A Touch of Camelot (26 page)

His sudden remembrance of their first meeting in Abilene had only served to underscore the differences between them. She knew now what he saw when he looked at her. A thief. It was true that he was attracted to her, and perhaps he'd even grown fond of her during their time together, but love her? How could he ever love a woman whose whole life stood for everything he despised?

The three of them were seated in a small basement eatery on Kearney Street known as Coffee Dan's, consuming their breakfast in awkward silence.

Cole cleared his throat. "Could someone pass the bread?"

Arthur didn't look up and so Gwin passed the small basket. "I was just thinking," she ventured cautiously. "If Sidney Pierce is still in San Francisco and we can find him ..."

Cole tore off a chunk of the warm bread. "Yes?"

"Maybe he'd be able to help."

"I thought Silas and Sidney parted on bad terms."

"Yes, but that was years ago."

"If that's the case, don't you think that if he was still in San Francisco, he would have come forward when his brother was killed?"

"Maybe he doesn't know."

"Maybe."

Gwin sighed. "Maybe he's not even here."

"And maybe you're looking for excuses to find him. You'd like to meet him, wouldn't you?"

"Can you blame me?"

"No."

Neither said anything for a long moment, so Gwin broached another subject. "What are your plans for today?"

"I'll pay another visit to the police. There are a few more questions I'd like answered. And I'm interested in seeing if the same detective tries to follow me when I leave."

Gwin almost choked on her scrambled eggs. "Follow you? You didn't say anything about that.
What
detective? Did he follow you to our boardinghouse? What's going on?"

Cole held up a hand. "First of all, no, he didn’t follow me back to the boardinghouse, and second, it was the same detective who headed up the investigation into Silas's death."

"You mean that detective who questioned us? Detective ... oh, what was his name?"

"O'Connell."

"Yes, O'Connell. That's the one. He tried to get Arthur to change his story."

"I believe it," Cole said.

"You do?"

"Oh, I knew there was something dirty about that guy even before he followed me out of the building. I could practically smell it."

Gwin sat back in her chair. "I'm surprised to hear that."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I guess I wasn't sure you'd believe that some policemen are crooked."

"I worked for the New York City Police Department for almost a year. Believe me, I saw enough corruption there to last me a lifetime."

"Is that why you left? New York, I mean?"

"That was part of it."

Part of it?
Something tightened in her stomach. She wasn't sure whether it was the tone of his voice or the way he avoided her eye, but she was suddenly sure that the other part of it had something to do with a woman.

Gwin looked down at her plate, trying to digest this new realization along with the beginnings of a breakfast that she had suddenly lost all appetite for. Why should this bother her so much? Surely, she had known before this that there had been other women in his life.

But he was in love with this one
. That was the difference. He had loved her and something had happened to tear them apart. Had she died in a tragic accident? Was she a rich girl betrothed to another man? Or perhaps she had been a schoolteacher. A shopkeeper's daughter? Did it matter? Whoever she was, she’d been a nice girl, a respectable girl, the kind of girl that an honorable, upstanding young man like Cole Shepherd would have considered marrying.

"What's the matter?"

Gwin jerked her head up to meet Cole's inquisitive gaze. "What?"

"You're not eating. Something wrong with your food?"

"No. It's fine. Nothing's wrong." Gwin stabbed a piece of ham from her plate and took it off her fork, chewing with relish to prove her point. It tasted like dirt.

"So, tell me, what makes you think Sidney could still be in San Francisco?" Cole asked.

Gwin was glad for the change in subject. "According to Silas, he always talked about California, and a week before the revival—" She turned to her brother. "Arthur, wasn't it about then he saw something in the newspaper that reminded him of Sidney?"

Her brother, who had been picking at his food, looked up with a scowl. "What?"

Gwin ignored his hostility. "I was talking about the week before you came to San Francisco with Silas and the others. You told me Silas was reading one of the local papers when he said something to you about Sidney."

Cole interrupted. "Wait a minute. This was the week before he was killed?"

Gwin urged her brother, "Tell him, Arthur. You do remember, don't you?"

"Of course I remember."

Gwin turned back to Cole, explaining. "Silas and the rest of the group camped about twenty miles south of San Francisco the week before they came to town. Silas always liked to get some local newspapers before a revival just to make sure we wouldn't be playing against any competition."

Cole raised an eyebrow. "Competition? How many faith-healing preachers are there?"

"Not that kind of competition. I'm talking about a circus or some other event that would discourage attendance."

Arthur cut in. "We played the same day a circus came to town once, and hardly anyone showed."

"Anyway," Gwin continued, "Silas was going through some San Francisco newspapers when—" She turned to her brother. "You tell him, Arthur."

Arthur still wore a sullen expression, but he relented on his vow of silence long enough to explain. "He seemed real interested in one of those papers. After he put it down, he turned to me and said, 'I do believe our ship has come in.' I asked what he meant, and he said, 'Your long-lost Uncle Sidney has struck gold.' I still didn't understand what he was talking about, but he wouldn’t say more."

Cole frowned. "Did you get a good look at that newspaper?"

"Sure. After he left, I picked it up. I thought maybe there would be an article about someone striking gold, but there wasn't. I went through the whole paper. There was one article about gold prices but not one on new strikes."

"Strange," Cole said, setting down his mug. "Do you remember which newspaper it was?"

"The
Chronicle
."

"Would you recognize that issue if you saw it again?"

Arthur wrinkled his nose. "Do skunks stink? You want me to quote the front page for you?"

Cole ignored the boy's sarcasm and gave Gwin a significant look. "This could be important."

Gwin felt a stab of hope. "You think so?"

"It's worth checking into. If Sidney is here, maybe he knows someone who could help us."

Gwin sat forward, forgetting the food left on her plate. "But how will we find him?"

Cole thought for a moment and turned to Arthur. "How about we go find a copy of that newspaper Silas was reading?"

Arthur glowered. "I told you there was nothing in it. No gold. No Uncle Sidney."

"I know, but something caught Silas's eye that day." Cole looked at Gwin. "Maybe, knowing what we know now, we'll come up with something Arthur missed."

Arthur sounded insulted. "I never miss anything!"

"But where are we going to get a copy of that paper?" Gwin asked.

"We'll go right to the horse's mouth."

"What?"

"The
Chronicle
office." Cole addressed Arthur. "You willing to go?"

"Do I have to?"

"Yes."

Gwin picked up her napkin. "I'm ready, anyhow."

"You're not going," Cole said.

"What are you talking about? Of course I'm going. It was my idea."

"I need Arthur along because he saw the paper, but you're not going anywhere. By showing up at the police station yesterday, I may have rattled some cages. Until we find out what shakes loose, the less we're all seen together, the better. We'll meet you back at the room."

Gwin opened her mouth to argue but couldn't think of any argument convincing enough to launch. She sat with her arms folded as Cole counted out sixty cents and a tip to pay their bill. He pushed back from the table and motioned to Arthur.

He was right, of course. The detective who had followed him yesterday would report Cole's presence in San Francisco to whoever it was he was working for. Now, they had to be more careful than ever. Still, as Gwin watched Cole and her brother leave, it galled her to be staying behind. She had a feeling they were on to something. If Sidney was here, she was certain he would help them.

*

Cole and Arthur emerged from Coffee Dan's, squinting in the bright morning sunlight. The morning fog was gone and the sun had begun to warm the pavement as they turned south on Kearney toward the Market Street intersection.

Although he had grown up in a small town, Cole had already lived in two large cities. He acclimated easily to urban surroundings, and San Francisco was no different. He had obtained a city map yesterday morning before setting out for the county jail, but since then, he had only glanced at it a few times. He remembered city landmarks as he passed them, and the
Chronicle
building was a hard one to miss. On the corner of Kearney and Market, it stood like many in this thriving metropolis as a multistoried monument to modern architecture.

Cole tried his best to make conversation, but Arthur wasn't biting. By the time they crossed Sutter Street, he had surrendered to the boy's balky silence.

Cole's thoughts turned, instead, to his investigation. His first stop yesterday had been the county jail to interview Ricardo Cortez, the man accused of murdering Silas and the others. Before he had exchanged even one word with the dark-eyed bandit, Cole had known there was something dreadfully amiss with the police investigation that had brought him up on charges of murder.

Young Arthur Pierce, the only eyewitness to the killings, had described the perpetrator as a Goliath. The man who faced Cole from behind those bars barely stood five feet six. Naming Arthur as a key witness for the prosecution of this case was a farce. Whoever was pulling the strings in this puppet show had no intention of allowing that child near a witness stand.

Cole had started out this morning with a plan. That plan had been to return to the police station to do a little shadowing of his own. He thought Detective O'Connell might lead him to whoever was padding his salary. Would that benefactor be the Pinkerton Agency’s own client, Phineas Taylor? Cole would have to wait to find out. His plans had changed. They had changed the moment Gwin had brought up Silas's comment about his brother, Sidney. Cole's interest was piqued. Things were starting to come together.

Gwin had told him that Silas had disappeared into town on business the day he was killed. What business? Silas had never been to San Francisco before. Gwin had told him that Silas's estranged brother had probably settled here in California. Could he still be here? Could the business Silas had travelled into town for be unfinished business between embittered brothers? Of course, it was possible that Sidney Pierce's presence in San Francisco, the city where his brother was brutally murdered, was simply a coincidence.

The trouble was, Cole didn't believe in coincidences. It was a fact that bona fide coincidences did occasionally occur in everyday life, but when they occurred in the course of an investigation, they were the yellow flags that snagged any detective's attention. One supposedly coincidental event was usually tied to another. The trick, naturally, was to find the elusive thread that bound them together. Cole believed he was getting close to that thread. Very, very close.

Cole glanced down casually only to see, with surprise, that Arthur was gone.

He stopped, feeling a shot of fear. He hadn't thought about how easy it could be to lose a child in a city this size, especially a child who might want to be lost. When he turned around, though, relief swept over him. There was Arthur, in plain sight, standing like a statue back at the last street corner.

Cole hurried back. "Why did you stop? The
Chronicle
office is right up here."

Arthur folded his arms stiffly and refused to meet Cole's gaze. "I'm not going."

"Not going?"

"That's right. I'm not going anywhere with
you
."

Cole felt a stab of self-recrimination. Whatever trust Arthur had placed in him was gone. He hadn't realized until now just how much he had come to value that trust. "Look, Arthur, the sooner we get this over with, the sooner you can get away from me. Now, come on."

"I don't have to listen to you. You're not my father. You're not my brother. You're not even my friend."

Cole grew aware that they were garnering curious glances from pedestrians. "I
am
your friend, Arthur, whether you choose to believe that or not."

"A friend wouldn’t have ..." Arthur faltered, his ears turning pink. "A friend wouldn't do what you did."

"You may be a little young to understand this, but no one's perfect, no matter how much you want them to be. I'm sorry if I let you down."

"I am
not
too young! I understand better than you think!"

They were now earning more than a few curious stares. Cole reckoned that if Arthur grew much more belligerent, they might attract a crowd. And a crowd inevitably attracted a policeman.

Cole lowered his voice. "Look, if you've got a bone to pick with me, we can have it out in private later. Now, either you stop acting childish and walk with me to the newspaper office or I'll drag you there."

"No." Arthur tilted his chin arrogantly.

Cole reached for him. "All right, if that's the way you want it."

Dodging Cole’s grasp, Arthur ran and wrapped his arms around the nearest lamppost. "No! No! No!"

"Damn it, Arthur! People are staring."

Cole wasn't exaggerating. Already, a woman bedecked in a fashionable day dress and ostrich-plumed hat had slowed her stride. Judging by her expression, Cole suspected she was debating whether to club him over the head with her parasol or scream for the police.