Sadie's Secret: 3 (The Secret Lives of Will Tucker) (4 page)

He’d written other things. Something about a photograph in the
New Orleans Picayune
that was causing a stir. A postscript to request she report her travel itinerary forthwith.

She would have to ask Henry if he knew what sort of fuss Daddy meant. If the tempest was bigger than a teapot, it would be heard and reported back to Henry Smith, especially if it involved one of his agents.

More likely, her mother had read of some distant relation’s wedding and decided it was time for Sadie to come back and find a husband.

Yes, that was it. Mama and her matrimonial machinations were most likely behind the letter. But Sadie had no husband in mind, nor did she intend to find one, not while she still had plenty to occupy her time. Mama would just have to wait, and thus so would Daddy.

Sadie set the letter aside and reached for the file Henry had insisted she read. Somehow, even Will Tucker’s impossible case seemed less daunting than a brief letter from Daddy. Less worrisome. And certainly less taxing to what remained of her patience.

The dossier was brief but impactful. The London Metropolitan Police were in receipt of a missing persons report from one Honorable Eliza Tucker, who wished to follow up on the failure of her son, a detective in the employ of the police, to return from a business trip to the United States. They were also in receipt of letters from an inmate incarcerated in the Louisiana State Penitentiary claiming to be their missing detective.

Known next of kin for William Jefferson Tucker was his brother, last of Mobile, Alabama. The brother’s name was William John Tucker.

His twin.

A third letter, from the warden of Louisiana State Penitentiary to the state prison board dated May 10, 1889, acknowledged the release of a prisoner and the incarceration of another. Wrongful imprisonment was the reason.

The name was Tucker. William Tucker.

No middle name declared.

Sadie sat back and tossed the last letter onto the desk. If there were two William Tuckers, then which one sat in prison?

Instinct told her the answer. Instinct also told her that, if she valued her freedom, the last place she needed to be right now was anywhere in the state of Louisiana.

Three

S
adie arrived at her supervisor’s office at exactly ten o’clock the next morning. Unlike adhering to the fashionable lateness she had learned at her mother’s knee, she was always prompt.

Determining that this was someone else’s case, someone else’s responsibility, she kept her suspicions to herself and tried to ignore the niggling voice that was her conscience. Or perhaps it was merely the enemy of her soul bent on sending her back down to the place where she least wanted to be.

Other agents could be moved to the Tucker case. Surely Henry would see that she should be helping Mrs. Astor with her art troubles. Who better to fit into the drawing rooms and salons of Fifth Avenue than she? Indeed, Sadie Callum was born to take on this role. A role she had assumed with great success during much of her career with the Pinkertons.

With each step toward the entrance of the agency’s offices, Sadie bolstered her argument. Louisiana judges preferred to deal with detectives of the male variety, as witnessed by the grief she received when she climbed into the witness box to testify against Will Tucker during his resentencing hearing.

She sighed. Testimony that would have to be refuted if this Tucker were to be released. The judge would want to hear from her. Would probably require it.

And yet she did not want to go. With all she had in her, Sadie determined she would avoid the assignment at all costs, something she had never done before.

So, when Henry opened his door to usher her inside, she smiled with the confidence of a woman on a mission. A woman with an argument that would cause him to see the sense of sending someone else down to the Louisiana State Penitentiary to free the wrongly imprisoned Tucker. Because whoever freed that man would likely be sent to search for the other. She gave that a moment’s thought as she stepped past Henry and settled in the spot where he’d delivered yesterday’s ultimatum.

If only she could guarantee that Will Tucker wasn’t spending his time within shouting distance of River Pointe, Louisiana. Or New Orleans, which he tended to favor with his presence on multiple occasions, according to the vast array of documents Pinkerton agents McMinn and Russell had compiled.

No, Tucker was a Southerner who tended to keep his activities and his location distinctly Southern in nature. And between Mama’s people in New Orleans and beyond, and Daddy’s plantation in River Pointe, there wasn’t much of the area beneath the Mason-Dixon line that didn’t contain a family member.

She sighed again. It was indeed a conundrum.

What was right would prevail, and she knew, at least in part, what that was. However, sending one Tucker back to freedom did not mean she wanted to arrest the other. And that argument had yet to be well developed.

Thoughts on the subject roiled and swirled but refused to find any solid and defendable form. Instead, the more she considered her words, the more she knew she would sound like a petulant child not wanting to do what her father asked. And yet, in some ways, she was exactly that.

Sadie busied herself with adjusting her sleeve and studying the view out the third-floor window as she waited for her boss to broach the subject.

“I take it you’ve read the file.”

She sat up a little straighter and schooled her features to keep them neutral. “Yes, sir. I have.”

“Then you’ve decided,” he said as he sat down in his chair across the desk.

What to say? She chose silence in the hopes it would give her a moment to find one last solid reason to beg off the case.

Henry leaned back and steepled his hands, his gaze missing nothing as it swept her face. And then, slowly, he nodded.

He knew. Of course. That’s why he was sitting on the other side of the desk, second only to the man whose name was on the sign outside.

All that remained was to give up the ghost and admit the truth. And yet the idea of stepping on the train to New York and Mrs. Astor was powerful incentive to try one last time to derail the situation.

“There were conflicting statements in the file,” she said demurely. “And I believe the judge still thinks he is holding the correct Tucker behind bars.”

“I didn’t ask what the judge thinks.” His eyes narrowed.

“Yet his opinion is the only one that counts, isn’t it, sir?” A poor counter to Henry’s statement. She was running out of time, and worse, running out of excuses.

“You’re too good at this Pinkerton game to show it, but I know you have the instincts.” He pressed his palms against the desk’s top and leveled her a no-nonsense look. “Who does the state of Louisiana have locked up, our perpetrator or his twin brother?”

“His twin.”

There it was. The truth. Two words that hung in the air between them.

“And what specifically has caused you to arrive at this decision?”

“There were numerous factors that indicated the two men had been switched, but only one concrete piece of evidence,” she said.

“What was that concrete piece of evidence?”

“Eye color.” She hurried to explain as Henry’s brows rose. “In every instance where victims of Will Tucker—that is, John Tucker—described the perpetrator, his eyes were either gray or green. Thus I am left to believe that John Tucker has gray eyes that can shift to green depending on the light.”

“Go on.”

“Yes, well, the man currently incarcerated has, according to documents provided by the London Metropolitan Police, eyes that are blue except under certain conditions.”

“When they also appear gray.”

“Exactly, sir.”

“Then get him out.” Henry held up his hand to stop any protest before it found voice. “Just do your job, Miss Callum,” he said with a weariness that hadn’t been evident moments before.

Just do your job.

“Yes, sir.” She gathered up the file. “And Mrs. Astor?”

“She will understand.”

A flicker of hope rose. “Are you saying my duties only extend to offering testimony as to the identity of the prisoner and then I will be released to take on the Astor case? The topic is well within my area of expertise, as you know, and Mamie and I have a shared history of friendship, although we are no longer close as we once were.”

Henry sat back in his chair and picked up a pen from atop a stack of papers. For a moment he appeared to be more interested in writing instrument than the topic at hand.

Abruptly, he dropped the pen and it clattered to the floor. “You do not wish to continue as lead agent on the Tucker case, then.”

A statement, not a question. And yet Sadie felt compelled to respond.

“I do not, sir.”

“And would your reluctance to continue have anything to do with matters more personal than professional?” He paused only a second. “Has your father demanded your return?”

Startled, she met his gaze. “He mentioned something of the sort in his last letter.”

That the Callum family had no idea of Sadie’s true calling as a Pinkerton was common knowledge with Henry Smith. How much he knew beyond that basic fact was a mystery to Sadie. Uncle Penn had likely spoken in her defense, possibly even enlightened her employer as to the issues Sadie faced as the only daughter of an impossibly archaic father.

“Did he mention a photograph that appeared in the
New Orleans Picayune?”

Of course Henry had known about it. “Yes, sir. He did.”

“Would you like to see it?” He opened the topmost drawer of his desk and withdrew a folded newspaper. “I must say it’s quite a good likeness of you and Agent Russell.”

He slid the newspaper across the desk toward her and then waited silently for her to pick it up. Trembling fingers retrieved the paper and unfolded it to lie flat across the desk.

There, just below a heading touting the Society column and the byline of its author was a photograph of Senator Robert Davey taken at
a reception held in his honor last fall. Sadie recalled assisting Kyle Russell in seeing that the senator slipped out the rear exit of the venue, eluding a possible threat on his life.

Unfortunately, they did not elude a cameraman from the
Picayune.
Odd that the photograph would be published now when nothing had appeared in the newspaper at the time.

She shrugged. “I fail to see why a photograph taken six months ago would cause any concern for my father.”

“You didn’t read the accompanying article. I suggest you give it a look.”

Her attention went to the words beneath the photograph. The first sentence, phrased as a question, caught her breath in her throat and held it there.

Why would a man newly married to a veritable saint dedicated to the establishment of libraries and educational facilities cavort about New Orleans with this woman?

“Cavort?” Her mouth gave voice to the word, and yet it fell hollow into the silence. She saw her name a few lines down and was drawn back to the page.

Gently educated, well bred, and of a lineage that should have given her pause to be seen in public in such a manner, Miss Sarah Louise Callum escapes out the back exit and clutches at the arm of…

“Should have given her pause?” Sadie pushed the paper away. “Clutches at the arm? Kyle and I were providing security for the senator at his request. If I am clutching anything, it is the Remington pistol in my hand.”