To my father, Bob Spotswood,
who taught me to love a good mystery
Very few of us are what we seem to be.
—Agatha Christie, The Man in the Mist
WILLOWJEAN PARKER: The circus-trained right-hand woman of Lillian Pentecost. Learning the highs and lows of being a working detective.
LILLIAN PENTECOST: New York City’s preeminent lady gumshoe. Not as steady on her feet as she used to be, but it’s her steel trap of a mind you need to watch out for.
ALISTAIR COLLINS: Steel magnate and coldhearted patriarch. A little over a year ago he picked up a gun and put the final punctuation on his own life.
ABIGAIL COLLINS: Matriarch of the Collins family. Somebody ruined her Halloween party by bludgeoning her to death with a crystal ball.
REBECCA COLLINS: Daughter of Al and Abigail. Bold, beautiful, and more than just your average society girl.
RANDOLPH COLLINS: Rebecca’s twin brother. Looking to take over where his father left off, and he figures that includes keeping his sister in line.
HARRISON WALLACE: Godfather to Rebecca and Randolph and acting CEO of Collins Steelworks and Manufacturing. Says he wants justice for Abigail, but that might just be lip service.
ARIEL BELESTRADE: Medium and spiritual advisor to the Upper East Side. Says she can speak with the dead, but is she leaving bodies in her wake?
NEAL WATKINS: Former university wunderkind turned Ariel Belestrade’s assistant. How close is he following in his employer’s footsteps?
OLIVIA WATERHOUSE: Mild-mannered professor with a passion for the occult. Her obsession with Ariel Belestrade might go beyond the academic.
JOHN MEREDITH: Longtime plant manager and brawl-scarred bruiser. He has a chip on his shoulder and strong feelings about the Collins clan.
DORA SANFORD: The Collinses’ longtime cook. More than willing to spill the beans.
JEREMY SANFORD: The Collinses’ butler. Practicing the perfect poker face, he keeps the family secrets locked up tight.
ELEANOR CAMPBELL: Lillian Pentecost’s cook and housekeeper. Loving, loyal, and not to be trifled with.
LIEUTENANT NATHAN LAZENBY: One of the NYPD’s sharpest. Underestimate him at your own risk. Willing to give Pentecost and Parker just enough rope to hang the killer. Or themselves.
CHAPTER 1
The first time I met Lillian Pentecost, I nearly caved her skull in with a piece of lead pipe.
I had scored a few shifts working guard duty at a building site on West Forty-second. A lot of the crew on Hart and Halloway’s Traveling Circus and Sideshow picked up gigs like that whenever we rolled into a big city. Late-night and off-day gigs where we could clock in after a performance and get paid cash on the barrel.
There were more jobs like that available in those years. A lot of the men who’d usually have taken them were overseas hoping for a shot at Hitler. When you’re desperate to fill a post, even a twenty-year-old cirky girl starts to look good.
Not that it required much of a résumé. It was a knucklehead job. Walk the fenced-in perimeter from eleven until dawn and keep an eye out for anyone slipping through the fence. If anyone did, I was supposed to ring a bell and shout and make a ruckus to drive them away. If they refused, I ran and found a cop.
At least that was what I was supposed to do. McCloskey—the site foreman, who was paying me—had other thoughts.
“You catch anyone slipping in, you give them a good clobber with this,” he said, tugging at his greasy moustache. This was a two-foot length of lead pipe. “You do that, you get an extra dollar bonus. Gotta set an example.”
Who I was setting an example for, I didn’t know. I also didn’t know what was around the site that would be worth stealing. Construction had just started, so it was basically a giant hole in the ground half the size of a city block. Some lumber, some pipe, a few tools, but nothing really worth pinching. This close to Times Square, I was more likely to get drunks looking for a place to sleep it off.
I expected to spend a handful of uneventful nights, collect a few bucks, and be done with my shift in time to run back to Brooklyn and help with the circus’s matinee. I was also hoping to find some quiet time to devour the detective novel I’d picked up at the newsstand down the street. Maybe catch a few hours’ sleep in some corner of the yard. On the road, solitary sleep—especially sleep without the rumble of trucks or the roar of the tigers prowling in their cage across the yard—was a rarity.
The first two nights, that was exactly how it went. It was actually kind of lonely. New York might be the city that never sleeps, but even those few blocks in the heart of Midtown took a catnap between two and five. Not much in the way of foot traffic, or at least little that could be heard through the seven-foot-high wooden fence surrounding the construction site. That half-block hole in the ground was eerily quiet.
So on the third night the creak of a board being pried away from the fence rang out like a bell.
Heart racing, I grabbed the piece of lead pipe and made my way around the edge of the pit. I was wearing dungarees and a denim shirt—soft fabrics that didn’t make a sound. My boots had worn-thin soles, which didn’t do any favors for my arches but meant I was able to slip like a shadow. I crept up on the figure crouched on its haunches at the edge of the pit.
Whoever it was picked up a handful of dirt and let it sift through their fingers. I thought about yelling and trying to drive them off, but they were bigger than me. In their other hand they were brandishing what looked like a stick or cudgel—something heftier than my length of pipe at any rate. If I yelled and got rushed, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stay on my feet long enough to hit back.
I took one slow step after another. When I was only a short stride away I lifted the pipe above my head. I wondered what it would feel like when I brought it down. Could I finesse it so I just knocked them out? Detectives were always managing to do that in the dime novels. More likely, I’d crack their skull open like an egg. My stomach did the same kind of slow flip it performed when I watched the trapeze artists.
I still had the pipe raised above my head when the figure turned and looked at me.
“I’d prefer not to end my day with a concussion,” she said with a voice even as a tightrope. The hefty guy I had been afraid would rush me was a woman. She was around the age my mother would have been with her hair done up tight in an intricate bun.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” I told her, managing to keep my vibrating heart out of my voice.
“That remains to be seen,” she said. “Have you worked here long?”
“A few nights.”