A Twist In Time

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He nodded.

“Report to me in the morning. There’s produce to be picked up and furniture to be moved for the night’s entertainment.” She went on listing all the jobs she expected him to do that ran the gamut from daytime handyman and deliveryman, to nighttime bouncer and bartender.

“For a dollar a day?” He asked in disbelief.

“You want the job or not?”

Della watched the cords in Colin’s neck tighten. Being subservient was not in his nature, either. How long would he last under Maude’s callused thumb?

“I’ll take the job…for now.”

“Good.” Maude’s smile showed her satisfaction. “Gertrude Katz runs the boardinghouse next door. Tell Trudie to give you a room. Most people on Market Street do my bidding…police included. They don’t call me Queenie for nothing.”

“I can see that,” said Colin with an edge of sarcasm to his tone.

Maude didn’t seem to notice. “As for you, Della, you’d better get yourself some sleep and act lively tomorrow. The girls haven’t been paid for nearly a week. Usually, each night’s receipts is figured and pay envelopes slipped under their doors the next morning. Got it? I expect you to get the books in shape in quick order. I’ve got bills to settle. We’ll go over everything in the morning.”

Della clasped her hands so tightly that her nails bit into her flesh. She welcomed the pain. It was real. More real than anything in the room.

Maude lifted her ponderous body to her feet. “Have to keep a check on my guests. I keep a short rein on my boarders…and my help.” She added the last with a pointed look at Colin. “Remember, no men beyond this room. If you’re thinking about putting your shoes under her bed, you’ve got the wrong floor. I never allow pleasure to be mixed with business. Better hie yourself over to Trudie’s and get a room.”

“I will…in a minute,” Colin answered firmly. “I have a few things I want to say to Della.”

Something in his tone made Maude’s hard eyes swing from him to Della and back again. The bridge of her nose narrowed and her ugly nostrils flared. “Keep the rules or out you both go. Nobody plays free and easy with me. You try and fox me and you’ll be like a dog with his tail cut off behind his ears. Five minutes and then you git!”

With a swish of her taffeta skirt and hidden petticoats, the madam rolled out of the room like a frigate and disappeared down the hall. They could hear her raised voice ordering more food trays from the kitchen.

Colin turned to Della. “Are you all right?”

Her answer was a shudder that racked her slender body. He reached out and drew her against his solid chest. With a sob, she melted against him. He could feel her pulse beating wildly, and through the layers of clothing, the supple curves and lines of her body brought a fierce heat radiating through him. “It’s going to be all right, I promise,” he said in a husky voice.

“How could this have happened?” Hot tears spilled from her eyes. “What are we going to do?”

He touched her wet cheek. His embrace tightened. He had to get her out of this. He stroked her soft hair and allowed himself a fleeting fantasy of claiming every inch of her utterly feminine body. Then he gave himself a curt rebuke. Della Arnell wasn’t for the likes of him. Look what had happened because he had brought her into his life. It didn’t matter what happened to him, but he had to protect her at all costs. “The way things are set up we’ve got a good cover for as long as we want.”

“As long as we want,” she repeated. She lifted her face and stared at him. Fear, disbelief and anger formed a hard lump in her throat. “We have to find a way back now.”

“That may not be possible…for a little while.”

A moment ago she had felt safe in his arms, now she felt trapped. She drew away, glaring at him with frightened eyes. Her voice trembled. “Why did you rush into that tunnel like a crazed man?”

His dark eyes burned into hers. “I didn’t have a choice then, and I don’t have one now. But I didn’t mean for this to happen. Hell, I would send you back in a minute if I knew how.”

“What about you?” Her voice rose. “You’re not going back, are you?” She recoiled from the steel hardness that turned the blue of his eyes into obsidian. “You wouldn’t leave if you could,” she said in horror.

“You have to understand. I can’t leave until I find some answers.”

“Answers to what?”

“The kind of experiences you’ve been having are not new to me,” he said patiently. “All my life, I’ve had these…spells. My mother said I was possessed, that the devil was trying to claim me through the spirit of my great-grandfather. I know it doesn’t make sense, but for some reason I’ve been drawn back into his lifetime. I’ve never hated anyone as much as I’ve hated Shawn Delaney and the heredity he gave me.”

“Well, I’m not staying. Do you hear me? I’m not going to wait for you to dig up your family’s skeletons. I’ll find the tunnel. Somebody will believe me…”

He grabbed her as she tried to jerk away. This time, his hands on her shoulders were not soft and reassuring but bit harshly into her flesh. “You can’t start blabbing about a tunnel. You can’t draw attention to yourself. They’ll never believe the truth and there’s no telling what Maude would do.”

“I can’t stay here. I can’t!”

“I promise you, I’ll look around tonight…then we can decide what to do. Trust me,” he said again.

“Trust you? How can I? I saw the way you looked at that newspaper. You have some crazy idea of solving your great-grandfather’s murder. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t bother to deny it.” She met his gaze squarely as she moved out of his arms. “I recognize a man with a purpose when I see one.”

The cleft in his chin deepened. “I have to know what kind of man Shawn Delaney was…why he was murdered. If I understand, perhaps I can lay some demons to rest—”

“Or be killed yourself,” she interrupted.

He gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Not possible. I didn’t live in my great-grandfather’s day.”

With a tremor in her voice, she corrected him. “You do now.”

Chapter 4

W hen Della awoke the next morning, she kept her eyes closed, praying that when she opened them, she would find herself back in her hotel apartment. Her heartbeat quickened as she slowly lifted her eyelids. Disappointment laced with anxiety instantly surged through her. Nothing had changed since last night. She was still wearing a cotton shift for a nightgown, still sleeping in a room that had belonged to the deceased bookkeeper, Vinetta Gray, and still caught in the weird time warp that had swept her back to the turn of the century.

Last night, Colin had promised to come for her if he was successful in his search for the tunnel. She had lain awake for hours, waiting, but he hadn’t come. Had he failed to find the tunnel? Or had he lied to her about looking for it? Her feelings for him were in a hopeless tangle. When he held her close, she wanted to lose herself in his embrace. Her pulse leapt when his resonant voice softened to liquid. His intensity, dark passion and compelling personality were mesmerizing. She wondered if she’d be able to leave him behind as she had threatened.

Sitting up in bed, she looked around the room. Everything was just as Vinetta had left it, she recalled with a slight prickling chill. An ugly bowed dresser stood against one wall next to a scarred clothespress whose warped door was slightly open, revealing a collection of clothes. Positioned on one side of a small fireplace was an overstuffed chair with ecru doilies over the headrest and arms. A worn floral rug lay on a wide-planked wooden floor, and faded wallpaper in a pink cabbage-rose pattern covered the walls.

Della had a queasy feeling as she took in the dead woman’s personal items. A brush and comb with strands of brown hair still clinging to it lay beside a hand mirror and a box of large hairpins. A porcelain tea set, a leather-bound book and a pair of reading glasses lay on a round drop-leaf table covered with an embroidered fringed cloth. Vinetta Gray was dead but everything was neat and orderly, as if she would return any moment.

Abruptly, Della felt a swish of cold air upon her cheek. You don’t belong here, a voice whispered. She raised her hands to protect herself from the angry words and cried out as a vile wind of hostility whipped around the room, tossing the lacy curtains with wild frenzy. The sweet smell of lilac perfume was suddenly suffocating and overwhelming. Go back where you belong!

Gasping for air, Della leapt from the bed, ran to the door and jerked it open. She leaned weakly against the wall in the hallway, waiting for her legs to regain some strength and her head to quit spinning.

“You ain’t coming to breakfast in your shift, are you?” A large Swedish-looking woman with thick blond braids wrapped around her head stood in the kitchen doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. “Miss Vinetta never poked her nose out the door without every hair in place and her dress crinkling with fresh starch.”

Della tried to find her voice but couldn’t.

The woman gave a disgusted snort. “So you’re the new bookkeeper. You looked mighty peaked to me. Too much to drink, I’ll wager.” The cook’s expression showed her disapproval. “If you’re looking for the bathroom, it’s last door on the right. I guess Miss Maude told you that you’re sharing the bathroom. I’m Inga and Lolly’s the housemaid. We don’t run around half-dressed the way the girls do upstairs. You’d better find a wrapper to cover yerself.”

But I don’t have any clothes. Della bit back the excuse. The cook’s scowl told her she was in enemy territory. Be careful. Don’t give yourself away. Any kind of scene would arouse suspicions. A hundred questions stabbed at her, but Inga had a closed expression which discouraged any explanations or confidences about insidious perfume and threatening spirits.

“I don’t hold breakfast. If it’s cold, it’s cold,” Inga snapped at Della. “Better get a move on. Maude doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Della’s breath slowly came back and the suffocating feeling faded. She looked down at the thin cotton shift that barely covered her. When she had undressed the night before, she’d draped the unfamiliar clothes over a chair. She couldn’t go anywhere the way she was.

“Well, what you waiting for?” the cook demanded ungraciously.

Della straightened and glanced through the open door into the loathsome bedroom. She had no choice but to go in and get some clothes on. Cautiously, she took a step inside the door, stopped and waited. She braced herself for the malevolent whirlwind that had sent her rushing out into the hall. Nothing. No scent of lilacs. No vindictive accusations. No hint of hostility. Nothing to indicate that the horrible experience had been anything but her imagination. She brushed her hand across her forehead and found it moist with sweat.

She walked across the room and with trembling hands, gathered up the dark brown dress, full petticoat, knee-length drawers and thick white stockings. She looked warily at the ribbed corset and left it lying on the chair. There was no way she was going to wear such a torturous atrocity. The dress with its long sleeves and high neck was uncomfortable enough.

With her arms filled with the clothes and the pair of old-fashioned shoes she’d worn yesterday, she opened the bedroom door again and peered out. No sign of Inga. She could hear pans and dishes rattling. A low murmur of voices floated through the kitchen doorway. She hurried down the hall in bare feet and cotton shift.

Much to Della’s surprise, the bathroom was as large as Vinetta’s room. A beautiful marble cabinet contained a small sink and a huge claw-footed tub was raised on a small platform. A smile crossed her lips as she viewed the toilet with its wooden box overhead, a long chain dangling beside it.

Someone had set out sweet-smelling towels and she decided that a quick bath in the deep tub might restore her frayed nerves. She filled it with enough water to touch her chin. The water was only tepid, but running water of any temperature must be a luxury, she mused as she scrubbed with a bar of coal tar soap. Thank heavens, electricity had come into use by the 1880s. The thought startled her. Was she beginning to accept the impossible? Was she really going to be living a hundred years in the past? She reached for one of the large towels and shivered as she stepped out of the tub.

She hated putting on the same undergarments and dress but she had no choice. Using a large-toothed ivory comb lying on the marble counter, she smoothed her fair hair into a French roll and fastened it with several large hairpins from a glass jar that stood beside a bottle of lime juice and glycerin lotion.

A round mirror above the sink had lost some of its silver and gave back a distorted reflection, which made her feel more off-balance than ever. A sob caught in her throat. How could she hold on to her real identity when everything and everyone around her denied it? Where was Colin? She needed his enveloping presence to keep herself sane.

She left the bathroom, walked down the hall past her room and felt a quiver of uneasiness as she entered a large kitchen. Her breath caught when she saw the mess left by last night’s activities. Dirty glasses, soiled plates, trays of party food, spotted table linens and crusted silverware covered work counters and one long table that stretched the length of the room.

A dark-skinned girl about sixteen years of age was bending over a big sink. Her chubby arms were buried up to her elbows in soapy water as she washed dirty pots and pans. She didn’t look up or give any indication she was aware of Della’s presence.

Inga, the cook, came out of the pantry, dangling a duck carcass in each hand. Without acknowledging Della’s presence, she plopped down on a stool, dunked one of the fowl into a pan of hot water and started plucking. The smell of wet feathers filled the kitchen.

Della was about to cover her nose with her hand, when Inga stopped a moment and nodded toward a tray sitting at the end of the long table. “Miss Vinetta always took her breakfast at her desk.”

I can see why, thought Della, her empty stomach churning from the obnoxious kitchen smells.

“The tea’s probably cold by now,” the cook said with an edge of satisfaction in her voice.

Della swallowed back a request for a hot cup of coffee. She’d never liked tea, iced or otherwise, but she reminded herself that cold tea was a small price to pay to avoid a confrontation with the formidable cook.

Ignoring the woman’s pointed scrutiny, Della picked up the tray and left the kitchen. She walked down a center hall, peering into dark, shuttered rooms as she passed. The somber silent atmosphere in the house was oppressive, a sharp contrast to the bawdy noise and laughter that had filled it the evening before.

When she came to Maude’s shadowy office, she put the breakfast tray down on the small desk the madam had pointed out to her. A musty smell permeated the room. Della knew that she would have a headache in short order if she spent any time in the gloomy office. The room was like a closed box with no movement of air.

Going over to a pair of tall windows, she pulled back heavy green draperies, which allowed muted sunlight through floor-length ecru lace curtains. She broke two fingernails trying in vain to open a window to get some fresh air. The thick wooden frames looked as if they had remained shut since the house was built.

She looked out the window at a two-story clapboard house on the other side of a small alley running between the two houses. Gertrude Katz’s boardinghouse? Is that where Colin had spent the night?

A spurt of anxiety made Della bite her lip. He had told her to stay put until he found out what was going on, but what if he had disappeared and left her here? She’d always prided herself on her ability to solve her own problems, in any situation, but this was beyond anything she could have imagined.

Turning away from the window, she fought back an impulse to go running out of the house in an effort to find him. He was her anchor, her only hold on reality. She needed to tell him about the hostile presence in Vinetta’s room. Last night, he had handled an impossible situation with a deftness that was almost frightening. She had felt an intense pulsating energy radiating from him that both attracted and repelled her. Remembering how his dark looks had been enhanced by the old-fashioned clothes, a new sense of uneasiness brought a dryness to her throat.

She sat down at the small desk and lifted the damask napkin on the breakfast tray which held a small two-cup teapot, a matching cup and one slice of buttered toast on a plate. Nothing else. Either Miss Vinetta had been laced too tightly to eat anything more for breakfast, or she’d had the appetite of a bird, thought Della, her stomach rumbling with emptiness. She was tempted to take the tray back to the kitchen and demand a decent breakfast, but the impulse was short-lived. She wasn’t up to another exchange with Inga.

The day had just begun and already she felt bone weary. She sipped the lukewarm tea and had just taken the last bite of toast when a big rough-looking man sporting a full black beard strode into the room.

“I’ll be damned,” he swore with thick moist lips when he saw Della. He wore a gray-striped suit stretched out at the knees and slightly worn at the wrists. “What the hell we got here?” He strode over to the desk and leered down at her.

Della’s mouth went dry as he stood over her, his breath smelling of stale beer. She swallowed the last piece of toast, which seemed to grow in size as it went down her throat.

“Bet my britches you’re the new bookkeeper. Well, I’ll be damned.” His dark eyes took on a lustful sheen as he looked her over. “I haven’t seen corn-silk hair any prettier than that. A step up from that dried prune, Vinetta, aren’t you, sweetheart?”

“And just who are you?” Della asked coolly.

He fingered the gold chain of his pocket watch and stuck out his beer belly. “Maude’s ever-lovin’, Jack Gilly.”

“Her husband?”

“Husband?” He snorted. “Hell, no. If I’d married Maudie, she’d have hog-tied me long ago for sure. As it is, she has to keep me happy to keep me around. Gives me plenty of room to roam, you know.” He plopped a fat buttock on the corner of her desk.

His smirking smile was repulsive and his sour beer breath turned her stomach. She wanted to give him a shove that would send him tumbling off his perch. Everything about him was offensive, his looks, his crude manner, his thick wet lips and roving eyes. “I have work to do,” she said ungraciously and leveled her drop-dead look on him.

“We all have work to do, sweetheart.” He laughed at some private joke. “I guess you might say my job is keeping the old gal thinking she’s still a spring chicken. Been doing it for years…off and on. Oh, hell, I take off now and again, but always come back to dear old Maudie.”

For a second, Della’s curiosity won out over her repulsion. “You’ve known her for a long time?”

“Hell, yes. Ever since she had her place in Chicago…about seventeen years ago, I guess. Maude wasn’t bad-looking back then. Hell, I might even have married her, but she up and left her business and moved West. I guess she thought it was all over between us.” He gave a satisfied grunt. “A couple of years later, I surprised her and showed up in good old Denver. Been parking my carcass under her roof ever since.”

Della was even more repulsed than ever. He had verified her instinctive dislike. The smirking, foul-smelling Jack Gilly had opened his big ugly mouth and told her exactly what he was…a disgusting, sordid leech!

“’Course, I keep the boarders company. You know what I mean?” he bragged as if her silence meant approval. “Part of my duties as man of the house.” He reached out and pinched her cheek. “You stick with good old Jack and you can have the run of this place. Know what I mean? How about a little kiss—”

“Keep your hands off her!”

At the sound of Colin’s angry voice, Jack swung off the desk. He planted his stocky legs on the floor and balled his fists as Colin strode into the room.

“Leave her alone.”

Jack’s mouth spread in a smile above his dark beard as if a good fight was the perfect way to start the day. “Sez who?” He bounced on the balls of his feet, clenched fists ready to meet Colin head-on. Colin’s face was dark with rage.

“No…don’t!” Della cried. “No, Colin, he’ll—” She never got the next word out.

Without slowing his stride, Colin plowed right into Jack’s prizefighter stance. Apparently surprised by the rush that resembled a charging buffalo, Jack didn’t move fast enough. He staggered backward and Colin landed two hard blows to his stomach.

Jack’s eyes bulged and he gasped for air. While he was still off-balance, Colin gave him a shove that propelled him over a footstool and landed him flat on his broad back. Then Colin stood over him, his fists clenched, waiting for the burly man to get up.