As she dressed, she fumed at Nico’s dismissiveness. When she had been trying to stay in the shadows, be anonymous, she didn’t mind his occasional directives. At least, usually. And, he had pretty much let her run the store as she saw fit. But seeing Nico and Welles in close ranks, discussing the day-to-day operations of the store no doubt—with no input from me!—she felt quite shut out. Almost as if he had waved her off saying, “Go on about your business, little woman, you needn’t worry about these matters.”
She was overreacting, she knew. Things had been different at the Silver Queen Saloon in Leadville. There, she had been an equal owner. Here, it was a different story. He is the owner, not me. And until I am an equal partner in the business, I must either accept his attitudes or find ways to work around them. Those are my choices.
Still, it rankled her.
However, she now had time to investigate what had happened to Jamie Monroe.
At least, time for the next week or so. And she would have to keep in mind that she was, theoretically, giving piano lessons.
She walked down to Market and Third to catch a half-full horsecar and settled in for the short journey southward. They trundled down Third Street, two blocks away from Antonia’s school on Fifth—Inez wondered if the girl had truly gone to class that day, or if she was again playing truant. They passed shops, grocery stores, and saloons, strategically located on the corners. Lodgings of various kinds occupied the second floors, while cross streets sported densely packed two-story row houses. A sharp right onto Berry Street, and Inez disembarked at Fourth and Berry, just before Long Bridge crossed the Mission Creek channel. During the day, lumber-burdened schooners and barkentines vied with hay scows riding low under towering bales for passage through the narrow channel. They plowed through excrement- and garbage-laden water the consistency of mud, their crews cursing the orders that had brought them to “Shit Creek.” Those crews escaped as quickly as possible to the lowest of the low businesses lining the wharves or to the Barbary Coast.
Inez had been in this dockside area twice before, both times in daylight hours. Once to the music store’s modest warehouse just off Third and Berry to examine a piano for a customer, and again to the Mays’ laundry when she initially negotiated a loan with the two sisters. The laundry was in the opposite direction from the warehouse, so she started walking up Berry toward the higher street numbers.
As she passed Long Bridge, she wondered. What was Jamie doing there? Had he simply stumbled into the wrong people or was his death more insidious?
Warehouses and receiving buildings large and small lined the water channel, partially hiding the various vessels and the piers that sent finger-like wooden platforms out into the garbage-filled water. On the opposite side of the street were the usual complement of establishments that depended upon the maritime environment and its workers. Several smithies, a wood turner, a couple of box manufacturies, door and sash makers, a stair-builder. Proliferating among them were saloons, corner grocery stores, restaurants, and lodging houses, all of which offered liquor and wine for sale, either openly or behind back curtains. She recalled that the laundry was next to a shabby, westward-leaning nameless saloon that also offered lodging. The whole business looked suspiciously like a crimp house where a man who came for a drink or a place to lay his head ran the risk of being shanghaied.
It didn’t take her long to reach the Mays’ place. It was easily identified by the terse “Hand Laundry” sign above the door and a pile of bricks, stacked none too neat, against the new brick front. Random laundry implements were piled against an intact plank wall on the other side, including one scarred wooden tub and several badly dented metal tubs, and an impressively complicated but broken mangle that sheltered other smaller items under its shade. A murmur of voices inside assured her someone was at home. She knocked on the plank door, which shivered beneath her hand, and called out, “Hello? It’s Mrs. Stannert.”
There was a silence, then the door flew open under the hand of Bessie May, young Patrick’s gray-haired, gray-eyed aunt.
When the building had burnt, it was Bessie who had stormed into Inez’s office, still stinking of smoke, fire blazing from her eyes at the unfairness of the world. “As God is my witness, I stand here cursing Him for what He’s done to us. We are ruined, Mrs. Stannert. Ruined! We bought bricks with the money you loaned us to build another drying room. The money is gone, and we will need to rebuild the entire structure in bricks. And us, without insurance, because no one would cover us, being as the building is wood.”
Inez had said, “How much do you need?” She knew they would pay her back every penny plus interest owed. So far, her trust in the Mays had proved out; they had never been late with a payment.
Bessie gave her the eyeball. “We expected you earlier.”
Inez did not take this abrupt greeting personally. It was just Bessie’s way. Bessie, the elder of the two sisters, had seemed to have snatched up all the fierceness of spirit, kicking the more tender, tentative emotions to Molly.
“Business delay,” said Inez.
Bessie apparently considered the equally terse reply as sufficient. “Well, come in then, out of the stink of the street. No doubt you’ll be wanting to see that your money’s been put to good use and not wasted.”
The astringent smell of mint hit her almost like a physical slap as she stepped into the front room. A large stove, radiating heat, was positioned against the brick wall. Two laundry irons, which
