“But we weren’t finished,” Merinda protested.
“I have more than enough. Remember that it’s not just your perspective I was assigned to get. McCormick is out interviewing a few of Goldman’s followers, and I am charged with seeing Mrs. Goldman herself.”
“How exciting,” Merinda said without even the slightest attempt to hide her disappointment.
Jem was too deflated to even force a smile.
“It will be in the Hog tomorrow,” Skip said, rising and tucking his notebook in his pocket. “If there is a Hog.” He shrugged into the coat Mrs. Malone provided at Merinda’s bidding. “Funny, you never really realize how much Mr. DeLuca does until you think of how you’ll need to do it in his absence.” He tipped his hat at Jem. “I’m sure he’ll find his way back soon.”
Jem muttered something that almost sounded like an affirmative.
When Skip was gone, Jem moved to the seat adjacent Merinda. “He just left a note,” she told Merinda with a sigh. “It was the sort of note he would have left for Skip or McCormick. It was so cold.”
Merinda chewed her lip. “That isn’t like him.”
“I know. And he never wanted me to go to the Goldman rally. He’s not vindictive enough to hold a grudge for that, though.”
Merinda put up a restraining hand. “That’s not why he left, Jem. And it’s not why he didn’t put more in the note. He was in a hurry.” She rose, crossed to the bureau, and returned with the slip of paper she found at the Hog. “I went to his office after the rally. I wanted to see if there was anything about the trolley explosions that DeLuca hadn’t told us about. I knew something was wrong because his desk was all upturned. I think he must have received a call from his sister, jotted all of this down”—she pointed to the middle of the paper—“and dashed straight home to leave you a note and catch the first train.”
“Tony infuriates me,” Jem said, snatching up the paper and staring at it. “Time and again he gets himself into trouble, and we all have to pick up the pieces.”
“At the very least, I have you here again,” Merinda said happily. “Far easier for us to find Jonathan if we’re together.” Merinda bellowed for Turkish coffee and, when it arrived, gulped it so quickly she burned her tongue. “What do you say about joining this People’s Labor Movement?” She motioned for Jem to pick up a paper on the side table. “I struck up a conversation with a fellow after the rally last night. Not only did he know where Goldman was staying, he knew where their meetings took place. There are different levels of involvement.”
“He gave up his secrets rather easily!” Jem said.
“He’d had a little too much from his friend’s flask. Seemed quite delighted to find a girl wearing pants. We are just the sort they are looking for.”
“What makes you say that?”
“A woman who bounds about after a Goldman rally in trousers with no thought for the Morality Squad? The same woman who will be willing to rejig a few wires in the pursuit of a marvelous cause.”
“You’re not suggesting you’re going to blow things up with this fellow?”
“No. I’m suggesting we’re going to blow things up with this fellow.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Seasons change. As soon as you get used to autumn, so winter tugs at its coattails. Life turns in and out and the forest takes on a different face. A keen eye knows to anticipate the slightest changes—the thinning of the wood before the earth dips into the cavern of a valley, the slight birdsong that mournfully ushers out summer, signaling fall. Everything around you is a sign. An omen, perhaps, that no matter how you settle into a time, a place, a person, nature is already turning the hands of the clock and precipitating its imminent future.
Benfield Citrone and Jonathan Arnasson, Guide to the Canadian Wilderness
Jones brought Jasper the papers every morning, and they usually sat in an untouched pile on his desk until noon. Then he would leaf through them with a sandwich and a cup of tea at his elbow. But as soon as he saw the Hog headline about the Goldman rally that morning, he shoved the open file he was perusing to the side of his desk.
Jasper was impressed that Skip was the name on the byline. He was in and out of the action as stealthily as Ray always was. He even had a quote from Mrs. Goldman herself.
His heart had the most inconvenient habit of jumping slightly when he heard—or read—Merinda Herringford’s name, as it did the moment it appeared in Skip’s article: