A Proper Pursuit (35 page)

“Oh no,” I groaned. “This must be the lawyer’s office that my mother used for her divorce.”

“Well, then. That says it all, doesn’t it?”

I refused to give up. We trudged up the stairs to the third floor and met an unsmiling clerk guarding the portal to the shabby office suite behind him.

“May I help you?”

I struck a dignified yet flirtatious pose, hoping to penetrate his officiousness with my dignity and his male instincts with my feminine charms.

“Oh, I surely hope so, Mister …” I spotted the nameplate on his desk. “Mister Morgan. You see, my name is Violet Rose Hayes, and I’m trying to locate one of your clients, Mrs. John Hayes—who happens to be my mother. Her first name is Angeline. This address was listed on my parents’ divorce papers. Would you happen to have the address of her residence?”

“We can’t divulge our clients’ personal information.” His cold voice and lack of interest felt like a slap. It didn’t require much for me to summon tears.

“Oh, please … you must help me! She’s my mother. She left home when I was nine, and I haven’t seen her in eleven years.”

Mr. Morgan might have been carved from stone. “That’s unimportant.”

“Unimportant! I’ve traveled all the way from Lockport by train, and it’s vitally important that I get in touch with her immediately!”

“Our clients’ confidentiality is also vitally important.”

I took a deep breath to calm myself. My feminine charms obviously weren’t working. Grumpy Mr. Morgan showed more interest in the papers he was shuffling around on his desk than in me.

“Suppose … suppose I wrote her a message? Could you forward it to her?”

“We are not a courier service.”

“I realize that, but what if … What if I paid to become one of your clients, and then you could give—”

“Our firm only consults on legal matters.”

I grabbed Aunt Birdie’s arm and stormed away. As soon as we were out of his sight on the stairwell landing, I started to cry. Aunt Birdie offered me her handkerchief and a hug.

“There, there …”

“I need to find my mother, Aunt Birdie!”

“Well, then, we’ll just have to keep looking, won’t we?”

We went outside and started to walk again. I was too upset to care which street we were on or which direction we were going. We had stopped at an intersection and were waiting for the traffic to clear, when Aunt Birdie suddenly pointed to a group of men standing in front of the Municipal Court Building across the street.

“Oh, look. Isn’t that the young man with the lovely blue eyes who came to call on you? What was his name?”

“Silas McClure …” I breathed. He was unmistakable, even from this distance. I whirled around so quickly to walk the other way that Aunt Birdie broke free. Before I could stop her, she waved her arms like a drowning victim and called to him.

“Yoo hoo! Mr. McClure!”

“Hey there!” he shouted when he saw her. He waved in return, then left the other men and hurried across the street, weaving expertly between horses and wagons and carriages. “Miss Hayes! And Mrs. Casey. Hey, it’s great to see you!” Aunt Birdie greeted him with an enormous hug.

My pulse began to race, and I didn’t want it to, but Silas’ face had lit up like the White City at night when he saw me. It was so seldom that someone looked that pleased to see me. Nelson greeted me coolly, Louis was cordial, and gloomy Herman might have been comatose. I told my heart to slow down, reminding myself that Silas was a thief and a criminal—he had just come out of the courthouse, hadn’t he? But the element of danger only made my heart beat faster.

“What brings you ladies down here?”

“Violet is looking for her mother,” Aunt Birdie said. “Have you seen her?”

He blinked. Then I saw understanding dawn in his eyes.

“Hey, that’s right! On the day we arrived in Chicago you asked me to take you to LaSalle Street, and then—” He halted. His blinding smile disappeared. “I am really, really sorry, Violet. I was supposed to bring you here after the fair, wasn’t I? I really let you down that day.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, sniffing away my tears. “The address turned out to be a lawyer’s office. They’re the ones who drew up my mother’s divorce papers, but they won’t tell me where she lives.”

“Your mother loved the theater,” Aunt Birdie said. “That’s probably where she went. Why don’t we look there?”

I grabbed Birdie’s arm in time to stop her from leaving. “I don’t think she went to the theater, Aunt Birdie. She’s been gone for eleven years.”

“And there are dozens of theaters in Chicago,” Silas added.

“Well, there was a wonderful production of
Romeo and Juliet
. She would enjoy that. She and Johnny were just like them—star-crossed lovers.”

“Gosh, I can’t tell you how bad I feel for letting you down,” Silas said. “I’d like to make it up to you, Violet, and help out. If you give me your mother’s name, maybe I can help you find her.”

“How? I don’t even have an address.”

“I’ve … uh … I’ve got ways.”

I imagined him using the seedy underworld of thieves and pickpockets, whispering her name from one den of criminals to the next. I knew Silas was a thief, yet I didn’t feel at all afraid of him. Besides, as far as finding my mother was concerned, I was at a dead end and facing my father’s deadline. How could it hurt to tell him? I needed all the help I could get.

“If I give you her name and you do find her, will you promise not to say anything to her until I’ve had a chance to talk to her? I don’t want to frighten her off.”

“How could he frighten her, dear?” Aunt Birdie asked. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly. Would you, Mr. McClure?”

“A mosquito, maybe,” he said, winking at her, “but never a fly. Listen, Violet, don’t worry about a thing. Tell me her name and I’ll see what I can do for you.”

He reached into an inner pocket of his jacket to pull out a wad of folded paper and a stubby pencil. But as he did, I noticed a large bulge in another inside pocket and saw something metallic poking out.

Was that a gun?

I had never seen a pistol up close before, but from the brief glimpse I caught before he buttoned his suit coat closed, I feared that’s what it was. My heart started thudding so loudly that Silas’ friends probably could hear it across the street. Now I
was
afraid of him! I opened my mouth but nothing came out.

“Her name is Angeline,” Aunt Birdie said. “Angeline Hayes.”

“An-ge-line …” he repeated as he scribbled it down. “Anything else you can tell me that might help?”

“She was a pretty little thing,” Aunt Birdie added. “Just like Violet. And she loved the theater.”

“I think … I think she might be Bohemian,” I finally managed to say. Desperation had won the battle over fear. “I-I heard some Bohemian folk music the other night, and the language and the songs and everything sounded very familiar to me. I don’t remember much about my mother, but I remember that she sometimes sang in a different language.”

He finished writing everything down and refolded the paper. I held my breath, waiting for him to open his jacket again, but he shoved the paper and pencil into an outside pocket.

“Okay then, Violet. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Can you hurry, please? I have less than two weeks to search for her.”

“Two weeks? And then what happens?”

“Then my father is going to make me go home to Lockport.”

“Hey, McClure. Come on,” one of the men called from across the street. “Court is back in session.” I tried to get a look at their faces and see if I recognized “Josephine” or Robert, but the men had already turned away.

“Sorry, but I gotta run.” He squeezed my arm. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find out something, okay?” He gave me a long, lingering look, like he was memorizing my face. His candelabra grin had returned. “It was great seeing you ladies again. Bye.”

I watched as he dodged around the traffic again and bounced up the courthouse steps. He turned and waved before disappearing inside. I couldn’t seem to move. There was something terribly wrong with my heart. It was out of rhythm and pounding wildly.
It’s because
of the gun,
I told myself.
He has a gun!

Aunt Birdie tapped me on the shoulder, breaking the spell. “He’s in love with you,” she said.

“No. Th-that’s impossible. He’s … he’s completely unsuitable!”

“Your cheeks aren’t pink this time, dear, they’re bright red.”

I covered my cheeks with my hands and felt the warmth. Aunt Birdie cocked her head to one side and smiled at me.

“Make sure you marry for love, dear.”

Chapter

24

B
y the time Aunt Birdie and I arrived home, I had finally stopped shaking from my encounter with gun-toting Silas McClure. But I battled tears of bitter disappointment because I hadn’t found my mother. I wished I’d gone to LaSalle Street four weeks ago instead of wasting all this time. Now less than two weeks remained in which to find her, and my best hope of doing so was with the help of a thieving elixir salesman. I wanted to push past Aunt Birdie and run upstairs to my room and weep.

“It looks like you got another letter,” Aunt Birdie said. She had stopped in front of me to scoop up the mail that lay waiting for us on the foyer floor.

“From whom?” I asked wearily.

“It says, ‘Mrs. Charles Crane’ on the return address. ‘Riverside, Illinois.’ ”

It took me a moment to realize it was from Herman Beckett’s sister—whom I had dubbed Misery Mary. I took the letter from Aunt Birdie and ripped it open.

Dear Miss Hayes,

I am writing to invite you to a family picnic on July the fourth
here at our home in Riverside. Herman will be coming by train from
Lockport along with our mother, so you will have the opportunity to
become better acquainted with our family. I know this is short notice,
but I do hope you will be able to attend. Herman and my husband,
Ernest, will call for you around ten o’clock in the morning. I look
forward to seeing you again.

Sincerely,
Mary Crane

“Is it from one of your beaus?” Aunt Birdie asked.

“From his sister. She invited me to her Fourth of July picnic.”

“Oh, how nice. And tomorrow is the Fourth.”

“It is? Oh no,” I moaned. “That means there won’t be time to write back and send my regrets.”

“Don’t you want to go, dear? I do love Fourth of July picnics with the parades and the fireworks and everything. Don’t you? And everyone is so patriotic now that our country is at war.”

“It’s just that I can’t afford to waste another day, Aunt Birdie. I need to find my mother before the two weeks are up, and I have no idea where to look.”

“Well, you could always ask Philip. He would know where she is.”

Philip? My father’s missing brother?
A strange, tingling sensation rippled through me—the kind I used to get when one of the detectives in
True Crime Stories
unearthed an important clue.

“Did my Uncle Philip know my mother?”

“Well, I’m sure he did.”

I hesitated before asking the next question. “Where … um … where can I find Philip?”

“Well, he’s … I mean … Oh, that’s right. Philip is off fighting in the war like my Gilbert. He … they …”

Her gray eyes clouded over with tears. She looked down at the pile of mail she was holding and her frail hands trembled as she leafed through the letters again.

“I can’t imagine why Gilbert hasn’t written. He must be so warm down in Virginia this time of year—the poor dear. Those uniforms are ever so hot. And the Virginia Peninsula is such a muggy, buggy place. And it looks like Philip hasn’t written either… .”

She dropped two letters as she shuffled clumsily through the mail. I picked them up, then gently took the rest of them out of her hands and laid them on the hall table.

“Let’s go make some lemonade and you can tell me all about my Uncle Philip, okay? What’s he like?”

“Full of life,” she said with a smile. “But headstrong. He and his father are always butting heads, you know. Isaac didn’t want his boys to fight, but as soon as Philip turned eighteen, he ran away to enlist. Is that a letter from him?” she asked, pointing to the invitation from Mary that I still held.

“No. I’ve been invited to a picnic tomorrow.”

I decided not to ask any more questions about Philip. I feared that he also had perished in the war, and I worried that my probing would hurt Aunt Birdie. We made lemonade and a light lunch. Afterward, I went upstairs to my room to devise a new plan.

I couldn’t afford to waste time crying helpless tears of disappointment. My future was at stake. My father seemed determined to marry me to Herman or to Nelson. I had been taught to be well mannered and compliant, trusting that men were more knowledgeable than women and better able to make choices for me. But that was before I’d seen for myself what women could accomplish; before I’d visited the Woman’s Pavilion and the suffrage headquarters and seen the work that my grandmother and Jane Addams did.

Yes, I needed to take matters into my own hands. My two goals would now become three: find my mother, stop Father’s marriage, and—did I dare believe it?—decide my own future.