Girl in Disguise Read online

  I knew also that my face was not the kind of face that inspired instant devotion. Charlie had made sure I’d known it, and though his opinion was only that of a fool and a sot, it had sunk in with repetition. Men were hardly lining up to lend me a new last name. I hadn’t been born a Warne, but without a miracle, it seemed I might die that way.

  And there was more to consider. If I were married to DeForest—he would make a striking groom, wouldn’t he?—would that keep me safe from the jealousy of women like Joan Pinkerton? Could it be my safeguard against the men in the office who assumed I’d been having an affair of the heart with Pinkerton for years now, simply because they couldn’t imagine my skills and capabilities were enough to earn my success?

  I knew I would be safety for him, that no one would suspect his secret if he were squared away with a wife. He would have to be careful with his activities, of course, but he’d managed to keep them quiet so far. We could protect each other. Keep each other safe from what we both feared.

  I stared at his profile for a long time.

  His story came to an end, and his laughter was echoed by the laughter of the men around him, and he caught my eye.

  I beckoned him away and spoke quietly and quickly, hoping not to draw attention. Our conversation was short.

  “I can’t,” I said to him.

  He searched my face with those warm brown eyes, eyes that made other women melt. “Are you certain?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You can think about it a while longer, you know.”

  “Not necessary. It makes no sense for me. I’m sorry.”

  I excused myself, smiling a little so no one would remember me upset, and left the party shortly afterward.

  It was all lies, in any case. I didn’t reject his proposal because it made no sense. I rejected him because it made too much. If I didn’t say no right away, some time spent pondering it might be enough to convince me to say yes. I was already far too close to the edge. I might think too much about Joan Pinkerton’s jealousy, my own barrenness, the utter lack of love in my life that gave someone the confidence to declare that love wasn’t even a possibility. One more log on the fire, one more cup of punch, and I might have given in.

  I wasn’t ready to do that. Not yet.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Springfield

  Love makes fools of us all. If I had an inkling of what that meant after Philadelphia, the lesson was hammered home in Springfield.

  The railroads had never fully recovered from the Panic, but they had managed to find a new equilibrium, especially our friends at the Illinois Central Railroad. I rarely worked with the railroad—DeForest and Paretsky were our train experts—so I was surprised when Pinkerton summoned me to his office one morning and told me to pack a bag for travel. I was even more surprised that he didn’t tell me where we were going or why. But he did tell me that our train would be leaving in just over an hour.

  Waiting for him at the station as directed, pacing under the high arches of the grand, curved windows, I felt uneasy. For a lousy reason, but it wouldn’t be denied. As masculine as they acted otherwise, the men at the agency gossiped like old biddies at a picnic. Word would quickly spread that the boss and I had gone off somewhere together and stayed overnight. I still couldn’t shake the rumors of our love affair, though I was getting very good at ignoring them. I chose not to care. And if it scared me at first how easy it was to make myself feel differently about something by simply deciding it, I decided I could ignore that too.

  When Pinkerton hailed me, though, there was nothing in his manner beyond the usual friendly, businesslike air. We stepped aboard the train and seated ourselves on the red cushions of the banquette. Pinkerton waved off the porter and stowed our bags on the rack above our heads himself. Quickly, we were underway.

  As we rode, he briefed me on the situation. I knew the parties involved or at least the parties we would be meeting with: the vice president of the Illinois Central Railroad and a lawyer who worked with them, mostly on tax matters. Money was missing from the company’s account, and they suspected embezzlement, Pinkerton told me.

  “How did they find it out?”

  “I want you to hear the story firsthand. The lawyer will tell you.”

  “Which one’s the lawyer?”

  “The scarecrow. Lincoln. Acts the country bumpkin but sharper than ten tacks.”

  “And why is he involved?”

  “They want someone from outside the company. He has access to the books easily, and he understands them. All the vice president, McClellan, has is a hunch.”

  “So what are we to do?”

  “Not we. You. I haven’t got the time. You’ll be working directly with the lawyer on this.”

  “Oh.” It was the first time I had heard him make such a declaration. Generally, we stayed in close contact throughout a case. “Just the lawyer?”

  “As I said, they need someone outside the company. The two of you will keep it very hush-hush.”

  “All right.”

  “And I shouldn’t have to say this, but—no feminine wiles. Don’t flirt or simper. They won’t work on him.”

  “Is he—” I thought of DeForest.

  “Happily married.”

  “God bless their everlasting happiness,” I said.

  “Splendid. Now, lie to me.”

  If I weren’t so accustomed to surprise, I would have flinched. As it was, I raised an eyebrow pointedly. It had been quite some time since Pinkerton had demanded I play our old game.

  I said evenly, “On a chosen subject?”

  “Your choice.”

  Marriage was on my mind, so I said, “I was three years old when I first remember my mother telling my father she would leave him.”

  Pinkerton eyed me steadily as the train gently rocked. At length, he said, “I do not believe a child of three years has such memories.”

  No one had ever heard this story from me, not even Paul. In a way, it was a relief to speak the truth out loud. “I didn’t know all the words she said, but I knew some. I remember worthless and fool and mistake. I knew all those words, because she’d said them to me too.”

  For the first time in our years of staring each other down to test the truth, he was the first one to look away. He directed his gaze out the window, though there was little to see.

  “You are an unusual woman, Kate Warne,” he said.

  If he had wanted further details, I could have provided them easily. Over the years, my mother had told my father she would leave him countless times. Only his response changed. In the beginning, it was Please don’t. Then I doubt that. Later, it became What would you do then? And once when he’d been out late drinking with a Greek chorus, Then go ahead and leave already. His response never mattered. The next day always dawned with my mother still in place, maybe muttering or maybe apologizing but never gone.

  It was good to know, these years later, this behavior was unusual. At the time, I thought it was how all families behaved.

  We sped toward our destination.

  • • •

  The room we were shown to in the law office was plain. One of the men matched the surroundings, and the other did not. The plain one was Lincoln, who wore a plain black suit and thin tie at the neck. He was clean-shaven, with hollow-looking cheeks and dark, bushy hair above a high, wide forehead. The other, McClellan, was showier. He had a bushy mustache and quite possibly the shiniest pair of shoes I’d ever seen.

  I nodded my greeting to the lawyer first. “Mr. Lincoln.”

  “Mrs. Warne. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “I could say the same, of course.”

  He leaned over—with his height, he had quite a reach—and whispered conspiratorially, “Let’s agree not to believe all the things they say about us, shall we?”

  “Agreed.”

&
nbsp; McClellan shook Pinkerton’s hand and welcomed him gruffly but seemed not to perceive that I was in the room at all. For only a moment, I was disconcerted. Clients were often surprised to meet me but rarely openly rude. I decided my best response was to ignore that I’d been ignored.

  Pinkerton was the first to seat himself. After the rest of us had followed suit, he turned to me and gave a slight nod. I understood his meaning: it’s your show now.

  “Can you tell me how the suspicion came to light?”

  “These books,” said Lincoln, sliding them across to me.

  I searched the men’s faces, keeping my own expression level. It seemed clear I was being put to a test.

  So I looked over the books. Three ledgers, incoming and outgoing funds, with the name of the company on the cover and the month and year at the top of each page.

  Lincoln, possibly taking pity on me, said, “The first page of every month, working backward.”

  I opened the top ledger, with the most recent entries, to the beginning of August’s figures.

  There was an odd pattern I noticed right away—a coincidence, likely, but odd enough to jump out. The first four figures in the month ended in 73¢, then 37¢, then 77, then 33.

  “These are correct?” I asked. “These four?”

  Lincoln nodded, seemingly impressed. I knew I had to be on the right track.

  I flipped to the beginning of July, then June. The same four figures: 73, 37, 77, 33.

  “They remain the same.”

  Lincoln pointed to another ledger, and I looked at the previous year’s figures. The first was lower, and so was the second. The third and fourth too, and all by the same amount. 63, 27, 67, 23.

  “Ten cents,” I said.

  “All on regular, recurring bills,” said McClellan, speaking for the first time since our introductions.

  “Your suppliers’ prices hadn’t changed?”

  “Not these.”

  “Forty cents a month. Doesn’t seem like much.”

  “Other numbers changed too. These were just the easiest to notice.”

  “How much overall?”

  McClellan confirmed the figure Pinkerton had given me on the train.

  “So all this extra money isn’t being received by the people the books say it’s going to. Where is it going?”

  The look on the lawyer’s face wasn’t quite a smile, but it seemed I had passed his test, if no one else’s. “That’s what you’re here to find out, Mrs. Warne.”

  McClellan said, “There are two men most likely. Our accountant, Mr. Vincent, or the assistant secretary, Mr. Martin. We need someone to prove where the money is going and bring the guilty party to justice. And we need complete discretion. This kind of thing could cause a terrible scandal.”

  Pinkerton said, “You will have the finest assistance available in Mrs. Warne. She will not fail to bring in your man.”

  McClellan looked uncomfortable.

  Pinkerton left to go back to Chicago, and I remained in Springfield. I wondered what pressing business was taking him home and had a few theories. First, that he was testing me to see how I did without his direct supervision. Second, that he was testing something about the railroad men instead. Third, that he really did have more pressing business besides a highly confidential investigation on behalf of our biggest, most important client. That seemed the least likely explanation.

  Lincoln had a list of options for me to delve into, and I annoyed him by dismissing most of them right off.

  “He’s not going to buy land,” I said, pointing at the list. “Too traceable. He’d have to buy it in his own name, and it’s not portable.”

  “Cattle, then.”

  “No. Still too much paper.”

  “Gold.”

  “Maybe. But you have to go to a bank to get it. And a man buying ounce after ounce of gold is going to be remembered.”

  “Fine,” said Lincoln, folding his arms and exposing an extra inch of bony wrist beyond his too-short cuffs. “Tell me where you think it is.”

  “Gems.”

  I saw the switch flip in his head. He wouldn’t have thought of it himself—I could tell he was the kind of man who rarely indulged his wife in baubles—but he saw the sense in it right away.

  From there, we quickly discovered that there was only one jewelry store of any consequence in Springfield. I asked to take a position there as a clerk, and the lawyer quickly succeeded in arranging it, telling the proprietor that I was a country cousin, a bit of fiction that I think amused us both.

  Dressed neatly in a white blouse and a sensible skirt of muted plaid, introducing myself with the name Miss Lincoln, I stood ready to assist any ladies looking to make purchases. The proprietor, Mr. Corwin, was younger than I expected, with a long nose, fine eyebrows he often raised in amusement, and thick, dark, wavy hair. He familiarized me with the stock, from the smallest silver pin to the most ornate, gem-studded necklace and everything in between.

  As the days proceeded, Mr. Corwin and I spent a good deal of time in conversation, passing minutes and hours as we waited for customers. He instructed me in good principles of service, and I made him laugh, acting the part of a terrible customer, demanding all sorts of fine manners. He had a crooked, warm smile, and I enjoyed seeing it.

  Lincoln and I had decided that I would report once a week. The first week, I had very little to say. Some of the wives of men on the railroad’s payroll had come in—I had a list—but their purchases had not been untoward. My confidence began to waver, though I didn’t show it, knowing he would only believe in me as long as I appeared to believe in myself.

  The second week broke things wide open.

  Two women made major purchases. First, a dark-haired woman in middle age whose broad, high bosom made her resemble a pigeon selected the store’s showpiece necklace, a ruby affair with branching silver leaves. It looked well enough on her, and both Mr. Corwin and I encouraged the purchase, each for our own reasons. She dithered a long time. When she finally decided to take the necklace, she laughed and clapped, and I saw a peek of the schoolgirl she had once been. When she indicated to Mr. Corwin that the purchase should be placed on the Vincent house account, I was sorely tempted to burst into applause my own self. This, then, was Mrs. Vincent, the accountant’s wife.

  I asked Mr. Corwin whether this was her first extravagant piece, and he mentioned a brooch she’d purchased six months before, a large cushion-cut sapphire surrounded by diamonds. I felt I couldn’t ask for more specifics without arousing his suspicions, but I filed away the information, feeling on the cusp of discovery.

  Two days later, a much younger woman with auburn hair purchased a stack of gold-plated bracelets, enough to cuff her arm nearly to the elbow. I wrapped them in pretty paper while she discussed the financial details with Mr. Corwin, so I did not hear what name she gave. After she left, I said, “My goodness! Whoever sponsors her purchases must be quite well-off. Whose account does she use?”

  “Bronson,” said Mr. Corwin without elaborating.

  Something about his manner struck me as odd, as he had never been terse with me, not in the least. I drew close to him and asked in a conspiratorial whisper, “Bronson? I don’t believe I’ve heard that name here before.”

  He laughed then, his charming, boisterous laugh. “Oh, so be it. I was never a good liar. There is no Mr. Bronson; it is a nom de guerre of another gentleman of Springfield who doesn’t wish his…sponsorship of the young lady to be known.”

  I said, closer still, “And who might that gentleman be?”

  “Tsk tsk, Miss Lincoln,” he said, waving a finger. “There are some secrets I can keep.”

  I thought it would probably not be hard to get the truth from him when the time was right. He was an open and honest man, and I hated to think about how misled he was about my identity and my purpose in Springfield. We
enjoyed each other’s company so greatly, during those many hours in the store, and I told myself no one was getting hurt. He had no wife; I had no husband. Our flirtation was only that.

  Yet I found myself fantasizing, certainly too often, what it would be like for Miss Lincoln to enter into a relationship with Mr. Corwin. How we might sit in front of a fire, drinking warm wine, entertaining each other with outlandish stories. How one of us might reach for the other’s empty glass, set it out of the way, and then reach for the person who’d emptied it. I’d been a married woman, and I knew what a man and a woman did in the dark, but what I had not had with either Paul or Charlie was a romance, and I thirsted for one. I reached for Mr. Corwin countless times in my dreams. Some mornings, it was hard to look at him, knowing how his imagined figure and mine had twisted themselves up together while I slept. And one day, when his hand brushed mine as we both reached to close a display case and he turned crimson, stammering an apology, I knew the signs. He’d been imagining a romance with me—or the woman he thought me to be—as well.

  My conversations with Mr. Corwin became more substantive, and one night, he insisted on buying my supper so we might continue talking at a nearby restaurant. We talked so long, the food grew cold on our plates. A few days later at the store, a lady with decidedly thick fingers asked Mr. Corwin to slip a particular ring onto my finger to see how it looked, and he did so cautiously, tentatively, and the air seemed so fraught with possibility, I thought I might burst.

  In my next meeting with Lincoln, I shared what I knew about the Vincent and Bronson house accounts, and he set his chin against his fist thoughtfully.

  “Bronson,” he said. “Could it be Mr. Martin, the assistant secretary, in another guise?”

  “It could be. We have one way to find out.”

  “And that is?”

  “People tend toward the familiar,” I said. “Would you like to try your hand at clandestine operations?”

  He cocked his head, curious.

  “Find out their mother’s names. Vincent and Martin. Can you do it without arousing suspicion?”