All the time, as Sabina covertly watched her, the pickpocket’s head continued to move from side to side — looking for someone in distress. Someone whom she could rob.
Sabina seldom had difficulty controlling her temper. True, it rose swiftly, but just as swiftly it turned from hot outrage to cold resolve. She, too, began looking for someone in distress. Someone whom she could save from the woman’s thievery.
Before long, she saw him, nearly ten yards away: humped over, leaning on a cane, walking haltingly. She poised to move in, but the woman, who obviously had seen him too, surprised her by turning the other way.
Another old man: limping, forehead shiny with perspiration in spite of the chill temperature.
The woman passed him by.
Had Sabina been wrong about the pickpocket’s method? No, this dip was clever. She was waiting for the ideal victim.
More wandering. More pretending interest in the shows and wares. No indication that the pickpocket had spied her.
In front of the bright red coach belonging to the purveyor of Doctor Wallmann’s Nerve and Brain Salts, the woman stopped. She spoke to the vendor, examined the bottle, then shook her head. A crowd had pressed in behind her. She stretched her arms up behind her head, then dropped them and angled through the people.
And in that moment Sabina knew her method.
She pushed forward into the crowd, keeping her eyes on the blue velvet picture hat. It moved diagonally, toward the Chinese herbalist’s wagon. Now, after ten o’clock, most of the women had departed, their places taken by Cocktail Route travelers on a postprandial stroll, after which many would visit the establishments of the wicked Barbary Coast. The woman in the blue hat would be there too, plying her trade upon the unsuspecting — unless Sabina could stop her.
The blue hat now brushed against the shoulder of a tall blond man clad in an elegant broadloom suit. The perfect victim.
Sabina weaved her way through men who had stopped to hear Rodney Strongheart sing in a loud baritone about how his elixir would keep one’s heart beating forever. A few gave her disapproving glances: She should not be here at this hour, and she certainly shouldn’t be elbowing them aside.
Sabina continued to use her elbows.
Now she was beside the woman. She reached for her arm and missed it just as the man in broadloom groaned and clutched his side. Sabina saw the dip’s right hand move to his inner pocket; she was quick, and the man’s purse was soon in her grasp.
But not soon enough to make her escape.
Sabina grasped the woman’s right hand, which held the purse, and pinned the dip’s arm behind her back. The pickpocket struggled, and Sabina pulled the arm higher until she cried out and then was still.
The victim had recovered from his pain. He stared at Sabina, then at the thief. Sabina reached down and wrested the blue-and-gold Charles Horner hatpin from the woman’s hand.
“And that,” John Quincannon said, “was the last of the Carville Ghost.” He looked pleased with himself, sitting at his desk, smiling and stroking his freebooter’s beard — a feature that made him appear rakish and dangerous. He fancied himself the world’s finest detective and he always preened a bit when he brought an investigation to a successful conclusion.
“And,” he added, “I have collected the fee. A not inconsiderable twenty-five hundred dollars. I would say that justifies dinner for two at Marchand’s and perhaps—”
Sabina interrupted his description of his evening’s plans for them. “I, too, have collected a handsome fee. From Charles Ackerman.”
“Ah, you solved the pickpocketing case.”
“Yes.” She proceeded to tell him about it, including the man who had died, Henry Holbrooke, finishing, “I thought the woman — Sarah Wilds — was preying upon infirm men, perhaps men in gastric distress. It turned out she was stealing from perfectly healthy men, stabbing them in the side with her needle-thin hatpin to distract them while she picked their pockets.”
“Needle-thin?” John frowned. “I presented you with a silver-and-coral Charles Horner hatpin on your last birthday. As I recall, it was fairly thick.”
“Sarah Wilds had altered hers so the pin would pass through clothing and flesh but not cause the victim to bleed much, if at all. Just a painful prick, and she’d withdraw it while reaching for her victim’s valuables.”
“But the man who died — Harry Holbrooke?”
“Henry. The police assume he was unlucky. The pin went in too deeply, punctured an organ, and caused bleeding and an infection. You must remember — Sarah Wilds was using the same pin over and over; think of the bacteria it carried.”
John nodded. “Another job well done, my dear. Now, about Marchand’s and perhaps—”
“I accept your invitation upon one condition.”
“And that is?”
“You will pay for your evening from the proceeds of your Carville investigation, and I will pay for mine from my proceeds.”
John, as Sabina had known he would, bristled. “A lady paying her own way on a celebratory evening — unthinkable!”
“You had best think about it, because those are my terms.”
He sighed — a long exhalation — and scowled fiercely. But as she knew he would, he said, “An evening out with you, my dear, is acceptable under any terms or conditions.”
As was an evening out with him.
The Erstwhile Groom
by Laura Benedict
© 2007 by Laura Benedict
“I’m living proof that dreams do come true,” says Laura Benedict. “I wrote fiction for almost 20 years before selling my novel Isabella Moon (releasing in September) to Ballantine Books.” The book is not, however, the author’s first major fiction sale. She debuted in our Department of First Stories in ’01 under the byline Laura Philpot Benedict.
Kurt follows his wife, Livia, through the kitchen, which is dim even at mid-day because of the heavy awning shading the room’s single window. She pushes open the basement door, presses the light switch, and stands aside so he can carry the bags of canned goods downstairs.
“Yams,” he says. “Twenty-nine cents a can. You can’t beat that.”
“Lunch is on the table,” she says. “We’re out of pickle loaf.”
He knows how much Livia likes pickle loaf, but it won’t be on special again, he thinks, until the next week.
“Monday,” he says from the basement. “Can it wait until Monday?”
Livia doesn’t answer. He hears her footsteps clip across the linoleum. Always she wears shoes that he believes other women would wear for dancing, smooth leather shoes with high, chunky heels and deep vamps that hint at the cleavage between her toes. The shoes make her legs look long and elegant. He’s never liked how Livia shows off her legs; though she’s almost fifty, other men still stare at her.
Kurt sets the grocery bags on the floor and tugs gently at the window shade that acts as a dust cover for the storage shelves on the wall. The shade is crisp and cracked in a few places now, and does not roll as smoothly as it used to. He feels along the top shelf for the grease pencil he uses to date canned goods. He will date them and arrange them on the shelves, oldest in front and newest to the back, knowing full well that Livia doesn’t appreciate his efforts. She will quickly raise the shade, reach in, and take whatever can she cares to, regardless of the date. It’s no wonder, he thinks, that she’s never noticed that there’s something not quite right about the shelves, that they aren’t as deep as they might be.