Page 33 of Ghost in the Garden
“Not yet. How much has Boggie been bothering you?”
She still smiled. “Oh, he don’t bother me none, love. I’m much too indolent to get worked about such things.”
“What things?”
Juliet regarded him with sleepy eyes that somehow managed to be perfectly sharp. “I’d think you really were a peeler, except you’re too well dressed.”
“Constance is worried about you.”
Juliet raised her brows with polite disbelief. “You just told me she doesn’t know you’re here.”
“She doesn’t. But she did ask a”—he broke off at the sheer impossibility of describing Janey—“asked a friend who is working for us to look into Boggie and what he wanted with you.”
The disbelief didn’t fade, although her eyes remained fixed on him, perhaps with curiosity. “And what did this friend say?”
“That Boggie is trying to buy out your business and that he had the backing of an unsavory man called Lambert.”
Juliet frowned. “Is Lambert notyourunsavory character? Boggie is mine.”
“Then you really don’t know anything about Lambert?”
“I asked around after you left on Tuesday. Made his money from shares in other people’s crimes, and subletting filthy rooms. Rose to being landlord of several such filthy rooms and then tenement buildings. Now he’s shedding everything illegal, while spreading further into anything that’s onlyjustlegal. He’s a nasty player. And several people do link him to that collapsed building. They seen him there, and his wife. So it wasn’t just Gregg.”
“I didn’t think it was. Yet Gregg’s carrying the full blame for it.”
“And why do you think that is?” Juliet asked, her lip curling with a hint of contempt for the rich, pampered fellow she thought him.
“Because he’s afraid of Lambert,” Solomon said. “And no one’s going to investigate very far beyond Gregg. A good many of the rich and powerful have fingers in unsavory pies. No one wants to rock a boat full of outwardly respectable slum landlords. Gregg’s a scapegoat, but even he will probably be back.”
Her lips stretched into a faint smile that might just have been reflected in her eyes. “You ain’t just a pretty coat full of bugger all, are you, son? I should’ve known my Constance wouldn’t hook a fool, though she’d have done better to.”
“I’m not a fish, madam,” he said tartly. “I rarely swallow hooks. Can you fend Boggie off? Do youwantto?”
She blinked once. “Without being rude, son, what’s it to you?”
“Nothing.” He shrugged. “It’s Constance who cares.”
“You got a very odd idea of our family relationship. She don’t bother me and I don’t bother her.”
“She cares,” he repeated steadily.
Her eyes dropped. “And you don’t understand why, do you? I was the whore who gave her birth and let her follow in my footsteps. Outstripped me for success, and no mistake. And yes, I wasn’t much of a mother. Bet you know that too.”
“Not from her.”
“Obvious, though, isn’t it? And you’re right. She was all I had, and I wanted to keep her out of it. But I was too fond of the bottle to pay attention, and she was always too damned pretty. She was gone before I realized I was killing myself, and by then she wouldn’t listen. She wouldn’t get out. She won’t do it for you, neither, will she?”
“No,” Solomon said.
He hesitated. Constance longed for family, yet largely ignored the mother she had, hoping instead for an unknown father she could admire. Everyone needed a fairytale. And Juliet, like any mother, wanted her child as safe as she could be.
“It’s not exactly what you think. That establishment she runs is as much charity as brothel. She helps the desperate out of the trap of prostitution, while those who prefer the profession are made as safe as they can be. She manages the whole thing. No one touches her.”
He had no proof of that, just the word of her friend, and yet somehow he knew in his bones that it was true.
He half expected a derogatory remark from Juliet about his naivety. It didn’t come. Instead, she spoke of her daughter.
“She’s too young and much too pretty to be a true madam… She was never hard enough, neither. I fear for her.” Juliet’s eyes lifted suddenly to his. “You’d take her out of the whole thing if you could. Wouldn’t you?”
