegan moved closer to search the stagnate water near the stoop. Refuse, most of it no longer recognizable, nearly filled the puddle. Deegan hunkered down, in no way eager to sort through the soaked mess. Portrait…dropped it.

Portrait…portrait…portrait.

He was about to give up when a damp bit of cardboard caught his eye. From the looks of it, the piece had skimmed over the puddle, nearly missing it before slipping into the shadow of a fallen, broken roofing tile. Carefully, Deegan lifted the cardboard free and turned it over.

The face of a once pretty young woman smiled up at him. There was no doubt in his mind.

He’d found Lilly’s photograph of Belle.

Chapter Four

Lilly stared into the looking glass in Hannah’s bedroom. In place of her conservative bonnet was an outlandish creation that seemed the epitome of a milliner’s nightmare. There were not only graceful feathers, faded silk flowers and satin ribbons in abundance, there was a pair of nesting birds complete with their clutch of unhatched, blue-speckled eggs affixed to the chapeau. Or at least Lilly thought there was. The cloud of netting that floated before her face nearly obscured her sight and made it difficult to admire the creation’s more imaginative flights of fancy.

As if the headdress wasn’t fantastic enough, Hannah had borrowed a form-engulfing, moth-eaten, fur-trimmed woolen cape and matching, equally feasted upon muff to disguise Lilly for her escorted visit to the police and ultimate escape from the Barbary Coast. Even Hannah’s assurances had not totally convinced Lilly that she would blend into her current surroundings better in such an ill-conceived ensemble.

No matter how odd her appearance, masking her identity appealed strongly to Lilly’s secret love of melodrama. However, as the mysterious Deegan Galloway’s plan called for him to simply take her by the elbow and sally forth to signal a cab as if nothing untoward had occurred, the ending to her adventure looked to be sadly flat. Not that she cared to run for her life as she had done barely an hour ago. It was just that with a disguise involved, she felt a more dashing plan would be fitting.

That was the romantic in her speaking, though. The more time that elapsed, the more her memory of the terror faded, so that now she could not help but wonder if her imagination had altered the scene, painting it in more dramatic shades than the reality of it actually deserved.

She had been so sure that she had witnessed Belle’s murder, yet she could be mistaken. She’d taken a single glance before fleeing. Had the violence, while brutal, not been of a fatal nature? With both Hannah and Deegan questioning exactly what she had seen, Lilly had begun to have doubts.

Her memory had not been aided by Deegan’s gallant rescue. Rather, it had added further color to the episode, turning her afternoon as adventurous as that of a heroine in one of Colonel Ingraham’s dime novels.

Her teachers and family had warned her that reading such low literature would have an adverse effect. She had not believed them. Now she would learn just how accurate their admonition had been. If Belle was found beaten but alive, Lilly promised in a bargainlike prayer, she would willingly renounce her weakness for Beadle and Adams’s stories.

But if Belle were really dead…

Steadfastly crushing the thought, Lilly concentrated on adjusting her top-heavy hat. Common sense told her that the beating Hannah and Deegan had suggested Belle sustained was far more likely than her murder. Lilly had read about crimes of murder, naturally, but witness the actual act? No. Impossible. People were only in the wrong place at the wrong time in the penny dreadfuls, and then they only acted recklessly when involved in such villainy because it was fiction.

Besides, she lacked every characteristic the yellow novels clearly showed were necessary traits in a heroine. She was neither of a pliable temperament, fashionably beautiful nor was she an orphan. She was a spinster past her majority, with family responsibilities. Even if it lacked excitement, doing as Deegan planned was the best course to pursue. The important thing was for her to reach the police and have them find Belle. And after that, to get home as quickly as possible.

Lilly lifted the widow’s veiling from before her face and checked the time on her lapel watch. She needed to be on her way, with or without the casual attendance of Deegan Galloway during her getaway.

“I don’t know how I can possibly thank you sufficiently for opening your home to me, Mrs. McMillan,” Lilly said, turning away from the mirror. “The tea was delicious, the cakes delightful and this…” She waved the trailing tail of whatever animal had given its life to adorn the heavy cape. “This…”

Hannah grinned. “It is frightful, isn’t it? But it is Mrs. Chandler’s most prized possession.”

“I’ll take good care that it is returned to her unharmed,” Lilly assured her.

“By which she means without incurring further bullet holes,” Deegan commented, appearing in the open doorway. One shoulder propped against the molding, he slouched there, managing to look like an upper-crust dilettante despite the rough quality of his clothing. “That poor critter has seen more than his fair share of buckshot.”

It was fortunate that her acquaintance with Deegan Galloway would be of a brief duration, for Lilly was quite sure she would never get used to the easygoing charm of his grin. He was such an attractive man, and an attractive man of the right age had never noticed her existence before. Having his smile turned her way made her feel flustered and all too aware of her many shortcomings.

It had begun to rain outside, and a slight sheen of misty dampness dusted the comforting breadth of his shoulders, and fresh, telltale marks of puddled water marked his boots. His tawny hair and luxuriant side-whiskers were dry, though, probably the result of being sheltered from the elements by the broad brimmed hat he had probably discarded upon entering the outer room.

He looked, Lilly felt, like a man without a care in the world. Like a man who doubted a load of buckshot would be loosed in their direction when they attempted to leave the Coast. Which meant that he had found Belle alive, and Lilly’s own brush with danger had been merely the result of an overactive imagination. She sat down abruptly, both relieved and a bit disappointed that her adventure was over.

“You found her,” she said softly. “Is she all right?”

Before he answered, his gaze skittered to Hannah, as if flashing a silent message to her. “I don’t know. I didn’t actually find her.”

Her hope of discovering Belle alive already weakened by the secretive exchange, Lilly clenched her hands together tightly in her lap. “You mean her…” she swallowed convulsively before adding, “…body.”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t.”

“But if you didn’t find her, Dig, that could mean Belle’s all right,” Hannah declared, offering a carrot of hope. “It could simply mean that she returned to her crib.”

As much as she wished to believe it was true, Lilly knew it was a false hope. She shook her head slightly, making the weight of her borrowed hat shift so that she had to save it from toppling off with a judicious touch of her hand. The comfort of believing she might have been wrong slipped away quickly, leaving the horror of the lone alternative.

“Belle isn’t in hiding somewhere,” she said. “That man killed her. I saw him do it. If her body isn’t there now it’s because he had her moved.” Lifting her chin, Lilly met Deegan’s eyes determinedly. “I want him caught and punished for what he’s done.”

She expected Deegan to agree with her. To leap to take her to the nearest police station so that she could tell her story, describe Belle’s murderer and thus start the wheels of justice rolling to avenge the unhappy prostitute.

“It isn’t that simple,” he said.

Lilly got to her feet. “Of course it is. Once the crime is reported, the authorities can arrest that man and—”

“And what?” Deegan demanded. “Accuse him of a crime when there is no evidence that one has been committed?”

“But—”

He held a hand up, indicating that she should hear him out before arguing. “Consider the circumstances, Miss Renfrew. We are not, as you seem to believe, in God-fearing San Francisco. We are on streets even God himself thinks twice about treading. The police in this neighborhood frequently look the other way when their neighbors break the commandments. At least they do if they want to live a long and healthy life.”

“I’m sure they do,” Lilly said. “I have had to gird myself against the brutality of this area since the first time I stepped down from my hired cab with my camera.”

“Full of crusading zeal, no doubt,” Deegan muttered under his breath, apparently so that she wouldn’t hear the comment.

But she did and as a result stiffened her backbone and climbed on her figurative soapbox. “I’ll have you know, Mr. Galloway, that the photographs I take and the likenesses I give to the women and children who sit for me bring a smidgen of cheer to their sadly wretched lives.”

“I apologize for wounding you, little wren. It’s just that I’ve rubbed shoulders with do-gooders before,” he said, “and the experience didn’t bring me a ‘smidgen of cheer.’ Perhaps I am jaded.”

“Perhaps you are, sir,” Lilly declared sharply, her chin raised unnaturally high to show him her disdain.

“And perhaps,” Deegan added, “you have another use for the photographs, such as publishing them to enlighten others to these people’s plight.”

She had considered it. Her brother, Edmund, wrote such stories for the newspaper. Reading them had given her the idea in the first place.

“Do you think it would succeed, Mr. Galloway? It isn’t only the scent of soot and sin breathed daily on these streets, in these buildings. It is hopelessness.”

“Very true, my dear,” Hannah said, crossing herself devotedly, as if completing a prayer.

A prayer she herself should be saying, for Belle in particular, Lilly thought sadly. Then she squared her shoulders. “The photographs I take have nothing to do with what happened to Belle Tauber,” she said. “That man murdered her and—”

“Perhaps he did,” Deegan agreed calmly, cutting off her diatribe. “But murder is as common as dirt in this place, Miss Renfrew. If such was Belle’s fate, let her rest in peace. We may not know the truth of what happened to her, but I think we can all agree that if she is dead, she’s in a kinder place now.”

“No!” Lilly cried vehemently. “That’s not true! She—” Lilly caught herself and stopped short. She took a calming breath. “Belle’s death is monstrous, criminal. The man who did this to her must be found, caught and punished.”

“Perhaps that is how things happen in your world,” Hannah said quietly. “But not in mine.”

Appalled at the woman’s resigned acceptance, Lilly got to her feet quickly and faced Deegan. “Surely you don’t subscribe to such a philosophy, sir.”

He shrugged elegantly, the graceful, masculine beauty of the movement so out of keeping with his rough clothing that it appeared exotic. “How can either you or I say, Miss Renfrew?” he asked. “We are only visitors to the district, not residents. Who’s to say that Hannah isn’t right?”

Lilly drew herself up. “The law, sir. The law.”

“Written law, perhaps,” Deegan agreed. “Civilized law.” He took her elbow, steering her to the window, forcing her to look out over the depressing drabness of the area. “Can you, in all honesty, tell me this is civilization?” he asked.

Lilly looked past the buildings, past the narrow alleyways, seeing instead the children, the women she had met.

“This is the jungle, Miss Renfrew. Only the strong survive, and then only if fate favors them,” Deegan continued.

Perhaps it was, but wasn’t that part of the reason she had chosen to document conditions in the Coast? To help balance the scales of justice?

“The law is for everyone, Mr. Galloway,” she said.

“Is it?” he murmured. “Or is it merely that you want Belle avenged and know yourself ill-equipped to accomplish a personal vendetta? The law wields a dandy sword of vengeance, doesn’t it?”

The accusation stung. Lilly’s cheeks burned with color. In part, what he suggested was the truth, yet wasn’t that precisely the reason the judicial system had been created? Whether it was called vengeance or justice, when a sentence was delivered, the result was the same—evil was punished.

Even stronger than her desire for vindication was the mystery of how Deegan Galloway seemed capable of reading the secrets she kept locked in her heart. If only she could read him half as well. But she couldn’t. Not on this short acquaintance. Perhaps not even in a lifetime.