The Widows

by Jess Montgomery

  Tears start coursing down Marvena’s face. Had he died pursuing that loyalty? Seeking justice for Eula?

  “And I know he was loyal to me as his wife. And to you as his best friend—”

  “Oh, Lily—”

  “No, it’s true. You were his best friend.” Suddenly Lily is sobbing, and seeing her face crumple with anguish is more than Marvena can bear.

  Marvena and Lily grasp each other, let their tears come unreservedly, in racking relief, first tears since Daniel’s been found and Eula’s been found. Since they found each other.

  After they finally let go of each other, the cabin suddenly feels too confining. Marvena goes and opens the front door, gasps in great gulps of sweet country air—the stench of Rossville doesn’t climb up Devil’s Backbone except on the windiest of days.

  “Mama?”

  In a voice pulled too thin, Marvena says, “I’m fine, Frankie. Jus’ play with your dolls.…”

  Would Daniel have been set up to be murdered to keep him from finding Eula? With a bonus that without him it would be easier to suppress the miners?

  Marvena comes back in the cabin, leans in the doorway. “We’ll never know who Eula was sleeping with, but likely that’s her killer. And possibly Daniel’s, too.”

  Lily rubs her eyes. “We have to find out. For Eula’s sake. For Daniel’s. Oh God, Marvena, if we don’t find out … if there’s no justice…”

  Boom. Fainter. Deeper.

  “Justice? You know who’s setting those charges in the mines … running out hopefully afore the flame runs up the fuse to th’ dynamite?”

  “No.”

  “Alistair. He’s the smallest, can get to the deepest, tightest places. Tom was telling you the truth. Daniel, last time we saw him, he was going to call an old army buddy who works in the Bureau of Mines, who might could help our cause.”

  “Daniel never shared a name of his army friend with me. After Tom told me Daniel was planning to contact an army friend, I read and reread the few letters Daniel sent to me during the war. But the only man Daniel names as a war buddy is my own brother.”

  Marvena drops her head to her hands. This all seems too much to bear—Eula’s death, Daniel’s, the thought the two might be related, the fragility of the movement, the danger of the Widowmaker reopening. Lily puts a hand on her shoulder, and Marvena doesn’t shake it free as she would have a few weeks before. She finds herself wanting to comfort Lily in turn, but instead she stands so suddenly that Lily’s hand falls from her shoulder and slaps on the table. Marvena moves woodenly to the quilt, pulls it aside, and goes behind it for a minute. When she comes back out she’s holding a handful of letters, bound in a faded red ribbon. She puts the packet before Lily.

  “He wrote me, too,” Marvena says.

  Lily looks at the letters, touches the bundle, pulls her finger back as if stung. She looks up at Marvena, clearly struggling to keep her expression placid. But hurt stirs her face as she says, “Well then, maybe he told you all about his buddy.”

  “Maybe,” Marvena says. God, woman, she thinks, don’t make me say it.

  Lily’s eyes widen as understanding comes to her. “Oh…”

  “He never knew I—”

  Boom. Deeper, but even yet bone rattling.

  Lily is stone-cold still. Then she unties the red ribbon, picks up a letter, slides it out of its envelope, begins reading, her voice flat. “‘My dearest Marvena…’”

  CHAPTER 25

  LILY

  Lily has tried twice in two days to reach Ben Russo at the Bureau of Mines via telegram. Now she steps out of the telegram office, disappointed that there’s no reply. In the bright day, she blinks hard. Then she walks down the street to the Bronwyn County Courthouse, ignoring the people, the storefronts, the life around her.

  The letters from Daniel to Marvena swim in her head. Not love letters. Yet in some ways more deeply hurtful. To Lily he’d sent romantic niceties, sexual teases. Glib reassurances that he was perfectly secure. Mundane complaints about the weather, food or lack of it, sleeping conditions. Descriptions of Paris, of small villages.

  But to Marvena he’d confided his heart, his fears, his sorrow, even his hurt over Roger’s death. How much he missed her and Eula. How much he missed his beloved Lily. How he hoped to survive, have children, have a life free of fighting and hatred.

  Lily considers: Daniel had been physically true to her. Shouldn’t she be grateful? That kind of faithfulness is more than most women get. And no doubt Daniel thought he was simply protecting her, as he’d always wanted to, from the moment they’d met.

  But for truly opening his heart, Daniel had turned to Marvena. She was where he’d found solace, courage, reassurance. Lily was the love of Daniel’s life. But Marvena … She was the friend of his life.

  Lily had seen it in Marvena’s face, whenever she glanced up from reading, Marvena taking in Daniel’s words in for the first time, so wrapped up that she nearly missed the significance when Lily read: “‘Since losing Roger, I try not to get to know the fellas too well here. Don’t know how long they’ll last. But I’m stuck with a new assistant gunner, fella from Cleveland, won’t shut up. Ben Russo. All sorts of stories to tell about his family, his girl, his job at the Bureau of Mines, how he can’t wait to get back to it. He says he can get me in, but I tell him me and Roger, we’re going to go back, help Pops with the grocery.…’”

  Pops. That’s what Daniel had called Lily’s father. As Lily gasped, thinking of her brother, of those innocent plans to run the grocery after the war, Marvena had asked, frowning, “Why did you stop?”

  And Lily pointed out that Ben Russo was the name they’d been looking for. The only other soldier Daniel cited by name, except Roger and the commander of their unit.

  Ben Russo, at the Bureau of Mines.

  Once they found the name, though, Lily kept reading the letters. She didn’t need to check with Marvena to confirm she wanted to hear the rest. When she’d finished, she’d looked up and seen the sad slope to Marvena’s shoulders, her head in her hands. Lily had left the letters on the table and gone quietly from the cabin.

  And now she was trying to find the truth about the death of her husband, a man she was no longer sure she’d really known in life.

  A hard jolt against her shoulder makes Lily come back to herself. She’s walked far past the courthouse and just run into a man.

  “Ma’am? Are you all right?”

  Lily looks at an older gentleman staring at her in alarm. She sees both of their hats on the sidewalk, realizes she ran into him hard enough that she knocked them both off.

  “Oh yes, I’m sorry.”

  The man picks up his hat and puts it back on and hands Lily her hat, all the while giving the star on her jacket a pointed look. She knows what he’s thinking—that this job is too stressful for a woman. Lily puts her hat back on and walks to the courthouse. Inside, she walks straight to the small office of the mayor.

  Mr. Wickler, the mayor’s secretary, jumps up. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No,” Lily says. “But I want to see the mayor.”

  The secretary pulls open a date book, makes a show of clucking as he turns pages.

  Lily slaps her hands onto his desk, leans forward. “Now.”

  * * *

  An hour and a half later, Lily slowly walks up Court Street to her house. Mayor Kline isn’t sympathetic to the miners—he would, he says, simply have her suppress any talk of unionization meetings at the opera house. Still, Lily is able to convince Kline that suppression will only lead to more violence. The date is set for Marvena to hold an open rally in two weeks.

  Lily thinks about what she needs to do next to ensure the safety of her town and county. Likely, men from surrounding mining towns will also attend. The town will be crowded. She’ll have to deputize townsmen who are sympathetic or at least neutral, giving them authority to arrest Pinks or miners if either get out of hand. She should meet with the commissioners soon, perhaps even that night,
for the same purpose on a county level.

  She is rattled from her thoughts by the sight of Abe Miller again awaiting her on her front porch. He’s leaning against the porch rail, smoking.

  As soon as Lily is within earshot, Abe says, “I have something from Mr. Vogel. Your answer, he says, to the query you had the local newspaperman make to the Cincinnati paper.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Darby Turner. You spoke with him after your installment as sheriff.”

  Abe pulls an envelope out of his vest pocket, hands it to Lily.

  Lily stares at the envelope, relieved to have an excuse to break her gaze with Abe, now remembering who this reporter Darby is. He’d asked her on the courthouse steps, after she was sworn in, if she’d be sheriff in the same way Daniel had been. “But how would Mr. Vogel know…?”

  “He’s connected to everyone, Mrs. Ross. Everyone. In any case, that’s not my concern. I am, in this case, just the messenger.”

  Lily gives him a sharp look. “Very well.” She starts to go into her house.

  But Abe grabs her arm. “Oh, delivering the envelope is not the message. The message is for after you’ve read the contents of the envelope.”

  Lily pulls her arm, but there’s no easing from Abe’s hold.

  Two men, chatting amiably, walk past Lily’s house. They quiet when they see Abe, hurry on, heads down.

  “Oh, it won’t take you long,” Abe says. “What’s more, I’ve checked, and your children—darling Jolene, little Micah—have left for a stroll on this beautiful day with your dear friend Hildy. No doubt to see your mama. And that sweet little brother of yours … Caleb Junior, if I’m not mistaken?” Abe smiles thinly, showing just the tips of his teeth.

  Lily clenches her jaw and then says, “I prefer to read sitting down.”

  Abe lifts his eyebrows. “Are you inviting me in?”

  Now Lily smiles. “Not at all. I have a perfectly fine porch swing. I’m surprised you haven’t taken advantage of it, seeing how often you visit my porch.”

  Abe lifts his eyebrows and, after a moment, releases Lily’s arm.

  She sits in the porch swing and then turns over the envelope, embossed with Vogel’s law firm’s name. Her hand shake as she opens it, sliding her fingernail under the seal; she gets a small paper cut on her index finger, puts the tip to her lips before the blood can drip to her skirt.

  There is no letter. Two news clippings fall out.

  Lily reads the articles. They’re brief. Yellowed. Dated 1917.

  Both are by Darby Turner. One, from the front of the sporting section, summarizes the knockout fight of Daniel’s last boxing match before he left for France, the fight with Frederick Clausen, the man named on the ticket she’d found in Daniel’s glove, along with her ribbon.

  The other article, dated a week later, is buried deep in the last page of the news section—between one advertisement for facial cream and another for soap flakes. It states that a pugilist named Frederick Clausen had been found dead in an alleyway after a match with Daniel T. Ross. It was not believed that Clausen had died from injuries sustained in the match, as many had seen him leave the venue on his own volition, but rather from another fight with an unknown man. Clausen, a shoe repairman by day, left behind a widow, three sons, and two daughters.

  Images of Daniel flash through her mind, like slides shuffling through a stereograph viewer: Daniel before his hometown fight in Kinship against Clausen, who’d beaten him once. The look of wrathful determination not to be bested again. In the ring, that same look, so amplified that it distorted his face. Later, in the alley, Daniel ready to murder the man who’d attacked her. Daniel, on their first honeymoon in Cincinnati, going despite her protestations for the final showdown with Clausen. And the next morning, his face a tight mask, saying his enlistment in the army was his duty—but what else had he said? She pulls the words forth: It’s a clean break, Lily. When I’m back, we’ll make a fresh start, far from here.…

  Yet after the war, on their second honeymoon to Cincinnati, she’d found Daniel with George Vogel in the barroom at the Sinton. Suddenly ready to abandon their plan to take on her father’s grocery business. Suddenly keen, at Vogel’s behest, to become Bronwyn County Sheriff. To take kickbacks for protecting Vogel’s illicit purchases of moonshine to repackage as Vogel’s Tonic.

  Now Lily puts together these snatches of memory, of information, and wonders: What if Daniel was capable of killing, not in the context of war or an encounter as a lawman, but simply out of personal rage? What if he’d encountered Clausen in the alleyway and Clausen taunted him and they’d fought again, this time not with referees to intervene if things went too far, and Daniel had beaten Clausen to death in that alleyway?

  Oh God. She quickly tries to conjure an image of the Daniel she knew, the Daniel she loved, who had been so tender with her, so gentle with their children, so concerned about the weaker members of their community, widows such as Ada Gottschalk …

  Lily looks back at Abe, still leaning on her porch rail. He’s finished his cigarette.

  “All right. I’ve read them. Your message?”

  “I’ve received word that a certain young miner, a Franz Hinkle, has been identified as the last person seen with Eula Whitcomb.”

  The diamond fallen from some piece of jewelry … A gift a young miner could not afford.

  A smile strains Abe’s mouth for just a moment at Lily’s double take. “He only speaks German, but he’s confessed his guilt of the girl’s murder to a fellow miner. He’s being held at your brother-in-law’s office. I believe having found him will make Miss Marvena Whitcomb—ah, what was her word?—beholden enough to Mr. Vogel to become a part of his operation.

  “As part of this new partnership, we will also make sure that her dear brother Tom’s obligations to Luther are settled. His son will thus be free to live with Miss Marvena. While you’re at Luther’s office to collect the prisoner, you’ll also forestall any problems between Luther’s men and the miners. Mr. Vogel would be most distressed to learn of any, ah, disturbances that might impede business. We are quite used to our transport drivers coming in and out of the county without fear of gunfire.”

  “I’m not Daniel. Mr. Vogel does not have a hold on me.”

  “You stepped into Daniel’s shoes. Now you walk in them. As distressing as those articles were to you, imagine if some enterprising reporter would—perhaps interested in learning more about the rare novelty of a female sheriff—investigate your deceased husband? Find witnesses from the alley that night? Wrote an exposé of a war hero and sheriff as a cold-blooded murderer? Why, sensational news like that wouldn’t be just in local papers. It would be national news.”

  He shakes his head, then goes on. “How shameful such revelations would be to Jolene and Micah, Mama, and Caleb Junior. No matter where you went.”

  For a moment Lily can’t breathe. Then she gasps in a gulp of air. She says, “Mr. Vogel’s only concern is that I continue to protect his interests, as Daniel did?”

  “Did he?” Abe bites off each word.

  The full import of the simple question grips her. The image of her assailant in the alleyway all those years ago, being pulled away, flashes before her. That was because Vogel didn’t want Daniel upset that his beloved was being assaulted—not because Vogel wanted vengeance on her behalf. What would he do if he thought Daniel had betrayed his trust?

  She takes a shaky breath. “Surely Mr. Vogel has plenty of sources for his tonic. Haven’t we been through enough here? Can’t he just let us be? I don’t understand—”

  “No. You clearly don’t. Let me explain the issues at hand. One: A single bottle of Vogel’s Tonic is three percent alcohol, well within regulation. One pint of moonshine is sufficient for thirty bottles of tonic. Five percent of the moonshine we use is from this region. You’ve surely purchased Vogel’s Tonic, know what you pay. So consider the profit margin we’re enjoying.”

  Lily considers: A bottle of Vogel’s Tonic from the gener
al store is ninety cents. Likely the moonshiners make less than that per pint. And, of course, Vogel then doesn’t have to go to the expense of manufacturing alcohol legally under the strict regulations of the Volstead Act.

  “Two: the matter of being assured of the sheriff’s cooperation for legal considerations.”

  “I have no proof that Mr. Vogel is acquiring illegally made alcohol,” Lily says slowly. “And my word wouldn’t hold against Mr. Vogel’s even if I were foolish enough to try.”

  The notion of her publicly accusing Vogel—and having anything other than the wrath of the man as a result—is so ridiculous that a thin smile traces her lips.

  Abe lifts his eyebrows. “Well, Mr. Vogel will be glad to know that you are a quite logical thinker. And finally here’s the third issue: your husband offered his loyalty to Mr. Vogel—”

  Lily waves the newspaper clippings. “Under duress!”

  “But it was offered. And accepted. Mr. Vogel does not take lightly breaches of loyalty. Aside from legal or financial costs, it is, let us be clear, a matter of pride. And by stepping into Daniel’s shoes, you’ve also accepted the constraints that loyalty necessitates. So.” Abe regards the tip of his cigarette, as if assessing how much is left. “So, tomorrow you will go to Rossville. Arrest the boy Franz. Stop any disturbances between Marvena and Luther.”

  “If I can’t?”

  “Eventually Mr. Vogel will be forced to intervene.”

  “In that case, whose side will he come down on?”

  Abe takes his time lighting another cigarette. He inhales, then flicks a smile along with his ashes. “Mr. Vogel is always on the side of his own business.”

  * * *

  Ada Gottschalk pins a pillowcase to the clothesline, reaches down, grabs another.

  Lily wonders if the woman has heard anything she’s said, the whole story tumbling out as Ada put up the wash: That there’s a miner being held as Eula’s killer. That he’s from Liechtenstein and speaks only German. That perhaps he knows something about Daniel, too. That Lily is supposed to go to Luther’s office in Rossville and arrest him. That not only does Lily want Mrs. Gottschalk to translate for her, but also she’s the only one she trusts to do so honestly.