“Thank you. I’m the team mascot.”
“You’re a funny one. Are you girls having a party?” The officer craned his head to see past the door and into the kitchen down the short connecting hallway.
“Not really. We just like to get together now and then, away from work. We’re salesclerks at Pemberton, Day.”
“My wife was there only yesterday. She bought a tam o’ shanter for my daughter — for her birthday. Maybe you sold it to her.”
“I don’t think so. I’m in the ribbons department.”
The policeman led Jane back into the kitchen. Then he and his partner looked around the showroom and through all the back rooms of Jane and Lyle’s living quarters. After searching the house, they went out to the yard in the back. There was a storage shed, where some of the stock was kept. It was locked. Jane gave them the key. Twenty minutes later, the police officers were gone.
We Five agreed to wait in the kitchen until they felt confident the men weren’t coming back. They took this opportunity to come to one mind about the fate of Jane’s brother Lyle, who was presently hiding in a crawlspace above his bedroom.
“I’m not comfortable harboring a fugitive from justice,” said Ruth. “But you know already that this is where I stand. And I know that I’m outvoted. The three of you think that Lyle shouldn’t have to pay for what he did. And Molly, having yet to make up her mind, abstains.”
Maggie, who was sitting next to Molly at the table, the two having lovingly patched up their differences so that they now held hands in sisterly affection beneath the table, said, “Molly’s torn in two different directions when it comes to her father. It’s too much to make her decide the fate of Lyle Higgins as well.”
Molly shook her head. “No, Mag, I have made up my mind about Papa. He is my father and I love him, and I don’t trust a judge or jury to be lenient with him. As for Lyle, I’ll go along with whatever the rest of you want.”
Ruth, who had been pacing back and forth, now stopped and addressed the three young women sitting at the table and the tall one washing dishes at the sink: “I was raised to understand the difference between right and wrong. But I was also raised by a minister and his sister to recognize how murky is the swamp that lies in between. Mobry himself has given shelter to men — Negro men, who are alleged to have committed crimes — but in these cases it was to shield them from the lawlessness of mob justice. It’s a complicated matter deciding what’s totally right, what’s half right, and what’s only a little right. And if I’m to be perfectly honest, I’d say that keeping Lyle from arrest is only a little right — the kind of right that comes from selfish love. But it’s the same kind of selfish love that would make me do the very same thing for any of you.”
“Please take the last slice of mocha cake, Ruth,” responded Jane with tearful affection.
“Are you insisting?”
“We’re all insisting,” said Carrie.
It was Jane and Carrie who went into Lyle’s bedroom to tell him the coast was clear. Jane tapped the ceiling above his bed. A panel slid back and Lyle dropped down. Jane told him what the police officer had said. Meanwhile, Carrie’s eyes were drawn to Lyle’s sketchpad on the table.
She opened it and turned its leaves, each bearing a pastel drawing of a scenic landscape.
“Did you do all these?” she asked.
Lyle interrupted his conversation with his sister to answer, “Yes. Yes I did.”
“They’re really quite wonderful,” said Carrie, who could not keep her eyes from them. “I’d like to have one to keep.”
“Where will you keep it, Carrie?” said Jane, brusquely. “You don’t have anywhere to live.”
“You keep it for me then, Lyle. This one.” She turned to a sketch of a seaside village. “That’s Tiburon, isn’t it?”
“Yes it is.”
“Put my name on it. It’s mine.”
“All right.”
“Are you both quite finished?” asked Jane. “We can’t stay here. It isn’t safe. The police will pay a return visit as soon as Holborne is made to tell them everything he knows. They’ll want to ask me a thousand questions. I can’t answer a single one. I’ll fall to pieces.”
Carrie nodded. “And I don’t like it that Holborne’s still out there — that he may want to come after us. Look at what he did to Ruth’s face.” Carrie had put her statement in the present tense because Ruth at that moment was coming into the bedroom, along with Maggie and Molly.
Ruth, having already taken charge of matters, was in medias res with the other two: “The next ferry to Oakland isn’t until early tomorrow morning. Molly, you and Jane and Lyle will need a place that isn’t far from the Ferry Building where you can spend the night. If you hide yourselves well enough, you stand a good chance of getting Lyle on the boat without being seen and followed.”
“You might as well come with us, Ruth,” said Maggie. “You’re already packed and you already have your ticket for New York.”
“That leaves Carrie,” said Jane. “What are you going to do with yourself, Carrie?”
“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. There’s a music school I’ve been looking into. It’s in New York.”
Ruth corrugated her brows with interest. “Are you saying you’d like to come with me, Carrie?”
“There’s nothing keeping me here in San Francisco. Especially with all of you leaving. Yes, I’d like to come with you, Ruth. I have money in the bank. I didn’t put it in my mattress like some do. I put it in a savings account. I’ll just withdraw it all tomorrow morning and then you and I can be on our way. If, that is, you’ll have me.”
“Why shouldn’t I have you, Carrie? You seldom get under my skin the way our three sisters do.”
Ruth’s attempt at dry levity went unacknowledged.
Carrie looked at Lyle. “I think, then, I will take that picture from you, Lyle. Because I don’t know when I’m ever to see you again.”
Lyle tore the sketch from the book. There was a shyness, an awkwardness about him that seemed out of character. But then again, there was very little Lyle Higgins had said or done over the course of the last two or three days that seemed in character. He handed the sketch to Carrie.
She looked at it with the loving eyes that her present discomfiture would not permit her to raise up. “I always wanted to live in this little village. I’ll look at it and think of you, Lyle.”
Lyle swallowed nervously. He glanced up at the ceiling as if he might wish to climb right back up into the crawlspace to escape his present unwonted unease.
Ruth looked back and forth between the two of them, half smiling with curiosity. “How did I happen to miss the first act of this little play?”
“You didn’t miss anything at all,” chuckled Jane. “It feels to me as if the curtain has just begun to rise.”
What was also rising at that moment was the color in both Lyle and Carrie’s cheeks.
“So just where will we be staying tonight?” asked Maggie, returning the discussion to more practical matters. “Holborne knows where each of us lives. Miss Colthurst gave all our personal information to the Katz Agency.”