The Detroit Electric Scheme Read Online Free PDF Page A

his employees at the EAD. I marched up the steps to the porch and used my fist to hammer away at the door.A few seconds later, John threw it open. Frank stood behind him, another hulk, nearly as big as Cooper. I demanded they remove themselves. They refused. I shouted over them, proclaiming my undying love for Elizabeth, then took a swing at Cooper. My next memory is of him dragging me like a rag doll down the sidewalk and dumping me out the gate. I’d cursed John and all his progenitors at the top of my lungs.
    My next thought roiled my guts. I had threatened him.
    I’d said I was going to kill him.
    Elizabeth and her parents might have heard. Frank Van Dam had definitely heard. But surely they would know it was the empty threat of a drunk.
    I was an idiot to go back there. Elizabeth hated me and had every reason to do so. But I’d promised my father I would tell her about John, and it was possible she’d know who wanted him dead. I had to go.
    At nine o’clock, I limped the remaining three blocks in the rain and climbed the wide stairway to the front porch of the Humes’ spacious yellow and white Queen Anne. Alberts, an older man who served as the Humes’ butler and chauffeur, answered my knock on the paneled wood door. His gaunt face was a blank canvas, betraying no reaction to seeing me after so long. He took my coat and hat, and in a formal voice asked me to wait in the parlor.
    I warmed myself at the large stone fireplace while I waited, breathing in the aroma of wood smoke mixed with furniture polish and disinfectant. It hurt just to be within the cheerful green-papered walls of this room. Elizabeth and I had spent many happy hours here during the nearly four years we courted, most times under the watchful eye of her mother. The other times, when her parents were gone, had been even happier, until the last. I shook my head to clear it. I had to think about Elizabeth.
    â€œWill?” Elizabeth’s normally clear alto was husky. “What are you doing here?”
    I spun around and stood for a moment in shock. Elizabeth was thin to the point of emaciation, with haunted green eyes peering out abovehollow cheeks. Her long blue skirt bunched underneath her belt, and the white plaited shirtwaist hung about her like a windless sail. Her curly auburn hair, normally swirled into a glorious chignon, hung dull and lifeless over her shoulders. She looked more like an impoverished immigrant than the daughter of a wealthy jurist.
    And it was my fault.
    I took a deep breath and gathered my wits. “Elizabeth, please, sit.”
    She stepped lightly as if the soles of her feet were injured, and perched on the edge of the straight-backed white sofa. I reached out to take her hand, but she pulled it away.
    â€œWhat do you want?” Her voice was lazy, words drawn out like she’d just awakened. Her china-white face was a frozen mask. She was still beautiful, to be sure, a Gibson Girl with delicate features contrasted by sensuous lips, but the look was gone. Her eyes, which had always spoken of a hidden knowledge she alone possessed—a confident look, arrogant even—now stared back at me blankly, half open.
    â€œI’m sorry to have to give you this news.” I stopped, still searching for the words, the phrases that might cushion the blow. Finally, I just said, “John is dead. He was killed at my father’s factory last night.”
    Her eyes widened, and she slumped against the back of the sofa. “Dead? But . . .”
    â€œHe was crushed in a hydraulic press. It doesn’t appear to have been an accident.”
    â€œHe was murdered?”
    â€œYes.”
    Her head slowly tilted toward me. “Did you do it?”
    â€œWhat? No. Why would you—”
    â€œThen who did?” She closed her eyes and nestled into the sofa.
    â€œI don’t know. Whoever it was seems to have gotten away. . . . I wondered . . . Do you have any idea