Page 4 of Blackmailed (The Browns of Butcher’s Hill #2)

Phillip opened his mouth and shut it quickly. He left the kitchen instead of replying and hurried up the stairs. He needed to get to the Everlys’ soon.

“Mr. Jenkins, can you tell me where the items on this list were located before they went missing?” Phillip asked the Everly butler.

The man pulled on his glasses and reviewed the paper Phillip handed him.

He picked up a pencil stub and noted the location of many of the items. “Obviously, the purse holding Mr. Everlys’ mother’s money would have most likely been in her rooms, although her maid said she did not remember seeing it that day.

I imagine it’s possible she set it down somewhere before going to her rooms. She sometimes sits in the morning room after she returns from shopping or visiting to read her correspondence. ”

“Tell me about the jewelry, Mr. Jenkins. Where would most of those items have been stored?”

“Mrs. Everly’s expensive pieces are kept in the safe in Mr. Everly’s office, but even the ones in her rooms are not just costume jewelry. Most have real gems, even if they are not as large as the ones in the safe.”

“His mother has something secure in her rooms for this jewelry?”

Jenkins shook his head. “Just a large jewelry box. Her personal maid, Porter, has been with her for thirty years and has complained about that very thing.”

“Porter, you say,” Phillip repeated and took back the paper he’d handed to Jenkins. “I don’t see her name here.”

“It’s not on there, that’s why.”

He glanced at the paper listing the missing items and back at the butler, taking a moment before he spoke. “The items you marked as being on the second floor, were they located near Mrs. Everly’s rooms?”

Jenkins glared at him. “So what if they were? Don’t you begin to accuse Porter! She’s blameless! And it’s not as though Mrs. Everly is stealing her own belongings. I tell you, it’s one of the new maids. Mrs. Brandeis should have never hired any Irish.”

“I’m here to find our who has pilfered the items on this list, Mr. Jenkins, and I will find out who it is whether you care for the answer or not. I have six more staff members to speak to. Can you please see that they are sent to the room I’ve been using?”

Phillip took the trolley home, staring out the window as he stood and held tight to the leather strap above him, reviewing all that had been said and not said by the staff.

There was only one person left he hadn’t interviewed other than Porter, and he would meet with the cook on the following week when she’d returned from her visit to relatives. He found Sarah waiting for him.

“Can you go now?” she asked.

He nodded. “Let me put my things in my room.”

They walked the few blocks to Dolly’s Dress Shop and down the alley behind it where Cornelius Colfax had met his end. Sarah showed him where and how the man was lying when they found him.

“It seems that the gunshot came from that direction,” he said and pointed down the alleyway where they’d just walked.

“Probably, unless he spun around somehow.” Sarah walked to the back door of the shop and knocked. “Dolly! It’s Sarah. Can I come in?”

“You didn’t tell her you were bringing me, did you?”

“No. I didn’t think she’d let me in if I did.”

Phillip blew out a breath. He had a feeling Dolly was not going to cooperate or even answer his questions, which would likely make him unable to solve the crime and therefore disappoint his sister. He turned back to the door when he heard the bar slide away.

Sarah stepped inside the shop, and he followed. The woman he assumed was Dolly glanced at him in surprise.

“Who’s this?” she asked.

“My brother, Phillip Brown. Phillip, this is Dolly Irving.”

“Ma’am.” He nodded.

“Why is he here?” Dolly asked.

“My brother is very good at solving mysteries and helping people who wouldn’t get much attention from the police.”

The woman turned to a set of steps and began to climb. Sarah followed and so did he, into a spacious apartment. She sat down in a tufted chair in front of the fireplace and Sarah opposite her. Phillip stood as there was nowhere for him to sit and be able to see the woman’s face.

“There’s no mystery. Cornelius is dead,” she said.

“I’m sure you want to know who killed him, though,” Sarah said.

“Don’t know why I’m just sitting here. I should be packing. They’ll be after me,” Dolly said.

“Who will be after you, Miss Irving?” Phillip asked.

She looked up at him and shook her head.

“Were you . . . involved with Mr. Colfax?” he asked. Her eyes slipped from his, and she nodded. “How long had you and he been seeing each other romantically?”

Dolly turned her head sharply. “Romance? I never said anything about romance.”

“Then how were you involved?” Sarah asked. “When we found him, you were very upset. Upset enough that I thought you loved him.”

“Loved him? No. We shared a few kisses, and maybe a little more when we first met,” Dolly said and glanced at Sarah. “That’s not why I was upset.”

“What was it, then?” Phillip asked.

“Cornelius was extremely charming and well connected,” she said and shrugged her shoulders. “He would just bring an item here or there home from his trips for his father, store them here, and then sell the items eventually—for a profit, of course.”

“What kind of items?” Phillip asked.

“Oh, jewelry sometimes. Art. Irish whiskey.”

“He was a fence for stolen property?”

“I have no idea if it was stolen. He never said.”

“What’s a fence?” Sarah asked him.

“A fence receives stolen property, or steals it himself on occasion, and then sells the items, often to someone who does not know or realize that they have bought someone else’s property.”

Sarah turned to Dolly. “Is that what Mr. Colfax does—or did?”

The woman glanced at Phillip. “He makes it sound so dreadful, so underhanded.”

“Well, Dolly, it is a far cry from running a dress shop, don’t you think?” Sarah asked.

“I needed the money.”

“The shop isn’t profitable?” Phillip asked.

“It is,” she said and stared at her hands, white-knuckled and folded in her lap.

“Then what is it?” Sarah asked.

“It wasn’t profitable enough,” she said finally. “Not enough to see to a daughter’s upbringing.”

“You have a daughter?” Sarah smiled. “Where is she? Why isn’t she here with you?”

“I’m not married. Never was, don’t you see! There’s plenty of my customers who would never buy here again if they knew. She’s with my brother and his wife and their children. I send them money every month for her keep.”

“So much that the store can’t provide it?”

“My brother got injured at Gettysburg. Lost a leg and only gets around on crutches. His wife takes in mending and laundry, but they’ve got four children of their own. I don’t know how they’d live if it weren’t for me sending them money.”

“I’m so very sorry, Dolly.”

“Just got a letter from him. He’s a bookkeeper by trade, and there’s an emporium that may hire him, even without the leg. It’s not too far from where they live, and I was hoping to send them enough this month to get a pony and a cart for him to get himself back and forth.”

“Oh, Dolly,” Sarah said and reached for the woman’s hand.

“And the items Colfax stored here brought you some income,” Phillip said.

She nodded. “They did. I had no idea who he sold the items to, but I think there was one person who bought what he hid here and then that person sold it to his customers spread all around the city. Cornelius was very excited last month because he found out the name of one of the customers that his contact sold to. We hid some boxes separately, he sold them directly to that customer, and I got thirty percent of the proceeds. Do you think that was why he was killed?”

Phillip just stared at the woman until she looked away.

“I have little doubt that is why he was murdered,” Phillip said.

“That’s why I have to get out of here,” she whispered.

“If you leave your shop, how will you support your daughter and your brother and his family?” Sarah asked.

“I do not know, only that it is better for me to be alive and poor than with a bullet in the back.”

“I think you should stay here and reopen your store. Hire someone to watch it overnight. There’s plenty of policemen who will do that type of work for some cash, and I know a man who is always willing for some extra work.”

“But they could come looking for me,” Dolly said.

“Let me talk to a friend who is a policeman and see if they have any idea who killed Mr. Colfax,” Phillip said. “I’ll see him this evening if I can.”