by Beth White
“Small price to pay,” Mose said, tucking his pipe into his pocket.
Joelle handed over the treat. “Did we lose a chicken last night?”
“Two.” Mose made a disgusted face. “Wyatt gon’ have to go huntin’ again.”
“He won’t mind. He should be home from school before too long. I’m going to town with Aurora. You need anything?”
He thought as he chewed on a bite of biscuit. “Some tomato seed, if Whitmore’s got any. It’s a little late for planting, but I lost some vines in that late freeze in April.”
“All right. We’ll be back before dinnertime.”
“Y’all be careful. I told Nathan to look at the off rear wagon wheel, but I’m not sure he got to it this morning.”
“I’ll check with him before we go.” She wandered on toward the big house, thinking if she could have picked a papa, Mose would have been her choice. And wouldn’t that be odd? The image of her own father never came to mind without a burst of rage and sorrow. It wasn’t just that he’d clearly adored the practical, math-minded Selah and gregarious, outdoorsy Aurora, while barely noticing his quiet middle daughter.
He’d forced Joelle to leave home for boarding school at the age of seven. Having no one but Selah close by to represent home had further cemented Joelle’s tendency to retreat inward. In Holly Springs she’d made few friends. Other girls assumed she was stuck-up, proud of her so-called beauty, when in reality she was terrified of saying the wrong thing. Often she’d contribute a perfectly reasonable English sentence, causing her conversational partner to look at her as if a horse or dog had just spoken. Later she might find that one or more of her vocabulary choices had been a tad esoteric.
And so she would pretend to be stupid or bored and say nothing at all. Or she’d simply stay in her room with a book and her journal, or steal into the music room to play the piano.
At least Papa had seemed to enjoy her musical talent, she thought as she entered the big house through the back breezeway door. She’d even caught him wiping away surreptitious tears during the family’s Wednesday musical evenings.
“Pete!” she called up the stairs as she reached the foyer. Aurora had gone by Papa’s nickname for her since she was a baby, and Joelle seriously doubted she would ever answer to anything else. “Are you ready to go?”
Aurora came clattering down the stairs, pulling on her gloves. She always seemed to be dressed to the nines when they went anywhere. And she had a wide variety to choose from, for Grandmama had paid for her clothes while she lived in Memphis.
Halting at the bottom of the stairs, Aurora planted her hands on her hips. “What are you wearing?”
Joelle bristled. “I’m wearing what I always wear on a Wednesday afternoon.”
Aurora walked over and twitched at Joelle’s homely dark blue skirt. “I know you have something better than that. It doesn’t even fit you. Look at it hanging off your hips. Go change.”
Joelle looked down at her own faded day dress, suddenly aware of her extreme dowdiness. They’d all had new gowns made for the ball back in April—and she’d worn hers to the opera—but the expense of a complete new wardrobe would have to wait for the arrival of hotel income.
“I don’t have anything to change into. And quit ordering me around. I’m in charge here.”
Aurora’s cinnamon-colored eyes lit with amusement. “Is that right? Well, my things are too short for you, but what about that travel dress that Selah—Oh. Selah wore it to New Orleans.”
“Yes.” Joelle sighed. “Her trousseau seemed to trump my need for a dress to wear to town. Nobody expects me to be a fashion plate, Pete.”
“Have you thought about Gil? Now that you’re engaged, people will be looking at you as the future pastor’s wife.” Aurora waved off Joelle’s incipient objection. “Never mind, we’ll take care of it today. And don’t argue, I’ll pay for it. Grandmama left me some funds for just this purpose.”
Swallowing aggravation, Joelle followed her little sister out the front door. Once she sold the article in her pocket, she’d have funds of her own for a new dress. She’d been planning to spend it on new books for the school, but she’d be hog-tied if she’d let Grandmama pay for her clothes. Maybe Gil would loan them a few of his books until she could afford more. She made up her mind to speak to him about it this very afternoon. And while she was at it, she’d convince him to promote Reverend Boykin’s candidacy for Congress.
Feeling paradoxically righteous and anxious, she let Aurora handle the reins and listened with half an ear to her sister prattling about fashion during the half-hour drive to Tupelo. She couldn’t care less what clothes went on her body at this point. Gil certainly paid no attention to such worldly attributes. Schuyler sometimes tweaked her about her cuffs being buttoned wrong or her collar turned inside out, but he was in Mobile.
“I’m going to the funeral,” she said suddenly.
Aurora turned to look at Joelle in high dudgeon. “If you’re going to interrupt, you could at least say something cheerful.”
“Funerals are not inherently a cheerful subject.”
“Inherently? What kind of word is that?”
The look on her sister’s face reminded Joelle very much of her boarding school classmates. “Never mind. I’m sorry I interrupted. What color feather did you say you were going to buy for your hat?”
Guiding the wagon around a giant rut in the road, Aurora sighed. “No, I’m sorry. Grandmama tells me I monopolize conversations. What funeral? Who died?”
“I told you about Schuyler’s father. His whole family will be in Mobile. The hotel won’t open for a month, so I don’t see why I can’t take a few days to be with them. Camilla will think it odd if no one from our family goes.”
“Do you think I should go too?”
“I honestly would feel better about it if you’d stay to deal with hotel management, in case anything comes up. Selah and Levi will be on their honeymoon for another week or so.”
“All right.” After a pause, Aurora said, “Do you think Selah will abandon us and move to New Orleans with Levi?”
Joelle laughed. “Well, the wife generally goes wherever her husband goes.”
“You know what I mean. They talked about Levi giving up the Pinkerton job and staying here in Tupelo, so Selah wouldn’t have to leave the hotel. She worked so hard to get it going.”
“We all did.” Joelle sighed. “And I’m really worried you and I can’t handle the practicalities without the two of them.”
“Well, Mose and Horatia and Nathan and Charmion are all still here. And surely Schuyler will come back, once the funeral business is over.”
Joelle supposed he would. And she was engaged. To Gil.
The wife goes wherever her husband goes.
Ugh.
The minute Schuyler laid eyes on Levi Riggins at the Tuscaloosa train station, he realized what he’d done. With the fresh eyes of one so recently cured of the blight of self-absorption, he saw a newly married man—less than two weeks, if his calculations were correct—torn from the side of his bride during his honeymoon. What sort of cad would do such a thing to a man he called friend?
The sort of cad, apparently, who was used to paying for whatever he wanted. But in response to Schuyler’s wire, Levi had telegraphed back that he would meet Schuyler in Tuscaloosa, and there would be no money involved.
Now it was too late to withdraw the request for help.
Levi got off the train and strode toward Schuyler with his swinging horseman’s gait, a hand held out in greeting. Schuyler took it without a word as Levi gripped his other shoulder.
“I’m sorry, my friend,” Levi said gruffly, a painful acknowledgment of sorrow in the hazel eyes. “I can’t imagine . . .” The hand on Schuyler’s shoulder tightened.
Schuyler’s throat closed. He’d not given in to tears since he’d wept in Joelle’s lap, and he wouldn’t do so now, no matter how comforting he found the sympathy of a friend. He dropped Levi’s hand and stepped awa
y. “Thank you. I’m sorry I rushed into asking you to come all this way. I’ve talked to the coroner, and he says the sheriff is a good man who’s looking into the shooting.”
“Don’t be stupid. I bought a ticket as soon as I heard. Matter of fact . . .” Levi hesitated. “Keep this between us, all right? There’s been a rash of this kind of atrocity, and Pinkerton has already been called in. So I’m on the payroll.”
Schuyler glanced down the street. “That’s where it happened. The balcony of the Old Tavern Hotel. He was giving a speech—” To his horror, his voice broke.
Levi overlooked Schuyler’s struggle for control. “Yes, I’ll want to talk to the coroner and the sheriff. But let’s find somewhere more private, so I can ask you some pertinent questions about your father.”
Schuyler cleared his throat. “I’m staying at the Tavern. As you might guess, the steak and ale’s pretty good there.”
“Then I’m your man. It’s been a long trip up from the coast.”
The two of them left the station and headed down Broad Street’s tree-lined boardwalk to the famous hotel. From 1827 to 1846, when Tuscaloosa was the state capital, the Tavern had hosted quite a list of celebrated guests and now boasted such comforts as gas lighting, indoor toilet facilities, and a bath upon request. Schuyler had checked in last night and retired exhausted, but he’d lain in bed listening to the noise of the bar below, unable to shut down a flood of memories of his father’s larger-than-life presence. He’d woken to sunlight flooding his room and kept himself upright all morning, as he’d told Levi, in the pursuit of what information he could obtain about Pa’s murder.
By now, however, he was so weary it was all he could do to set one foot in front of the other. Still, he tried to think beyond himself. “I’m so sorry to have interrupted your honeymoon. Did Selah go home—to Tupelo, I mean—when you came here?”
“Yes, I didn’t know how long this would take, and she’s been concerned about Joelle getting overwhelmed with the hotel opening.”
“Joelle is—I guess you could say she’s coming into her own.” Schuyler pictured her face as she’d given him the worst news of his life. “She’s handling things just fine. She finally said yes to the preacher.”
“The preacher? You mean Gil Reese?” Levi gaped at him. “Yes to marriage?”
Schuyler shrugged.
Levi whistled, giving Schuyler a look that he couldn’t interpret. “Selah was right to worry. That’s bad.”
He had to agree, but what could he say that wouldn’t sound like sour grapes? They walked on in silence.
As they sat down at a table in a back corner of the Tavern’s dining room, Levi regarded him with concern. “You look like you’ve been on a five-day bender. Are you all right?”
Schuyler straightened his shoulders, swiped a hand across his bristly chin. He’d forgotten to shave. “Can’t lie, this has rocked me. But my pa wouldn’t stand for wallowing in grief. He’d want me locating the swine who did this and making sure he pays. So what do you need to know?”
Levi took a leather-bound notebook and pencil out of the inside pocket of his coat. “I made some notes on the train, trying to establish motive. I don’t know much about your father, beyond what you told me when we first met in Oxford. I know you have an older brother, Jamie, and Selah introduced me to Camilla and her husband in New Orleans. Your father, you said, tried to run the M&O through Ithaca but had to reroute when Daughtry wouldn’t sell. So there were some business conflicts between the two?”
Schuyler nodded. “My family and the Daughtrys are shirttail kin, I guess you’d say. My grandmother and the girls’ grandmother—their mother’s mother, you know—were first cousins. So our mothers grew up as schoolmates and friends until they married and moved to opposite ends of Mississippi and Alabama. They continued to correspond and visit whenever they could, either at Ithaca or our home in Mobile—until my mother died when I was born. Then my grandmother kept up the connection, mainly for Selah and Camilla’s sake. But Colonel Daughtry wasn’t what one would call a friendly sort, even before the war. He was competitive, jealous, and guarded his property like a dog with a bone.” He met Levi’s eyes, wincing. “He would never have allowed you to marry Selah. It’s a good thing he’s gone.”
Levi chewed on the end of the pencil. “He was a pitiful old man. But I’m glad I met him so that I understand a little of Selah’s grief. In spite of everything, I could tell he loved his wife and daughters.”
“Yes. But it’s funny, when you look back on events that happened when you were a kid, things that didn’t make sense come into focus. Like Daughtry’s obsession with an heir to carry on his name. He treated Selah like a substitute boy, even had her educated that way. He more or less ignored Joelle, petted baby Aurora, and fell apart when the little boy died. Kind of explains his lapse in sanity when he thought the place was going to be taken over by the government.” Uncomfortable with the melancholy turn of the conversation, Schuyler produced a sour grin. “In any case, despite the ties between our families, there was no chance Daughtry would let go of one square foot of that plantation, especially to an Alabama mercenary like my father—nothing personal, you understand,” he added with a curl of his lip.
“Fair enough.” Levi scribbled a note. “What about the M&O’s buyout attempt of the Mississippi Central? Perhaps you could update me on that process.”
“You think someone from the Mississippi Central might have killed him?”
“Sky, we have to consider everything at this point.”
Schuyler rubbed his aching forehead. “My brother knows more about it than I do. The idea was to keep the competition from gaining strength. The transportation industry is already saturated here in the South, and consolidation is one way to curb that. Jamie’s been in negotiations with the MC for some time now, but I don’t know how it’s going. I’ve been so occupied with the launch of the hotel . . .” And other things, things which he was embarrassed to talk about with Levi.
Eyebrows quirked, Levi waited for him to finish the thought, then glanced at his notes again. “All right. I’ll talk to your brother when we get to Mobile.”
“You’re going to come to Mobile?”
“I wouldn’t normally horn in on a family tragedy,” Levi said, “but there are people there I’ll need to question.”
“You wouldn’t be ‘horning in.’ I consider you family. I’m just surprised you’re willing to leave Selah for that long. Newlyweds and all that.” Schuyler grinned at Levi’s flush. “Why don’t you get her to come down with Joelle? We can put off opening the hotel for another month if we need to.”
Levi considered him for a moment before answering. “You aren’t the same man I met after the train wreck in February.”
“Well, sooner or later a man has to grow up and adjust his priorities.”
“True, but . . .” There was another long pause. “All right, I’ll wire Selah before I visit the sheriff. Right now I need more information about your father’s political dealings. That’s the third strand of this snarl, personal and business being the first two. I understand he was running for governor.”
“Yes, he was concerned about rail subsidies and gradually came to the conclusion that if he was going to stop it, he’d have to step in and do something from the inside. Though they’re similar in many ways, Alabama politics have always been more complex than Mississippi’s. My father was a Whig who converted to conservative right before the war. People in the upper parts of the state, the cotton kingdom, called people like us in Mobile—who’d made our money in other ways—elitists.”
Madly taking notes, Levi looked up at that. “Different flavors of Southern aristocrats, huh?”
Schuyler made a face. “I suppose you’d say that. But during the 1860 presidential election, everything boiled over. Moderate ex-Whigs, like my pa, and folks in the border states created the Constitutional Union Party in an effort to skirt the issue of slavery. They were adamantly opposed to sectional extremism and, I suppose,
considered cooperationist at the time.”
Levi lowered his pencil. “Wait—did your family not own slaves?”
Schuyler laughed. “That’s where my own crazy grandma comes in. I’m sorry she passed on, because you two would have gotten along famously. Pa’s money came from transportation, not cotton. We had a few house slaves, owned by my grandmother—at least I thought so. Turns out she had set them free the minute my grandfather died, and they stayed with her to help run a leg of the Underground Railroad.”
“But your father—”
“The old man was cagey over the issue. Had no personal love for the institution but was reluctant to dictate his convictions to his neighbors. He opposed secession, but gave in to the inevitable when Lincoln won the 1860 election. Pa was publicly called a traitor and a ‘scalawag.’ If he hadn’t jumped in to offer rail transport for Confederate troops and supplies and funded Jamie’s free trading, the whole family would have faced exile.” Schuyler wiped his face again as buried memories surfaced. “My sister being caught spying nearly undid us all. If Jamie and I hadn’t—” He stopped, reminded that, though he liked Levi, he was talking to a former Union officer.
“I’m listening.”
“Well, let’s just say Jamie and I were involved in projects that ensured our survival.”
Levi gave him a wry, sympathetic smile. “So your father’s politics were, as you say, fairly complex, which could make him the target of violent conservatives.”
“I don’t know.” Schuyler shook his head. “The Constitutional Union Party fell apart when the war started, and Pa was running as a moderate conservative. He’d managed to cobble together a lot of support at the bottom of the state.”
“Still. As I’ve been told over and over, people are good at holding grudges in the South.”
Schuyler mentally sifted through the top layer of his father’s multitudinous acquaintances. “I suppose you’re right. I’ll think about it and let you know if someone has a particular ax to grind.”
“Please do. Meanwhile, since we’re here, I want to go up to the balcony and look around.” Levi closed his notebook and stuffed it back into his jacket. “You don’t have to come—”