The Lady and the Robber Baron Read online

  Jason Fletcher watched Jennifer Van Vleet skim down the stairs to street level and step into a waiting carriage. She was wearing a long white coat and a white hat with a long feather. She looked like a princess, and he liked that.

  He watched her carriage roll out of sight. He was beginning to get used to these city types. He’d been in town a while now, and though it was colder than he liked, he was enjoying himself. He’d bought himself some fancy duds, and had been introduced into some private clubs where he’d won a lot of money in poker games. With the money old man Kincaid and Latitia were paying him, plus the money from the gambling and the last bank job, he’d be set for the winter, even if he hit a losing streak at cards.

  He knew he could have killed Jennifer Van Vleet any number of times in the last few weeks. She was careless of her safety to the point of being stupid. She traveled alone with just a driver. She took long walks by herself. She was an easy target. And Latitia was anxious for him to get rid of Miss Van Vleet and set Kincaid free.

  But an odd thing was happening to him. The more he followed Jennifer, the less anxious he was to move in on her. Sometimes, just following her, he felt a satisfying tingle in his body that reached all the way up to his head. That was worth a lot. Lately, he got no feeling at all killing a girl. It pleasured him thinking about Jennifer and what he’d do to her when he finally made his move. It made him think of the first girl he’d killed. Maybe he’d been rushing it with the others.

  He was lucky this time, being paid to follow a girl he would have followed for free. He had a special weakness for slim, blond women. So he wouldn’t lose track of how many he had killed, he kept a small vial of blood from each girl. He’d had well over a dozen vials several years ago. But they’d all been broken in a tornado that had swept through Dallas one night. That damned twister had picked up his trunk and smashed it against a wall of the room he’d been staying in. He’d seen that as a sign that he wasn’t supposed to keep count. But he figured he’d killed a girl at least every two months since he was eighteen.

  The first time had been an accident, sort of. He’d trapped this girl and gotten so excited by her slim young body and her shiny blond hair that he’d raped her, and once he’d done that, he knew he couldn’t let her go. She’d just run home and tell her menfolk, and they’d come back and kill him, or try to. He figured he could take out most of them, because he’d be waiting for ’em.

  But then he thought, why bother? Why kill five or six men when he’d just have to kill one woman? And knowing he was going to kill her gave him a lot more freedom to do what he liked. So he’d taken his time and tied her up and used a special knife he’d taken from a mean Indian. He reckoned the Indian had stolen it, because it wasn’t the sort of thing an Indian could make. It was a hollow-bladed knife, crafted of the best quality steel by someone who knew what they wanted—the same thing he himself wanted.

  The point was like a needle, and the rest of the knife was like a slim, sharp funnel. When he stuck it in the girl’s side, just over the liver, she bled like a stuck pig. He had blindfolded her so she couldn’t see what was happening, and once the initial sting was over, she had no idea that her blood was flowing out in a continuous stream and draining off the end of the knife into a bucket.

  He’d climbed on top of her and kept doing it to her until long after she’d died. Then he drank some of her blood, and gave the rest to the hogs. He wrapped her in sacking and buried her behind the barn. Her menfolk scoured the countryside for her, and never did find hide nor hair.

  He’d had two meetings a week with Halbertson, and one with the old man. Jason knew the old man was scared spitless that his grandson was going to marry the girl. Jason liked to just sit there and watch the old man squirm, trying to get up the nerve to ask him to kill her.

  He had an odd ability to read old men’s minds. Sometimes young men, too. But they didn’t interest him. The slim blondes did. They heated up his blood so bad that he felt certain they must enjoy dying for him. They screamed and cried and begged, but he knew that was just an act to excite him so he’d do it to them. His mother had taught him about women. He knew that you couldn’t believe anything they said.

  At the memory of his mother, a cold chill threatened to ruin the warm glow he’d gotten from seeing Jennifer for those few seconds. He walked to the cabriolet he’d rented. He’d see where she was going. Just the thought of not knowing whether he would do it today made him feel good again.

  Steve walked into Chane’s office. “I met with Wentworth of Amalgamated Steel.”

  “How’d he take it?”

  Steve sat down, pulled out a cigarette, lit it, took one long pull off it, and stubbed it out in the ashtray. “He was surprised as hell. When I told him we’d buy rails from him if they were up to our standards, he almost fell out of his chair. Apparently he’s worked with Number One before. He didn’t expect any standards.”

  “Am I paying you too much?” Chane asked. “That’s the hundredth time I’ve seen you take one drag on a cigarette and put it out.”

  “You’re not paying me nearly what I’m worth. I quit smoking.”

  An explosive laugh escaped before Chane could stop it. “You quit?”

  “Yeah. Now when I want a cigarette, I light it, but I just take one puff.”

  “Sounds like I’m paying you too much.” Chane shook his head. “I’m heading for a meeting with Roudenko and Beaver Targle right now. If their bodies are at all warm, I’m going to hire them to build my grandfather’s railroad. Then you and I won’t have to worry about it anymore. It’ll be their problem.”

  Steve took out another cigarette and fondled it. “If God had meant us to roll at high speed on train tracks, we’d have been born with wheels,” he said, realizing his fear was irrational. A man had to die of something, but he just couldn’t tolerate the thought of it being in a train wreck. His fear shamed him, but not enough to pretend it didn’t.

  “Unfortunately,” Chane said grimly, “trains and railroads are built by men, and even God can’t keep men from screwing up just about anything they do.” He had faith in man’s ability to build anything he set his mind to build, but the way the government funded railroads encouraged sloppy construction and rewarded greed and graft.

  “My grandfather is no exception. Few men in positions of power can resist the opportunity to rake off millions of dollars while building railroads so unsafe they slaughter several thousand unsuspecting passengers each year. If Wentworth delivers, we’ll still make money, but we’ll build a safe railroad in the process,” Chane said.

  “A first, I’d say.”

  Chane grinned. “As long as I don’t have to leave New York.”

  “Hallelujah.”

  “By the way, have you seen Jennie?”

  “Not today.”

  “I wonder where she could be?” It wasn’t like her to stay away from the theater. She practiced every day. But this morning he’d gone looking for her, and Bellini had said she’d taken the morning off. As soon as he could break away from his morning appointments, he’d track her down and be sure she was okay.

  The phone rang and Chane picked it up. “Mr. Kincaid.” His secretary’s voice came clearly over the line. “A Mr. Beaver Targle and a Mr. Louis Roudenko are here to see you.”

  Chane greeted the two men and motioned them to chairs across from his desk.

  Roudenko was small, dark-skinned, and tight-lipped. Targle was a big, sunburned man with hands like hams. They seated themselves and waited.

  “You’ve quite a bit of experience working on railroads, haven’t you?” Chane said.

  “Yes, sir,” Roudenko replied, his words curt.

  “You were with the…?”

  “The Union Pacific mostly.”

  “And then…”

  “The Southern Pacific for a time, but not too long…” Roudenko looked like giving that information pained him. Chane knew Roudenko hadn’t been able to get construction boss work for a while. He’d been hurt two yea
rs before and lost his nerve. Working in the switchyard, he’d tried to show one of his men how to place a link pin between two boxcars, and the engineer had backed the train up and pinned him, almost crushing his chest. He’d been lucky. Only six broken ribs.

  Chane didn’t hold that against him. Any man could lose his nerve after an accident like that. He just didn’t want a man who hadn’t gotten it back yet in charge of his crews.

  Chane asked questions for fifteen minutes. Roudenko answered grudgingly at first, then finally eased up and answered more frankly.

  Chane grilled Beaver Targle as well. After an hour, he still wasn’t satisfied, but feared it was them or no one. And they were more experienced with railroad building than he’d expected to find on such short notice. In spite of his misgivings, he hired them.

  Roudenko would stay in New York to finish pulling together the thousand loose ends that still needed to come together. Beaver Targle would board a train for La Junta, Colorado, immediately. He would be the advance man, hiring locals, setting up the sawmill, cutting trees, finding a quarry site and beginning the quarrying that would provide ballast for the roadbed.

  When they left, Chane breathed a sigh of relief that he wouldn’t have to go to Colorado. He’d be free to court Jennie.

  Chapter Ten

  “Oh, Christopher, I am so ashamed. I would not have believed myself capable of it,” Jennifer said.

  Chris Chambard’s fine gray eyes danced and twinkled. His dry, papery chuckle followed Jennifer to the window. “Oh, chérie, you have the fire and passion of a Venus, of an Aphrodite.”

  “Chris, I am enceinte!” Somehow, saying it in French was not so damning. She shook her head, amazed at her own stupidity. She had taken the precautions recommended by her fellow ballerinas. As if they were the most promiscuous women on earth, girls backstage spoke of new precautions daily. In reality, they probably had no energy left for anything besides collapsing alone into their beds. Perhaps they had never tested the precautions they swore by. Perhaps they had lied about their lovers. Perhaps she was the only one in the ballet company to ever take a lover. The rest merely pretended.

  “I could kill myself, except I hate the sight of blood, and poison terrifies me,” she said miserably. “I could jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, but heights scare me, too. What if I just broke every bone in my body and survived?”

  Christopher laughed. “You said yourself Kincaid wants you to come to him. He probably wants to marry you. Have you told him?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Your mother was a ballerina. She managed quite nicely, but of course she didn’t remain one.”

  “Mother was never a serious ballerina. She wanted to marry. I do not.”

  “So what will you do?”

  “Peter believes Kincaid killed our parents.”

  Christopher Chambard squinted his eyes at the vision before him. Though she probably had not ridden, Jennifer wore a white velvet riding habit and a white fur hat with a jaunty white egret plume. The cut of the lush, white velvet showed off her slender curves to excellent advantage. In an age when good health was positively vulgar, and young women went so far as to drink vinegar to attain the fashionable souffrante look, Jennifer Van Vleet glowed with health. Christopher had a proprietary pride in her appearance as well as her accomplishments.

  “If I had to guess, I would say that your parents killed your parents. Perhaps your father took one too many mistresses, and finally enraged Vivian so much that she shot him. Then she panicked at what she’d done and shot herself.”

  “Mother might kill Father, but she would not kill herself.” Jennifer paced the length of Christopher’s studio, which was reminiscent of fashionable salons of the Rue de l’Université and the Faubourg St. Honoré. Compared to the American fashion for geegaws and frills, Christopher’s apartment was austere and filled with light. It was a great barn of a place—a renovated schoolhouse remodeled on the outside to resemble the fashionable brownstones on either side. The town house managed, after years of Christopher Chambard’s influence, to look as cosmopolitan as he.

  “Drawing room society,” as Christopher called the members of the beau monde who flocked there when he gave one of his rare soirees, imitated his style and truly believed they were glimpsing customs and fashions of Paris. Christopher enjoyed the fact that they rushed home to imitate a caricature of an imitation. He designed only for function, to let in light and keep out his musty demons. He had not seen Paris in thirty years. The ocean terrified him.

  “Not on purpose, perhaps, chérie,” Christopher said, patting the pillow beside him. “If Kincaid somehow precipitated their deaths, then that is a fact to be dealt with, but it is my belief that men and women have to be responsible for their own predicaments. No one else.”

  “I never should have let him…” Her eyes filled with tears.

  “Chérie, what proof do you have that Kincaid caused your parents’ deaths?”

  “None.”

  Christopher shook his head and raised both hands in an elaborate shrug. Jennifer flashed him an exasperated look. “Peter’s friend, Derek, thinks Chane tricked Vivian into his bed and used her to gain information to ruin Father.”

  Christopher shook his head. “If Reginald thought Vivian had slept with Kincaid and gotten them into a financial mess, he would have simply ordered her to go sleep with him again and get them out of the mess. Your father was no fool. Even facing bankruptcy, he was not a man to think of his own death as a solution for anything. Undoubtedly there have been other men who have thought of it—his death, that is—but not Reginald. A drink perhaps, another woman undoubtedly, but not death. Only a fool chooses death as a solution. I am an old man. I know.”

  Jennifer inhaled deeply. She, Christopher, Peter, and Derek had not believed the police department’s theory of suicide and murder. Everyone else believed it—or pretended to.

  Christopher picked up his cup and sipped at the tea he had heavily sugared and creamed. “Even if they died by Reginald’s hand, how can you blame Kincaid? Many men have business reverses. Few kill themselves or their wives because of them.”

  “Perhaps Vivian did have an affair with Kincaid,” Jennifer said. “You know how Mama was. She could be so gullible…”

  Christopher laughed. “Make up your mind what you resent most. That you might be enceinte? Or that Kincaid may have slept with your mother?”

  Wiping her eyes, Jennifer laughed. “How many men could I have this conversation with?”

  “I have seen Kincaid at a number of functions. He would have no trouble getting me into bed,” he said matter-of-factly.

  Christopher Chambard pursed his lips and sighed at the memory of Chane Kincaid. Christopher was sixty-nine years old and had long ago come to terms with his homosexuality. It had not been easy. He had suffered horribly until he accepted himself and ignored those friends and relations who would not or could not accept him as he was.

  Fortunately, the Van Vleets and their close friends were comfortable with any manner of sexuality. Jennifer had grown up in a household whose amorality would boggle most modern-day Victorian minds. Reginald’s lovely, exotic little actresses, opera stars, and ballerinas had enlivened many a cold evening with their entertainments. Vivian had been just as free to choose and enjoy the many handsome young men in their circle.

  “I don’t think Chane had anything to do with their deaths,” Jennifer said. “I’ve told Peter that…” She sighed. “I saw what happened to Alicia. How could I have fallen into the same trap? I must be insane!” Alicia had been her understudy. She now had four sons, and she hadn’t danced in years.

  Jennifer felt overwhelmed by fear. A lump formed in her throat. Tears welled up and blinded her.

  “Chérie.” Christopher stood up and walked to Jennifer’s side. He took her slender, trembling body into his arms. Her shoulders shook with her ragged sobs.

  “I’m not psychic, but I think you see this pregnancy as a limitation. Every limitation is also an oppor
tunity. The one never comes without the other.”

  As a young man, Christopher had spent a year in India meditating under the direction of an Indian holy man. Christopher had appeared on several occasions to have psychic powers, but he did not flaunt them. He didn’t need to. His solutions to problems were so different from other people’s, they knew immediately he was not one of them. Jennifer considered herself odd because she generally understood him.

  “It’s the end of my life. I’m destroyed,” she whispered. A small, hysterical laugh caught in her throat. Christopher took her by the hand, led her to the sofa and tugged her down beside him.

  “The man does not exist who can destroy you—not for more than a moment. You are the phoenix—you will rise from the ashes of this experiment unsoiled, unless you choose otherwise.” Christopher raised a hand to stop her protest. “You will never allow any journey, no matter into what darkness, to dim your fine spirit. Hear me, Jennifer Van Vleet. I know this about you,” he finished sternly.

  Jennifer looked down at her hands. “Christopher, I feel like everything I ever believed about myself is suspect. With Kincaid—” She swallowed and looked away. “—I’m not myself. I tried to avoid getting involved with him, but when I see him, I feel so alive. So much better than I’ve ever felt in my life. I even see better. I can close my eyes and smell the scent of his skin…” Jennifer stopped, her cheeks flushed.

  Christopher reached over and patted her hand. The look that had fleetingly changed her expressive face spoke volumes to him. She was in love. And it had emerged suddenly, full-blown and awesome, before she knew how to deal with it.

  “How could everything else work so much better and my judgment so much worse?” she wailed.

  “Perhaps he had nothing to do with your parents’ deaths.”

  “I know he didn’t.” Jennifer sighed. She would have to tell Chane. She had already fallen in love with the idea of having his baby. Ever since Kincaid had made love to her, she had been doomed. “How will I tell Peter?”