Inez must have looked as blank as she felt, because Carmella threw up her hands with a sigh. “Never mind. On Saturday, I noticed the flowers in the display area were wilting. I shall go clear them out.” She swept out of the back room, shaking her head, apparently dismayed by Inez’s obtuseness.
Inez started back to the desk and her accounts, only to jump as someone hammered on the back door with a heavy fist. Then, the shouting commenced. “Mrs. Stannert? Mr. Donato? Anyone in? Please, it’s Otto. Otto Klein. It’s urgent!”
Disconcerted, Inez hurried to the door. She barely unlocked it before it flew open. Otto Klein, square of face and body, stood outside, sweating in his good black suit, carrying his cornet case, and, Inez noted with alarm, wearing the black armband of a mourner.
“Mr. Klein, what is wrong?”
“Frau Stannert. It’s terrible.” He pulled out a black-hemmed handkerchief, removed his hat, and mopped his brow. Even though the morning was cool, his thin blond hair was plastered to his head and he was breathing hard, as though he had run some distance.
“I’m sorry, I had no idea where else to go. The others, I know not where they live.” His voice cracked. “It’s, it’s Jamie Monroe. He’s dead! Murdered!”
Chapter Three
“No!”
The scream of denial erupted behind Inez, followed by the crash of shattering glass. Inez whirled around, heart pounding.
Carmella stood in the passage between the back office and the showroom, face paled to ivory, hands to mouth as if to trap a torrent of words that threatened to pour out. Petals and stalks of withered flowers and shards of a Chinese vase were scattered at her feet, water from the huge vase now spread on her skirt and across the floor.
She removed her hands. “It cannot be.” Her voice, almost a whisper, held a symphony of disbelief, a plea that it not be real.
Otto blurted, “Verzeihung, Fraulein Donato,” then gamely pulled himself out of his native tongue. “I am sorry, Miss Donato, I did not know you were here. Perhaps it is not Herr Monroe.” He looked helplessly at Inez, as if expecting her to do or say something.
Inez moved to Carmella’s side, careful to avoid the broken pottery, and put an arm around the young woman’s shoulders. From there, she began to recover and consider. Otto was prone to exaggeration and jumping to conclusions, then blurting out whatever was in his mind without thinking it through. “Mr. Klein, please, back up. Is it, or is it not Mr. Monroe? It must be one or the other.”
He stepped over to the chaos on the floor and bent to pick up one of the larger pieces of porcelain. “Forgive me, I perhaps spoke in haste.” He retrieved one brown and dripping stalk and gathered three petals, their violet color stained brown with time. “Early this morning, a body was found in Mission Creek channel by Long Bridge. One of the longshoremen in the area, Sven Borg, who was there when the police came, saw the body and thought it might be Jamie. This Mr. Borg knows him from union meetings and came to our boardinghouse, asking for Jamie. Since Jamie and I room together, the landlady told me to talk to him.” He looked beseechingly at Inez. “Mr. Borg said I should go to the police station, find where they took him, and go see if I can tell whether it is him or not. So, it may not be Jamie at all. I haven’t seen Jamie since early yesterday.”
Inez tried to recall the last time she had seen Jamie Monroe. It was three days ago, Friday, in the store. He had been trying to convince Otto and the others to attend some labor union gathering or other on Sunday. “We must organize! It’s the only way we will ever get paid as professionals, the only way we will be taken seriously!”
Pianist Thomas Welles’ short “Tried. Failed. Twice.” had been followed by newsman Roger Haskell’s acidic, “Sorry, Monroe. I guess you musically inclined fellas just don’t have what it takes.”
Rather than dousing the ardor in Jamie’s light blue eyes, these responses had only seemed to set his determination afire. He’d pointed at Welles and said, “And that’s the problem! You, Nico, all the ‘old guard.’ You tried and gave up! And now, you are settled, complacent. Secure. But we—” his arm swept around to capture the Ashes, Otto, and the others, all of whom were lounging and listening— “We are the newcomers. We are trying to make our lives here, just like you did, and be viewed as the professionals we all are, and be paid a living wage for our efforts.”
Inez recalled that the others, who had been listening, had shifted imperceptibly as he named them, as if to duck his fervor and inclusive embrace. Otto, in particular, had looked terrified.
The memory, still fresh, released an unexpected flood of alarm. Could the union meeting have something to do with his death?
Now I’m the one jumping to conclusions.
Inez glanced at Carmella’s stricken face, her eyes glimmering with suppressed tears. Did she believe Otto’s story? In any case, those tears, her obvious distress was all the proof Inez needed that indeed Jamie was more than just “Mr. Monroe” to the young woman.
“Carmella, come sit down.” Inez steered her away from the sharp bits of pottery on the floor to the table. Carmella sank onto the chair, her gaze fixed on Otto.
Inez turned to him. “I take it that since the longshoreman ‘knows’ Jamie but came to you, that identification is… difficult?”
“Herr Borg said the face, pardon me for saying this, got the worst of it.” He gulped, a little green about the gills. “Which is why he was not sure.”
“Are you going to the station today?”
“I can’t!” The panic in his voice was clear. He cleared
