A Mrs. Kelly Mystery, Book Two
All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2025 Tule Publishing
Miss Rebecca Smith had stamina, I had to give her that. An early morning rise, a whipping chill in the air, and my own silent determination to not lose our way left her to chatter nonstop about everything and nothing.
The girl had yet to surface and take a breath.
A breakfast of scalding coffee taken directly from the hotel kitchen had settled my stomach for the first half hour. The rest of our ride to the shore was punctuated with seagull cries and a rumbling from the exact center of my corset. That Becky heard neither did not come as a surprise.
“She stood there, saucy as you please, and demanded I give the money back.” Becky tossed her chin and the feather in her bonnet brushed against the open parasol above it. “She’s the one ruined the gloves. Why should Dr. Park be held responsible? I tell you, Mrs. Kelly, she has enough money to be Midas.”
Becky was pale to the point of invisibility. Her hair was not the deep blonde I carried from my Norse ancestors, but a washed-out version of straw. Where my blue eyes snapped, hers grayed to a colorless murk. The autumn winds had chapped some color into my cheeks, but Becky remained on the sallow side. All this to say, that when she waxed eloquent on an opinion for the better part of an hour, it was reassuring.
The girl did not choose to be wallpaper.
Despite my careful navigation, a wagon wheel bumped through a deep hole in the road, and she loosened her grip on her shawl and took hold of the seat we shared. The woolen shawl dropped from her shoulders, revealing a spotless white shirtwaist over a proper gray skirt with only a suggestion of ruffles. The uniform of a shopgirl was attractive in its simplicity. Serviceable. I had learned not to judge this book by its cover.
I clucked reassuringly at the horse and drove us through a soft spot of sand. The streets of San Francisco were paved with cobbles for the most part and our journey from the Palace Hotel along Market Street to the Bay had been uneventful, if congested with Monday morning traffic. Once the Ferry House was in sight and the houses turned to hotels and factories, we’d turned left and headed north along the wharves and docks.
The Bay swirled deep enough to hold entire cargo ships. The crowded terminal directed traffic not only for the daily commuting ferry boats, but giant schooners from Australia and steamers headed for Hawaii. Paddle boats and sailing vessels and cross-continental trains connected passengers and baggage with exotic ports around the world.
San Francisco’s golden gateway to the Bay presided over wealth untold. Gold dust from the distant hills had once filled our city with men. Now men jostled for an inch of town and dug for gold in each other’s pockets instead.
Becky exclaimed over each ship we passed, although her words were lost in the screeches of gulls and the whistles and shouts of the laboring men and lines of travelers thick along the docks, cable cars, and warehouses.
Although the noise did not diminish, the scent of tar and lumber gradually gave way to one of salt and fish as we continued the curving road that soon became dirt that mingled increasingly with the white sand on which our peninsula was built.
Telegraph Hill rose on our left as we meandered north, Broadway cutting a direct line from our nebulous road past its very feet and on across to the Pacific Ocean, following the sun as it rose and fell over the city.
Another squint down Broadway convinced me I couldn’t see the jailhouse from here.
I returned to the task at hand as Becky said, “I gave it to her, of course. Dr. Park always says to humor the ladies so they’ll keep coming back, but the skinflint is only in twice a year.”
Her eyes darted to mine. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s our day off, Miss Smith,” I said. “Whatever you have to discuss today will never reach the ears of your venerable Dr. Park.”
She grinned back at me. “The right glove had a tea stain on it. I could tell she tried bicarbonate before giving it up as lost.” The wagon bucked again, but she regathered her shawl. “They happen to be my size. And I happen to know how to properly clean a glove.”
I chuckled and her pale blue-gray eyes widened. “We’re here! The air is so thick with fish, you can taste them.”
“I should hope not,” I muttered, pulling up to a bustling wharf. Securing the reins, I pulled the slip of paper from my reticule and rechecked the name. Which fisherman was the correct one?
Becky and I weren’t the only early shoppers at the Filbert Street wharf. Wagons vied for positions along the boardwalk, some painted with the names of restaurants on the sideboards, others destined for the myriad of shops in the city. Shrill demands from hunched women with baskets on their arms and provocative calls from younger women swathed in colorful shawls were answered with encouraging shouts or barked words as the morning’s catch was purchased as fast as it could be unloaded from the docked boats.
At least three different languages mingled over the crates of ocean harvest.
“We need Hiram,” I said. “Hiram Paiva.”
But Becky was already over the side, parasol closed and stowed. Her eagerness was a good balance for me. I had yet to understand the meaning and good use of a day of rest. I’d only agreed to drive us to the wharf because the Palace Hotel had a standing order on Mondays and offered the loan of the wagon if I fetched it for them.
We needed a barrel of salmon and another of anchovies. Becky’s tastes obviously ran to the exotic. She was leaning, spellbound, over a tub of water snakes before I caught up with her.
With a gasp, I pulled her back.
“Mrs. Kelly,” she laughed. “They’re eels. You eat them. They don’t eat you.”
“I refuse to go near anything that isn’t a good, honest fish,” I said. “And a crab is a creature more fit for nightmares than dinner plates.” I shivered. “This Mr. Paiva is going to load the wagon for us. If we can find him.”
A woman had her limits. I’d been running a dairy farm in Minnesota not four months ago and though the sea intrigued me, I had no interest whatsoever in touching it. Or the things that slithered in its depths.
Becky took my elbow and steered us past a long dock crowded along both sides with small fishing boats. A tall rail ran down the center of the dock, draped from end to end in sprawling nets. Women picked their way through it all, refastening colorful floats or pulling at bits of seaweed or retying a knot.
“Let’s try the other side,” Becky said, tugging us into the crowds. I put a hand to my hat and reassured myself it wouldn’t come off with a gust of wind or an errant flying fish. We had neither basket nor parasol to break a path forward with, and only my fashionable bustle flailing behind, so I tolerated a certain amount of bodily crush as we fought our way toward the larger crates and the burly men who presided over them.
“Mr. Paiva!” I called, and the closest man glanced our way with heavy, rheumy eyes and a gray-streaked beard stained by years of tobacco juice. He grunted and jabbed his fat thumb over a shoulder.
“There.” Becky and I pushed onto the wooden planks and moved carefully toward another row of crates, picking our way around coils of rope, long barbed poles, and barrels of salt. One fisherman wrapped a huge fish in a sheet of newspaper while the other took coins from a woman in a yellow shawl.
“Mr. Paiva!” I called, hoping we were getting close to our quarry.
The second man squinted at our approach and dropped the money into one of the deep pockets of his canvas apron. His hairy arms were bare nearly to the shoulder, thick with sinew and muscle that rolled with indecent masculinity. Becky stared at the anchor tattoo on his forearm, gripping my elbow until I peeled her fingers free.
“I’m with the Palace Hotel,” I said, arresting my hand before it had extended far enough for a handshake.
He was smeared in a cocktail of scales and blood. The woman in the yellow shawl pushed past us with her purchase.
“Here to pick up the Monday order,” I said. “For salmon and anchovies.”
I could understand his apparent confusion. In my soft violet dress, fashionably cut for an afternoon outing, gloved and bustled and hatted, I hardly passed for a delivery boy. Even Becky was obviously one step up from a domestic servant in her tidy skirt and boots.
Next to us, a heavily bearded man began a heated conversation. I held out the slip of paper, hoping it was enough. Mr. Paiva accepted it and stared at the words, and I pointed back toward the wagon.
“I can bring it closer,” I said, “but not nearly close enough. Can you load the order for us?”
He frowned at the paper for another moment and I felt the crush into my bustle as a fisherman bumped by with a basket of sloshing water.
“Here, Mrs. Kelly,” Becky said. “Stand to the side before you’re drenched.”
I found myself on the edge of the dock and took hold of a raised piling in case anyone else came sideways at me.
“We will wait here,” I said to Mr. Paiva. It seemed the normal Monday fish order came with plenty of chaos and the responsibility of getting it correct kept my feet glued in place.
“Are you sure he’s the right one?” Becky looked anxiously from the fisherman to the shore and back.
But Mr. Paiva—if that’s who he was—tucked my paper into his pocket and trudged off down the dock.
“I can’t help but think he’s illiterate,” Becky said behind her hand.
“Portuguese,” a deep voice said. The voice came from a bald Goliath of a man with his face hidden behind a huge, sloshing basket on his shoulder. His hands and arms were black as pitch and held the burden with ease.
For the first time in my life, I felt diminutive. As though my sturdy frame and square farmer’s hands had become magically dainty and delicate.
Becky blushed.
“He speaks Spanish,” the man continued. “Italian.” He shifted the basket and brought his deep, dark eyes to mine. A small gold hoop glinted in one ear. “And English.”
“Thank you,” I said, regaining my senses. “I imagine you all do. For business. Of course.”
When he smiled, his teeth gleamed. “I hail from Barbados, darlin’. For me, it is only the French. Oui?”
Becky stared hard at the wooden planks beneath her boots and I looked frantically around for our fish order. With a wink, the man was gone.
“It’s more than I was expecting for a lark to the beach,” I muttered.
“I’m so pleased you agreed to this little jaunt.” Becky giggled and glanced at the water. “It’s ever so much better than waiting on ladies in my stuffy little shop.”
“By all means, enjoy yourself, then.” I kept my hand firmly on the piling, but turned away from the bustling people, determined to avoid another embarrassing commentary but unwilling to diminish the girl’s fun. Becky launched into a sermon on the varieties of fish before us.
The water glimmered in the morning sunshine and it felt as though we could reach out and touch the island of Yerba Linda. Beyond the Bay, the mainland mountains shimmered in the golden hues of dried grasses painted with a summer-bleached brush.
A brief dizziness washed over me, and I brought my gaze down to my feet, blinking.
“Becky. Look there.” A rope floated below us, nearly out of sight beneath the dock. “It might be…”
“Someone lost a net,” Becky finished. “I suppose it happens.”
“There must be a float of some type on it.” I recalled the nets drying across the way.
“What if someone lost their catch?” Becky was already reaching for a pole.
“I’m sure such a thing would not go missing for long. Leave it be, Becky.”
She paused, and we considered the pole in her hands. It was more of a javelin with a wicked-looking barbed hook at the top and soared a good five feet above her head.
“Goodness,” she said. “I feel like Captain Ahab.”
The image of Goliath wielding such a thing on the open sea like Neptune had me looking down again, and I took a renewed interest in the floating rope.
“Let me see it,” I said, holding out my free hand.
Visions of Odysseus and the Vikings of my childhood bedtime stories flashed in my head, and I tipped the top-heavy pole into the water. “It’s an awkward thing, isn’t it?” I mumbled, poking at the rope.
“Oh, you’ve caught it.” Becky clapped her hands. “That makes you a fisherman. Or fisher woman.”
“I didn’t mean to.” It was impossible to untangle the rope from the end of my pole with one hand, and I didn’t trust myself to release the piling. I certainly wasn’t going to let Becky do it.
“Careful.” Becky leaned out to see.
Her ear-piercing shriek forced the issue. She wobbled at the edge of the dock. I grabbed her instead of the piling, and to prevent us both from falling headfirst into the water, I pulled us directly down to the planks and landed hard on my backside.
The result was a heavy leveraging on the pole that dragged the tangled net, for net it was, out into the open.
Someone yanked the pole away from me, but my eyes were fastened on the scene below.
“Mrs. Kelly.” Becky’s whisper filled the space of everyone’s collective inhale. And then we were surrounded with shouts. Fishermen and shoppers alike swarmed around us as I pulled Becky close.
A hand had appeared first. White. Wrinkled. Curled. A gold ring adorned one finger.
Once stronger backs than mine applied themselves to the task, the hand was quickly followed by an arm, a torso, a long dress wrapped around a body in high-button shoes. Her long hair had drifted down and covered the face, brown but shot through with gray, telling that an older woman had tangled in the net. A fairly well-to-do female by the cut of her jacket and buttons that still lustered like pearls.
By the time the body was pulled onto the dock, the pandemonium reached fever pitch. I struggled to my feet, dragging Becky with me, trying to keep us from being trampled. Our skirts were ruined.
Water spread over the planks as eager hands pulled at the tangled netting around the dead woman.
“Mrs. Kelly,” Becky said, teeth chattering.
“Wait, Becky.” I patted her back, watching. Knives came out to get the job done faster, and no one protested the ruin of the net.
The woman’s face was bloated and bleached, and I stepped closer as they peeled hair from it. “They shouldn’t be touching her,” I said.
Not that anyone heard me.
An exclamation brought the men to a halt. Several stood upright and more backed away quickly.
It was my fisherman. Our Mr. Paiva. With a scowl, he held up a little, dripping book and the crowd dispersed with oaths in several languages.
“It’s…” Becky blinked. “It’s a Bible, Mrs. Kelly.”