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bottle, the fallen candelabrum . . .”
    I stopped struggling and saw what Neily was trying to point out. Brady didn’t appear to have been attacked. He appeared to have fallen in a state of drunkenness and passed out. A bottle of Tennessee bourbon lay on its side just beyond his head. And those papers fanning away from beneath his hand . . . I could see the words New Haven-Hartford-Providence emblazoned across the top of the first page, and beneath them, figures, first in mileage, then in dollars.
    “The stolen plans,” Neily said softly at my shoulder.
    “What?”
    “The railroad business,” he clarified. Then he pointed. In the corner of the room, the waist-high steel and brass safe my uncle always traveled with stood like a sentinel, its door appearing to be sealed tight.
    I whirled to face Neily. “He was bringing them back. I swear it. He meant to make it right.”
    “But Alvin caught him at it . . .”
    “Don’t say it, Neily. Don’t even think it. Brady wouldn’t . . .”
    His gaze swung sharply up from Brady’s prone form. “You knew about the documents?”
    “No.” I shook my head briskly. “At least, not until this morning. And even then I didn’t know much. Brady came to see me, he said—”
    “Why didn’t you tell me?” He grabbed my shoulders, almost hurting me. “Emmaline, you promised to call me if you heard from him.”
    Brady stirred and let out a groan. At the same time, I became aware of voices and footsteps coming up the stairs. Brady sat partway up and groaned again. Reaching out, he grabbed a fistful of coverlet and groped into a semi-upright sitting position, only to double over as a fit of coughing overtook him. Then, moaning, he pressed a hand to the back of his head. Uncle Cornelius, his brother William, and two policemen barreled into the room.
    Red-faced and puffing, Uncle Cornelius drew up short. “What in hell is going on here?”
     
    In the next minutes, Neily and I helped Brady up off the floor and into a chair. Cornelius and William stood by scowling while all the lights were lit. One of the officers gathered up the fallen papers and the other picked up the silver candelabrum that lay on the floor on its side, its two tapers having rolled beneath the bed. I noticed wax and scorch marks on the rug—thank goodness nothing had ignited. The main structure might be fireproof, but the furnishings were not.
    Through the open balcony door, the sounds of commotion drifted from below. The shrieks of whistles and the deep-toned barking of orders told me more policemen were securing the area and inspecting the body. Officer Jesse Whyte approached my brother. “Good evening, Brady.”
    Running a hand up the back of his tousled blond hair, Brady gave a nod and a low groan that resulted in Officer Whyte wrinkling his short, thin nose and pulling back. “Been nipping a bit tonight, eh, Brady?”
    “No . . . I haven’t been, actually. . . .”
    “Uh-huh.”
    This was not Brady’s first encounter with Jesse Whyte; far from it. Nor mine, for that matter. A lean man in his early thirties with large ears and deceptively youthful features, Jesse lived in the same house he’d grown up, a white clapboard colonial just down the street from our own family home on the Point section of Newport. We were old neighbors, old family friends.
    As a cop on a beat, Jesse had apprehended Brady on countless occasions over the years, though only rarely had charges been brought. Typically, Jesse would bed Brady down for the night in an unlocked cell to let him sleep it off, and call me in the morning.
    Now a plainclothes detective, his taut expression overrode the initial relief I’d felt when he strode through the bedroom door. “You want to tell me what happened, then, Brady?”
    My brother’s pale eyebrows drew together. He squinted, suggesting unconsciousness had left his brain fuzzy. I thought of the empty bottle of bourbon, but when Brady’s gaze swerved to mine, his eyes were sharp. I