“It hasn’t got a name. Mostly folks call it Henderson’s or sometimes Three Sheets. As in three sheets to the wind.”
“No doubt appropriate,” said Inez. “A question to you, then. Did you work there Sunday night?”
“No’m.”
“Did you walk that evening down by the wharf?”
His gaze flitted left and right as if he was trying to decide what the correct answer might be, the answer that would get him in the least amount of trouble.
“You were.” Inez confirmed. “Did you hear or see a disturbance? A fight or someone getting attacked?”
Even though they were walking, something inside him seemed to freeze. She stopped and said, “Patrick?”
He looked warily at her.
“A friend of mine was attacked on Sunday night. You might have heard. He was pulled from the channel the next morning, on Monday.”
“Who was it?” There was a thread of fear in his voice.
“A pianist. Jamie Monroe.”
Fear now drained his face.
She stared at him, incredulous. “You knew him?”
Patrick gulped. “Not much. Not really. He played at Henderson’s.” His words came out in a rush. “He worked late at night, and he’s the one I sometimes stood in for. That was him they found by the bridge?”
Inez nodded.
Patrick shifted from one foot to another. He finally said, “I did hear something. I was walking around down by the hay pier. I thought it was just a couple of sailors. They sounded angry. I figured, late at night, they’d probably had too much to drink.”
She held her breath. He didn’t say anything more. “Did you see them?” she finally asked.
He shook his head.
Disappointment percolated through her. “Can you show me where this was?”
He nodded.
They crossed the street, continuing toward Long Bridge, and Patrick took her down a wide alley between two warehouses. “When they bring in the hay, it’s hard to find your way around. Easy to get lost with all the bales, like walls.”
He surveyed the wharf. Men were working on the far side, loading bales onto wagons. “This end still looks pretty much the same as it did Sunday. Best those men don’t see us.” He slid up next to a towering wall of bales, and Inez did the same. They followed the wall to a gap.
“Here,” he said and slipped inside. The gap opened into a space, enclosed on three sides by bales and open to the water.
Inez looked around. “Here?”
“Yes’m.”
She stood still a moment, trying to get a feel for the area. The stench from the water, gurgling beneath their feet under the pier, and from the vast garbage grounds up the street was overwhelming. She turned to Patrick. “Did you by chance tell the police about this? About what you heard?”
He recoiled. “No ma’am! It was none of my business.”
So, if Jamie had a disagreement here, a fight, most likely the police have not been here looking around.
She began to walk the inside perimeter, keeping some feet away from the walls, scanning the ground.
“Ma’am?” He kept pace with her. “What are you doing?”
“Just looking, Patrick. Looking for anything unusual. Out of place.”
“I don’t see anything.” He sounded nervous. “We shouldn’t be here. Someone’s going to find us, ask us what we’re doing here, and tell us to leave.”
“When they do, we will.” She kept her eyes on the planks. They were filthy, scuffed, split, dark with years of use. Random clumps of moldy hay and clots of dirt appeared here and there, along with the detritus of months, years. She stopped, a cold rill running down her back. There, on the planks, a large red stain that stood out from the scuffed-in black mold. Next to it, there was a smaller stain. A handprint? In blood?
“We oughta leave.” Now Patrick sounded panicked. “We shouldn’t be here.”
She glanced up at him. At six-four, he was an imposing figure. But his green eyes betrayed the fact that, inside, he was just a frightened boy.
“Soon,” she said. She moved around the stain and the print, circling, then walked to the nearest hay bales. Something on the ground, nearly hidden by the lower edge of the bale, caught her eye. A container, small, dark brown. A little circular leather box, lying on its side, as if it had been tossed or kicked aside and had rolled up against the hay bale. She picked it up, freed a little brass hook, and opened it.
Inside was a velvet bed with an empty slot in the middle.
She knew what kind of box this was. What it was meant to hold.
Inez’s mind flew to a distant time, ten-plus years past. Her soon-to-be husband, Mark Stannert, placed in her hand a little leather circular box, much like this one, and said, “We’re two of a kind, I knew that the moment I saw you. You’ve stolen my heart, Inez, just slipped it out as neat as a light-fingered Sal. What do you say we make it official, Darlin’?” She remembered the exciting thrill that had run through her from the warmth of his touch and the promise in his eyes. Mark Stannert promised a future full of adventure and new horizons, an unbounded future very different from the one defined for her by her parents and her station. All of it, waiting for her to say yes, to open the little box and let him slide the gold ring inside onto her finger.
She fiercely willed the memory away. Aware of Patrick’s anxious breathing beside her, Inez tilted the box to read what was printed on the satin lining inside the top—“Barnaby Jewelers, Market Street, San Francisco.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Once Inez retrieved the box, Patrick succumbed to such panic that they were obliged to hustle out of the maze of bales and away from the hay wharf. “You won’t tell Ma or Aunt Bessie about Henderson’s and the wharf, will you?” he asked over and over.
She assured him over and over that she wouldn’t. Before they went their separate ways, Inez asked him if he knew a Sven Borg. “A longshoreman who works with the lumber ships, I believe,”
