The Titanic Secret (Isaac Bell 11)

“Miss Emily?” Bell chanced.

“Goodness no,” she laughed. “I’m Corinne Johnson. I rent a room. I’m performing at the opera house.”

“My apologies,” Bell said. “I don’t have a description of the Dawson sisters.”

“Quite all right, Mr. . . .”

“Bell . . . Isaac Bell.”

He shook her hand in a way that showed the gold band around his left ring finger. She gave him a disappointed little look but nevertheless invited them into the home, calling out to the kitchen, “Miss Emily, there are two gentlemen to see you.” Her eyes still shone when she turned back. “Mr. Bell, if you’re still in town, I’m singing tomorrow night and all through the weekend.”

“Not sure our schedule will permit it, but if we can make it, we most certainly will be there.”

Corinne Johnson smiled up at him again before climbing the oak stairs to the second floor at the same time an elderly woman came out from the kitchen at the back of the large house. She was wiping her hands on a towel lest she soil her perfectly white apron. She was slender without looking frail, with short-cropped gray hair and wrinkled skin but sharp dark eyes. She was nearer seventy than sixty.

“May I help you gentlemen? Are you looking for lodging?”

“No, ma’am,” Bell said, and pulled out one of his business cards with the Van Dorn logo prominent. “I’m a private investigator hired by Mr. Bloeser, the owner of the Little Angel Mine, to look into the tragic events of last week. I understand that you rented a room to one of the miners.”

“I did. Poor Mr. Caldwell. Johnny, is what he wanted everyone to call him. He was very young and polite. He would often fix little things around the house that Sarah and I never got around to.”

“Did he leave any possessions?”

“Some,” Emily Dawson said a little suspiciously. “Why do you ask?”

“Reopening the Little Angel Mine was a rather odd act on the part of Joshua Brewster. The mine’s rightful owner, Mr. Bloeser, is hoping to discover why these men went in there. We hope there could be some clues in whatever the poor souls left behind.”

“I understand,” she replied, satisfied with the answer. “I haven’t rented his room yet. And with winter about to set in, it isn’t likely we will. Please, follow me.”

She led Bell and Wickersham up the stairs to the second floor. The staircase bisected a long hallway with several closed doors. At each end of the hall were open doors to white tile and marble bathrooms. Given its age, the house had to have been retrofitted with indoor plumbing. Emily Dawson pulled a set of keys from her apron and unlocked one of the doors midway down on the right. She left them alone to return to her kitchen.

Johnny Caldwell’s room was small but serviceable. There was a tiny closet and a single bed with a white hand-stitched quilt. The four-drawer dresser matched the night table. Atop the table was a kerosene lamp and an incidentals dish. Usually, such dishes contained spare change, keys, maybe a button off a shirt that needed repair. This one was empty.

Isaac Bell had tossed hundreds of rooms over the course of his career and went about the task quietly and efficiently. He found what he suspected he would—clothing mostly, a couple of books but no Bible, and a cache of dried beef jerky. He also found a silver picture frame that probably stood on the nightstand but was now in one of the drawers. The photograph was missing. What he didn’t find, and what told him what he already suspected, was cash or luggage. Presumably, all of Caldwell’s possessions had been brought to the room in a suitcase, but it was now no longer present. Also, miners were paid in cash, and they paid their rent in cash as well. There should have been a rolled-up wad of bills hidden in the back of the drawer or slipped into an envelope taped under the bed. Further suggestive evidence was the lack of shoes in the closet. No doubt Johnny Caldwell wore heavy work boots into the Little Angel Mine that fateful morning, but he didn’t wear them exclusively. There were no regular shoes for a night on the town or Sunday service at a church.

“What do you think?” Tony Wickersham asked, Bell standing silently in the middle of the room now that he was finished. Although he had handled every single object in the room, there was no evidence a single thing had been disturbed.

“Evidence suggests that Mr. Caldwell left that morning with no intention of returning home after his shift. He had packed a bag, took some clothes, including a pair of street shoes, and every dime he had to his name. Everything else was left behind.”

“So, we know for certain they didn’t die in the mine?”

“Not for certain. As I said, the evidence suggests a scenario different from what the papers reported. This isn’t proof. That will only come when I dive into the mine and see for myself. However, this is what we call an evidentiary link. It jibes with what we suspect.”

Before leaving the boardinghouse, they thanked Emily Dawson for her help and inquired about other rooming establishments where Caldwell’s friends might have stayed. There was no point driving out to the mine until Bell’s equipment arrived from San Francisco, so he and Wickersham spent the afternoon asking lodge owners about the other miners. It turned out to be a fruitless endeavor. None of the men lived in the town proper. Like Brewster, they must have camped up near the mine itself.

The one interesting thing Bell did realize as he and the young mine engineer crisscrossed Central City is that their presence had drawn interest.

They had been followed all afternoon.

4

As the sun sank behind the towering Rocky Mountains, Bell and Wickersham headed to their hotel. Bell was aware that their tail was well back, not an amateur, but also not as seasoned as someone with Isaac’s abilities. He got an initial impression that it was a slender person, but didn’t make it so obvious as to stare at the lurker and let on that he knew the stranger was following them.

They rounded the last corner before the hotel, and Bell pulled Tony Wickersham into the doorway of a boardinghouse so they weren’t easily visible from the street. To his credit, Wickersham didn’t cry out at the sudden maneuver, though his eyes went wide with unasked questions.

“We’re being followed,” Bell whispered. “He’s going to walk past us in a minute or so. Sport jacket, no overcoat, and a black hat.”

The black and boxy Colt .45 was in Bell’s hand.