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Page 13.

Chapter 4. Detroit—Early Fall 1892

A doorway brooded over an iron catwalk high above the work floor of Winn & Hammond, Bookbinders. The door had a sign on it, reading General Manager. Coarse female laughter sickered through the twilight of grimy windows, littered work benches, and hunched women. The air smelled of paper, glue, and machine oil.

Lizzie’s seat was empty. The closed door marked Foreman spoke volumes. May Wyllie looked embarrassed while the other women, some missing teeth, most quite rough, laughed and jeered softly. They kept their heads down and their postures workmanlike.

The door above opened. The General Manager, a stern older man in starched shirt and stiff clothes, walked out with arms akimbo. He stopped to stare at the women, who promptly fell silent and bowed deeper over their work. The General Manager walked deliberately down the steel steps, one clattering step at a time, and then on the concrete toward the Foreman’s door.

A vicious crone muttered: “There you go, Sister May. The whore is about to get found out, and the hound with her.” Stifled laughter erupted all around the table. May rose, threw aside her work, and tore at the other woman’s hair.

The General Manager rattled John Longfield’s door knob. The door was locked from within. The General Manager came prepared, however—he fished a spare key from his vest pocket, and turned it in the lock. The door swung open. There they were—lovers, half naked, frozen in shock and shame, atop Longfield’s desk. They were mussy-haired and sweaty, cheeks flushed with passion and now shame, as they fumbled into their clothes.

The General Manager turned and pointed to May. His voice was harsh as whip-cracks. “For starters, you are terminated. Get out! The rest of you, back to work or I’ll fire you all.”

The General Manager entered John’s office and slammed the door.

A short time later, a tearful May and sobbing Lizzie clung together as they hurried down a bleak street that was beginning to rustle with the first wind-blown, brown leaves of fall.

Not far away went a stooped, gloomy John Longfield shuffled off in another direction, carrying a leather satchel of tools.

Lizzie and May sat with teary, smeared, swollen faces at the table. Mrs. Wyllie served them hot oatmeal and coffee.

Elizabeth said: “So that’s it. This is what it’s come to. I am alone, a widow, barely making ends meet, taking in sewing and cleaning as I can, working my fingers to the bone. Now where will the rent and food money come from?” She bent close to Lizzie and said: “You fool! Look what you have done to yourself and your poor sister! You must be totally daffy, to make the same mistake over and over again, without learning a lesson! Next you’ll be knocked up and there we go through all that again!”

Far away, in the evening at a foggy railway station in San Francisco, Kate Morgan stood in line at the ticket counter. She had just come from Emily’s tenement flat, where she had taken away the Spreckels love notes. She looked over her shoulders several times. A porter wheeled her trunk to the baggage car.

Kate reached across the counter and put down a ticket and some dollar bills under the window. “I bought a ticket to Indianapolis recently. I want to exchange it.”

The ticket agent said: “And where to, Miss?”

Kate said: “To Detroit.” She choked excitedly. “Michigan.”

The transcontinental railroad was a marvel of its age, as was the telegraph. Kate Morgan, dressed nicely for travel, sat on a wooden train bench in third class. She cut an apple with a paring knife, eating slowly, bite for bite, while she once again compared one of sugar mogul John Spreckels’ and domestic Charlotte Barnard’s love letters with samples of Spreckels’ handwriting that she had obtained.

Meanwhile, the train rumbled its stately, rhythmic clackity-clack. Kate had many hours to spare before she would reach Michigan, but she’d already seen enough to convince her the letters were real. She considered the vast fortune owned by the Spreckels family, and the possibilities for the largest score she had yet made, and might ever make if she had the nerve. As she examined herself, and clutched the locket at her neck, she knew she did have the nerve. She had nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

These trains had a class system. In first class coaches, better-off families sat on upholstered, spacious seats. White-jacketed waiters served them appetizing treats. In second class coaches, passengers sat jammed together in separate compartments with upholstered seats. Kate preferred the anonymity and crowding of third class. The working poor rode on hard wooden benches.

Kate ate a sandwich from wax paper on her lap as she read. She savored pungent innuendos and verbal frolicking suggesting Mr. Spreckels’d had quite a sexual romp. How nice being able to afford such fun with a poor but beautiful girl, scrubbing her hands and knees raw at the dirt in his house. Oh, yes, Mr. Spreckels, what if you had a little come-uppance for a change?

Kate sipped hot coffee from a thermos as she schemed. She envisioned a Robin Hood scheme, stealing from the wealthy to enrich the poor, meaning herself. She had next to nothing, except her previous master’s little blood money for her silence, so he could keep tormenting and fondling innocent young women. There had to be an angle. There always was an angle. What was the angle, the hinge, on which her strategy upon Mr. Spreckels would turn? Visiting his latest victim would help her figure that out. She hugged herself and shuddered at the thrill of coming into several thousand dollars—her largest haul to date, if she could pull it off. Surely Spreckels must value his privacy and good name that much. A plan began to take amorphous shape. Spreckels would value his good name, and she would see that he feared for it. It was just a matter of putting the right playing cards on the table for this game to begin. And it must be soon if she were to capitalize on Charlotte Barnard’s folly. Passing countryside turned from Western mountains and deserts to Central plains, and eventually Eastern forests starting to turn Fall colors.