“Said Corbett was always sorry the tiger got a last victim. A few minutes before Corbett shot the cur, it tore apart a girl about your age. That’s what he told me.” McAdoo laughed again. “I hope the story doesn’t frighten you?”
“No.”
“You were talking about... Champawat, is it? That’s what he said. That he didn’t know if he’d see you again later. So when I came to fetch Al — he says they want you at the house, Al — would I please mention this to you.”
Smith said, “Funny way of flirting with a gal.”
Flirting? Ella imagined Killy sitting opposite her in a restaurant. Imagined them discussing politics and history with pleasure and not with dread.
Smith rose. “So they miss me, do they, Bill?”
“How could they not, Al? It’s been a good half-hour since we heard how you worked at the Fulton Market, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps and vast talents.”
Smith laughed. Ella watched the men as if through a fog.
Killy didn’t know if he’d see her again? He’d said this to McAdoo?
Corbett was always sorry the tiger got a last victim.
Ella stood shakily. She extended Smith’s handkerchief. But he closed his hand around hers. “You keep it, dear.”
For a few minutes, she stood watching Smith and McAdoo walk away.
On the other side of the pond, farmland rolled through the back acres of other rich Washingtonians’ summer estates. Eventually the fields must meet dirt paths and narrow lanes. Not the road that brought her here. That would be roaring with cars soon — lawmen descending to pull the dynamite from the pond, to question the guests and servants. None was likely to remember Ella carrying the tray in.
Other cars would race to check abandoned farmhouses for miles around. But Mario and the rest would have left by now. Expecting trouble after what they hoped was a horrific explosion. An inestimable blow to the nation’s ruling party.
She didn’t know how Killy would explain finding the bomb. She hoped it brought him satisfaction, but she knew it would fade. His friend the Attorney General would soon launch his raids. Palmer would bring an iron fist down on a Bolshevik revolution in America, a Red menace, that was chiefly in his own mind. Killy would see his Fighting Quaker bring unwarranted misery to tens of thousands. Then he would feel, perhaps, the way Ella did now.
She started toward the far side of the pond. Buzzing over the water, minute insects caught the sun like glitter. Farther on, rectangles of dirt lay fallow and hedges tumbled with yellow flowers.
Ella didn’t know where she was going. Not home to retrieve the small comforts bought with Mrs. Kingston’s gems. Killy might come looking for her there. He was grateful to her now: She could have let him pull her away from the bomb. She could have let it do its damage.
Later he might repent this favor.
It was bitterly hard to lose everything again. But she’d never meant to be a thief. She’d taken the jewelry thinking Mrs. Kingston had no more use for it. It would only trouble her to keep the proceeds now. She’d have to find another way.
It was worth it to know what Nicky had done. How like him, how brave, to put a sick woman’s needs above his own. To risk all to help a stranger.
Mario told Ella she’d find Nicky again if she came here. And in a sense, she had.
By the time the Westfield estate was far behind her, her arm tingled from clutching Al Smith’s handkerchief so tightly. She would never regret that he’d been spared today.
She wondered if the marshal would ever regret sparing her.
Copyright © 2012 by Lia Matera