“Don’t look at me like that, Viv,” he said quietly. “I’m not trying to get frisky, I’m trying to keep you safe. I’ll sleep on the floor, if you like, but you shouldn’t be alone. Not with Mrs. Wilson and her boys getting involved.”
Vivian felt like a heel. Of course he just wanted to make sure she was safe. She wished he’d asked, instead of telling her what he was going to do. But he wasn’t wrong about Mrs. Wilson and her bruisers. And now that she knew they had already tracked down where she lived… Vivian shivered.
“All right,” she said, looking away. “But Bellevue first, yeah?”
“Absolutely,” Leo agreed, standing and holding out his hand. “Let’s shake a leg.”
Vivian took it, giving him a sideways glance as they left the restaurant. “So you’re saying you’renotinterested in getting frisky?” she said, trying to force a playful note into her voice.
Leo laughed. “I don’t think that’s what I said, was it?” he asked, pretending to frown like he couldn’t remember.
“Just don’t get your hopes up, pal,” Vivian said, rolling her eyes at him, hoping he wouldn’t notice that her heart wasn’t quite in it.
As they paused at the edge of the sidewalk, waiting for traffic to clear so they could dash across to the streetcar stop, Leo glanced down, catching her eye. There was so much heat and tenderness in his that Vivian wanted to look away. “Any fella who knows you, Viv, has got nothing but hopes,” he whispered. “But they’ll keep until we’re out of this mess.”
Vivian gripped his fingers tightly, trying to anchor herself in the moment. They were heading to Bellevue. They were going to figure this out. “Five days now,” she said with forced lightness, as though it was a hope and not a countdown. “Come on.”
Pulling him after her, she dashed across the road, ignoring the drivers honking at them. They made it just before the streetcar pulled away.
“Well, so. You’re back.” The man across the desk from Vivian shook his head. “I thought the next time I saw you would be because I had good news about your mother.”
“My…” Vivian let out a short laugh.
Last summer, she and Florence had discovered their mother was not, as they had always believed, buried with the other poor and unclaimed dead on Hart Island. She had asked, through Leo, whether the coroner’s office had records that might help her uncover who had claimed her mother’s body. The medical examiner had agreed to have his assistant look into it, when the young man wasn’t busy with other work.
“To be honest, Doc, that’s not much on my mind right now,” Vivian said, trying to smile but not really succeeding. “Though I don’t suppose your assistant has found anything?”
“Not yet.” Dr. Norris cleared his throat. “I looked at the police report Mr. Green mentioned.”
Vivian glanced over her shoulder to where Leo leaned against the door, arms crossed over his chest. He looked vaguely menacing standing there, though Vivian didn’t think it was on purpose. He and the medical examiner had been trading favors back and forth ever since Leo came back to New York—though this time, Vivian knew the favor would be all on her shoulders, since Leo was fresh out.
And anyway, there was only one extra chair in the office, and she was sitting in it.
She turned back as the medical examiner added, “You live a dangerous life, young lady.”
He had a habit, which Vivian appreciated, of not using names during their discussions. Not the names of the people they were talking about, and not her name either, even though he knew it ever since she asked for his help tracking down where her mother had been buried.
“Seems that way,” she agreed. “I didn’t do it.”
He laced his fingers together, elbows resting on the desk and his chin tucked down as he eyed her. “I’m still not letting you anywhere near that report.”
“I wasn’t gonna ask you to,” Vivian said sharply.
Leo shifted behind her, and Norris’s eyebrows climbed toward his thinning hairline. The medical examiner made her nervous, with his office full of medical tools and dead bodies just down the hall. But he was upstanding as they came. She’d heard from Leo that he never touched a drop of alcohol, even before Prohibition. And judging by the political enemies he’d made during his investigations, he seemed to care about getting at the truth in his work.
Vivian took a deep breath. He was giving her the benefit of the doubt, just letting her be there without telling the police she was poking around. There was no reason not to be polite.
“I know you have to keep me out of it. But you know me and Leo, mister. Doctor, I mean.” She grimaced at the slipup, but the medical examiner didn’t look cross, so she barreled on. “And you know…you know what can happen to a girl who’s in the wrong place at the wrong time in a case like this.” He nodded grimly, and Vivian felt something hopeful unfurling in her chest. “The commissioner let me go, at least for now. I just want to make sure I don’t get snatched up again. If there’s anything you can tell me, anything that might have been odd or…” She trailed off. “Well, honestly, I don’t know what it would be. I don’t know enough about folks getting killed to know what to ask about. But you do, Doc. You’d know if something was strange. Wouldn’t you? That’s all I’m asking about. Please. I’ll owe you big.”
She finished in a rush, cutting herself off before she could get too carried away. She glanced over her shoulder at Leo again and was relieved to see him nodding.
The medical examiner sighed, leaning back in his chair, his hands clasped across his stomach. “Well, here’s the thing, young lady. I do believe that you had nothing to do with this man’s death.”
Vivian sucked in a sharp breath. “There was something strange about it.”
It hadn’t been a question, but Dr. Norris still nodded. Vivian could feel her heart speeding up, an ache of relief in the center of her chest. Strange was good. Strange could prove that the whole thing had nothing to do with her.
“He was stabbed in the neck with what seems to be one of the kitchen knives,” the medical examiner said, grimacing with distaste. Vivian liked him better for it. He probably saw far worse than a stabbing in the course of his work; it said good things about his humanity that it still bothered him. “That itself isn’t particularly strange. Lots of people come and go in that kitchen every day. I think you even did, according to the report, hmm?” Vivian nodded reluctantly. “And a knife is an easy thing to grab and carry with you without anyone noticing.”
