Fletcher's Woman

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Shut up!” snapped Judge Sheridan, seeing the dangerous, stricken grief in John O’Riley’s face. “We’re talking about Dr. O’Riley’s daughter!”

  John had turned away, though; he was stumbling back inside the tent. Griffin moved to follow him, was detained by Judge Sheridan’s grasp on his arm.

  He wrenched free, concerned only with the blue tinge of John’s lips, the gray pallor of his skin. “Damn it, let me see if he’s all right!”

  Henry brought the barrel of his pistol up, so that it rested flush with Griffin’s midsection, pressing hard. It felt cold, even through the fabric of his shirt. “You saw to enough, Doctor. After what you did to that poor woman, I’d just as soon shoot you as say your name, so you stay right where you are!”

  Griffin swore. “I didn’t kill her, you wild-eyed incompetent—I’ve been here all day!”

  “You did it, all right,” insisted Henry, implacably. “We found something of yours near the body. Besides, everybody knows how she wanted you back and how you just couldn’t see beyond that whelp of Becky McKinnon’s—”

  Griffin, swallowing the fury pounding in his throat, closed his eyes. “I didn’t kill her,” he repeated.

  Judge Sheridan brought a small object from his pocket, extended it to Griffin. “This, among other things, leads us to believe that you did.”

  The pocket watch was cool against Griffin’s palm, and it confirmed what some part of him had suspected all along. “This belongs to Jonas,” he said, handing it back.

  Henry scowled. “You expect us to believe—”

  Griffin brought his own watch out of his vest pocket and dangled it, by its chain, from two fingers. It gleamed, golden, even in the torchlight. “My watch, Gentlemen,” he said, and his smile felt gruesome on his face. “Look closely—it’s exactly like Jonas’s. And there is a reason for that.”

  Henry’s mustache began to twitch again, up, down, sideways. “What reason?”

  “ ‘What reason?’ ” mocked Griffin, sardonically. “Why don’t you tell him, Judge? You should remember.”

  Judge Sheridan looked uncertain for the first time, as far as Griffin knew, since before his election. “Jonas’s mother was a twin sister to Dr. Fletcher’s. Those two fine, gentle ladies always hoped that their sons would get along with each other, so they bought them duplicate watches and threw a big party to celebrate their birthdays one year.”

  “So?” challenged Henry, impatient with such pedantic reverie.

  “So it’s possible that Dr. Fletcher is telling the truth. He has his watch; it’s an unusual one—the only other like it belongs to Jonas.”

  Henry was gravely disappointed. “It ain’t so unusual!” he protested, petulantly.

  Griffin opened the watchcase, pressed a small button inside it. The strains of a haunting, tremulous tune sounded. “My aunt—Jonas’s mother—composed that melody,” he said.

  Henry sighed. “Well, there’s still what Dr. O’Riley just said; he must have heard you threaten Mrs. Bordeau’s life.”

  The judge nodded in agreement. “Mr. Wilkes was her friend—wouldn’t have had any reason to want her dead.”

  “Did you say that? Did you say you’d kill her with your bare hands?” demanded Henry, the barrel of his pistol still nudging Griffin’s solar plexus.

  “Yes,” Griffin replied, in an undertone.

  “Then you’re under arrest,” said the judge, flatly.

  “Just let me look in on John—please?”

  Sheridan nodded sharply. “But don’t try anything, Griffin. Henry would be within his rights to shoot you.”

  Griffin wheeled away from his captors, strode into the mess tent. John was sitting stock-still on one of the long benches, staring down at the tabletop.

  Rounding the table, Griffin faced him, noted with relief that his color was better, his breathing even. “I didn’t murder your daughter, John,” he said.

  There were tears on John O’Riley’s face. “My God, I wish I could believe you, Griffin. I wish I could believe you!”

  Henry and the judge would wait no longer.

  “Put out your hands, Griffin,” urged the latter, his voice softer now.

  “Ain’t we better bind his feet, too?” muttered Henry.

  Judge Sheridan searched Griffin’s face. “No need,” he said sadly. His eyes moved to John. “I’m sorry about your daughter. Shall I send a message to your wife?”

  John shook his head slowly, and his eyes looked sightless, glazed. “I’ll let Joanna know myself,” he said.

  • • •

  Rachel sat up in the big bed, tried to scan Molly Brady’s pale, averted face. “What is it?” she demanded, in a broken whisper.

  “It’s Athena Bordeau,” Molly answered, facing her patient squarely as she laid a tray of hot food in her lap. “Eat now.”

  But Rachel felt no interest in the nourishing supper she’d so longed for only moments ago. “What about Athena?” she pressed, shaken by the fierce, distracted green of Molly’s eyes.

  “She’s dead,” Molly whispered. “And they’ve arrested Dr. Fletcher for murdering her.”

  The tray and its contents clattered to the floor as Rachel thrust away her covers and scrambled out of bed. “No!”

  Sniffling, Molly Brady knelt to gather bits of broken crockery, a buttered biscuit, a pork chop. “Now look and see what you’ve done, Rachel McKinnon. All your nice supper, and the best china—”

  Rachel’s voice was high and thin with stunned impatience. “How can you go on about china when Griffin is in so much trouble!”

  Molly looked up, and there were tears pouring down her face. “Oh, Rachel,” she sobbed, “He said he’d kill her! With my own ears, in this very room, I heard him make that vow!”

  Rachel’s knees were weak and wobbling beneath her but she had no intention of crawling back into bed and meekly accepting something that couldn’t possibly be true. “Where are my clothes—I’m going to him—”

  Molly dropped the litter she’d been gathering and shot to her feet. “You’ll be going nowhere, Miss Rachel McKinnon! My Billy’s gone for Field Hollister—it’s him the doctor needs now, not you!”

  Rachel wove her way around Molly, stopping to rest once against the wall. “I’ll find a stupid dress myself!” she screamed.

  But Molly Brady had not been ill, and she was not in a weakened condition, like Rachel. Taking care to avoid the china shattered on the floor, she grabbed her charge and propelled her back to the bed.

  “And what help will you be to that man if you’re dead of the bleeding?” demanded Griffin’s housekeeper savagely, her hands on her narrow little hips, her eyes bright with tears and determination.

  Now, it was Rachel who wept. “He wouldn’t—oh, Molly, he wouldn’t—”

  Molly’s eyes were distant now, emerald in their fierceness. “She’s destroyed him, sure as I’ll draw my next breath.”

  Before Rachel could manage a reply, there were sounds from the entry hall below, followed by quick, light footsteps on the stairs. Fawn Hollister came into the room, brown eyes desolate, and gravitated toward the bed. Reaching it, she sat down on its edge and, without ceremony, wrapped her arms around the shuddering Rachel.

  “Field is with him,” she said softly. “Field is there.”

  Rachel swallowed a fresh spate of tears. “I think Molly believes Griffin’s guilty.”

  Fawn’s brown eyes rose to meet Molly’s, but there was no accusation in her gaze, and no anger. “Molly is wrong, then,” she said.

  Molly turned, went to stand at the black, uncurtained expanse of Griffin’s window. “I pray that I am,” she said, in a small, hopeless voice. “I pray that I am.”

  A moment later, she gathered up the tray and its scattered contents and left the room.

  “Jonas,” Rachel said, her forehead resting on Fawn Hoillster’s small, strong shoulder. “Jonas killed her.”

  “Probably,” agreed Fawn, and there was no more hope in her voice than Rachel had hea
rd in Molly’s. “Nothing on earth could make him admit it, though. Nothing.”

  “But Griffin could hang!”

  “We’ll think of something,” Fawn promised, pressing Rachel gently back onto her pillows. “But you must be strong, if you’re going to help. Sleep now, and we’ll make plans in the morning.”

  Rachel could not sleep, but for the sake of her friend, she pretended to. And as she lay still in that darkened room, alone, a plan began to form in her mind. It was wild and it was desperate, but it had one distinct virtue—it was the only way Rachel could think of to save Griffin.

  • • •

  Griffin Fletcher stood gripping the bars of his cell, tracing a pattern in the sawdust floor with the toe of his right boot. The door leading from the jail’s solitary cell to Henry’s dry goods store swung open, and Field was there, beyond the bars, looking grim and frightened and sick.

  “You were in Tent Town when it happened!” he barked, without preamble. “Weren’t you?”

  “Of course I was,” Griffin snapped back. Then, gruffly, he added, “I didn’t do it, Field.”

  For the first time that Griffin knew of, Field swore roundly. “I know that—it’s just that Henry and the judge and a lot of other people around here would just as soon see you hang as anybody! Damn it, Griffin, why do you have to go around making enemies all the time, anyway?”

  “Habit,” said Griffin, with a shrug and a rueful grin.

  Before Field could retort, the door opened again. This time, the visitor was Jonas.

  There was a look in his cousin’s eyes, a quality in the set of his face, that made Griffin feel fear—not for himself, but for Rachel. Deliberately, he kept his voice light, even. “Don’t tell me, Jonas—let me guess. You came to bail me out.”

  Jonas laughed, and the sound was disjointed somehow. Griffin’s fear deepened, and so did his determination to hide it.

  “I wouldn’t think of impeding justice,” Jonas said. But then his eyes fell to the design Griffin was tracing in the sawdust on the floor, and a horrible spasm moved in his cherubic face. “The scar,” he whispered, brokenly. “The scar.”

  And then he turned and bolted out of the quarters reserved for Providence’s rare transgressors, leaving the door to gape open behind him.

  “What the—” began Field, staring after Jonas.

  But Griffin knew. He looked down at the tracing he’d made on the floor and groaned. It was a diamond shape.

  Unwittingly, he had confirmed something that Jonas couldn’t bear to know.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Fawn’s brown eyes widened as she watched Rachel scrambling into a simple calico dress. “You must be out of your mind, Rachel McKinnon!” she announced bluntly. “Jonas would never fall for a trick like that!”

  Rachel fought down a rush of lingering weakness and forced herself to be strong. “Can you think of anything better?” she challenged, wrenching the now-scruffy kid leather shoes she’d bought in Seattle onto her feet.

  The beautiful Indian woman lowered her head. “No,” she admitted. But when her eyes came back to Rachel’s face, they were filled with foreboding. “I don’t think you really understand Jonas Wilkes, Rachel. But I do, and I can tell you that the man is vicious even under the most ideal conditions. It’s obvious, considering what he did to Athena, that he has already passed the point where reason gives way to madness!”

  Rachel turned away, to stand before Griffin’s mirror and brush her hair in fierce, determined strokes. “I don’t care how dangerous he is, Fawn. I won’t stand by and see Griffin hanged for something Jonas did!”

  “He’s mad, Rachel.”

  Grimly, Rachel nodded. “I’m depending on that,” she said.

  Fawn sighed furiously, but her reluctance was insignificant. It was clear that she planned to help.

  • • •

  Judge Edward Sheridan reviewed the case of Athena Bordeau’s murder over and over in his mind. God knew, after what that woman had done two years before, it was a wonder that she hadn’t turned up dead sooner.

  Sheridan settled back in his desk chair, lit his pipe, drew thoughtfully on the cherry-scented smoke. He’d seen Griffin Fletcher that night, and been awed by the cold, murderous rage in his eyes, in the taut set of his shoulders. He’d stood at Becky McKinnon’s bar, Griffin had, swilling more whiskey than any man had a right to consume and still stand.

  Griffin hadn’t talked about finding his fiancée in Jonas Wilkes’ bed, but then he never talked about much of anything unless he was pressed. No, he’d just stood there, trying to exhaust the whiskey supply, and whatever demons had possessed him had been silent ones. It must have been hell, Sheridan thought, knowing a thing like that, knowing that the whole town probably knew it, too.

  Clovis came into the Judge’s study, her face avid, for all its aversion to the crime committed the night before. She put a shot of brandy into a coffee mug, poured the steaming brew in after it. “Louisa Griffin Fletcher would roll over in her grave if she knew what’s happened,” she said, with a kind of horrified relish. “When is the trial to be held, Edward?”

  The Judge reached out for his coffee, stirred sugar into it with irritated vigor. “I think you would like to see young Fletcher hung by sunset at the latest, wouldn’t you, my dear?” he bit out.

  “He murdered dear Athena!”

  “Dear Athena,” mocked the Judge, with gruff scorn. Then, after a reflective silence, he said. “You know, Clovis, that young man is brash and ill-mannered and generally obnoxious, and I don’t like him one bit better than you do. But I don’t think he killed that woman.”

  The very prospect of Griffin Fletcher’s innocence had an alarming effect on Mrs. Sheridan. She sank into a chair, pale, and her eyes were suddenly too bright. “Of course he did, Edward! Why, after that scandal two years ago—”

  “Exactly,” breathed the Judge. “It was two years ago. Why did he wait so long? Why didn’t he murder Wilkes and the woman then and there? A lot of men would have, you know.

  “That bothers me, Clovis—that and a few other things. Like the watch, and the fact that the body was found in the woods between Tent Town and the Fletcher house. Seems too easy. Griffin Fletcher is a smart man, Clovis, and he’s in love with that McKinnon girl. If he was going to kill Athena, why would he leave so many clues?”

  “Edward, really! You’re just defending that wastrel because you were so smitten with Louisa!”

  Louisa. The name still ached in a darkened, benumbed corner of the Judge’s heart. “Mike and Louisa Fletcher were friends of mine, Clovis, and I’ll be damned if I’ll railroad their son just because he annoys the hell out of me—or because he nettles you, for that matter.”

  Clovis’s voice was a petulant whine. “He’s guilty as sin, Edward Sheridan!”

  The Judge relit his pipe. “Maybe. And maybe not. But he isn’t going to hang if he didn’t kill that woman, Clovis, and you and the rest of Providence had best be about accepting that.” He sighed. “Now, leave me alone. I’ve got to think.”

  Judge Edward Sheridan was still thinking at seven that evening, when Clovis burst into his study to announce that Mr. Wilkes’s housekeeper, Mrs. Hammond, was waiting anxiously in the parlor to see him.

  • • •

  Fawn gasped when she saw the dress. “Where did you get that?”

  Rachel turned the finely tailored white gown in her hands, thought she could feel Athena’s terror in its very folds. “Mamie got it from the undertaker somehow. I’ve sent the message to Jonas, too—so everything is ready.”

  “If Jonas doesn’t kill us,” Mrs. Hollister breathed, “Griffin and Field will. Lord in heaven, Rachel, you’re mad as Mr. Wilkes himself!”

  Rachel had spent the day constructing a dummy of bedsheets and feathers purloined from several pillows. Now, calmly, she began to clothe the crude manikin in Athena’s gown. “Billy checked,” she said, as if Fawn hadn’t spoken at all. “There are no men around Jonas’s barn—I suppose most of the
m are down with the influenza. He’s going to put this in place for me, and then, when it gets really dark—”

  Fawn’s gaze shifted to the window, The rain had stopped; but the sky was overcast all the same, and the night would come sooner because of that. She stood up, smoothed her calico skirts. “I’ll do what you asked me to,” she said. “But there is something else I have to do first.”

  “Don’t you tell!” warned Rachel, in a terse whisper.

  As she walked out of the bedroom, Fawn Hollister made no promises, one way or the other.

  • • •

  Jonas stood still at the upstairs window, looking out over the grim aftermath of the rain, the note crumpled in his hand. Did Rachel think he was a fool? he wondered, with savage calmness. Did she really believe that he would walk blithely into whatever trap she was laying?

  He let his head rest against the cool dampness of the window, closed his eyes. There were no illusions now; he knew that Rachel had betrayed him with Griffin, knew that he could not allow her to live.

  In his mind, he saw Griffin Fletcher drawing that diamond symbol in the sawdust of the jailhouse floor, pretending not to know what he was doing. But he’d been taunting him all the same—proving that he had, after all, been the first to possess Rachel.

  A guttural cry rose in Jonas’s throat, tore itself free. He’d loved her so much, loved her against reason, loved her against his own will. And she’d lain with Griffin.

  As Jonas waited, he was certain that he couldn’t bear the knowledge.

  • • •

  Griffin paced the sawdust floor in volcanic desperation. As he moved, he allowed the nonsensical prayers hammering in his heart to take shape in his mind, as words.

  All the while, he despaired. It wasn’t likely that Field’s God would be inclined to listen to him. After all, this was the second or third prayer he’d ever consciously offered—and he hadn’t exactly lived the faith.

  He remembered the first time he’d directed a word deliberately to heaven—it had been in Seattle, just after the fire had broken out, when he was searching for Rachel. “Please,” had been all he could manage then, and his entreaty was hardly more articulate now.