“Smart,” Leo said, nodding. “Did he make it himself, or was it here already?”
Of course Leo would admire a good hiding spot. He probably had more than one in his own home. Vivian was about to say something sharp when she caught sight of Bea’s face. “What is it?” she asked.
“The money,” Bea said. Her voice was quiet, but there was an edge of panic under her words. “It’s not here.”
SIX
The hidey-hole wasn’t empty. There was a bottle that no doubt held Pearlie’s bootleg liquor. But there was no money, not even a handful of quarters, and certainly not anything like a mobster’s payout.
“I don’t understand,” Bea said, her voice going high-pitched. “He showed me. There was cash…”
Leo moved her gently aside and inspected the hole. His face was impassive as he pulled out the liquor bottle and handed it to Vivian. There was an envelope as well; he handed that to her, too, before running his hands around each side of the hiding spot. “No other compartments,” he said, stepping back and dusting his hands off. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t somewhere else he was hiding things. Let’s look around.”
He and Bea began to search the rest of the apartment, moving systematically around the room as they felt the walls and searched behind the furniture. Vivian didn’t join them. Bea knew her uncle, and Leo knew how folks with things to hide tended to think. They were more likely than she was to find anything else Pearlie might have tucked away.
Instead, she looked at the bottle Leo had handed her. It was unmarked, but that wasn’t a surprise. It was mostly full of deep, amber-brown liquid, though it looked as though Pearlie had enjoyed a drink or two from it already. Vivian uncapped the bottle and took a sniff. For someone who spent as much time at a bar as she did, it was easy to identify: brandy, and high quality, too. She put the cap back on and set the bottle down, turning her attention to the envelope.
Inside was a simple sheet of paper, folded once and unmarked with any sort of monogram or address, though that was no surprise. What was written on it wasn’t the sort of thing anyone in their right mind would put their name on.
A bottle of the good stuff for a job well done. Drink a toast to our continued work together.
It was signed only with the letterH.
A shiver went skating down Vivian’s back. “Well, we know for sure that he was taking work from some shady folks,” she said, raising her head.
Bea and Leo had met up on the opposite side of the room, neither of them having found anything else hidden away. But at Vivian’s words, they both looked at her.
She held up the letter. “Looks like the booze was a thank-you for whatever job got him so flush. And it says there was more work to come.”
It took Leo only a few strides to cross the room. “May I?” She handed him the letter without protesting, and he scanned it. His frown deepened. “Any chance it’s from your Ms. Huxley?” he asked, pointing to theH.
“It’s not her handwriting,” Vivian said. “And I never heard of Honor sending liquor to any of the staff.” She turned to Bea. “Have you?”
Bea took her own turn examining the note. “Nah, she just lets usdrink on the job. If she was going to treat anyone to a little something special, my guess is it would be Viv here. Don’t you think?”
This last was said with a deliberate lift of her chin, her gaze slightly taunting as she met Leo’s eyes. Vivian could see his jaw tighten—Bea knew exactly which buttons she was pushing—but he let the jab slide.
When Bea saw she wasn’t going to get a rise out of him, she shrugged, handing the paper back. “Viv’s right, it’s not her handwriting. And she’s got too much class to send a note that someone else wrote for her.”
“And anyway, who would she get to do it?” Vivian pointed out. “Danny?”
That made Leo chuckle, and even Bea cracked a smile. All of them knew Danny, and none of them could picture him writing out Honor’s letters for her like some sort of Park Avenue social secretary.
“Well, in that case—”
Leo broke off, whatever he might have said lost to the sound of the door opening. They all turned, Leo stepping forward to put himself in front of both girls as the door swung open.
All of them stared at each other.
Bea found her voice first. “Abraham? What are you doing here?”
He gave them all a wary look before answering. A young Black man who drove a cab and had lived in New York City his whole life, Abraham had a skeptical streak a mile wide and plenty of rough experiences to back it up. Vivian thought he had probably just gotten off work: his hair, which he wore parted along one side and pomaded down, was still perfectly in place, but his white shirt wilted around the collar, and he was holding the jacket of his suit over one shoulder. That made sense; from what Bea had told her, Abraham tended to work nights and mornings, which made their schedules conveniently compatible.
“Looking for you,” he said at last. “I stopped by to see you, and when you weren’t home, I thought you might have come here to get some of Pearlie’s things.”
Vivian didn’t know Abraham well, and the look he turned on her and Leo made her want to take a step back. The hand that had been holding his jacket up dropped to his side, the fingers curling into a fist in the fabric. Tall, wiry, and good-looking, with a pair of round spectacles perched on his nose, Abraham wasn’t the sort to seek out a fight. But he was protective enough of Bea that Vivian wouldn’t put it past him to start swinging if he thought he needed to. He stepped closer to Bea and put an arm around her shoulders. “Everything all right?” he asked, casting another baleful look at Leo. “You one of Pearlie’s associates?”
“No,” Leo said, his own shoulders set warily, as though bracing for a fight. “Just helping out Beatrice here. As a favor.”
