Page 26 of If Looks Could Kill
She blushed. “Er, Mr. Laurier asked if he could walk me to the evening meeting.”
Sothat’swhat they’d been talking about at lunchtime. Well, well. Courting in earnest, were they?
“I don’t see why that should take you any longer than walking there with me,” I told her, all naïveté and innocence. “We can all three go together.” She’d been extra Pearlish today, and I felt she deserved a little grief.
“You wouldn’t,” she jabbed back, the little witch.
Just because I didn’t have the suitor she had—and she was welcome to him—didn’t mean no male had ever cast a glance my way. And furthermore, a pretty face isn’t the only thing there is. Certainly not the only reason two people might be drawn to each other. And just because one face is prettier than another doesn’t mean the other face might not be perfect to somebody. Not that any of this mattered, and I scolded myself for letting Pearl get to me.
It did cross my mind, briefly, that Mike hadn’t returned to any more meetings. Not that this surprised me. Nor did I know why I was thinking of him. NorwasI thinking of him. It’s not thinking about someone to be thinking about why you’re not thinking about them.
Drat that Pearl! Drat her insufferable Purse Laurier, too. May they marry and bear children twice as pretty and four times as conceited as either of them.
Freyda, Girl on a Mission, strode along oblivious to these little dramas percolating in the tortured hearts of the Salvation Army. She headed downtown from our apartment, away from the Lion’s Den. Just beyond the intersection of Allen and Broome, we turned down an alley.
“Nearly there,” Freyda whispered.
“Nearly where?” wondered Pearl.
There didn’t seem to be anything near other than trash cans, fire escapes, crates of milk bottles, and laundry strung up between windows, all smeared with the smoky grime of the city.
“Are we headed for one of those secret saloons?” I whispered. “The hidden, unlicensed ones? That no one is supposed to know about?”
In answer, Freyda held a finger to her lips. She turned suddenly and climbed up to the first landing of a fire escape, then squatted there, watching the alley. We followed her lead.
A woman opened an upper window and called something across in German. Another window opened for a yelled response.
“Why do we have to hide up here?” Pearl asked.
Freyda’s pointed look at Pearl put a cork in her complaint. “Because you’re Salvation Army girls,” she said testily. “You blend in like circus clowns at a funeral.”
My thighs began to cramp. My fingers had stiffened and my brain had fallen asleep, when Freyda finally hissed through her teeth and pointed our gaze down the alley.
A man in a suit walked out of a gap I hadn’t noticed and hurried away down the alley, to our right.
“Who’s—” began Pearl, but Freyda silenced her once more with a glare. She pointed downward, beneath us, as someone else approached from the opposite direction. The flat top of the man’s beaver-trimmed hat passed directly below and turned into the same hidden gap. He disappeared, and we heard a heavy door open and shut, and a murmur of voices before it closed. Then all was quiet once more.
Freyda rose, and we did the same. My joints groaned as we followed her down the iron stairs.
“Is that the brothel?” whispered Pearl. “Let’s go take a look.”
Freyda dragged Pearl out of the alley toward the street. “Only if you want all your knuckles broken,” she muttered. “Or worse. Pretty face like yours.”
We turned back uptown. “And you think our girl, er, works there?” I asked.
“Look, I don’t know her from Adam,” said Freyda, “or I guess I should say Eve. You saw her mug, remember, and I didn’t. But, yeah.” She nodded grimly. “Pretty sure this is where the girls holed up above the Lion’s Den earn their bread. At least, that’s what my source tells me.”
Freyda Gorbady, Girl Journalist, hadsources.
“Disgusting,” Pearl spat. “Those were… well, I would’ve said respectable men, but they’re not. That last one wore a wedding ring! And they both looked like, I don’t know…”
“Partners at a law firm?” supplied Freyda. “Deacons at church?”
Pearl blanched. “I don’t know as I’d gothatfar….”
“I would,” I said. “Yes. They could be anybody. Ministers, even.”
“But not in the Salvation Army,” Pearl said loyally.
