Shadows in Chinatown Chapter One

A Mrs. Kelly Mystery, Book One

All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2025 Tule Publishing

The train slowed as buildings blocked the strip of blue from our view and the cabin filled with a general bustle as we pulled into our final destination. I ached to stand up and stretch, but I kept my hands tucked patiently in the folds of my skirt and felt around with my booted toe for the carpetbag.

Still there.

“That isn’t the Pacific, deary,” the terribly helpful woman seated across from me said. “That’s only the Bay. But San Francisco isn’t so large a city you can’t go see the ocean any time you’ve a mind to.”

I smiled politely. She had attached herself to me in Omaha, Nebraska out of a good old-fashioned sense of obligation. As she looked to be at least twice my age, and I was no spring chicken, I’d tolerated her hovering in order to hover over her. Women did not travel alone, not single ladies and certainly not elderly ones.

For one moment, the memory of Aunt Mary’s face came to mind. Then I shut the door on it firmly and peered out the window again. At my future.

“I can’t wait to be home.” The elderly woman’s voice grew bolder. “It’s been years. San Francisco has a mist that comforts a body. It embraces you.” She winked at me. “Or hides you, if that be your pleasure.”

Pleasure? My face grew warm, and I forced my eyes back to the window. In mere minutes, I would meet for the first time the man who was to marry me by sundown. The thought of hiding in the train and taking it in reverse flashed through my mind and, just as quickly, vanished.

“Come to join your husband, you said?” Her lips pursed with the observation, and I took in a deep breath to dodge the very last of her travel inquiries with a firm but polite invitation to mind her own business.

I didn’t wear a wedding band. Yet. But my best pair of gloves made sure no one knew that.

“You’ve a no nonsense look about you,” she said. “I’m sure it will all turn out—”

The train engine shuddered and the last of her words were lost in the sound of a shrill whistle as the train came to a complete stop. My companion stood and caught hold of the brass rail above us. The conversation was clearly over, and her duty done. Picking up her two small bags, she cocked her head briefly in my direction and was gone. Trailing her slowly, I let myself out of the car and the last of my travel inertia was swept away.

The depot cacophony assaulted my ears. From the bowels of the engine steam released with a hiss and other compartments emptied, pouring passengers into the teeming mass of rushing travelers.

The photograph of my husband had been dutifully memorized, but his was not among the faces rushing by. Ebony, coffee, ivory with an aged yellow patina. Ruddy and pale and freckled and pockmarked and whiskered.

Nobody looked like him. Nobody looked like me. I blinked and told myself to stop staring.

After a bump from a passing suitcase, I sought refuge behind one of the crowded benches on the landing, as out of the way of the crushing bodies as one could get without climbing to the rooftop.

Unlike mine, women’s hairstyles were swept up beneath the hats. I gripped my carpetbag with both hands to stop a compulsion to fiddle with my crown of braids. My new hat mostly covered them, but—with a wider brim and a single pheasant’s feather that I’d preened all the way across the country—the hat was also out of fashion.

I would buy a new one after the wedding.

A shriek exploded on the platform as a man darted from the throng of travelers and threw himself headlong between train cars, racing over the rows of empty tracks beyond. Like a swarm of angry bees, the teeming mass parted briefly to reveal a woman calling for a policeman.

“He took my bag!” she screeched. “Police!” The rest of her words were obliterated by the swarm as it closed in again, undulated, and dispersed. The woman was left alone clutching a gentleman’s arm, and he appeared to be as puzzled as she when it became painfully obvious that no police were forthcoming.

Horrified, I heard my Aunt Mary’s stinging reproach as though she’d whispered it in my ear—truly a feat from her grave in faraway Minnesota.

“You don’t have to marry a heathen. It’s a den of iniquity you’re rushing to. You’ve reached thirty years, not a hundred. Why the panic, Karine?”

Not panic, aunty. A clearheaded decision. The man is well able to keep a home and a wife. He is a businessman.

“A butcher.”

Yes. I am certain, from his words, that he is kind.

“A man who orders a wife as though she were a piano or a sack of potatoes.”

Aunt Mary!

“You’ll be lost. Lost in that big, wild city!”

But I was not lost. I stood at the official headquarters of the Central Pacific Railroad at the corner of Fourth and Townsend streets. According to the watch pinned to my shirtwaist, our 11:35 a.m. arrival had been delayed by twenty minutes. I was late.

“Cities are full of disease and fires.” The train let loose another almighty hiss and her words hissed along with it. “And pagans.”

A man at the far end of the platform looked my way and straightened. Purposefully, he headed toward my bench. His well-cut suit was pin-striped and gray, and his hair and eyes were dark. His top hat set at an angle told me that he was a man who did not take himself strictly seriously. It took a beat before I discerned his work boots, well-worn but perhaps as polished as such boots could be.

For shame, aunty. You shouldn’t keep prejudice.

My Mr. Kelly smiled as he approached and removed his top hat. Without it, he was an inch shorter than I. He was also a foot narrower. But I could see that he had good teeth under his thick mustache.

“Miss Langland?” He extended a rough but scrubbed hand.

“How do you do, Mr. Kelly?” My hand was larger than his. I held his gaze so he wouldn’t look down and notice.

“Stunning,” he murmured.

I pulled my hand away as my smile faltered.

“Your eyes,” Mr. Kelly said, fingering his hat brim. “A very unusual color. I’ve been guessing at it since your photograph arrived. Cornflower blue, I’d call them. Nearly violet.”

His words filled me with more pleasure than he could know. I’d been praised for many things in my life, but beauty wasn’t one of them.

“I’m afraid they’re quite common where I come from,” I said. “All my brothers sport the same.”

My handsome husband-to-be measured up to his photograph and more. His advertisement seeking a wife, a tiny blip near the back of a newspaper I’d been about to line my new shelves with, had caught my attention. Over the months that followed, his letters had captured my heart.

“But what does my good Lutheran girl—surrounded with a loving family, I might add—want with an Irish Catholic stranger? You can’t trust them.”

I had hidden our correspondence from everyone, except her. Then turned around and hidden her telegram completely, even from myself.

But I could not get her out of my head.

A June wedding, Aunt Mary. And a home of my own. I’ll learn to love them both. San Francisco. And Mr. Kelly.

“Have you a trunk?” he asked, snapping me back into the present.

“I do.” I hoped he missed the momentary hesitation his words gave me. The hat went back on, and he reached for my elbow. It was a moment before I recalled the manners involved. A man escorted a lady by taking her elbow and guiding her about. Something like a promenade, but less studied. It took me all the way across the landing to find the rhythm that matched his steps and kept me from dragging him about instead, like a bull on a tether.

“I’ve hired a carriage,” Mr. Kelly said with a broad grin that seemed a more or less permanent feature. “It delayed me, but your train was late as well. No harm done, then. And we’ve places to be.”

After arranging for the trunk to be delivered, we rounded the corner of the station.

“Welcome to San Francisco, Miss Langland.”

The scents of coal, smoke, and unwashed bodies vanished with the first tangy taste of ocean air. Not ocean, I reminded myself. The Bay. All the same, I breathed in the summer sunshine as Mr. Kelly escorted me down the steps and into a waiting carriage pulled by a fine pair of chestnuts. I had only a brief sight of a gull as it wheeled overhead.

“Fourth Street,” he said, closing the door. “Nothing to see here.”

Surely he was jesting.

“How was your trip?” he asked, as the carriage lurched forward. Mr. Kelly took the seat across from me and leaned forward, hands braced on his knees. “You passed through several states. Any of them catch your fancy?”

“None so much as this one.” I tried in vain to see out the window, but the teasing squares of passing rooftops and wires gave me no sense of where we were. “We stopped in the wilderness and the desert and some towns. But none of them reminded me of home.”

“You’re homesick?” His grin faltered.

“Oh, no.” I took my attention away from the window. “I meant each place was like a country to itself. Vastly different. The food, too. And the accents.” I wondered what might most interest him. “We were served antelope steaks in Colorado that I’m certain were horse meat. Unbelievable, what some folks will try pulling on a tourist.”

“A first-class ticket was out of the question.” His words became terse.

Now I’d done it, placed my sizable foot into my sizable mouth. “My, no! No criticism on the passage, Mr. Kelly, none at all. I’m a good cook, as I’ve written you, and I can tell the difference, is all I was saying.” I leaned forward. “It was mighty good of you to send for me. And I appreciate economy.”

The carriage hit a rut and we nearly bumped heads. Sitting upright with his grin returning like sunshine, he said, “My sister does the cooking, but she’ll be that happy to let you show her a thing or two.”

I held my tongue. It was all but a proverb that you couldn’t have more than one cook to a kitchen. Mr. Kelly went on to explain the many types of meat that passed through the family business. Beef, pork, chicken, and duck, I knew. Venison was something imported to large cities, though. And San Francisco offered more varieties of fish than I could keep track of.

“I suppose you know all about cows,” he said, as the thought struck him.

I was not going to spend my wedding day discussing Holsteins.

“We do have a dairy business,” I said. “Three herds pastured on acres of homestead. The big house, a barn, a silo, a water tank, and a creamery on the main county road.”

I allowed the implications. I’d written him about home, but had left out the details. We hadn’t lacked money, but none of it had been mine.

Now he stared at me and said, “That’s the ticket. You’ve a fair face, Miss Langland. Lovely as new cream. I’ve a bonny milkmaid for a wife and no mistake.”

The flattery loosened the tension forming in my spine.

“Courthouse is just around the next corner,” he said. “Have you anything to add to our arrangements?”

I hesitated. “I think you are more than fair, Mr. Kelly. With all good intentions, I believe we have a fine agreement between us.”

“I’m not one to welch on a deal, future wife.”

“No, I don’t believe you are.” It took a strong man to deny his Catholic priest and marry with a justice of the peace, and a stronger woman to leave her church behind for it. We’d met in the middle, as any sensible couple would. Our other arrangements had been none of Aunt Mary’s business, but it seemed the man I was marrying would keep to them. I smiled in satisfaction.

“This way, Miss Langland. We’re not the only ones getting hitched today, and I’ve been told you don’t dare keep the judge waiting.”

It took several minutes for me to find any words. The building before me was as grand as any I’d hoped to see and twice as imposing as a church. City Hall held out thick pillars like welcoming candles, soaring upward to ignite ornate roofing above and setting the dome blazing with the afternoon sun. Arching windows stretched two stories tall if they were an inch. Each step we climbed added weight to the gravity of my choices.

“Mr. Kelly. We’re to be married within the hour. Please call me by my Christian name, Karine.”

He opened the massive door and let me pass before him. “Karine.” It sounded possessive in his mouth.

Marble floors sent soft echoes bouncing along corridors as we made our way to the courtroom. A couple stepped out, nearly colliding with us in their preoccupation with each other, and another couple stood before the judge himself as we stepped up to a large glossy desk.

A secretary held a finger to her lips—as though anyone would disrupt such a solemn room. She waved us over to the desk and picked up a fountain pen.

“Name?” she asked in a terse voice. She looked tough as a willow whip.

“Karine.” I hesitated. Then, stronger, “Karine Halvorsdatter Torkelson Langland.”

She smirked without looking up. “Just one’ll do. Langland’s easy enough. From?”

“Waterford Township. Minnesota.”

“Thought so. Your accent gave you away.”

“I…”

“And you?” she continued without looking up. The judge was ready for us.

Patrick. My Mr. Kelly was Patrick. He had a ring for each of us, and our brief ceremony was over before trembling could betray my nerves.

“Sign here,” the lady said. She slid the inkwell in my direction as another couple took our place before the judge. I added my tidy signature. The plain gold band did not turn my wide, capable hands into the dainty and delicate hands of a lady. I was quick to put my gloves back on as Mr. Kelly—Patrick—finished our business with the clerk.

He’d kept his word. No diamonds on my wedding band. No kiss on my lips.

We left the room in silence and had gotten halfway through the foyer when my husband stopped.

“Here now,” he said. “We’ll not go another step before I’ve given you your wedding gift.”

Gently pulling me aside, he reached into his pocket and handed me a small packet wrapped in red silk, knotted at a corner.

“Mr. Kelly.” Was it wrong to wield a reproachful tone before the ink on the wedding certificate had dried?

“I know, I said nothing of the sort.” His grin was contagious. “But it wouldn’t be a surprise otherwise, would it?”

The silk fell away to reveal a necklace, a polished stone disk that now lay cool and gleaming in my palm. Knotted with a black, waxed cord wound through a central hole, the mottled golden pendant nearly throbbed with a pulse. Or perhaps it was my own at the sight of such a gift.

“Passed down for generations,” he said, the pride evident in his voice. “Look.” He took it from my hand and dangled it in the sunshine slanting from the window. It lit up from within, a fiery sunset with moody white and brown clouds floating through the stone.

“Allow me.” There was no chance of him lifting it over both hat and hair, so he retied the cord, his fingers brushing the nape of my neck and sending small shivers down my spine.

“The symbol of my family.” He stepped round to face me and lifted the pendant from my collar. “Our family,” he murmured, his voice suddenly as intimate as any kiss. “Wear it over your heart. None will ever see it but us. ’Tis more personal to me than your wedding band and more precious than the diamonds that should have adorned it. Swear you will.”

I fanned my blazing face. In such a public place, I had no intention of causing a scene. Before I could rethink the implications, I ran a finger along my collar and slipped the pendant beneath my shirtwaist, where—with some thanks to my corset and more thanks to God’s bountiful generosity—it was in danger of never being found again. His eyes followed.

Ah, me. Sooner or later, the rest of him would.

I turned my hot face away. The disk warmed against my skin.

“You don’t know him,” Aunt Mary whispered.

What’s done is done. I closed the door firmly in her face and took my husband’s arm. “Let’s go home, Mr. Kelly.”