Love for Sale

as part of our jobs—there was no payment for it. Of course, we never came around to a conclusion. Give it to the Brewsters. Pottinger told me I was to pay it to them as we left.”
    That afternoon when Chief Walker returned to his office at the boardinghouse, he received a phone call from an accountant in Albany.
    “I’ve been handed the mess of paperwork and it’s going to take me quite a while to sort it out. But I’ve glanced over the treasurer’s first.“
    “What’s your opinion at this point?“ Walker asked.
    The man said, “He’s either fully incompetent with bookkeeping or so clever at it that he knows exactly how to fake the incompetence. I’ll keep in touch with you as I go along. I just wanted to warn you that it’s going to take at least a couple weeks, if not a month or more.“
    “By that time, he’ll be long gone,“ Walker said.
    “I’m afraid so. Sorry for the bad news. I’ll do my best for you.”
    The next call was from Detective Williams, the fingerprint expert. “I’ve found nothing out of the way. The fingerprints on that big table in the suite tell me who sat where. Other than that, everybody’s belongings had only their own fingerprints. There are small fingerprints all over everything in the house.“
    “Those will be Mimi s. She’s the housemaid,”
    Walker said.
    “I’ll keep all of them just in case they become relevant,“ Detective Williams said, ringing off.

    * * *

    Lily discovered that the children were all wound up that Monday morning. They were passing around some secret, she suspected. Bob, the boy who drove his father’s truck, seemed to be the source of whatever the gossip was about. Lily debated with herself as to whether she should do some eavesdropping or openly pry it out of the children.
    In the end, she decided it was probably something trivial and she was better off not knowing about it. She was there to teach them worthwhile skills, not to pry into their private lives.
    She herself was fairly nervous, as well. Tomorrow was Election Day. Would Governor Roosevelt win the presidency? The signs all looked as if he would, but she didn’t trust signs, or newspaper and radio speculation. What would happen to the country if by some freak chance Hoover was reelected? Would the government go belly-up? Would there be a true second civil war tearing up the country? Would the middle of the country, the farmers who were hit so hard, try to form their own country as the South had once done? Would the C ommunists step in and wreck America with Russian rules? They’d been looking for an opportunity to stage a full-fledged revolution.
    Could these things happen if Hoover won? She felt sure they could.
    Robert, taking over for Lily after lunch, was wondering the same thing. He didn’t even notice the children whispering to each other. He gave a rousing speech to them about reminding their parents to go vote the next day. He was careful not to tell them their parents had to vote for the New York governor, much as he wished to say it. He didn’t think Mrs. Tarkington would approve of him doing that.
    It was clearly too cold that day to play croquet outside, so he took them to the now empty lunchroom and moved the tables aside to create a tiny croquet court on the floor, with colored paper indicating the wickets. Today he was too worried about the election the next day to even chide them for their rampant cheating and deliberately silly questions.
    Robert hadn’t voted in the last election, though he had been of age to do so. He knew Lily hadn’t either. He couldn’t remember if she’d been too young or simply as disinterested as he was.
    The last election was while they were still rich and, looking back, extremely simple-minded about politics. About real life, in fact. But if he had voted, the last time, he’d have voted for Hoover. The family had been staunch Republicans, and his father had told them that the man was a famous benefactor. Hoover had seen to it that the starving nations who’d lost their farms and homes in Europe were fed after the Great War.
    Hoover had sounded like a nice, compassionate man. Then. Now most of the people in his own country were starving, as Lily and he would have been if Great-uncle Horatio hadn’t left them Grace and Favor. This fact, if nothing else was wrong with the President, made Robert nearly rabid.
    He’d vote first thing tomorrow. Not that he even knew how or where. As he noticed Mrs. Tarkington going past the