Kate had just put the wash water on to heat when a knock on the front door startled them. Paddy left the kitchen, still in his stocking feet, and a moment later, Kate heard Daniel Gibson’s voice. She wiped her hands on her apron, then stood in the doorway, an arm around Grace’s shoulders.
Deputy Gibson’s dark eyes settled on her, his jaw tightening.
“If you’ve got any news, Daniel,” Paddy said, “speak it plainly. No need to spare my wife. She found the reverend, you’ll recall, and she found the candlestick today.”
“Well, the dog found it,” Kate said. Grace’s thin body quivered and she tightened her grip. “And Grace is nearly twelve. She deserves to hear everything you know about her father’s death.”
But bad news—or good, for that matter—always goes better with a cup of something hot, so it was a few minutes before they sat, Grace on the sofa between Kate and Paddy, Daniel Gibson in the matching armchair, the bone china cup small and fragile in his hands. The candlestick Kate and Buster had rescued sat, partially wrapped in Kate’s white handkerchief, on the mahogany coffee table her parents had given them as a wedding present.
“We tore that woodpile apart,” Gibson said. “Searched every inch of church and school that we hadn’t searched before. No sign of the mate, or anything else where it shouldn’t have been. Tell me again, Mrs. Murphy, why you went looking for trouble in the woodpile.”
“She’s told you, Daniel,” Paddy said. “It was the dog.”
Gibson gestured with one hand. “And what on earth set the dog off? How did he know to dig there?”
His narrowed eyes made Kate wonder if he suspected she knew more than she should. That she’d been involved, somehow. Because it was strange that the same person—a woman, and a newcomer—had found both the body and the missing silver. People would stare. They’d talk. They liked her well enough, but they didn’t know her yet, and they would talk. That’s how small towns were.
“Buster sat at my father’s feet every night,” Grace said, speaking for the first time since Deputy Gibson’s arrival. She glanced at Paddy. “Like he sits at yours, Mr. Murphy.”
“Go on, lass,” Paddy said.
Grace swallowed, then raised her eyes to Gibson’s. “Buster went everywhere with my father. If he had a call to make, and it was close enough to walk, Buster walked with him. If he took his bicycle, when he went down to the lakeshore to visit the encampment or out to see Mrs. Peterman, Buster trotted along beside him. He waited by the front door to the church and barked to let Papa know someone was there to see him.”
The Indian encampment. Kate had heard of it, but had not seen it. “I spoke with Mrs. Peterman this afternoon. She didn’t mention a visit with the reverend. Did he go out there often?”
“No. Well, I don’t know. Once, about two weeks ago? And Mr. Peterman came to see him at the parsonage.”
Perhaps Laura Peterman was active in the churchwomen’s guild. Churches depended on donors and volunteers, from those who paid for the candles and lights to those who scrubbed the floors and chopped the wood. And those who kept the records, a task for a banker like James Peterman.
“You’re saying the dog might have seen what happened to your father,” Deputy Gibson said gently.
“No one cares what a dog sees,” Grace said, “because they can’t talk. As long as he wasn’t barking, the killer would have ignored him while he struck my father and left him there to die, then hid the candlestick in the woodpile. But Buster knew. And when Mrs. Murphy went to the side door, near the woodpile, he made sure she saw him digging and found the candlestick.”
Kate squeezed the girl’s hand, and Grace squeezed back.
Gibson sipped his coffee. Kate thought of the man she’d met in the street. No point mentioning him, though he had unsettled her.
“Deputy,” she said, “no thief would leave behind the most valuable thing in that church. Nor would he have taken the time to hide it, once he’d killed a man.”
“Why hide the one, though, and take the other?” Gibson said. “He has to have known it would be found. And one’s not worth half what the pair would fetch.”
True enough. Besides, if the thief tried to sell the single silver piece within a hundred miles, word would reach the sheriff.
“Might be it’s hidden nearby, somewhere your men didn’t search. Tossed down the hillside or into the water,” Paddy suggested.
“Surely, though, the hiding means something.” Kate leaned forward. “The candlestick wasn’t simply dropped in the rush to get away. A killer bold enough to strike in broad daylight and then take the time to hide the candlestick in the woodpile wasn’t a thief who got caught in the act and killed to cover his tracks.”
The killer had known how to slip out one or two pieces of wood, hide the silver, then slip the wood back in. The killer knew how to stack wood. But then, almost every man did. Did the killer also know how much wood the church and school might use through the winter, and when the candlestick might be found?
“Mrs. Murphy, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders and I dare say there’s a chance you’re right. But the sheriff thinks the good reverend’s mur—death the work of no-good drifters, and unless we find good reason to persuade him otherwise, that’s the approach we’ll be taking.”
He was telling her to leave it be. To take care of Grace, and Paddy, and the things that a woman, a wife, should care about.
But it was clear to Kate that the discovery of the candlestick disproved the theory of killer thieves. It was equally clear that if Reverend Arval Haugen had been killed for some reason other than the missing silver, his killer might still be in Jewel Bay. And Grace could be in danger, too.
Deputy Gibson drained his coffee and set the cup on the table. Stood, patted his pocket, and withdrew a slim black leather book. “Reverend Haugen’s address book. Found it in his desk drawer, right where you’d expect.”
Kate felt Grace’s gaze, almost heard the girl realize Kate had lied to her about not finding it. A white lie, meant to hold off the moment when she had to tell the girl what she’d found. She vowed to tell no more such lies. They bought time, but caused pain in the process.
“Thank you,” she said. “Grace, please fetch the deputy’s hat and coat.” While the girl did as she asked, Kate unwrapped the handkerchief around the base of the candlestick and pointed, wordlessly, at a dark red spot on the silver. Beside her, Paddy stifled a gasp and even the deputy grew more somber. She rewrapped the candlestick, then wrapped it carefully in a soft shawl. When he’d donned his coat and hat, the big man took the bundle from her as though it were a newborn baby, and headed out into the dark night.
∞
The night was quiet, the only sounds an odd sigh or snort from the dog asleep on the kitchen floor. Dreaming of running beside his master, as the reverend pedaled out along the lakeshore to the Petermans’ grand home?
The dog snorted and shuddered, and Kate wondered if he truly had seen the killer, had watched his master die.
With the door between the kitchen and front room closed, she could not even hear the faint ticking of the clock. Paddy was asleep in their bedroom, Grace on the sofa. Late as it was, though, Kate had no thoughts of sleep, certain that the moment she lay down, all that she’d seen in the past two days would play itself out against the darkness.
She cradled the cup of tea, its scent reminding her of home and the day she’d left to come west. She pictured her mother’s fine dark eyes—Mrs. Flannery was a handsome woman—filling with love and tears of longing and excitement, all that had flooded through Kate herself. But of all the things she had imagined in her new life, she had not imagined finding a man murdered, or taking temporary custody of his daughter. She had not imagined listening to the deputy sit in her own home and tell her the sheriff believed the tragedy a theft gone wrong, though the evidence said otherwise.
“Lass, yeh may be right,” Paddy had said to her after Gibson had gone. “But leave it be. Leave it to Daniel.”
If there was a killer walking around Jewel Bay, were any of them safe? Could this be the haven Paddy and Ivan Gregory and James Peterman and so many others had worked so hard to create if a killer walked free because the sheriff had made up his mind?
She took a long sip, letting the toasty aroma and smooth, slightly sweet flavor soothe her. Then she set the cup in the saucer and opened her writing box. She threw two sheets of the creamy linen paper her sister Alice had given her as a wedding gift into the cookstove firebox before managing to complete a note she could bear to send to the formidable Agnete Swenson. Then she opened Reverend Arval Haugen’s black book and copied out Mrs. Swenson’s address, folded the letter, and slipped it inside the envelope. She’d forgotten to ask Grace the names of the missionary couple, and didn’t want to flip through the book, searching for an address somewhere in Africa. Too much like prying.
So she poured another cup of tea and started a letter to Alice.
She was late. Since arriving in Jewel Bay, she’d written her mother every Sunday and her sister every Wednesday. But she could not have written last night, not with all that had happened. They shared her letters, although Kate trusted Alice to hold back any doubts or fears she expressed that might worry their mother. This letter was nothing but doubt and fear, and she wasn’t sure she would send it. Alice didn’t need to hear about the gash on Reverend Arval Haugen’s forehead or the look in his sightless eyes.
Was it fanciful to even think she’d seen a look in them? A plea to protect his daughter and find his killer?
She’d always been too sensitive, Kate knew. Everyone had said so. Except Alice, who had held her and let her cry when they were at the farm and saw the colt break its leg. Alice had rushed her inside and held her hands over young Kate’s ears but it hadn’t been enough; she’d heard the gunshot anyway, heard the mare whinny long and loud. She could almost hear it now. Could almost hear Alice utter soothing sounds, hear her father tell her mother they couldn’t baby her, she had to grow out of it. “Hush, Michael,” her mother had replied. “Let her be. It’s her big heart that makes her our Kate.” If she tried to hold back her emotion, to say anything less than what she felt, Alice would know.
A tear splashed onto the paper and spattered the damp ink.
The door to the front room opened. Kate raised her head. Grace stood in the doorway, in her white nightgown, a wool shawl around her shoulders.
“Can’t sleep?” Kate asked. “Sit. I’ll warm some milk for you.”
As she poured milk into a saucepan, the dog woke, stretched, and padded over to the table. Grace buried her face in his neck.
Kate set the mug of warm milk on the table. The girl took a long drink, then raised her swollen eyes to Kate’s. “Thank you, Kate. For everything.”
Kate nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Her tea would be cold now, too bitter for comfort, but she didn’t want to busy herself heating more water, cleaning the pot, making a new cup. Sometimes it was better to stay put.
She touched the envelope on the table. “I’ve written to your grandmother. Would you like to add a note to her? I haven’t sealed the envelope yet.”
“What would I say?”
“What would you like her to know?”
Grace’s fingers tightened on the mug, her knuckles almost as white as the milk itself. “That my father was a good man. That he loved my mother and me, and that he made a good life for us here in Jewel Bay.” The shawl slipped off one shoulder and she tugged it into place.
Kate waited.
“That he never hated her,” Grace continued, “even when she said hateful things about him. He believed everything he preached, about forgiving those who harm us. About praying for those who do wrong in the world.”
Someone had hated Arval Haugen. Had done him wrong. Who? There could be no forgiveness until they knew who had killed him, could there?
How could she send this earnest, wounded little bird back to the woman who had sent her and her father away? Too lost, Kate presumed, in her own grief to stand the sight of the man who had loved her daughter.
“I’ve told her you’re safe with us, for now,” Kate said. “We can write her again in a day or two, when you’re ready.”
“Who else are you writing? I have no other family.”
“My sister, Alice.”
“Oh, the one with two children who lives near your parents in Bear—Bear what?”
“Baraboo. On the Baraboo River.” The girl heard and saw everything, forgot nothing, just as in her piano lessons. They would have to be very careful. “Funny name, isn’t it? I’ve heard half a dozen different theories about its origin. Most likely it came from a French fur trader who settled on the riverbank.”
“What’s it like, having three sisters?” Grace asked. “I wish I had a sister. Or even a brother. Miss Lang’s brother lives with her.”
You have me, Kate wanted to tell her, but held her tongue. Grace belonged with family. Perhaps there was an aunt or a cousin she didn’t know about, someone who would open their arms and welcome her.
What if her ideas about her grandmother were wrong? Even a bright, perceptive child like Grace would not understand everything. Kate was counting on that, though the girl was so certain of the old lady’s judgment that it would be difficult to persuade her otherwise, even if the woman wrote back immediately and extended every possible welcome. Even if she got on a train and came to fetch Grace herself.
And if the girl was right, and the grandmother did begrudge her existence but sent for her anyway? Should she be sent to a house where she would surely be alone, and lonely, even if warm and well-fed and educated? Sometimes children were better off in other situations, weren’t they?
Don’t be fanciful, Kate. You know nothing about raising children yet, let alone girls Grace’s age. Although she had once been a girl Grace’s age, interested in many of the same things. Not as drawn to books, but Grace had grown up alone with a bookish father.
“Come with me,” Kate said, and led her back to the front room. On top of the side table sat several framed photographs, one of Kate and Paddy on their wedding day a month ago. Hard to believe so little time had passed—so much had happened. At the same time, her wedding day seemed like yesterday, so vivid. So happy. “My parents,” she said, indicating a woman with strong features under a glorious sweep of dark hair and a man with a round head and a mustache, his railroad watch chain straining across the ample belly under his dark suit coat. “And this was taken last summer, just before Margaret left for art school, underneath the beech tree out back.”
Grace held the photo of the four girls in both hands. Kate pointed at a woman who strongly resembled their mother. “That’s Alice. Then me, and Margaret. And Mary, who’s three years older than I. She’s a teacher.”
“Like Miss Lang.”
“Teaching is an excellent occupation for a woman. You might consider it yourself.”
Grace studied the photo for a long time, then returned it to the table and ducked behind the sofa. Opened her canvas bag and drew out a framed photo. Held it for Kate to see, but kept a firm grip. Kate did not try to take it from her hands.
“Oh, Grace. She was lovely.” Freya Swensen Haugen had been a beauty, with wavy blond hair pulled into a loose chignon, a firm jaw and nose, and an enchanting smile. Kate glanced at Grace. Her face was still a child’s, but if the maternal influence won, she too would catch eyes and hearts.
And in that moment, Kate understood how difficult the resemblance might be for Mrs. Swensen, and in her heart, she asked the good Lord to show them all the way.
∞
The next two days, the threesome, and Buster, fell into a rhythm. Grace proved enormously helpful, having been something of a housekeeper for her father as well as cook and daughter. Paddy left after breakfast Friday morning, Kate’s letters in his pocket. Buster settled into his guard post in the tiny front yard. Kate and Grace washed up and tidied the house, then readied a basket of fresh garden vegetables a churchwo
man had brought by for a hearty soup.
Midday, Kate and Grace walked to the shop with Paddy’s lunch, exchanging a few words with the shopkeepers and villagers they met on the streets. After he’d eaten, Paddy took the wagon out to make deliveries, and Kate kept shop with Grace as her assistant. Late that afternoon, Laura Peterman dropped in again, bringing her daughter, Elizabeth, and Kate readily agreed to Laura’s suggestion that the girls walk down to the bay for a bit of fresh air. The two practically bounced as they headed out the door and down Front Street.
“Thank you,” Kate said. “I’d hoped Grace would want to spend time with other girls her age, but she hadn’t mentioned any friends and I’m too new in town to know all the adults, let alone their children.”
“I’ll confess, I wanted a moment with you,” Laura said. “To ask how Grace is doing, and how you’re holding up. But also to confirm a few things for the funeral service and the burial at Lone Pine.”
Paddy had pointed out the cemetery, a few miles north of town, but she’d had no reason to visit yet. “It’s a lovely spot, and the mountains are stunning, but—” Kate broke off, holding her hand to her heart. “Is it fanciful to think he might be lonely there, so far from the land where he was raised, and from his late wife’s grave?”
“One is never alone, or lonely, when one accepts God’s grace. As Reverend Haugen most surely did.”
Kate sighed. “I only wish he’d designated someone to care for his daughter, if he died.” Surely a man who frequently confronted human mortality would have thought about his daughter’s future.
“I have the impression that there were family difficulties. As happens from time to time.”
Would Kate’s letter make those difficulties better or worse? Had she meddled where she ought not?
Carried to the Grave and Other Stories Page 17