Read Online Crooked Hearts by Patricia Gaffney - Free Book Online
Authors: Patricia Gaffney
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cadence of the voices, Reuben’s and Lincoln’s, she gathered they were having a rather jovial argument. Suddenly the talk broke off; she heard sounds of movement, and a second later the click-squeak-click of the door to the alley opening and closing.
She crept down the stairs, listening intently. “Mr. Jones?” No answer, and when she reached the bottom step, she saw that the house was empty. Everybody was gone.
The suspicion that Reuben had run out on her came and went speedily. He wouldn’t have left without taking a single possession, and certainly not without his beloved wine collection, no matter what the inducement. He’d gone out for a while, that was all, with his peculiar friends, to do whatever men without regular jobs did together during the day. Well, fine. Leave her here all by herself, then, with no money, nothing to eat, and nothing to do. She’d find something to do.
She cracked his desk and searched it. The locks on the drawers made her laugh; she picked them with a couple of hairpins as easily as picking dandelions. What she found inside, arranged, filed, and organized with admirable neatness and attention to detail, were the records of a half-dozen bunco games and confidence schemes, operating simultaneously from seven different city post office boxes.
Among other things, Mr. Jones ran a bogus clipping service—Readiclip, Inc., was its current name, although it periodically went out of business and reappeared as something else. He sold fake lottery tickets and Irish sweepstakes chances, sometimes forged, sometimes nonexistent. He dabbled in the rightful-heirs swindle, a complicated genealogical-investigation fraud that Henry used to work years ago, she recalled. But Henry had given it up because it had gotten too dangerous.
Here was a game she hadn’t heard of: the Skytop Roof Services Company, Ltd. The handsome brochure offered amazingly inexpensive roofs to people whose only obligation, after the roof was built, was to allow potential new customers to inspect the finished product. The lucky homeowner paid for his cheap new roof up front—and never saw the salesman again.
The ad Reuben took out in newspapers from time to time was a masterpiece of small-time simplicity. It promised nothing, so it wasn’t even illegal. It merely asked readers to send a dollar to a post office address, for “a little surprise in store for you. Who knows?” Grace knew: the surprise was that they lost a dollar.
But her favorite was the “International Society of Literature, Science, and Art,” a combination correspondence course and talent school. Hopeful amateurs sent in their stories, pictures, and inventions, and for thirty dollars Reuben sent back advice on how to “revise” their work, to ready it for submission to a publisher or a patent office. And for a small additional fee, he offered diplomas, plaques, scrolls, certificates, and—she loved this—the privilege of using the initials A.S.L. or M.S.L. after their names.
Leafing through the Society’s correspondence, she was cynically amused until she came upon Reuben’s unfinished reply to the writer of one particularly bad piece of autobiographical prose, a lonely-sounding spinster from Sacramento. He was sending her money back, along with the kind and very gently worded advice that she perhaps try gardening or needlework for an artistic outlet.
In a thoughtful mood, Grace returned the contents of Reuben’s desk to the proper drawers, and relocked them with her hairpins.
A few minutes later, innocently seated on the sprung couch and perusing the newspaper, she heard the door open. Pretending absorption, she didn’t look up until he’d crossed the room, passed in front of her, and turned for the stairs. She only caught a glimpse of his profile, but it was enough to make her jump up, tossing the paper aside, and cry, “Holy saints, what happened to you?”
His answer was garbled; he kept moving, shuffling up the steps at an uneven gait,
She crept down the stairs, listening intently. “Mr. Jones?” No answer, and when she reached the bottom step, she saw that the house was empty. Everybody was gone.
The suspicion that Reuben had run out on her came and went speedily. He wouldn’t have left without taking a single possession, and certainly not without his beloved wine collection, no matter what the inducement. He’d gone out for a while, that was all, with his peculiar friends, to do whatever men without regular jobs did together during the day. Well, fine. Leave her here all by herself, then, with no money, nothing to eat, and nothing to do. She’d find something to do.
She cracked his desk and searched it. The locks on the drawers made her laugh; she picked them with a couple of hairpins as easily as picking dandelions. What she found inside, arranged, filed, and organized with admirable neatness and attention to detail, were the records of a half-dozen bunco games and confidence schemes, operating simultaneously from seven different city post office boxes.
Among other things, Mr. Jones ran a bogus clipping service—Readiclip, Inc., was its current name, although it periodically went out of business and reappeared as something else. He sold fake lottery tickets and Irish sweepstakes chances, sometimes forged, sometimes nonexistent. He dabbled in the rightful-heirs swindle, a complicated genealogical-investigation fraud that Henry used to work years ago, she recalled. But Henry had given it up because it had gotten too dangerous.
Here was a game she hadn’t heard of: the Skytop Roof Services Company, Ltd. The handsome brochure offered amazingly inexpensive roofs to people whose only obligation, after the roof was built, was to allow potential new customers to inspect the finished product. The lucky homeowner paid for his cheap new roof up front—and never saw the salesman again.
The ad Reuben took out in newspapers from time to time was a masterpiece of small-time simplicity. It promised nothing, so it wasn’t even illegal. It merely asked readers to send a dollar to a post office address, for “a little surprise in store for you. Who knows?” Grace knew: the surprise was that they lost a dollar.
But her favorite was the “International Society of Literature, Science, and Art,” a combination correspondence course and talent school. Hopeful amateurs sent in their stories, pictures, and inventions, and for thirty dollars Reuben sent back advice on how to “revise” their work, to ready it for submission to a publisher or a patent office. And for a small additional fee, he offered diplomas, plaques, scrolls, certificates, and—she loved this—the privilege of using the initials A.S.L. or M.S.L. after their names.
Leafing through the Society’s correspondence, she was cynically amused until she came upon Reuben’s unfinished reply to the writer of one particularly bad piece of autobiographical prose, a lonely-sounding spinster from Sacramento. He was sending her money back, along with the kind and very gently worded advice that she perhaps try gardening or needlework for an artistic outlet.
In a thoughtful mood, Grace returned the contents of Reuben’s desk to the proper drawers, and relocked them with her hairpins.
A few minutes later, innocently seated on the sprung couch and perusing the newspaper, she heard the door open. Pretending absorption, she didn’t look up until he’d crossed the room, passed in front of her, and turned for the stairs. She only caught a glimpse of his profile, but it was enough to make her jump up, tossing the paper aside, and cry, “Holy saints, what happened to you?”
His answer was garbled; he kept moving, shuffling up the steps at an uneven gait,
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