Death at the Tavern
A Higgins & Hawke Mystery book 1
Lee Strauss
Chapter 1
When the door of the morgue cracked open, Dr. Haley Higgins hoped it wasn’t news of another body. She’d been backlogged with autopsies since the day the chief medical examiner, Dr. Angus Brown, had been struck by a streetcar and died. She had only just finished stitching up the Y incision on the body now lying on the table. The medical examiner’s replacement was due today, a Dr. Peter Guthrie, and in her opinion, he couldn’t arrive too soon.
“Stand down, my good boy!” The owner of the gruff voice slammed the door on his way in. “Bloody intern thinks I can’t find my way around. It’s not my first time in America. I know how the savages think.”
The doctor was exceptionally tall with long, willowy limbs and pointed elbows and knees. His shoulders fell forward giving the impression that his head, and its mass of white unruly hair, was in the lead, just an inch or two ahead of the rest of him.
He made a turn about the morgue, squinting his eyes as he took in the equipment and supplies. Giving Haley only a cursory glance, he acted as if she merited no more attention or commendation than the mechanics in the room.
Becoming aware of her slackened jaw, Haley snapped her mouth shut. Her mind tried to comprehend the man before her. Why on earth would the hospital administration replace the late medical examiner with a man who was clearly as old as the hills? And worse, Haley recognized the crotchety English gentleman. Years ago back in England, they’d worked on a case together.
Haley wiped her hands on her lab coat before crossing the floor. “Dr. Guthrie?” She reached out a palm. “I’m Dr. Higgins, your assistant.”
The man had a modicum of English good manners and returned her salutation. “How do you do?” His bright eyes blinked as he finally took a moment to consider her. “A lady pathologist, eh? Not many in the field. I’ve only encountered one before.”
“Might that have been me?” Haley asked. “We’ve met previously .”
He worked his lips. “Yes, in Chesterton. I remember you. You’re tall for a woman, aren’t you?”
Haley held in a smirk. If she had a dollar for every time someone mentioned her height—that and her occupation—she’d be a rich woman.
“You were friends with the Gold family at Bray Manor,” Dr. Guthrie continued.
“That’s correct.”
“How extraordinary that we should meet again and on this side of the globe.”
Haley couldn’t have agreed more. “It is.”
Dr. Guthrie made a sudden pivot and took quick strides toward the ceramic table situated under a bright lamp in the middle of the room. He nodded his pointy chin to the pale corpse lying there. “Very well, tell me about this poor fellow.”
Haley began her recitation. “Male, Caucasian, mid-thirties. Stab wound. Upper thrust with a thin blade puncturing the right lung and left ventricle. He lost too much blood.”
“In the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“He’s a suspected bootlegger.”
“Ah. Sadly, one must not drink on American soil.”
Haley concurred. “That’s the law of the land at the moment. However, the powers that be must eventually come to the conclusion that it’s a fool’s errand trying to control the private lives of people in that manner.”
The success of rum running and the string of underground clubs and speakeasies were a testament to that.
Dr. Guthrie grunted. “Prohibition is on its last legs, I predict.”
Haley had to agree, though they were almost halfway through 1931 and she couldn’t see it happening anytime soon.
“It’s the only reason I agreed to endure that frightful journey over the Atlantic,” Dr. Guthrie continued. “That and my sons’ audacity to move to America. The idiots went on to marry American women and now, blast it, I have Americangrandchildren! My wife Eileen must be turning in her grave.”
Haley held in a grin.
The morgue telephone rang, and Haley picked up the heavy black-and-gold receiver. It was the police. After a short conversation, she hung up the phone and followed Dr. Guthrie to his office behind a glass wall.
“There’s a body at the Bell in Hand on Union Street,” Haley said. “Would you like me to accompany you?”
Dr. Guthrie lowered himself into the chair behind his large oak desk, his knees jutting out awkwardly. He flapped long fingers in Haley’s direction.
“You go. The weather in this blasted city is too bloody hot for my old bones.”
Investigative Reporter Samantha Hawke, byline Sam Hawke, is the only dame on the beat at the Boston Daily Record. She doesn’t take no guff from the guys, and they’ve learned to respect her, even if she’s a skirt. She’s fearless and tough as nails. Her blond locks and red lips get attention, but the smart men keep their distance. Those who don’t, learn a thing or two about the lethal side of long fingernails and pointy-toed shoes. Besides, Sam’s married, even if she hasn’t seen her no-good husband for a year.
Though no one had ever laid eyes on it but her, Samantha had written that autobiography five years ago when she’d braced herself for a confrontation with the editor in chief, Archie August. She’d insisted that he promote her from receptionist to reporter. The editor said he’d admired her nerve. He had given her the women’s column, which she’d begrudgingly taken. Though Mr. August didn’t know it, she had a young daughter to think about, and had inherited a demanding mother-in-law whom she supported. The women’s column offered pay she couldn’t scoff at. She’d taped the biography to the back of her notebook to remind her about how far she’d come since the day Seth Rosenbaum had walked out on her.
Hollywood bombshell Marlene Dietrich’s eyebrows are all the rage. Get your tweezers out and shape your brows into razor-thin arches. A little pain is worth the glamor, ladies! Women who happen to lack the natural arch pluck the entire brow and pencil them in with the new eyebrow pencils by Maybelline.
Samantha didn’t mind writing the columns, even if they were mostly fluff. Fashion and make-up interested her and her only beef was that she couldn’t afford to buy those things for herself. The men she shared the room with would be surprised to know that a safety pin held her brassiere together and that the seams of her skirt had needed reinforcing more than once.
There were times when facing issues particular to a woman, such as the recent celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment—the women’s right to vote—that Samantha, being the only female to report on the story, had produced copy that Archie August had whistled at. Whistling was always a good sign with the bloated editor: it meant he liked what he saw. Samantha had taken the opportunity to plead her case that she could report stories of interest to both sexes. Mr. August had puffed hard on his cigar before relenting.
“Okay, I’ll let you sniff out stories on your own time, but in the office you have to cover the women’s page.”
“Deal!”
Since then Samantha Hawke had made some headway for herself in the paper, but what she needed to be recognized as a real journalist was a big lead.
The Boston Daily Record was housed in a three-story stone building located on Water Street. The “pit” on the second floor had rows of desks butting up against one another, each with a black Remington typewriter, a black cradle telephone, stacks of paper, a well-used coffee mug, and an ashtray. Streams of gray smoke pillared upwards, collecting into a mesmerizing haze along the ceiling. The men sat in various positions of contemplation or hunched over their typewriters with inspired enthusiasm.
Johnny Milwaukee sauntered over to Samantha’s desk—the only one without a telephone. Not exactly Rudolf Valentino, Johnny had a charisma that outshone what he lacked in Hollywood good looks, and was never short a woman when he wanted one. Samantha had made it clear from the beginning that she wasn’t available for dating. She couldn’t afford to screw up her job with a bad office romance. Johnny took the rejection easily. “I don’t swing with married broads anyway.”
She still kicked herself for letting him in on that secret, but it had seemed like the only way to stop his unwanted attentions.
“Hey there, Sam,” he said with a glint in his eye. “Slow news day?”
“I’m busy,” Samantha said, glancing up from her typewriter.
“I mean with real news, not that women’s fluff.”
“Women read newspapers too and advertisers like that.”
“I just finished a piece on Al Capone,” he spouted. “Indicted on 5,000 counts of violating prohibition, and perjury. Five thousand! Can you imagine?”
Samantha huffed. “Practically everyone is guilty of violating prohibition. They know Capone’s guilty of murder, yet they never arrest him for that. Now that would be news.”
“Take it outside!” The grumpy voice belonged to Freddy Hall, a middle-aged sports reporter with a brood of kids to feed. He wasn’t shy to show his disapproval of Samantha’s entrance into what used to be a boys’ club. He’d groaned to Archie August when he discovered they had promoted Samantha from her position as receptionist. “We’re called newsmen for a reason! And when jobs are hard to find, it’s a sin to bring a woman into the pit!”
It wasn’t uncommon for a man to write the ladies’ pages, and the reporter with the least amount of seniority was usually tasked with the job. But Archie August thought the pages would read more authentically to their female readers if written by a woman. He had a lot of advertisers’ dollars counting on it.
He refused to give her a byline, though. Fluff work didn’t merit one.
Johnny leaned a hip on the edge of Samantha’s desk, his arms casually folded over his vest. “How ’bout I make you a deal?”
Samantha raised a brow. “What kind of deal?”
“You bake me some of those rugelach,” Johnny said, murdering the pronunciation, “and I’ll let you tag along the next time my telephone rings.”
Samantha eyed her co-worker suspiciously. She’d only brought the rugelach—croissant-like pastries made with flour, butter, sour cream, sugar, and yeast, and filled with pecans and brown sugar—once, on Mr. August’s last birthday. They were expensive, even after replacing the pecans with walnuts and cutting back on the brown sugar, and were meant to impress her boss. And though she never claimed to have baked them—she had Bina to thank for that—she’d never bothered to correct the assumption either.
“Won’t we, Max?” Johnny said, waving to his quiet counterpart, Max Owen who took photographs for the paper when out in the field. When in the building, he ran memos between departments and performed miscellaneous tasks.
Max blushed as he locked eyes with Samantha and nodded subtly.
Johnny turned up the charm. “Come on, doll face. Don’t be a pill.”
“Okay,” Samantha said slowly. An actual story would be worth a higher grocery bill. “But the lead comes first, then the rugelach.”
Johnny pushed away from Samantha’s desk as he slapped his hands together. “Terrific! I’ve been dreaming about those darn pastries ever since the old man’s birthday. Seriously, I’d considered becoming a Jew.”
Johnny only referred to Archie August as “the old man” when out of the editor’s hearing. In the man’s presence, Johnny always addressed their boss as Archie. Samantha couldn’t quite bring herself to call him anything but Mr. August.
Samantha tried to regain focus on the piece she was writing, but her gaze landed on her leather messenger bag. She returned her notebook, added a sharp pencil, and confirmed other important items were inside such as a small flashlight, and a tube of red lipstick—nearly a nub—that Sam wore sparingly. Next paycheck she’d have to break down and buy a new tube.
Samantha finished her article, then picked up her camera bag. The film in her black Kodak box camera held images from yesterday’s Ladies of Boston fundraiser. The luncheon had taken place in the new and glamorous Hotel Manger, an imposing modern building near the North Station that simply dwarfed everything else around it. Mrs. Warren, a member of Boston’s elite, hosted the event and had given her free rein to take photographs. It was in times like that, when confronted by wealth, that Samantha wished she owned a more fashionable wardrobe and a proper camera. She knew she should be thankful that she even owned a camera at all, but she couldn’t help but envy the Ensign Cameo used by Max Owen.
She removed the roll of film and carried it out of the pit. The darkroom was down one floor, along with the composing room, and though there was an elevator in service it took longer than using the stairs.
Heads bobbed up as Samantha passed the glass window of the composing room and she smiled and waved. She hated to interrupt the men who were busy setting up rows and blocks of type—a task that required extreme concentration—but by the pleased looks on their faces when they saw her, it was evident that they didn’t mind.
The dark room was a small rectangular, windowless space that took walking through two doors to get to, as a precaution against letting in unwanted light.
When occupied, a Do Not Disturb sign hung from the door, but at this moment the sign was down and Samantha knew it was safe to walk in.
She pulled the cord and the room was washed in red light, the only type of light that wouldn’t ruin the photographs as they were being developed. Samantha began the process of subjecting her negatives to the chemical solutions she’d introduced to the trays.
While she waited for them to develop, she took a look at other photographs that were pinned to a couple of wires that stretched across the room. There were shots of political rallies, the construction of a new office building, and Fred’s photos of a baseball game at Fenway Park.
Once her photos were ready, she pinned them to the remaining space on the wire. She’d taken some fine shots of Mrs. Warren. The lady would be pleased.
Samantha returned to her desk and wondered what she should work on next. She checked her watch for the time and sighed. Still three hours to go before the end of her shift. The newspaper had a subscription for several ladies’ magazines, an expense she’d convinced Mr. August was necessary to her job, and she started thumbing through them for ideas. If nothing else, she could write about Depression-friendly recipes. Independence Day was coming up. She could tie the piece into that—easy celebration meals and how to adjust a winter frock into a pretty summer dress. A common adage is to write what you know, and making the most of one’s wardrobe was Samantha’s specialty.
She held her fingers over the keyboard and began typing just as Johnny’s telephone rang. Samantha stared at him as he answered.
“Ya? Ya? Yep. Thanks.” He grinned at Samantha. “Got a lead. Body at the Bell in Hand.”
Samantha grabbed her bag.
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