The Rose Legacy
Page 23
“What my uncle’s done.”
“Oofa! You don’t know anything. Do you borrow trouble?” She tugged Èmie by the hand, the taller woman following like a doll with limbs of sawdust. “Come. I’ll show you.”
Firmly, Carina led her outside. Their skirts were wrinkled, their hair mussed, and their faces unwashed. But she pulled Èmie out the front door and swung her arm. “There. You see? No fire and pestilence. No—” Her eyes lighted on a gathering near the corner of Central and Drake, men shouting and rushing over, pressing into the mob.
Èmie’s eyes were bleak as she, too, took in the scene. “I’m going home.” She stepped off the porch and walked stiff-legged around the side of Mae’s.
Carina stared after her a moment, then started for the street. Anything could draw a crowd like that. A snake, a … Her breath caught as Quillan Shepard stepped out from the alley behind Fisher’s Mercantile and raised a hand. Why did he always appear so abruptly? She stopped short, though he didn’t touch her.
His face was grim, and he looked as though he’d slept worse than she. “Don’t go over there, Miss DiGratia. A man’s been killed.”
His words stunned her. “What man?”
“William Evans, owner of the Emporium Gambling House.”
Carina looked at the backs of the townspeople huddled together. Had Èmie known? Guessed what lay at the center of that crowd? Carina shuddered. What morbid fascination brought them to view a dead man’s body?
Quillan’s voice grew rough. “It’s—his throat’s cut.”
Carina brought a swift hand to her own neck. Com’ é terribile! For a moment she thought she’d be sick.
Quillan caught her elbow. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you that.”
Carina had seen plenty of death. Not even Papa could save them all. But except for the gunshot man, they had been natural deaths—sickness or accident or old age. Not murder. She swallowed hard and lowered her hand, then met his gray eyes. “Why?”
He shook his head, jaw cocked. His eyes held the same intensity she’d seen in them the day they rode to the lake, some unexpressed bitterness.
Carina looked over her shoulder to where Èmie had disappeared, then returned her focus to the man beside her. “But who would do such a thing?”
The eyes sharpened, not unlike those on the rattler’s head he’d severed. “An animal, Miss DiGratia. In human form.” He turned and left her, heading not for the street, but through the field away from town.
Carina felt the breath leave her in a slow sigh. A man dead. Throat cut. Lying in the street where people gathered like vultures. She shuddered. Where was the sense of it? She turned and hurried back to Mae’s. She hadn’t meant to be seen in her disheveled state. She’d been drawn, unthinking, toward the crowd.
Once again Quillan Shepard had blocked her way. But what was he doing there? Why was he even in town? It was Tuesday. Should he not be miles away? She found Mae on the porch, hands on her hips and hair as wild as Carina’s own.
“What is it this time?”
“A man was killed last night. William Evans, of the Emporium.”
Mae’s eyes widened. “Grizzly Will?” Her mouth opened and hung there, gaping. “What would someone kill him for?”
Carina shook her head. “I only know what Quillan told me. His … throat was cut.”
Mae’s flush vanished; her cheeks went limp and pasty. Carina feared she might faint, so swiftly did the blood leave her. But she only sagged against the post and mumbled, “Not again.”
Dread crawled Carina’s spine. “It’s happened before?”
“What?”
Carina stepped forward. “You said ‘not again.’ ”
Mae rubbed her face like a flabby dough. “I’m not myself. I … I knew Will a long time.” Her voice trailed off like a bygone memory.
Carina took the stairs and helped Mae to sit on her porch chair. It began to drizzle, but Mae made no move to go inside. Carina was in no hurry to reach Berkley Beck’s office, though she supposed she must go eventually. Right now, she simply sat with Mae.
“I haven’t called him Grizzly Will in years. He’d grown too respectable.” Mae shook her head. “After all he survived, why now?”
Mae didn’t want an answer, and even if she did, Carina had none. She didn’t know this man, nor did she understand such evil. She startled when Mae suddenly laughed, a low, almost strangled laugh. “His arms were so thick in those days, the men dubbed him Griz, and he could wrestle every one of them into the ground.”
Carina shook her head. How could such a powerful man have his throat cut? It couldn’t be Èmie’s uncle. He was large, but not … surely not capable of this. He was a thief, not a murderer. She couldn’t believe Èmie lived with a man who could cut another’s throat. “What will be done?”
“Done?”
Mae wasn’t thinking straight, and Carina asked it more plainly. “Will they find who did it?”
Mae’s eyes closed and she rocked back in the chair. “Can’t say. They didn’t the last time, although that was a long time ago.” She shook her head. “No, I can’t say as they will.” And then Mae ground her knuckles into her eyes and cried.
Carina waited, but it was clear Mae no longer wanted her, hardly even knew she was there. It frightened her to see Mae cry—Mae, who callously shrugged off the deaths of so many. People die. Isn’t that what she said? But then, most people don’t have their throats cut.
Carina stood up and, when Mae made no notice, went inside to wash. She had slept in her skirt in case Èmie’s fears proved more widespread than her uncle’s drunkenness. Now she changed into her only alternate and put on a fresh blouse. She brushed the tangles from her hair and quickly rebraided it.
Mae was gone from the porch when Carina went back out. She considered checking Mae’s rooms but didn’t. Some grief was better suffered alone. Hadn’t Mamma shut herself away when the two babies after Carina died?
There was no longer a crowd on the street. They must have moved the body, but she made no effort to learn where. Mr. Beck was not in the office, so she took her place at her desk. She would work as though yesterday’s conversation hadn’t happened.
Did he need her filing services? It was a favor he did her? Though it humiliated her to consider the triviality of her job, especially as Mr. Beck had described it, she must do it still. If it were true no one else would hire her, she must make the most of this chance. She would show him he did need her assistance.
The rain came again, insistent, falling from skies dark and menacing, but not violent as it had been the day before. Still, Carina felt trapped, stifled. Though she wanted to, she couldn’t ride out to seek the solitude of the snow-streaked mountains. Of the mine.
Why? Why would she seek a scene of tragedy when right here in the streets of this city was death enough? Yet the more she thought about it, the more she wanted to go. She had opened Pandora’s box, and now the Rose Legacy held a strange fascination for her she couldn’t ignore.
She stared out the window of Mr. Beck’s office through the rain to the rushing streams in the street. If only it would stop. She’d leave this moment, Berkley Beck notwithstanding. He hadn’t yet shown his face, and no one solicited his services. The office was a tomb, and she had run out of things to do. It made it harder to believe she was necessary.
Carina threw up her hands in frustration. Innocente! She was in his debt. She bunched her hands into the hair pulled tight on her head. She would not leave it loose again in his presence. The last thing she needed or desired was his affection. Her heart was too bruised already.
And she thought of Flavio. She thought of his times of melancholy, his silent brooding that left her separate, not knowing what to say, how to reach him. He was an artist, temperamental, moved by forces within him that she couldn’t understand. Sometimes his smile was easy, sometimes his gloom so dark it overshadowed her. Yet she had loved him since they were children, seeing in him a depth, a genius other men lacked.
Yes, her own spirit cried. They changed you. She was stunned by the thought. But it was true. She had unleashed a hatred she didn’t know she was capable of. Years of envy, of bearing Divina’s cruelty, her sharp tongue, her insults … all of it had come out when she saw the depth to which her sister would stoop.
Carina shuddered. Every step she’d taken since that night had been treacherous. A vengeful journey, as Father Charboneau had guessed. “Are you given to revenge, Carina?” It was Quillan Shepard to whom Father Charboneau had referred, but it was Flavio her heart condemned. Was that not her sole purpose in coming? To punish him? To hurt him as he’d hurt her? To make him come for her? To leave Divina?
“You must be washed in the blood of the risen Lamb.” Had Preacher Paine seen through her as easily as the priest? Seen how she hated Divina in her unforgiveness. Divina, the darling, always the shining one. The one who lied, who demanded, who received. Divina who slapped, whose insults hurt because she knew the weak places to probe.
But something had changed, though Carina wasn’t sure when. Some subtle shift, and Carina had gained power. People noticed her, petted her. She grew into Mamma’s likeness, and Divina seemed … dulled, sharp-tongued, spoiled. She grew defensive—picking, picking, always picking.
But Carina had found a new strength. A belief in herself. And Flavio became her banner. The Romeo, the one who could not be reached: he loved her. In his fourteenth year he told her so in poetry. She was only twelve, but she knew what she had. Something Divina could never have.
Sciocca. She pressed a palm to her forehead. Why did she think he would come? What did he care that she went so far? Wasn’t Divina close—and willing? Carina stalked across the room and back. Nine years she had loved him, waiting while he proved himself, became a man. Waiting for him to make good his promise and marry her.
Did Divina wait? No. She skulked in the shadows and laid a trap. And gladly he walked in.
Bene! She could have him. He deserved her sharp tongue; it would rouse him from his shadows. Wake up! See what you have chosen. You will wake to it every day.
Father Antoine Charboneau stood in the rain over the grave, freshly dug and turning to mud, into which they had committed William Evans, deceased. So it had come to murder. He’d seen it before, the camps never teeming with violence, but never free of it either. Something in this, though, was different, darker, ominous.
As he prayed over the grave he felt a weight on his spirit that sapped his strength. There was something personal in the grief he felt for this heinous act, though he’d not known Evans well. It tapped a depth in him not disturbed for some years. Not since that other time so long ago.
Had an ancient evil wakened? Lord God … Antoine swallowed thickly, knowing the truth of it. That ancient evil never slept, never stopped pacing the earth, traveling to and fro, searching for someone to devour. And this was one more example of it.
This was not a simple case of robbery gone sour. The man had forty dollars still in his vest when they found him. No, this was deliberate, premeditated murder. Yet Marshal McCollough was at a loss, bless his wretched soul. Like his predecessor, he’d been bought through pain and fear.
Whatever questions he raised would stay far from his true suspicions, or even what he knew for certain. And what Donald McCollough confessed would be held in the protection of the sacrament. Father Antoine would carry it to the grave. The weight grew heavier.
He looked up at Èmie standing off some twenty paces as straight as the sapling beside her. She was not a comely girl, yet his heart clung to her, his brother’s child. Jean had been the best of them, marrying for love a plain woman he came to know late in life. Èmie was the only fruit of their union.
As he watched her, their gaze met. What did he read there? Horror for what had happened? Or something else? Did she fear for herself? Surely Henri would see to her safety. He would not risk the one who made his meals and kept his home. And Henri loved her to the best of his ability.
Antoine sighed, the feeling of ultimate failure seeping in with thoughts of Henri. Oh, they sparred, and that sparring enlivened him. But underneath lay a desperation, a thought that maybe if Henri went unsaved, his own soul was forfeit. Why did he feel responsible for an older brother who continually resisted, who stubbornly chose the wicked path and kept to it in spite of the prayers, the sacrifices, made for him by his priest brother? What more could he do? Antoine was feeling his fifty-eight years.
He left the grave and sought Èmie. Taking her hands in his, he drew her into his embrace, kissing the crown of her head. “How are you, child?”
“I’m fine, Father.”
“And where’s Henri keeping himself?” Did he imagine the shudder in her spine? He held her back from him. “Èmie?”
She waved an arm. “He’s somewhere. At the mine perhaps.”
Antoine lifted her chin and studied her face. She was a woman grown, no more deceived by Henri’s mining ruse than he. They both knew what occupation Henri practiced. Yet Antoine didn’t make her speak of it. “He treats you well? No … harm comes to you?”
“No harm to me, Uncle Antoine.”
The familial endearment touched him. “You would tell me, Èmie, wouldn’t you?”
She nodded. And he believed her. Though she kept much to herself, he knew she trusted him. He glanced back at the grave, then turned away. “How is your friend Carina DiGratia?”
“Fine, Father.”
Fine. Such a nondescript word, saying nothing really, containing none of Carina’s fire and depth. Was Èmie even aware of it, the discrepancy? Did she know how she faded next to Carina’s vibrancy? Her physical beauty alone, so remarkable. Yet to him Èmie was more dear.
Forgive him his human weakness. Should he prefer one soul to another? Did ties of blood allow a greater concern for some than others? And then he considered Carina DiGratia in her own right. She had not once received the sacrament of Holy Communion at his hand. And that meant something separated her from the Lord. Was it the vengeance of which they’d spoken?
If so, how did he bring peace? But maybe not he. He met Èmie’s eyes, felt their gentleness, yet recognized their distress. He felt impotent. This woman, his niece, and Miss DiGratia, both struggling, both searching. Maybe they would find peace together.
He squeezed Èmie’s shoulder. “I’m glad you have her. You need a friend.”
“Yes, Father.”
“Èmie, I prefer Uncle Antoine.”
She smiled, the first that morning. He was a priest, but to this girl he was family. And given that her only other family was his brother Henri …
“Come on.” He patted her shoulder. “I’ll treat you to lunch at the hotel.”
Èmie’s eyes widened. “Should we?”
“Of course. Life is too short to forgo its few pleasures.” And if he could bring joy to Èmie today, the Lord would forgive any excess.
After waiting most of the day in the silence of the office, Carina could stand it no longer. She had to get out. Snatching up the canvas miner’s jacket she had purchased as a protection in the rain, she reached for the door. Mr. Beck’s hand was on the other side, and he stepped back in surprise.
Startled, she, too, shrank back, and he came inside, wet and dripping. Not again. Carina frowned. She would not wait while he changed and put himself in the mood for other things. She pulled the jacket closed.
“You’re not leaving?”
She waved an arm. “What is there to do? You said yourself it’s unimportant. I sat here all day with nothing to do.”
He closed the door against the rain. “You were making yourself available. In case I should need you.”
So he was again the indebted businessman. Which one was she to believe? “Don’t you mean require, Mr. Beck?”
“Berkley.” He raised a single brow as he looked at her sideways. “And I mean need—in the business sense.”
She sighed, flinging her arms wide, and paced the room. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. Why am I here?” She threw the question to the air, but Berkley Beck answered.
“Because I employed you.”
“I don’t mean here, in this office. I mean at all. What place is Crystal for me? I should go. I should leave.”
“You can’t.”
She stopped pacing. Did she imagine the threatening current beneath his words? “What do you mean, I can’t?”
“You’re upset—”
“Upset?” She shrugged. “Why should I be upset? Men beaten outside my window, robbed and lying in their own blood. Throats cut—”
“Carina.” He caught her arm. “You don’t understand what’s happening. There’s something … uncivilized out there.”
“I don’t know that?” She tugged free and walked to the window. “I should never have come.” She turned. “I’m leaving now.”
“Believe me, Carina, it wouldn’t be safe.”
“Safe!” She threw up her hands and stalked across the room. “And I am safe here?”
“Yes. You’re under my protection.”
She started to scoff, but he held up a hand.
“Nothing will harm you. I give you my word.”
“How can you say that? How can you know?”
He went very still, his eyes the cold blue of a mountain lake. “I believe I know who’s behind all this.”
She stared. How could he know? Had he gone to Èmie’s uncle? Had he seen …”You know who killed Mr. Evans?”
“Not just that. This is bigger than one murder.”
Her breath came out hard as her stomach knotted like a clenched fist.
“You don’t need to fear. As you learned last night, I can protect you. And very soon I will extend that protection to others.”
“What others? What are you saying?”