that sounds important. What do you think?”
“I think it’ll work.” He gave her the smile he reserved for her alone, the quiet grin that seemed to promise she could depend on him, and Lucy’s trepidation lifted a little.
Lucy took a deep breath and tried the door to the building. It wasn’t locked, so she slipped inside, Jessie following right behind her. Inside, the air hummed with the sounds of the sewing machines and the chatter of the women working at the cutting tables. A plump, gray-haired woman wearing glasses on the end of her nose looked up from the nearest table and asked if she could help them.
“My mother is Miyako Takeda,” Lucy said. Several heads turned, the women clearly curious. Caught staring, they quickly returned to their work.
“I have her asthma medicine. She forgot it this morning, and if she doesn’t take it she’ll get sick.”
“I’m sorry,” the lady said, setting down her pinking shears and dusting off her skirt. “Miyako has been called away. You can leave the medicine with me.”
“Called away?” Lucy echoed. “Where?”
The lady glanced nervously down the service hallway at the end of the room. “She had an errand for Mr. Rickenbocker,” she said at last.
“Oh. I’ll just... Maybe I can come back a little later.”
“I really don’t mind giving it to her, dear.”
Lucy couldn’t give the woman the box, because it was empty. She hadn’t planned for this scenario. She thought either she would see her mother right away or, if she wasn’t in the main room, she could use the pillbox to gain access to wherever she was working. “No, she, she...” Lucy stammered, the woman staring at her curiously. “She’s very strict. She won’t let me give it to anyone else.”
She thanked the woman, averting her eyes from her appraising gaze, and turned to go. As soon as they were outside, she pulled Jessie toward the side of the building, her body trembling from a buildup of nerves.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Where would she have gone?”
“Do you want to wait for her to come back?”
Lucy hesitated, considering her options. “Maybe we could look around?” she finally asked. “That lady...she was looking down the hall. Maybe that’s where they went.”
“Where? You mean the other end of the building? That’s where the trucks pull up. I bet it’s just storage and shipping down there.”
“Yeah, but she acted like she knew where they were and didn’t want to say.”
“Okay.” Jessie touched her arm lightly. “If you want, I can stand out by the street and block the view so no one can see you by the window.”
Lucy couldn’t help thinking of the schemes Nancy Drew was always coming up with in situations like this. “You’ll be my distraction?”
“Sure. Whatever you need.”
Lucy gingerly approached the side of the building, treading carefully in the landscaping. The windows along the short wing were propped open to allow as much air as possible to circulate inside the hot rooms. Lucy rested her fingertips lightly on the sill of the closest window. Behind her she could hear Jessie’s tuneless whistling, and felt reassured; anyone passing by would focus on him, not her. But inside the room there was nothing but a pair of empty handcarts and a long metal bar against the wall, from which hung a row of finished garments, wrapped in paper and ready for shipping.
A flash of movement caught her eye. There—at the end of the room—a small anteroom, the door partway open. It took Lucy a moment to process what she was seeing, gray and white moving together until she realized it was two people she was looking at, not one, pressed up against a utility sink, partially obscured by the door. A man, his arms wrapped around a woman who seemed to be struggling silently, trying to extricate herself from the embrace, her blouse pulled free from her skirt, her hair falling from its carefully pinned chignon. Lucy heard a small grunt as the woman tried to push the man away.
Her mother.
Lucy gasped as she recognized her mother’s glossy hair, her tiny pearl earring, the near-white nape of her slender neck. She struggled harder, but the man was undeterred. His arms, roving across her back, came to rest on the curve of her buttocks and he squeezed and kneaded while his mouth traveled along her throat, burrowing into the V of her unbuttoned blouse. “Stop,” she heard her mother say, but it sounded more like a question. “Someone will hear you.”
“Let ’em,” he grunted,