“What? No!” Inez, alarmed, was caught off guard. “Antonia? Antonia Gizzi came to see you? And she, she told you, about—”
He shook her arm, cutting her off. “About Robert masquerading as someone named James Monroe while playing out his fantasy of being a musician in San Francisco. Yes, she did. Albeit very poorly. She told me he was dead, then scampered away. It took me a trip to the police station, a talk with the Police Chief and the Police Surgeon, to find out where Robert was and—” Harry stopped. It was as if a train barreling down the track had slammed into a granite wall.
He shoved Inez away. “This. This was beneath you, Inez.” Fury mixed with his despair.
Inez staggered a little, then recovered. “I grieve for your loss, Harry, but I assure you, I did not send Antonia to you with such a message. Do you truly think I would stoop to that? I have no idea, none, how she even knows about your son. I only worked it out this morning.”
“You worked it out,” he said. The anger vanished and a mask settled over his face. “I was told by the undertaker a Mrs. Stanfort came by to identify him. Clearly that was you. And you had your niece in tow. Miss Gizzi?”
Inez decided to sidestep that one. “Antonia is my ward, but she calls me aunt. Honestly, I had no idea he was your son. I knew him as James Monroe.”
“How did you identify him, then?” Harry’s eyes bore into hers. “He was unrecognizable.”
She cleared her throat and looked away. “Your son has, had, a distinctive mark.” She looked back at Harry and hastily added, “Flo knew about it. She told me.”
He closed his eyes. “She would,” he muttered.
“I didn’t know your son was using a false name. I swear, Harry, I had no idea until then.”
Only his compressed, downturned mouth, the sudden age that weighted his shoulders, showed the burden he now carried.
He pointed to a nearby chair, indicating she should sit.
Inez did so, her heart pounding like a fist on a door. She heartily wished she could vanish on the spot.
Standing above her, he reached into his waistcoat pocket, pulled out his pocket watch—silver engraved and attached with a silver chain—clicked it open, glanced at the face, clicked it shut, and put it away. The process was mechanical, more as if he had wanted a space of time to collect his thoughts and contain his emotions rather than check the time.
He began. “This is what will happen now, Mrs. Stannert. I am going to have my son prepared so I can take him Back East for a proper burial as befits his station. In the meantime, I have business in Virginia City. While I am gone, you, Mrs. Sweet, and Mr. de Bruijn—whom I am certain Mrs. Sweet has told you about—are going to work out who killed my son. When I return, you will tell me what you have found. You have a week.”
“What about the police?” Inez managed to croak out. “Aren’t they investigating? Whatever information we uncover, surely we should tell them.”
His laugh, short, bitter, cut off as if with a hatchet. “The police? The kind of justice my son’s killer deserves will not be meted out by the law. For suspects, I suggest you start with Phillip Poole, the man who accused my son of driving his daughter mad with despair and causing her death.”
She tried to reason this through, give him the benefit of the doubt for what he was saying. He was crazy with grief, surely. But with someone like Harry, it didn’t matter if he was thinking straight or not. He would do what he set out to do. And if he commanded you to do something, whether it made sense or not, whether it was foolhardy or not, you did it, or there would be hell to pay. She softened her voice. “Please, be reasonable. I did not lie to you. I did not betray you. I will do what I can, but—”
The muffled clunk of the entry bell penetrated the closed door. Off in the distance, from another part of her life, she heard the gentleman who had promised to return with check in hand for a piano for his wife call out, “Excuse me, Mrs. Stannert? Is anyone here?”
She stood, bringing herself closer to his level. “How am I supposed to do this? I cannot go gallivanting all over the city. The police and your detective are better equipped to do this than me. I have a business to run.”
“You have connections in the music world that they do not. You knew my son. If you had only told me this when we first talked.” His hands opened and closed by his sides, as if grasping for something, anything, that could change what was, turn back time.
He finally turned and opened the door for her to pass, saying, “I have said what I came to say. If you do not get busy and find who murdered my son, I swear to you, your business will be the least of your worries. I will make sure you rue the day you ever set foot in San Francisco.”
Chapter Eighteen
De Bruijn returned to the Palace Hotel after a long day spent trying to determine the lot of San Francisco’s musicians, whether there was a musicians union formed or forming, and if so, who was involved. He suspected if young Gallagher was in San Francisco, he would surface in a labor movement, given his leanings in that direction. From what de Bruijn had learned, the young man was as determined to bring “rights” to the workingman
