“No. Mr. Steele the younger will be going with you. He’ll be posing as your husband.”
Raven’s mask dropped and her startled eyes flew to his. His eyes held both fury and a hint of amusement.
“You’ll be the housekeeper. He’ll be the valet and driver.”
Raven questioned him, “Have you ever done anything like this before?”
“Of course not.”
Lord.“Then why choose him instead of a male member of my family?” she asked Welch.
“Because I need someone who’ll keep you on the straight and narrow, and another Moreau will not. Left to your own devices, who knows what the outcome may be.”
Raven didn’t care for this at all. “His father has betrayed my family twice now. How am I supposed to work with someone I can’t trust?”
The son tossed back in a voice dripping with sarcasm, “This from a woman who swindles people for a living.”
Raven raised her chin defiantly. Their gazes dueled.
Hazel spoke. “Why don’t you have another way to achieve this?”
“We haven’t found a way to get inside the house. The document is in the possession of Charlestonian Aubrey Stipe, a Democratic member of the South Carolina State Senate, as I noted a moment ago. He and his wife, Helen, were staunch supporters of the Confederacy, and their beliefs haven’t changed. From the reports I’ve received, Mrs. Stipe will only allow Colored help in her home because it lets her believe she still owns slaves. Which is why we’re sending you two.”
Raven was finding this plan increasingly distasteful.
“How do you know he still has it?” Braxton Steele asked.
“Frankly, I don’t. The original owner inherited the copy from her grandfather. Apparently the Declaration was printed and distributed to the public back in those days. Last year, the granddaughter saw Stipe’s likeness in a newspaper and remembered him as one of the men in the reb unit that sacked her Richmond home and stole the parchment and other items during the war. She traveled to his office in Columbia to ask for its return. He laughed in her face. Told her it was a spoil of war and that he’d deny ever having the conversation with her about it. After the visit, she wrote to Mr. Pinkerton and proposed donating the document to the country if it could be retrieved. One of our agents met with Stipe, but he denied any knowledge of the theft.”
“Yet you didn’t threaten his freedom,” Raven pointed out.
Welch bristled. “He’s an elected official.”
“And not subject to petty blackmail like us poor Blacks.”
Welch’s eyes turned hard. Raven showed no remorse.
“I can have you jailed again, Miss Moreau.”
“Then do so, and good luck finding someone else to do the job.” After the awful experience in a Detroit jail, Raven had sworn to never be jailed again. But the Pinkerton’s hypocrisy needed tobe addressed, jail or no jail. “I’d probably be more cooperative had you simply asked for our assistance and not threatened our freedom just because you believe you have the authority to do so.” Did Welch know or care about the violence presently sweeping South Carolina? The racial killings had become so entrenched that one of President Grant’s last official acts had been to send in federal troops to combat the terror.
Welch’s lips thinned and she assessed Raven in a way that seemed to show the detective hadn’t considered asking for assistance but chose to exercise her power instead. And if Raven didn’t trust her before, she trusted her even less now.
“Let’s get back to the issue at hand, shall we?”
Raven gestured for her to continue.
“You and Mr. Steele will be Millers. Lovey and Evan.”
Raven glanced Steele’s way. He showed no reaction. She kept her simmering temper hidden beneath her mask.
“The current housekeeper and driver are a married couple. A few days ago, the husband received a letter purportedly from his Texas family, but sent by my office, with word that his mother is on her deathbed. He and his wife are preparing to leave, if they haven’t done so already. There’s a Pinkerton operative in Charleston who’s been there for the past six months working on another investigation and has ingratiated herself into thecircle of Helen Stipe’s friends. She’s going to suggest you as replacements and claim you worked for me, her sister in Virginia. She’ll tell Mrs. Stipe you plan to relocate to Charleston and are in need of employment. You’ll come highly recommended.”
Raven thought that a simple enough explanation but wondered what the other detective had been looking into. “Why doesn’t Mrs. Stipe hire someone local to replace the people you sent the letter to about their dying mother?”
“She has a well-known reputation for being cheap. It’s said the only reason the other couple continue to work for her is because she owned them before the war.”
The Steele son asked, “How much interaction will we have with this other agent?”