“Some neck lightning.” He pulled a necklace from his pocket and offered it to her.
Evie gasped. “Holy smokes! That looks like a real diamond on there! Where’d you get this?”
“Would you believe a generous aunt?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so. Where I got it, they won’t miss it. They got plenty.”
Evie sighed. “Sam…”
“I know their type. They don’t care what happens to anyone but themselves. They buy everything the magazines and billboards tell them to and forget about it when something new comes along.”
“And Uncle Will thinks I’m cynical!” Evie shoved the necklace back into Sam’s jacket pocket. “You can’t just go around taking things that don’t belong to you, Sam.”
“Why not? If captains of industry do it, they’re heroes. If little people like me do it, we’re criminals.”
“Now you sound like a Bolshevik. Say, you’re not one of those anarchists, are you?”
“Bombs and revolution? Not my style. I’ve got my own mission,” Sam said, the last part coming out a bit hard.
“What mission is that? Leading girls astray with stolen gems?”
Sam gave her a sideways glance. “You ever hear of something called Project Buffalo?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Well, if you look for any information on it, you won’t find it. It was a secret government operation during the war.”
“Then how do you know about it?”
“My mother went to work on it. She took some kind of test—”
“A test? What…?”
“Don’t know. Whatever it was, she scored pretty high. She and my father had a big fight about it. I heard ’em in the other room. She said she felt she had to go. ‘What can we do?’ she said. My father said no. My father loves the word no.” Sam’s face clouded. “Anyway, maybe a month later, these fellas from the government showed up. They had my dad’s papers. Told him they could send him back to Russia if he didn’t cooperate. My dad wasn’t going back to Russia to starve or be killed. He had a nice house and a fur business. So that night, my mother packed her things and left. She sent us only one letter. Most of it had been blacked over. But she said they were doing good work, important work for the country. She said it would change mankind. And then we never heard from her again. When my father wrote to them, they said she’d died from influenza. I was eight.”
“I’m sorry. That’s terrible.” In the afternoon sun, the city shimmered like a mirage. “Sam Lloyd doesn’t sound very Russian, though.”
“Sergei Lubovitch. My father changed our last name to Lloyd when he and my mother came through New York. When I was born, he insisted they name me Sam. As in Uncle.”
“I thought you looked familiar,” Evie teased. “Where’s your father now?”
“Back in Chicago, I suppose.”
“You don’t know?”
“My father and I didn’t get along too well. He likes to say no, and I’m supposed to say yes. He didn’t like it when I could say no myself. And he sure didn’t like it when I said I wanted to find out what really happened to Mama.”
“I thought you said she died.”
“That’s what they told us. Two years ago, I got this.” He pulled the worn postcard of trees and mountains from his pocket. Evie pretended it was the first time she’d seen it.
“Pretty. Where is this?”
“I don’t know. That phrase on the back, there. It’s Russian.”
Evie examined the soft handwriting, obviously feminine.
“It means ‘little fox.’ It was my mother’s nickname for me. She was the only one who ever called me that. That’s when I knew my mother was alive, and I was going to find her. So I took off. I joined up with the navy for a bit—till they found out I was only fifteen. Then I fell in with a circus.”
“You did not!”
“Scout’s honor.”
“You’re no scout,” Evie sniped. They hit a bump and Evie careened into Sam for a second. “Sorry.” She sat back, red-faced.
Sam smiled. “No apology necessary. Gee, I might have to hit another.”
Evie cleared her throat. “The circus?”
“The circus. I trained as an acrobat. Got pretty good on the high wire. Quick feet. I even worked as a barnstormer, doing aerial tricks out on the wings.”
“On a moving aeroplane?”
Sam grinned. “You should try it sometime. Though if you really want to see someone do it up right, you should see Barnstormin’ Belle Butler, the aerialist extraordinaire.”
“Who is that, pray tell?”
“An old friend.”
Evie arched an eyebrow. “What sort of friend?”
Sam smiled but didn’t satisfy her curiosity. “The circus brought me to Coney Island. When they headed south to Florida for the winter, I decided to stay here for a while, see if I could make enough money so I could find my mother.”
Evie looked at the postcard again. It was a beautiful picture of blue skies and tall trees, with mountains in the background. She handed it back to Sam, who secured it inside his jacket pocket once more. “Doesn’t seem like much to go on.”
“I’m going to find her,” Sam said, sounding very determined. “So now you know about me. What about you? How’d you end up with your uncle?”
Should she tell him the truth? Then she might have to admit that she’d tried to read his mother’s postcard and gotten nothing from it. He might be furious. Or he might ask her to try again. And when she couldn’t get a read, he’d think she was a liar.
“I killed a man for insulting my honor,” Evie said blithely.
“Naturally. And?”
“And… I robbed a five-and-dime. I can never have enough paste bracelets.”
“Who can? And?”
“And… I accused the town golden boy of knocking up a chambermaid.”
Sam let out a low whistle. “For fun?”
Evie looked up. The sun seemed close enough to touch, like a shimmering foil prop in a Broadway show. “I was at a party filled with those ‘bright young things’ you love to hate. Yes, I was one of them. It was late and I was drunk and… anyway, it was just some gossip I heard,” she lied. “But it turned out to be true.”
“I don’t understand. If it was true, how come you got sent up the river?”
Evie wished she could tell him the truth, but she’d also promised Will she’d stay mum, and she didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize her stay in New York. “I really did kill a man in Ohio.”
“Hmm. And then these murders started in New York. Coincidence?”
“You’re on to me, Lloyd. I’m afraid I’ll have to kill you now. Be a honey and sit still while I strangle you.” Evie reached playfully for his throat and Sam jerked the wheel, making the car swerve and Evie scream.
“I’ll go quietly, sister,” Sam said, correcting their course. “Just don’t wreck us.”
They parked Will’s old Model T a block away and dodged the trolley rattling up the cobblestones of Centre Street on their way toward the Tombs. The imposing, elliptical jail was anchored by a turret at each end and surrounded by a tall stone wall and an iron railing, which made it seem more like some medieval fortress than a modern New York City building.
“If I give you this signal”—Sam put a finger to the side of his nose—“it means distract the flat foot while I steal what we need. Got it?”
“Got it. But how will we find where they’re holding him?” Evie said in despair. They entered the building to find a bedlam of officers and miscreants. It was like opening night at a Broadway show of criminals.
Sam walked up to the officer at the front desk. “Pardon me. The lady here heard you might be holding her brother, Jacob Call?”
The officer conferred with someone over the telephone and came back shaking his head.
“No visitors.”
“I see. We just want to be sure he’s not being held down below. He had pneumonia just last month, and that swampy air isn’t good for his lungs,” Sam said.
The officer turned to Evie. “He’s in the warden’s office on this floor, so you can rest easy, Miss.”