Isabel Feeney, Star Reporter by Beth Fantaskey
Chapter 66
FLORA AND I SAT ON A BENCH IN THE WAITING ROOM AT THE Cook County Jail, kicking our feet in awkward silence, while Morse—who was on duty again—kept one eye on us, as if we were trying to break out, as opposed to get in.
I checked the big clock on the wall. Its hands had been dragging around the dial ever since I’d hung up the telephone on Morse’s desk after begging him to help me place a call.
Come on . . .
Then, just when I was starting to think something had gone wrong, Maude Collier swept in through the door, grinning from ear to ear.
“Well, hello, girls!” she greeted us both. But her wink was only for me, and although I’d recently dragged her to an empty house to see a stray cat, she wasn’t being sarcastic when she said, “I can’t wait to see how this truly brilliant plan turns out for all of us, Izzie!”
Chapter 67
MAUDE LED THE WAY TO MURDERESS’S ROW, WITH ME AND Flora trailing behind. Although it was warm in the jail, and very clean, Flora kept her hands tucked in her muff, as if she didn’t want to touch anything in such a filthy, despicable place.
Did she really not see the irony?
“Will you stop acting like you’re better than everyone here, Flora?” I suggested, waving at a killer named Clara Harq, whom I recognized from reading Maude’s stories. If I recalled correctly, Mrs. Harq had bumped off her dentist husband—but she’d smiled at me, so I had to be nice, right? “Take your hands out of that stupid muff and act normal!” I added to Flora. “You wanted to come here!”
“Yes, well, I’m questioning that now,” she said in her sniffy way. “And I don’t know if I like having a reporter along, writing a story.”
“That was the deal,” I reminded her. “Maude gets us in, and you let her write an exclusive article.”
That was the favor I’d wanted, not really for me, but for Maude, since I’d done such a bad job interviewing Flora at the funeral.
Flora wrinkled her upturned little nose as we passed another occupied cell, although nothing was stinky. “Yes, I know we agreed,” she said. “But I don’t think Uncle Carl would approve.”
If she was trying to back out of our arrangement by threatening me with her gigantic “guardian,” it wasn’t going to work.
“I thought you were in charge of Uncle Carl,” I noted. “And you’re not going to lose your stupid movie contract. Even if you said something dumb, how would anybody in Hollywood see the Tribune?”
Maude glanced over her shoulder. I hadn’t realized she’d even been listening, but of course she’d been eavesdropping, like any good reporter would’ve done. “You’re going to look very sympathetic, Flora,” she promised. Then she made up a mock headline, like I’d done the last time I’d visited the jail, even sweeping her hand the same way. “ ‘Young Girl Confronts Father’s Accused Killer.’ The public will eat it up.”
That seemed so cynical. And yet, so true. I knew I would read the story when it was in print.
“Thanks for arranging this, Isabel,” Maude added. “You really do have a nose for news!”
I started to blush, then forgot about the compliment, because we’d reached Miss Giddings’s cell and . . .
Oh, poor Miss Giddings!
Chapter 68
“WHAT ARE YOU ALL DOING HERE?” MISS GIDDINGS ASKED, rising from her cot and making a weak attempt at fluffing her curls. It didn’t help. They were as flat and lifeless as her mattress, and she had dark circles under her eyes. She was far too skinny, too, and wearing a shapeless shift that made her look like she was a hundred years old. Frowning, she knitted her brows. “Isabel? And . . . Flora?”
“Hey, Miss Giddings.” I clutched the bars of her cell and poked my nose inside. She still had some flowers, but most of them had wilted. “How are you?”
“I’m . . . I’ve been better,” she said, her gaze darting among the three of us. “But I’m surprised . . .”
Maude didn’t speak up to explain why we were there. She was busy scribbling in her notebook. Apparently she was going to let me and Flora run the show.
Fortunately, if there was one thing Flora Bessemer was good at, it was running shows.
“I had to see you before the trial,” Flora said. She gave Maude a quick glance. “I’ve been reading about you in the newspaper, and I don’t know what to think.”
I backed up a step as Miss Giddings came to the bars and grabbed them too. Her knuckles were white. “You have to believe me, Flora—even if a jury doesn’t—you have to believe that I didn’t kill your father.”
Flora stepped closer to the cell. “Why did you lie about having a gun? Because I read that.”
Oh gosh, was Maude scribbling furiously!
“I didn’t have a gun, anymore,” Miss Giddings insisted. “I’d gotten rid of it. Given it to my sister, who lives in a rooming house with people who are practically strangers. I thought she needed protection—and I didn’t want it around Robert.”
My eyes were like saucers. “Aunt Johnene has the gun?”
Miss Giddings nodded. “Yes.” She glared at Maude. “I’ve told the police—and reporters—that. I gave it to her months ago!”
Releasing my grip on the bars, I turned to Maude, confused. Was she holding back information that could help Miss Giddings? Because that would be terrible . . .
“How come you and Detective Culhane didn’t mention that when you brought the gun to Miss Giddings’s house?” I asked Maude. “That seems pretty important!”
“Detective Culhane wanted to see if Robert would voluntarily mention something about his aunt having the gun—and thereby corroborate his mother’s story,” Maude explained. “But Robert didn’t do that.”
I felt betrayed, and not just on Robert’s behalf. “That seems kind of tricky!”
“Yes, I suppose it is.” Maude didn’t seem to think being “tricky” was bad, though. Still, she clearly knew what I was thinking. We’d talked about Aunt Johnene, and missing guns, and she’d kept something from me. “I’m sorry, Izzie,” Maude apologized. “Sometimes detectives—and reporters—don’t share everything they know until they’re ready.” Her gaze flicked to Miss Giddings. “And to be honest, I’m not sure I believe the story.”
“I know you don’t,” Miss Giddings said softly. “You’ve made that clear.”
“Your sister won’t say anything about having a gun,” Maude added to Miss Giddings. “She just said she’s not surprised you wound up in trouble; then she slammed the door in my face. And the police haven’t been able to confirm your assertion either.”
Maybe Maude had reasons to doubt Miss Giddings’s claims about giving away the gun, but she really shouldn’t trust Aunt Johnene.
“Johnene Giddings is awful!” I reminded Maude. “I told you, she’s a jealous, stingy person who practically makes Robert crawl just to get a bowl of soup. You can’t trust anything she says. I swear, she wants Miss Giddings to hang!”
That last word . . . it seemed to echo through the whole jail and was suspended in the air for what felt like eternity.
Behind me, I heard Miss Giddings suck in a breath, and when I spun around, she was resting her hand against her throat.
I grabbed the bars again. “It won’t happen . . . I didn’t mean to say it . . . It won’t . . .” I’d been angry at Maude a moment ago, but now I looked to her for support. “Please . . . tell her . . .”
Although Maude Collier probably thought Miss Giddings should go to the gallows, she agreed. “Isabel’s right. As I’m sure your attorney’s also told you, pretty women always get off scot-free. I’ve seen it a hundred times.”
“My attorney?” Miss Giddings finally smiled, but it was a wry, wan effort. “I can’t afford a fancy lawyer. And the public defender is too overworked to worry about my case. He hasn’t told me much of anything.”
My heart sank. I knew enough, from reading the papers, to understand that being defended by a high-priced private lawyer was much, much better than having a public defender
Meanwhile, unlike most of the women accused of killing their men in Chicago during what was being called the “heyday of the murderess,” Miss Giddings wasn’t using jail to make herself look better. She was wilting faster than the posies that suitors weren’t sending anymore.
Could I have even called her pretty right then?
“Please . . . please don’t worry,” I nevertheless begged. “You’ll be okay. Me and Flora and Robert are trying to find the real killer, and we have some leads. Honest!”
Miss Giddings wasn’t listening. She leaned against the wall and buried her head in her hands. Her shoulders shook. “Please . . . everyone go now,” she said, her voice barely audible. “I’m very tired . . . Give Robert my love . . .”
But Flora Bessemer didn’t get bossed by adults, and she wasn’t about to leave until she had the answers she wanted. While Maude rested a hand on my shoulder, indicating that it was time to go, Flora came right up to the bars and asked a question that I certainly hadn’t expected.
“Just tell me . . . Did you love my father or not?”
Miss Giddings dropped her hands and slowly raised her face to us. I could see tearstains on her cheeks, under her red-rimmed eyes, but her voice was steady, if strained, when she informed Flora with a shake of the head, “No, Flora. I didn’t. Not the way I should have to be his wife.”
I looked at Maude, who for once wasn’t jotting notes. Her eyes were wide, and her hand was stock-still.
What the . . .
Chapter 69
“SHE’S INNOCENT,” FLORA DECLARED FLATLY, right before slurping the last drops of her chocolate egg cream through a straw, making a huge bubbling, gurgling sound. My stomach rumbled in reply, and I licked my lips, wishing I hadn’t been too proud to accept Maude’s offer to buy me a fountain drink. All I had was free water, which I’d insisted I really wanted. Flora pushed her tall, empty glass across the counter where she and Maude and I were sitting on stools that spun. “She didn’t kill Father.”
I noticed that since the funeral, Flora had never called her dad “dear Papa” again, so apparently that had all been for show. And although I was dying to know why she was so certain about Miss Giddings’s innocence, I finally had to ask, “How can you talk about your dad getting killed and never really cry? Do you ever cry?”
Maude picked up her coffee and blew on the top, pretending she was more interested in not burning her tongue than in the conversation, but her keen eyes were studying Flora’s face.
For her part, Flora was glaring at me, as if I’d insulted her. “Of course I cry. I just do that in private.” She jutted her chin. “Bessemers don’t cry in public!”
Bessemers sure had a lot of rules, and even if Flora could afford to pay for her own drink, I was glad I wasn’t part of her clan. “You don’t have to be so tough in front of your friends,” I advised her. For some reason, I still kept trying to be pals. “I can’t tell you how many times I wished I had a friend to cry with—about my father being gone, and lots of other stuff, too.”
Flora jolted upright on her stool. “You don’t have any friends?”
I gave her a funny look. “Do you?”
“I . . . I don’t need friends,” she stammered, reaching into the pocket of her velvet coat and pulling out a little beaded change purse. Opening that, she placed some coins on the counter. “I’m going to be in the movies. I’ll have friends then!”
Maude and I exchanged skeptical looks over Flora’s bent head.
Yeah, right! When you’re rich and famous, you’ll have real friends! People will love you, just for who you are!
“Flora?” Maude asked, smoothly picking up her pencil, so the movement was hardly noticeable. “You seem so certain about Miss Giddings’s innocence now. Why? Especially since it seems as if you didn’t really know her that well, and the evidence points toward guilt . . .”
“No, my father didn’t bring her around too much,” Flora agreed. “He was very private about things like that, and didn’t always introduce me to his girlfriends.”
“He had a lot?” I asked, thinking about how Johnene Giddings had claimed that Charles Bessemer had “approached” her first. “Lots of girlfriends?”
“I don’t know!” Flora sounded exasperated. “I had a nanny when I was little, and Uncle Carl was paid to watch me too sometimes. I didn’t really care if Father had girlfriends or thought about marrying again. I’ve never really needed a mother.”
I started to say that everybody needed a mother, but when was the last time I’d really had one?
I mean, my mom tried, but she was so busy just keeping us afloat that there wasn’t much energy left over for hugs and bedtime stories and whatever else mothers were supposed to do. “I guess I understand,” I told Flora. “I kinda get by on my own too.”
Glancing at Maude, I saw that she looked sorry for both of us—a newsgirl and a soon-to-be movie star. How often did that happen?
“Flora,” Maude prompted. “About Miss Giddings’s innocence . . .”
How had I forgotten that big topic?
“Yeah,” I said. “How do you know for sure?” I swiveled on my seat toward Maude, adding, “Like I’ve known, all along.”
“Miss Giddings said that she didn’t love my father,” Flora informed us. “That’s how I know.”
Funny, because I thought that admission had made Miss Giddings look worse, and apparently Maude agreed.
“How does that prove innocence?” she asked, jotting a few notes. “I thought quite the opposite.”
But Flora was shaking her head. “No. If she’d made a big show of pretending to love Father so much that she couldn’t have killed him, I would’ve thought she was a liar and a murderess. She was being honest, though. She didn’t love him that much.”
“Not enough to kill him in a fit of passion,” Maude mused, giving her pencil a thoughtful tap against her lips. “It is an interesting observation.”
“Not just interesting,” Flora said, pulling her empty glass close again and sucking down the very, very, very last drops before concluding, in her no-nonsense way, “It is correct.”
“And you gotta admit,” I added, “Miss Giddings isn’t using her time in jail to fix herself up. She looks terrible. She’s not wearing fancy clothes or getting her hair done nice.”
“True,” Maude conceded reluctantly. “But you don’t know what her attorney is advising. Perhaps this is a new strategy to gain sympathy with the jury. Paint her as a fragile, damaged woman.”
“Miss Giddings is fragile and damaged,” I objected. “It’s not just an act. Did you see how skinny she is? And if the men on juries”—and they were all men, no women allowed—“always acquit women who look pretty, why would an attorney try something different? Miss Giddings is beautiful when she’s not in jail. Why wouldn’t she use that to save herself from hanging—unless she was too discouraged and scared to fight?”
Maude didn’t say anything. She just took a moment to consider what I’d said, which I thought was a good sign.
“She’s not like the other women you’ve covered,” I insisted. “She doesn’t think this whole thing is a joke.”
It was hard to believe that anyone could think murder was a laughing matter, but women in Chicago honestly did seem to believe that killing a man was pretty amusing, not to mention a way to get famous. Maude was always writing about how murderesses wanted to make sure they looked good in their newspaper photographs, and how they’d fight for reporters’ attention in jail, hoping to see themselves in the papers.
“Miss Giddings isn’t looking for publicity, either,” I reminded Maude. “She doesn’t ask to talk to you or beg you to take pictures of her. It’s pretty much the opposite.”
Maude still didn’t reply, but that was okay. She was listening, at least. Then she looked between me and Flora as she placed some coins on the counte
Well, I was trying. And since I’d gotten an endorsement from an attractive, stylish, and famous reporter, Flora looked at me more closely. Like she was finally starting to see past my shabby clothes and messed-up hair.
We all three got off our stools—Maude gracefully, Flora with a quick hop, and me practically tumbling because I wasn’t used to sitting on chairs that spun. Needless to say, I didn’t frequent a lot of soda fountains.
“I gotta go,” I said, thinking that the kid I’d paid to watch my corner was going to be mad if I didn’t get back soon. Plus, I was missing the people who would come out of their offices about then, looking to buy a paper for the streetcar ride home. “I’ll see you two later.”
“Izzie . . .” Maude grabbed my arm lightly. I looked up and saw apology in her eyes. “Again . . . I’m sorry if I kept something important from you or played a part in ‘tricking’ Robert. Sometimes I see things as a reporter and not as a friend.”
“It’s okay,” I told her honestly. “I think I understand.”
She let me go, and I started to walk toward the door. But before I got outside, Flora stopped me too, with a command, like I was Uncle Carl.
“Isabel Feeney! Wait!”
Chapter 70
“WHAT DO YOU WANT?” I ASKED FLORA AFTER MAUDE LEFT us to go write up her big scoop about a beloved little bread girl’s meeting with her father’s accused killer. “And hurry up,” I added. “I need to go sell papers.”
“Oh, for crying out loud.” Flora pulled her hands out of her muff and found her change purse again. “You and those newspapers . . .”
“What are you doing?” I asked as she dug among her coins.
“Here.” She tried to give me a nickel. “Take this.”