A Time to Love

by Al Lacy

  He flipped and flopped on the cot, trying to go to sleep, but it was no use. After a while, he sat up, holding the blanket around him.

  “Haman, what have you done to yourself?” he said quietly. “You should have burned those clippings. Or better yet, there shouldn’t have been any clippings! There shouldn’t have been a prison sentence for Blake. You let your greed ruin you, that’s what you did!”

  His mind flashed back to a sermon Pastor Frye had preached a couple of weeks ago. Somewhere in the Old Testament … Numbers, was it? Or Leviticus? No. Numbers. “Behold, ye have sinned against the LORD: and be sure your sin will find you out.”

  Those last six words seemed to taunt him, over and over again: Your sin will find you out! Your sin will find you out! Your sin will find you out!

  Haman buried his face in his hands. Hot tears surfaced as he regretted his evil deeds. Why? Why had he been so greedy? Bradley Barrett had left him in a comfortable situation. He had an excellent salary, which Blake would have raised every year, and he had 5 percent of the net income of the bank.

  “That should have been enough for you, Haman,” he whispered. “But no, you had to have more! Your sin has tracked you down like the wild beasts Pastor Frye told about in that sermon. With what the authorities know, you’ll be convicted and given Blake’s fifteen years behind bars. But it will be more than fifteen years, Haman! You falsified yourself in every way to buy the Great Plains Bank! They’ll probably add twenty years to the sentence! You’ll be an old man when you get out. Thirty-five or forty years in prison—that’s not life, that’s only existence!”

  He stood up and began pacing the cell. Tears coursed down his cheeks. His entire body trembled, but it wasn’t from the cold air in the jail. It was from the horror rising up within him.

  No! his thoughts screamed. I couldn’t stand being locked up in that prison! I couldn’t stand it! No! No! No!

  He moved to the barred door and shouted, “Deputy Larkin!”

  He heard the scrape of a chair on the wooden floor, then footsteps walking the narrow hallway between office and cell block. Yellow-orange light flooded the room as Larkin’s long, tall silhouette stopped at the door, which he had shoved all the way open.

  “You want something, Warner?” said the deputy

  “I need a pencil and a piece of paper.”

  “At this time of night? Go to sleep.”

  The deputy slammed the door and stomped back to the office.

  “No!” cried Warner. “Come back! Please! I need pencil and paper!”

  When there was no response, he shook the cell door hard, making it rattle. “Larkin!” he shouted. “Come on! I need pencil and paper!”

  Rapid footsteps thundered in the hallway, and the door burst open. Larkin charged in and stopped inches from the bars, his face heavy with anger. “It’s late, Warner! Why can’t you wait till morning? What are you gonna write tonight?”

  “I … I want to write a note to my wife. She won’t come here to see me. That deputy U.S. Marshal could show up here in the morning, couldn’t he? Denver’s only a hundred miles away.”

  Larkin thought on it. “Yeah. He could show up in the morning.”

  “Then have a heart for my wife. At least let me leave a note for her. There are some things I’ve got to say to her. I did her wrong. Let me tell her I’m sorry.”

  Larkin shrugged. “All right. One sheet of paper.”

  “That’ll be enough.”

  Less than a minute had passed when the deputy returned with pencil and paper. Haman reached through the bars to take them. “Is it all right if I light my lantern so I can see what I’m writing?”

  “Sure. Go ahead. But don’t stay up all night writing it. I’m going home now. I’ll get the note from you in the morning.”

  “Fine. Thank you.”

  Larkin halted at the door, letting the light from the office flow into the cell so Haman could get his lantern lit. “Thanks,” Haman said. Larkin nodded and closed the door.

  Haman sat down on the wooden chair by the desk and picked up the pencil. He paused to think, running splayed fingers through his thick black hair.

  His conscience struck him with the impact of a sledgehammer. “Blake,” he said, with a quiver in his voice, “you were nothing but good to me. You thought I was your friend. If you hadn’t believed that, you would no doubt have figured out who framed you. And you were such a good and true friend to me. There’s no way I could ever face you.”

  He heard the outside door of the office close. Deputy Ted Larkin was gone.

  More tears spilled down his cheeks as he said with a choked voice, “And then there’s Linda. Beautiful, sweet, innocent Linda. She tried to make a go of it, even when she was disappointed in the man she thought had written all those letters. Oh, Linda! I was angry at first that you had broken into my trunk. But I can’t blame you. You were seeing through me more all the time, yet trying to be a good wife. I understand why you had to find out what was wrong.

  “Linda, I can’t blame you at all for the anger you feel toward me. I may very well have ruined your life. Blake sure won’t want you, now that you’ve been married to me.”

  Linda couldn’t sleep. After a while she left the bed, put on her wool robe and slid her feet into slippers, then went to an overstuffed chair by the window and sat down.

  She hugged herself and looked out at the cold night sky, alive with a sliver of moon and millions of stars. She was still numb from all that had happened in the past twelve or thirteen hours. Sitting there, looking through the window at the dark night, she thought of the time she had stood at her bedroom window in Boston on that fateful night that was supposed to have been her wedding night. Again, the shimmering stars seemed aloof … distant.

  Twice now Linda Forrest had been shaken to the very foundation of her being. As she looked through the window toward heaven, she said, “Lord, what is wrong with me? Am I not taking enough time to listen to You, and to know Your will? You said in Your Word, ‘They that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.’

  “Please help me to wait upon You, and please renew my strength and lead me in the right paths. I want Your will in my life. And I want peace. You said You would give me perfect peace if I stayed my mind on You. Right now, I very much need that perfect peace.”

  She sat in the chair and fixed her mind on the Man who had gone to Calvary’s cross, bore her sins, died for her, and rose from the grave. Soon God’s perfect peace warmed her heart and soul. She finally rose from the chair and slid back under the covers. Smiling in the darkness, she said, “Thank You, Lord. My heart is still scarred from all it has endured, but Your blessed peace is indeed my balm in Gilead!”

  Before she dropped off to sleep, Linda thought of her parents, and how all of this was going to affect them. They were under the impression that her marriage was wonderful, and that she was happily married to the man whose letters had so captivated her.

  “Lord,” she prayed, “they have to know. Please prepare their hearts so it won’t hurt them too much when they find out.”

  She would write to them after she went to California and visited Blake. They would want to know the whole story.

  She thought of the handsome man whose picture was in the Sacramento Gazette. What a horrible nightmare this had been for him.

  “Lord,” she whispered, “let Blake be freed real soon. What a terrible thing to be locked up when you know you’re innocent! Put his life back together for him, Lord, as only You can do.”

  She fell asleep praying for Blake Barrett.

  The next morning, Deputy Jay Bounds carried a breakfast tray down the narrow hallway toward the cell block. Deputy Larkin walked ahead of him, telling Bounds about Haman Warner’s request for pencil and paper late last night.

  “Well, after what he did to that poor woman,” said Bounds, “I don’t know if a letter will be apology enough.�
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  “That’s for sure,” said Larkin, stopping at the door and turning the knob. He shoved the door open and stepped into the cell block, saying, “That pretty lady deserves a whole lot better than him, any—”

  The breakfast tray bumped Larkin’s back as he froze in his tracks, staring at Warner’s cell.

  “What’s the matter, Ted? What’re you stopping for—“Jay Bounds’s mouth fell open at the sight before him.

  Larkin said something low and indistinguishable as they beheld the lifeless form of Haman Warner. He had wound his sheet tight and formed a noose and rope with it, then tied it to one of the rafters in the cell.

  The chair that came with the small desk lay on its side beneath his dangling feet.

  A wan and weary Linda finished dressing her hair in front of the mirror, then left the guest bedroom. She was thinking of her first task—going to the railroad station—as she descended the stairs. The tantalizing aroma of ham and eggs, biscuits, and coffee met her nostrils. Not until then had she realized just how hungry she was.

  She found Sadie at the stove, scooping scrambled eggs from a skillet onto a plate.

  “Good morning,” Sadie said, catching sight of Linda from the corner of her eye.

  “And a good morning to you, Sadie dear,” Linda replied. “Sure smells good in here.” She went to the stout little woman and gave her a hug. “I love you, Sadie.”

  “I love you, too, sweetie,” Sadie replied. “How’d you sleep?”

  “All right once I got there. Took a while. Lots on my mind.”

  The two women sat down at the shiny clean table, and Sadie offered thanks to the Lord for the food.

  As they ate, Linda told Sadie about the Lord giving her peace before she went to sleep last night. When she was on her second cup of coffee, Linda said, “Sadie, there’s something I have to do.”

  “What’s that, honey?”

  “I must go to the Ukiah prison and see Blake. It may be a while before he gets out, since they have to convict Haman of the crime before Blake can be released. I know Blake may not be terribly thrilled to see me, but I feel I have to meet him face to face and tell him the whole story.”

  “I agree, honey, but what makes you think he won’t be thrilled to see you?

  There was a long pause, then Linda said, “What he and I could have had is gone, Sadie. He had his heart set on my being his mail order bride. Now I’m just what’s left of what might have been.”

  There was a loud knock at the front door.

  Linda jumped up. “This time I’ll do the running,” she said. “You finish your breakfast.”

  She opened the door to the familiar face of Sheriff Bob Coffield, accompanied by a man she didn’t know.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said, hearing Sadie’s short steps in the hall behind her.

  “Good morning, Mrs. B—ah … Mrs. Warner,” said Coffield. “This is Edgar White, a prominent attorney here in town. He worked with Haman in handling the legal details of the sale of the bank.”

  Linda smiled. “Good morning, Mr. White.”

  “We need to talk to you, ma’am,” said Coffield. “It’s very important. May we come in?”

  “Certainly.” Linda stepped back to allow them inside.

  Sadie drew up, curiosity on her plump face, and Linda introduced her to Edgar White, explaining that he was Haman’s attorney, and that he and the sheriff needed to talk to her.

  When Sadie realized it was private business, she excused herself.

  Linda took them to the parlor, and when they were seated, the sheriff said, “Mrs. Warner—”

  “Sheriff, you can call me Linda,” she interrupted. “I really don’t like being called Mrs. Warner. You understand.”

  “Of course. Linda, I have something to tell you, and then, because of my news, Mr. White has some things to explain to you.”

  “All right.”

  “Linda, when my deputies went into the cell block to take Haman his breakfast this morning, they found him dead.”

  “Dead! What happened?”

  “He made a rope out of his sheet and hanged himself from a rafter in the cell.”

  It took a few seconds for Linda to recover from this stunning news. “He didn’t seem like the type to commit suicide …” she said, her voice trailing off.

  “I don’t know if there is a type, ma’am. Most people who do that surprise everybody who knows them.”

  Linda thought of the time when the police officer in Boston thought she was about to end it all in the harbor.

  Coffield reached into his coat pocket and took out a folded sheet of paper. “Haman left a suicide note, ma’am. It’s addressed to you.”

  Linda’s hand trembled as she took the paper from the sheriff.

  “I can’t say I feel sorry for him, Linda,” he said. “He was a pretty bad man. While we were driving over here in Mr. White’s carriage, I commented to him that there was a wicked man in the Bible named Haman. In the book of Esther, I believe.”

  “Yes,” Linda said.

  “Well, this wicked Haman who framed Blake Barrett and tricked you into marrying him ended up the same way as Haman in the Bible, with his neck in a noose. I call that poetic justice in both cases.”

  18

  LINDA UNFOLDED THE PIECE OF PAPER and read its hastily scribbled message:

  Dearest Linda,

  What I did to you and Blake is more than I can live with. Neither can I stand the thought of spending years in prison. So, I’m taking the coward’s way out.

  Please forgive me for ruining your life and for so wickedly deceiving you.

  Sheriff Coffield will see this note before you do. I am confessing here and now that it was me who picked the lock in Horace Dodge’s safe-deposit box. I planted the $12,000 in Blake’s house to frame him. I wanted the bank and all its wealth, and was willing to let him go to prison so I could have it. I want Blake’s name cleared. He is innocent. Please tell Blake that I beg his forgiveness.

  Haman Warner

  Tears welled up in Linda’s eyes and began spilling down her cheeks. She realized that last night, even as she was asking God for guidance in her life and for Blake’s freedom, He had already answered. Haman could have hanged himself without leaving his signed confession. Now that the authorities had it, Blake would no doubt be freed quite soon.

  “Pardon me, ma’am,” said the sheriff, “are you actually weeping for that low-down skunk?”

  “No,” she replied. “I’m weeping because the Lord has answered my prayers for Blake Barrett. Now that you have the confession of Haman’s guilt in your hands, Blake can go free, can’t he?”

  “Of course. The investigation in Sacramento will come to a halt when I wire the news to Sheriff Perkins. However, I’ll have to send him the note with an affidavit signed by me that it, in fact, was written and signed by Haman Warner.”

  “Tell you what,” she said, wiping tears from her cheeks, “I can deliver it to Sheriff Perkins for you. As soon as I can purchase railroad tickets, I’m going to California to see Blake. I’m pretty sure I’ll have to change trains in Sacramento to go to Ukiah. I’ll see Sheriff Perkins and give him the papers.”

  “All right. I’ll make up the affidavit right away. Now, Mr. White has something to discuss with you.”

  Linda put her attention on the lawyer as he said, “I’ll have to address you correctly, ma’am. Legally you are Mrs. Warner. I came along because I felt it was important that you know your financial status now that you’re Haman’s widow.”

  Linda blinked in confusion. “Yes, sir?”

  “Ordinarily, in a case like this, if there hadn’t been a will you would have ended up with your husband’s estate, but not until it had gone through the courts with a whole lot of fees going to a whole lot of people, including me. Were you aware that just after you married the man who called himself Blake Barrett that he came to me and made out his will?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. Well, he left
his entire estate to you. Even though he was operating under an assumed name, it won’t make any difference. You now own the Great Plains Bank, this house, and the money your husband carried in his personal account. Of course, the money you have in the joint account is yours. You’re a very wealthy woman, ma’am.”

  It took a moment for Linda to absorb the news. Finally, she said, “Mr. White, this is all so sudden. You’re saying the bank, the money in the accounts, and this house are mine as of this minute?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I know we’ve kept about twenty thousand dollars in our joint account. Do you know how much is in Haman’s personal account?”

  “About a quarter of a million. Probably more.”

  Linda paused, letting the figure sink in. “So if I should decide to sell the bank, I can do it.”

  “You sure can. And I know what you’re thinking. You’ll want to sell it and give the money to the real Blake Barrett because, in essence, his bank was stolen from him.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, when you get ready to sell it, please let me know. I’ll handle the legal procedures for you.”

  “I will, Mr. White. Thank you.”

  “Linda,” said the sheriff, “when you get your train ticket and know the time of your arrival in Sacramento, please let me know. I’ll wait till then to send the wire to Sheriff Perkins. That way he can meet you at the depot.”

  “I’ll let you know today,” she assured him.

  Linda stood at the window and watched the two men climb into White’s buggy and drive away.

  “Oh, Lord,” she said aloud, “thank You! Blake’s life can at least be partly put back together. He’ll have enough money to buy a bank somewhere, or even set up a new one. He can go on with his life and put all his pain and sorrow behind him.”

  Two days later, a hired carriage pulled up in front of the house. As the driver stepped to the ground, Sadie opened the door and said, “The missus is almost ready, sir. She’ll be right with you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Her overnight bag is here, if you’d like to put it in the carriage.”