The Ragtime Kid (20 page)

Higdon shrugged. “Not really. But let me just check a couple of points. Friday night, when all this happened, were you at the desk, or was the night clerk here?”

“It was me,” Kaiser said. “Ed Sawyer was supposed to work, but he claimed he was sick. A man owns a business, what’s he going to do, huh?”

Higdon was all sympathy. “The buck always stops with the owner, doesn’t it?”

“You ain’t a-kidding, Bob. Busier’n hell that night—”

“That’s what Mr. Fitzgerald said. He told me that was why he took the young woman up to the room himself.”

Kaiser’s face said he wasn’t going to sit still and be accused of neglecting his duties. “He didn’t have to do it. If he could’ve waited a minute or two, Pee Wee would’ve been back, the bellhop. Then him or I would’ve taken her upstairs just fine. But what I think is, he
wanted
to do it himself—figured once he got her into the room he could stop her crying and get on with whatever his business was. But she must’ve turned him down, or made him some kind of trouble, so he killed her. That’s the way I see it.”

“That’s a possibility,” Higdon said, smooth and cool as custard. “How long do you think he was up there altogether?”

“Well, that I don’t know, running back and forth the way I was. I’m betting when he came back down, he watched and waited ’til I was out of the way or not lookin’. Then he ran on out, the little fancy-pants.”

“Did you see anyone acting funny, John? In the lobby or around the desk?”

“Funny?” Kaiser gave Higdon the fish eye. “God almighty, didn’t I already tell you I was running my bee-hind off? When do you think I’d have had any time to see funny business?”

“You saw Mr. Fitzgerald, and thought what he did was a little different.”

Kaiser slammed a pencil down to the counter. His glasses fell forward to near the end of his nose; his purse-string lips twitched. “Judas Priest, Bob—how many times I gotta tell you I can’t help you any? Now, would you please be so kind as to let a man get his work done? You’ve already taken up more of my time than I can afford.”

“All right, John. Thanks for letting me look around.”

Kaiser wiped his lips with a finger, then said, “Don’t thank me, Bob. Thank Bud Hastain.”

“I did,” said Higdon. “And I will again.” He tipped his Panama, and turned.

“Maybe some day you’ll stand on your own two feet,” Kaiser shouted after him. “’Stead of hiding under Bud Hastain’s skirts.”

Higdon told himself no point getting into a pissing contest with a skunk. Better use of his time to stop at Walter Overstreet’s on the way home, ask a couple of questions.

***

From his bedroom, Isaac heard his dog bark, then a scraping sound from out back of the house. He left off tying his tie, grabbed his old Smith and Wesson from the night-table, tiptoed to the edge of the doorway and flattened himself against the wall, pistol up and ready. Probably just an animal looking for food, but a colored man who wanted to see the next sunrise didn’t take much of anything for granted.

For the thousandth time he told himself he was a fool to leave all that growth behind his little back yard to shelter any varmint, human or otherwise, that might want to sneak into his place. But when he’d brought Mae here and bought the house for her, she wouldn’t hear of cutting down the trees and clearing the brush. She called it their own private forest, told him it put her in mind of the woods she loved walking through near her childhood house in Kentucky. Eight years now since she died having Belinda, but Isaac still couldn’t bring himself to cut down a single tree.

One tap, then a second, then Isaac heard the outside door open. He peered around the corner into the kitchen. Emil Alteneder stood in the middle of the room, looking every which way, all the while holding a nasty wooden club at the ready. As he began to move in Isaac’s direction, the colored man leveled the pistol and stepped quickly into the doorway. Alteneder’s eyes bugged at the point-blank Smith and Wesson. He staggered back a step.

“Drop it,” Isaac said. “Now.”

Alteneder’s surprise passed quickly. He raised the club. “You ain’t gonna shoot me,” he said. “Nigger shoots a white man, he don’t get further’n the next tree.”

“Not if no other white man ever knows.” Isaac tightened his finger on the trigger. “You’re the only white man for blocks around. You make me shoot you, I get my neighbors real fast, and inside of an hour you be hog food, nothing left of you. Now, put down that club, turn yourself around, and get your sorry face out of here. I’m countin’. One—”

Alteneder dropped the club and glared at Isaac.

Isaac gestured with the pistol toward the door. “I said turn around and go.”

“You messed up my boy’s face,” Alteneder snarled.

“Next time he even look crooked at my child, I mess him up so bad he ain’t never gonna get unmessed.” Isaac’s voice rose. “Now go on, get the hell outa my house. Don’t say one more word.”

Alteneder shot Isaac a glance of pure hate, then stomped back through the doorway and outside. Isaac moved quickly to the doorway and watched his enemy give a wide berth to the beagle tethered to a post, as he retreated through the yard, into Mae’s forest, and finally out to the road, on his way back to white Sedalia. Only then did the colored man go back to his bedroom, slide his pistol into its holster, strap it on, and cover it with his dark suit jacket. On his way out, he stopped just long enough to pick up Alteneder’s club like it was something contaminated.

Chapter Nine

Sedalia
Sunday, July 23, 1899

Brun raced past the Stark and Son display windows, put on the brakes, backed up, and took a few seconds in front of the glass to straighten his tie and smooth down his hair. First impressions. He was going to be on trial, the judge a woman. Hornswoggling his old man had never been much of a problem, but when wool had to be pulled over eyes, Brun’s Ma was the devil’s very own. The boy set his chin, then walked on past the shop, through a doorway into a small vestibule and up the staircase to the Starks’ flat.

Stark greeted him at the top of the stairs. Behind his boss, Brun saw a spacious living room furnished with hardback chairs, a red tufted sofa, and a couple of stuffed armchairs a bit past their prime. A grand piano, music on the rack and spread over the bench, took pride of place. Stark patted Brun’s shoulder. “Glad you could come.”

“I’m glad to be invited.”

“I’d like for you to meet Will, but he’s still in St. Louis, and couldn’t…”

Whatever Stark was going to say never did get said, because just then, two women, both red-faced and perspiring, walked into the room. The older woman carried a tray with a pitcher at least as sweaty as she was, and four tumblers. “Ah,” said Mr. Stark. “Let me introduce you to my wife and daughter. My dears, this is the new clerk I’ve been talking about, Mr. Brun Campbell. Brun, my wife, and my daughter, Nell.”

Brun politely allowed how pleased he was to make the ladies’ acquaintance. Mrs. Stark, the one carrying the tray, said, “Let’s go sit on the porch and have some lemonade. We must get better acquainted.”

More than a touch of Irish in her voice, her smile warm, genuine. The boy gulped back a sudden bolus of Sunday-afternoon homesickness as he followed the Starks through the dining room and out onto a covered, screened-in porch. The building across the alley, fronting on East Sixth, was only one story high, so Brun could see several blocks down Lamine. It was cool and quiet, and as the boy sat in a wicker chair, sipping at Mrs. Stark’s perfect lemonade, just the right mix of sweet and tart, the leaves on the maples along Lamine rustled in the mild breeze, and he suddenly realized not only had the homesickness vanished, he was happy in every fiber of his being. He felt so much at home, sitting on the Starks’ back porch on Sunday afternoon, that the notion of being a traveling piano man came to sound downright mean. How nice it might be to settle in Sedalia, work with Mr. Stark and Will, publishing and selling music.

But woolgathering wouldn’t do, not right then. Brun told himself he’d best show interest and initiative in the proper direction. Nell Stark had a lovely head of black hair, piled up on top and set off by a white blouse, but it was her hands that caught and held Brun’s attention. He couldn’t take his eyes off those long delicate fingers which never stopped moving in her lap, as though all the while they talked, she rehearsed a piano piece. “Miss Nell, Mr. Stark tells me you’ve been to Europe to study with Moszkowski.”

Nell’s ice-blue eyes, from the very mold that had produced her father’s, projected an intensity that told Brun in no uncertain terms she would not suffer a fool gladly, if at all. “Twice,” she said. “First in Berlin for two years, and then for just a few months in Paris.” She turned a look on Stark that made Brun wonder whether he’d have done better to keep his trap shut. “But Papa was concerned for my safety, you know, the Spanish-American War. So I had to come home.”

If she was casting bait, Stark didn’t bite. He just smiled, which seemed to irritate his daughter. “Papa fought in a war,” she said. “And Mother, all of sixteen years old, came up the Mississippi from New Orleans to Indiana, not four months after the war was over. But even with the whole of the Pyrenees mountains separating me from those hordes of rampaging Spaniards, they were concerned for my safety.”

Brun thought his question had been innocent enough, but pretty clear Nell was one of those people who aren’t much affected by usual polite conventions. The boy readied himself for a word-storm.

But Mrs. Stark straightway sent the squall off in another direction. She was smaller than Brun’s Ma, five feet tall at the outside, in a white dress with frilly lace down the front. No question where Nell’s beautiful black hair came from. Smile lines played at the corners of Mrs. Stark’s green eyes, and around her mouth. To this point, she hadn’t said much beyond that she was pleased to make Brun’s acquaintance, but now as she began to speak, the boy saw respect scribed cleanly over both her husband’s face and her daughter’s. “Mr. Stark had no choice but to fight for his country and his beliefs.” Again, the hint of Ireland in her voice. “And as for me, I would not have chosen to make my way up the Mississippi in times such as those, certainly not as a girl of sixteen. But it was safer for me than staying in New Orleans, married as I was to a Yankee.” She looked squarely at Brun, who worked his face to consider her in the most serious fashion he could manage. “Those were difficult times, Mr. Campbell.”

Exultation surged in the boy’s chest. Not Master Campbell.
Mister
Campbell.

“New Orleans was captured and occupied by Union forces. My father was dead, and my mother made our living selling cakes and cookies to the soldiers. I went with her to help.” She fired a wicked glance Mr. Stark’s way, the kind of flash Brun hoped a pretty girl might one day turn on him. “And I met this dashing and handsome bugler boy.”

Against her will, Nell laughed.

Stark rubbed his hand over his face. “Her mother carried the tray, and she sang, to get our attention.” Stark’s voice was half an octave lower than his usual, the words husky. “I’d never heard a more beautiful singing voice before, and have not heard one since.”

“We were married in February, 1865,” Mrs. Stark said. “And then Mr. Stark’s regiment was transferred to occupy Mobile Bay. Without him there with us, not only was I in danger, so were my mother and my younger sister and brother. So off I went, up the river to Gosport, Indiana, and I lived there with Mr. Stark’s older brother Etilmon and his family until Mr. Stark joined me after he was mustered out, January of the next year.”

“Let’s not get too far off the subject, Mother.” Nell, her father’s daughter, not easily gotten around. “I know your tricks, don’t I? You were still in far more danger on that voyage than I ever was in Paris.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Mrs. Stark, close on to fifty, suddenly looked to Brun like a mischievous schoolgirl. “Did you have a leprechaun with you in Paris, as I did all the way up the Mississippi River? Making sure every minute that I would have no trouble.”

Brun watched her eyes, where Irish humor shows itself. Nell and Stark burst out laughing; Nell wiped at her eyes. “Mr. Campbell, I hope you won’t draw hasty conclusions about Mother. She and her leprechauns… When we were children, she was forever telling us stories about little Irish fairy folk, how they’d show you a hidden pot of gold, if only you could catch them. Never two stories the same. She made them up as she went along.”

“Well, and didn’t I have a leprechaun along on that trip?” said Mrs. Stark. She waved both hands grandly. “Look, my pot of gold. Husband, children, grandchildren. My lovely home. Never as a child did I expect to have such riches.”

Brun began to think he might be all right with Mrs. Stark. She went on talking to him like he was one of her own children, rather than a young stranger who’d ridden a rail into town not a week before. Nell was a first-class pianist, her mother said, who played in concerts and gave lessons, and now that she’d studied with Professor Moszkowski, she wanted to move to St. Louis to open a studio. “And then, if Will decides to go off to St. Louis or Kansas City to publish music, we’ll have no one left here at home. No one even to help Mr. Stark in the store.”

Every nerve in Brun’s body twitched. He didn’t dare look at Stark.

“Now, Mother.” Nell laughed so hard she could barely say the words. “You should go on the stage, you know that?”

Mrs. Stark humphed, then stood, and smoothed her skirt. As if on a signal, Nell picked up the tray, with its empty pitcher and tumblers, and the two women marched out toward the kitchen.

***

Just as they sat down to dinner, Brun heard the stairwell door open, then footfalls in the living room. Mrs. Stark’s face lit. “Oh, good, that will be Isaac. Right on the dot.”

For the first time, Brun noticed the place setting in front of an empty chair between Nell and Stark.

As Isaac walked into the room, Mrs. Stark’s face lit. The colored man smiled, and wished all a good afternoon. “Sorry I be late,” he added. “Some things needed doing.”

In his spotless black suit, white shirt, and dark, sober tie, Isaac looked very different today from the way Brun had seen him in the shop. Mrs. Stark reached to pat his arm. “You’re never late, Isaac, you know that, dear. Whenever you come, you’re welcome, and glad we are to see you.”

A colored man, walking into a white house, cool as you please, to sit down to dinner with the family and their guest? Brun had never heard of such. The boy stared, thoroughly confused, until Mrs. Stark shut down his gawk by passing him a heaped platter of fragrant sliced meat.

***

What the meal lacked in fancy, it more than made up in generous, a joint of spring lamb with potatoes, and beans which probably were still on the vine on a nearby farm the day before. Cold beer in a pitcher, lemonade in another. Brun was careful to not touch his fork before grace, but to his surprise, grace was not said. Stark simply picked up his utensils, and the party set to. Mrs. Stark took a small taste of meat, potatoes and vegetable, seemed to find them acceptable, then turned to her guest. “Mr. Stark tells me you’re recently arrived in town, Mr. Campbell.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Where did you come from—if I’m not being too inquisitive.”

Brun took advantage of a mouthful of potatoes to think before he answered. “Mostly, I grew up in Kansas.”

She looked impressed. “Oh my. That’s pretty wild country.”

“Well, that’s for sure, ma’am. People there still keep one eye peeled for Quantrill’s raiders, or Jesse James. Or Old John Brown.”

All around the table, forks and knives hung in the air. Sounds of chewing vanished. Then everyone picked right up and went on eating like nothing had happened. But something
had
happened. Brun remembered Stark’s reaction to “John Brown’s Body” the day before, and cursed himself for a triple-plated fool. “Actually, my folks and I lived all over Kansas and Oklahoma,” he said, talking faster than his usual. “Presently, they’re in Arkansas City.”

Mrs. Stark’s face said a clear thank-you. “Have you brothers and sisters, Mr. Campbell?”

“Yes, ma’am. A brother, younger by six years.”

“Mr. Stark and I have three children, Nell, Will, and Etilmon—Till, we call him. He teaches music and violin at the Marmaduke Military Academy near St. Louis. I’m grateful that my children live close, and I see them often. I do hope you send
your
mother a letter from time to time.”

Brun almost said yes, once a week without fail, but held back long enough to try to figure which falsehood would get him out of a kettle of fish and which would leave him there to be cooked along with the evening meal. Mrs. Stark, with her gentle smile, could have been feeding him a little chitter-chat about her three children by way setting a trap. Likely, Mr. Stark had told his wife the boy was a runaway, and not a lot of runaways send letters home to their parents.

So Brun looked down at his plate, then back up, and stared directly into those earnest green eyes. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said, contrite as he could possibly manage. “I ran away from home. Truth, I wasn’t home all that much of late, anyhow, because like as not on any particular night I’d get a beating from Pop, and they were getting worse all the time. If you’ll excuse me, ma’am, and not to offend you ladies…” He pushed his chair back from the table, stood, and very cautiously raised the right side of his shirt, just far enough to show the raggedy bruise, now all purple and yellow, from the encounter he’d had on the train with that crate of lead shot. Then, he quickly lowered his shirt. “The night I ran away was right after Pop gave me that medal.”

Stark shook his head. Nell’s jaw fell open. Isaac let out a low, soft whistle. Only Mrs. Stark spoke. Brun would not have believed that small woman could house such indignation. “You mean to say your mother never stopped him doing that?”

“No, ma’am, she didn’t. She couldn’t have. Pop’s a big man, easy twice as big as Ma. Bad enough for me to get a beating, but let her
or
me say a word against him when he’d been drinking, and neither one of us’d ever see the light of day again. She often did try talking to him the next day, and Pop would say how he was sorry, sometimes even cry. But that night he’d get himself all full of the sauce again, and then there was no reasoning with him. Most nights the last year or so, I’ve been sleeping in the kitchen in the restaurant I played piano at.”

“Playing piano in a restaurant…” Judging by Mrs. Stark’s expression, Brun thought she might be wondering whether it really had been a restaurant he’d played in, and he was trying to be polite. “At your age.”

“Well, ma’am, I’ve always had a knack. And when I heard Scott Joplin’s music, I knew I wouldn’t rest until I mastered it. That’s why I came here when I ran away, and ever since I got here, I’ve had nothing but the best luck. Mr. Joplin said he’d take me on for lessons, and I got me a good job with Mr. Stark, and a good place to live, boarding with Mr. Higdon.”

Brun had no trouble seeing that his “Mr. Joplin” had scored him points with Mrs. Stark, and probably double points from Isaac. “Mr. Joplin is a fine gentleman,” said Mrs. Stark.

“He’s also a fine musician,” said Nell, a little sharply, Brun thought. “You’re fortunate to have him take you on. You’ll need to work hard if you expect him to keep you on.”

“I know that, Miss Nell, and I’ll do whatever’s required. Ragtime’s not easy to play. Have you ever tried it?”

He couldn’t have missed the glance that flew between Mr. and Mrs. Stark. “Here at home,” she said. “Not in recitals…yet.”