The drugstore seemed to swirl once more into noisy life. An older man walked past and frowned at them, and Theta and Memphis pulled their hands back and were quiet.
A TERRIBLE CHOICE
Evie and Jericho were having a late lunch in the Bennington’s dowdy dining room. Jericho was talking, but Evie was lost in her own thoughts. Her chin balanced on one fist, she stared, unseeing, at her coffee, which she had been stirring mindlessly for a good ten minutes.
“So I shot the man in the back,” Jericho said, testing Evie’s attention.
“Interesting,” Evie said without looking up.
“And then I took his head, which I keep under my bed.”
“Of course,” Evie muttered.
“Evie. Evie!”
Evie looked up and smiled weakly. “Yes?”
“You’re not listening.”
“Oh, I pos-i-tute-ly am, Jericho!”
“What did I just say?”
Evie gave him a blank stare. “Well, whatever it was, I’m sure it was very, very smart.”
“I just said I shot a man in the back and took his head.”
“I’m sure he deserved it. Oh, Jericho, I’m sorry. I can’t help thinking there’s a connection between this John Hobbes fellow and our murders.”
“But why?”
Evie couldn’t tell him about the song, and without that, there really wasn’t much to go on. “Don’t you think it’s interesting that there were some unsolved murders fifty years ago that were similar in nature?”
“Interesting but remote. But if you want to know about them, we could go back to the library….”
Evie groaned. “Please don’t make me go back there. I’ll be good.”
Jericho gave her the slightest hint of a smile. “The library is your friend, Evie.”
“The library may be your friend, Jericho, but it pos-i-tute-ly despises me.”
“You just have to know how to use it.” Jericho played with his fork. He cleared his throat. “I could show you how to do that sometime.”
Evie sat fully upright. “Jericho!” she said, grinning.
Jericho smiled back. “It would be no trouble. We could even go—”
“I know someone who could find out about the old murders for us!”
“Who?” Jericho asked. He hoped she couldn’t sense his disappointment.
“Someone who owes me a favor.”
Evie ran to the Bennington’s telephone box and shut the beveled glass door behind her. “Algonquin four, five, seven, two, please,” she said into the receiver and waited for the operator to work her magic.
“T. S. Woodhouse, Daily News.”
“Mr. Woodhouse, it’s Evie O’Neill. I’m calling in that favor you promised.”
“Shoot.”
“Can you dig up some information on an unsolved murder in Manhattan in the summer of 1875?”
She heard the reporter chuckle on the other end. “You got a history test, Sheba?”
“Just tell me what you find out, please. It’s very important. Oh, and Mr. Woodhouse—this is just between you and me and the garden gate. Do you understand?”
“Whatever you say, Sheba.”
Feeling very clever, Evie stepped from the telephone box and headed back toward the dining room. As she passed the elevator, the doors opened and a flustered Miss Lillian stood inside. “Oh, dear. I went down instead of up.” She was struggling with a bag of groceries, and Evie offered to help her carry the heavy bag to her apartment.
“Come in, come in, dear,” Miss Lillian said. “So nice to have a visitor. I’ll put the kettle on.”
“Oh, please don’t go to any trouble,” Evie said, but the old woman was already in the kitchen. Evie could hear the strike of the match, the hiss of the gas as it took. She hadn’t meant to get trapped in a conversation. That was the trouble with offering help to old people. She nearly tripped over a tabby cat, who meowed in surprise and darted away. A second cat, black with yellow eyes, peeked out from under a table. It was hard to see in the dim light. Miss Lillian reentered the room and turned on a lamp.
“What a charming home you have,” Evie managed to say, hoping that her grimace passed for a smile. The place was a dreadful mess, papers and books stacked all about, every surface covered in some sort of bric-a-brac: ornate clocks set to slightly different times, brass candelabras with dark candles burned down to nubs, a bust of Thomas Jefferson, a framed picture of solemn pilgrim ladies on a hill, plants, dead flowers in a glass vase whose water had dried to a film on the sides, and a small painted tintype of what Evie presumed were the young Lillian and Adelaide in their starched pinafores. If there were an award for hideous taste, Evie thought, the Proctor sisters would win, hands down.