Sadie's Secret: 3 (The Secret Lives of Will Tucker) Read Free Page B

thus so would Daddy.
    Sadie set the letter aside and reached for the file Henry had insisted she read. Somehow, even Will Tucker’s impossible case seemed less daunting than a brief letter from Daddy. Less worrisome. And certainly less taxing to what remained of her patience.
    The dossier was brief but impactful. The London Metropolitan Police were in receipt of a missing persons report from one Honorable Eliza Tucker, who wished to follow up on the failure of her son, a detective in the employ of the police, to return from a business trip to the United States. They were also in receipt of letters from an inmate incarcerated in the Louisiana State Penitentiary claiming to be their missing detective.
    Known next of kin for William Jefferson Tucker was his brother, last of Mobile, Alabama. The brother’s name was William John Tucker.
    His twin.
    A third letter, from the warden of Louisiana State Penitentiary to the state prison board dated May 10, 1889, acknowledged the release of a prisoner and the incarceration of another. Wrongful imprisonment was the reason.
    The name was Tucker. William Tucker.
    No middle name declared.
    Sadie sat back and tossed the last letter onto the desk. If there were two William Tuckers, then which one sat in prison?
    Instinct told her the answer. Instinct also told her that, if she valued her freedom, the last place she needed to be right now was anywhere in the state of Louisiana.

Three

    S adie arrived at her supervisor’s office at exactly ten o’clock the next morning. Unlike adhering to the fashionable lateness she had learned at her mother’s knee, she was always prompt.
    Determining that this was someone else’s case, someone else’s responsibility, she kept her suspicions to herself and tried to ignore the niggling voice that was her conscience. Or perhaps it was merely the enemy of her soul bent on sending her back down to the place where she least wanted to be.
    Other agents could be moved to the Tucker case. Surely Henry would see that she should be helping Mrs. Astor with her art troubles. Who better to fit into the drawing rooms and salons of Fifth Avenue than she? Indeed, Sadie Callum was born to take on this role. A role she had assumed with great success during much of her career with the Pinkertons.
    With each step toward the entrance of the agency’s offices, Sadie bolstered her argument. Louisiana judges preferred to deal with detectives of the male variety, as witnessed by the grief she received when she climbed into the witness box to testify against Will Tucker during his resentencing hearing.
    She sighed. Testimony that would have to be refuted if this Tucker were to be released. The judge would want to hear from her. Would probably require it.
    And yet she did not want to go. With all she had in her, Sadie determined she would avoid the assignment at all costs, something she had never done before.
    So, when Henry opened his door to usher her inside, she smiled with the confidence of a woman on a mission. A woman with an argument that would cause him to see the sense of sending someone else down to the Louisiana State Penitentiary to free the wrongly imprisoned Tucker. Because whoever freed that man would likely be sent to search for the other. She gave that a moment’s thought as she stepped past Henry and settled in the spot where he’d delivered yesterday’s ultimatum.
    If only she could guarantee that Will Tucker wasn’t spending his time within shouting distance of River Pointe, Louisiana. Or New Orleans, which he tended to favor with his presence on multiple occasions, according to the vast array of documents Pinkerton agents McMinn and Russell had compiled.
    No, Tucker was a Southerner who tended to keep his activities and his location distinctly Southern in nature. And between Mama’s people in New Orleans and beyond, and Daddy’s plantation in River Pointe, there wasn’t much of the area beneath the Mason-Dixon line that didn’t contain a family