The Night He Left the Syndicate, I Took His Chair novel · Chapter 8 of 32

Chapter 8: Pearls

I sat down across from her.

Mavis came over with the coffee pot.

"Anything else for the princess?" she said.

"No, thank you," Emmeline said softly. "It's lovely."

"It's lemon. You haven't touched it."

"I'm watching my figure."

"Everybody's watching your figure, honey. Doesn't make it pie."

Mavis went back to the register.

The sweetness went out of Emmeline's face.

"He showed me his statement," she said. "The fire. Your bag of money. Your handwriting on the withdrawal."

"Then you know he's lying."

"I know it doesn't matter." She turned her teacup a quarter turn on its saucer. "There's a ferry every two hours. It's my ferry. I'd make sure you had a nice seat. You get off in New Bedford, you keep walking, and maybe the state is too busy to look for you."

"And his chair?"

"Goes to whoever Mr. Hesketh likes. You were never supposed to have it."

"Orson told you that too?"

"Orson tells me everything." She smiled. "He tells me how you used to wait up for him. How you'd iron his shirts. He thinks it's funny now."

I didn't let it land on my face.

"You came all the way down to the terminal to tell me that?"

"I came to tell you that chairs have accidents." She picked up her purse. "So do the people sitting in them. Old Mr. Hesketh's last operations man fell off the Lower Wharf pier. Drunk, they said."

She stood up.

She dropped a ten for a six-dollar pie.

"Keep the change," she said to Mavis, sweet again.

Mavis picked up the ten and dropped it in the tip jar for the volunteer fire department.

The next morning at nine I walked into the Weatherby Ferry Line office at the terminal.

Zeke followed me as far as the door.

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