My Heart Belongs in Galveston, Texas

by Kathleen Y'Barbo

  Much as he didn’t like to agree, it was a logical assumption. “What did you find out from the maid?”

  “Gretchen admitted to using my room to read while her roommate was sleeping, but she had no idea what happened to the mirror. I believe her.”

  Jonah shifted positions. “So the light is explained but the mirror is not.”

  “Yes. Especially given the fact it was hers and had sentimental value,” Madeline said.

  “I’m hoping Pearson can shed some light on this. Are you sure you want to come to dinner on Friday?” He thought of what his sister must have said to her and tried not to cringe. “I warn you, my sister will continue to persist in her matchmaking.”

  “I fully expect it,” she said. “And I may know why, although she claims she did not see it.”

  “It being what?” he said.

  “It being an article in the Daily News about the party at Ashton Villa.”

  “Go on,” he said warily.

  She shrugged. “I can’t quote the author without reading the article, but let’s just say he wondered whether a Pinkerton agent ought to be courting while on duty.”

  Jonah’s temper spiked. “Of all the—”

  “Just wait,” she said. “There’s more. He also wondered how ‘the lady reporter’s dress had become torn after an assignation with the Pinkerton while the esteemed general and former president was being feted on the ground floor.’ That much I can quote from the story, although I am paraphrasing.” She paused. “Then there was the allegation of the kiss between us.”

  “Townsend,” he snapped as he tightened his grip on the reins. “I will see he never writes for another newspaper.”

  “Now Jonah,” she said as she reached over to place her hand over his. “Let’s think about this for a minute. First, we don’t know for certain it was Mr. Townsend. There was no byline on the story.”

  “Of course there wasn’t. The man’s a coward. He wouldn’t put his name on it.” Jonah slammed his fist down as he fought to tame his temper. “He saw us and threatened to write the thing. If he didn’t, then who did?”

  She studied him a moment. “Yes, you’re right. I was on my way out the door to go down to the newspaper and demand a retraction when your sister arrived. I’m still very tempted to do that.”

  “The paper owes us a retraction.” He leaned back against the seat. “I’m not worried what it said about me, but I don’t want you embarrassed.”

  “Why would I be embarrassed? I have been linked with ‘the most handsome Pinkerton detective currently employed by the force.’” She giggled. “Also a direct quote.”

  “Stop making that up,” he told her.

  “You don’t believe me?” She nodded toward the road behind them. “Let’s go. I have a copy at home that you’re welcome to read for yourself.”

  Jonah gave Madeline a sideways look. Even riled up as she was now, Madeline Latour was beautiful.

  But her beauty wasn’t what had attracted Jonah to her back then, and it wasn’t what he liked most about her now. Madeline’s intelligence, her wit and curiosity, those were the reasons he had fallen head over boots for the lady reporter.

  “So you’ve decided not to hunt down the reporter and force a retraction out of him?”

  She looked over and caught him watching her. “I have decided to hear what Officer Pearson says first. Something tells me Townsend might know more about our trespasser in the garden than anyone else.”

  “Why him?” Jonah asked as he turned the buggy around.

  “Call it a hunch, but do you remember when Townsend said he had eyewitnesses to corroborate the story of us courting on the roof?”

  “Vaguely,” he said. “I was so mad, I only remember threatening his life after he called you honey.”

  “I think you only threatened his career, but I could be wrong.” She paused. “Anyway, before he made his threat about the eyewitness, he looked down at the rose garden. I wonder if that was some sort of clue that he had a man down there.”

  “I don’t know,” he said as he turned the buggy toward Twenty-Fifth Street. “The time line doesn’t add up. Donovan says he turned the man over to the police a few days ago. Would someone risk another arrest by going back to the rose garden again? It makes no sense. If anything, I think he was referring to all the people standing on the lawn downstairs.”

  “I need to see the facts written down,” she said. “I plan to spend the afternoon outlining everything that has happened in the past twenty-four hours.”

  “Please leave off the part where my sister made a fool of herself—and me.”

  Madeline smiled. “I assure you she did not make a fool of you. She actually said some rather nice things about you.”

  “Did she now?” He glanced at her briefly before making the turn onto Broadway Avenue.

  “She did.” Madeline paused. “I’m almost home, so I want to ask you about something I keep forgetting to ask. Have there been any more holes dug in your property?”

  “No. Not since I returned to Galveston. Either the perpetrator is aware I am here and looking for him or the two events were isolated incidents and whoever did it decided to give up.”

  “It could be either,” she said. “And if it makes any difference, I haven’t come across any credible evidence other than hearsay that puts any of Lafitte’s treasure on Cahill property. Most say Three Trees is a likely place, but too many have looked there and not found it.”

  Jonah nodded. “Or if they have and it is gone, no one has admitted to finding it.”

  “Nor would they, for obvious reasons.” She paused. “If I can change the subject slightly, remember the commander thought Mrs. Smith’s granddaughter was at the Browns’ party but offered no facts to support that statement. What do you think of that?”

  “Anything is possible, especially regarding a man of the commander’s age.”

  “So you think he fabricated the story?”

  “I think he believes what he told you,” he said.

  “Mrs. Smith swears she’s in Galveston, so it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that she might have been invited and attended. And we didn’t exactly look at every woman’s eyes to check their eye color.”

  “Not that we can be certain they would be brown. That’s merely a guess that we hope is correct.”

  “Exactly.” She sighed. “We know very little, don’t we?”

  “We know more than when we began, but there is much more to learn.” He paused. “So to answer your question, I think the commander is a nice man and that he may have information we need to follow up on. But I am not ready to say he was correct in his statement that she attended the Browns’ party.”

  “I agree. One more thing. The investigation into my family still concerns me.”

  Jonah pulled the buggy to a stop in front of the Smith home. “I know it does, and I don’t blame you. But I don’t know anything about it.”

  “I believe you. The last letter I got from my parents indicated there had been nothing on that subject. Still, I just can’t get it out of my mind.”

  “That’s because you’re a reporter. You won’t rest until you’ve chased down all the leads.”

  She smiled. “True. And speaking of reporters, let’s go get that paper so you can enjoy the article as much as I did. Then we can talk about whether to force that retraction out of my colleague from the Daily News.”

  Jonah laughed and hurried over to help her down from the buggy. He followed her down the walkway until she stopped short. “Jonah, I never thought I would say this, but I’m glad we’re working together on this investigation.”

  “So am I,” he said and meant it as he took one last look around the perimeter and then followed her inside.

  “Second page under the advertisement for Dr. C. McLane’s Liver Pills,” she said as she handed him the folded newspaper. “We actually aren’t mentioned until the second paragraph.”

  “That’s comforting. At least our former president got
mentioned before we did.”

  “If only the reporter had said more about President Grant and less about us,” Madeline responded.

  “Detective Cahill, is that you?”

  Jonah looked around and found his current employer standing at the opposite end of the hall. “Mrs. Smith, yes, it’s me.”

  “Excellent. This saves me from having you summoned. Won’t you join me in the parlor. I’ve got someone you need to speak with.” She paused to turn her gaze toward Madeline. “You as well, Miss Latour.”

  Madeline did as she was told, and Jonah followed a step behind. Once inside the parlor, he immediately spied Reverend Wyatt seated beside Mrs. Smith’s favorite chair.

  Rising, he reached out to shake Jonah’s hand. “I suppose you’re wondering why I am here.”

  “I am,” Jonah said as he looked over at Mrs. Smith. “But I’m sure that is between you and my employer.”

  “Of a sort,” he said, “but it also concerns you and Miss Latour.”

  Jonah helped Mrs. Smith to her chair and then took a seat nearest the door, placing the newspaper on the table beside him next to a vase full of pink rosebuds.

  “First, I owe you an apology. I did not realize you hadn’t told Mrs. Smith you’d been shot at.”

  Madeline looked down at the floor and then back at the reverend. “Detective Cahill and I did not want to worry her,” she said.

  “There is always the possibility the gunshots were accidental,” Jonah added, but only for Mrs. Smith’s benefit.

  “They were not, I assure you,” Reverend Wyatt said. “Although I can also assure you that they were not meant to do anything more than to frighten you.”

  “How do you know this?” Jonah asked.

  “Because I am the one who fired the shots.”

  Jonah stood. “Let me get this straight, Reverend Wyatt.” He shook his head as he tried to tame his temper. “You aimed a .45 caliber weapon at Miss Latour and fired it?”

  “Essentially, yes.”

  “Reverend Wyatt,” Madeline said. “When I saw you, my first thought was that I owed you an apology. I now think that apology is rather owed by you.”

  “And I do apologize,” he said. “You see, I was keeping a promise, although it was not one I should have agreed to.”

  “Go on,” Mrs. Smith said when his words stalled. “Tell them the rest.”

  “To do that, I have to go back to the beginning,” he said to her.

  “Then the beginning it is.” She swept her gaze across Madeline and then stopped at Jonah. “With the understanding that you will not be required by any of us to say anything other than that which you are free to say.”

  He bowed his head as if praying and then lifted it again. “It all started back when I wasn’t more than a lad. I went to sea because that’s what we did in my town. I’m from south Louisiana, you know. A little town nobody’s heard of. We all fished or we went to sea and that was that.”

  Gretchen arrived with more tea and saw to refilling the reverend’s cup. She offered tea to Jonah, who declined. Ignoring Madeline, she left quietly.

  “You were saying you went to sea,” Mrs. Smith said gently.

  “Oh, yes, and our captain was a good and fair man.” He nodded to Mrs. Smith. “I was with Captain Smith for nigh on seven years before the incident back in ’55.”

  Jonah sat up a little straighter at the mention of the year of the Smith granddaughter’s birth. He slid Madeline a look and saw she had done the same. She had also thought to retrieve her notebook and was scribbling notes at a rapid pace.

  “It was storming something awful, and men where lashing themselves to the ship to keep from going over. Two hadn’t had the forethought to do that, and they were long gone,” he said as if recalling the moment with brutal clarity. “Me, I was trying to keep the old girl afloat, what with her taking on water like she was.”

  “By ‘the old girl,’ I assume you’re speaking of the ship you were on?” Madeline asked.

  “I am,” he said. “So it came to the point where the captain’s son, well, his wife was in the family way and came to her time right in the middle of all of that. We all stayed away, but it wasn’t hard to imagine by the sound of it all that things weren’t going as they ought. The serving girl she’d brought with her went in and out, always asking for more cloths and hot water, things like that. Finally it got all quiet and we figured all was well.”

  “But it was not,” Mrs. Smith said.

  He looked up at her. “As you know, it wasn’t.”

  “What happened?” Madeline asked.

  “The mama, she died. We thought the little one had too until that serving girl comes out carrying the wee thing. She wasn’t any bigger than a minute, probably shouldn’t have come early as she had, but she had her daddy’s eyes and the tiniest little mewl like a kitten. We’d have given thanks right there, most of us being God-fearing people, except that we were all about to go under right there in that storm.”

  “That must have been terrifying,” Madeline supplied.

  “Oh, we’d had worse blows, but none where we had a woman and child aboard. Some said that was why our luck went sour, what with women being considered bad luck aboard a ship and all.”

  “A bunch of poppycock,” Mrs. Smith said, her tone pure acid.

  “Indeed, ma’am,” Reverend Wyatt said. “The ship, she was shuddering, and the captain, he called me to come see him. I gave him the report and he knew we were done for. There were only two boats on board, so he decided he’d send out his son with his wife to bury her on one and the baby with the serving girl on the other.”

  “Why take separate boats? Were they that small?”

  “They weren’t at all. Each held a half dozen full-grown men, maybe more. But the captain, he feared losing all his family at once if one of those boats went under. And honestly, it was a strong likelihood. So he decided he’d divide them up and hope the Lord took neither but was prepared in case He took one.”

  “So each of these boats had two passengers and then the remaining spots were filled with crew members?” Madeline asked.

  “Not a one of the crew would volunteer to leave with the ship in distress. It isn’t done, miss. We go down with her, to a man, unless our captain says otherwise. He knew this, our captain, so he picked two and sent one out with each boat to do the job of rowing. I was the one sent to row the captain’s son and his missus.”

  “That would be Samuel and Eliza,” Mrs. Smith supplied.

  “It would be,” he said as he dipped his head. “Mr. Samuel, he fought me for the oars. Said he needed to do something to help get us to shore in Indianola. But I told him an order’s an order and I’d be the man rowing. He understood. We made it to shore, we did, though only the Lord knows how. Out in the middle of that weather with the waves pounding us and Mr. Samuel holding tight to his lady wife, well, I just stopped what I was doing and begged Him, would You just let us live? I’ve got orders to get this man and his lady to shore and I’d be obliged if You’d let me do that, is what I told the Lord.”

  “And obviously, He allowed that to happen,” Jonah said.

  “He did, but I promised Him one more thing before He did. I promised Him wouldn’t nobody harm Mr. Samuel or his little girl ever long as I kept watch because he was good as family to me and so was she.”

  Jonah shook his head. “It’s obvious Samuel Smith owed you his life, but what does that have to do with firing shots at Miss Latour?”

  The reverend winced at the question. “I am getting to that, I do promise. You see, that storm raged on for two days. We took shelter in a boardinghouse and were thankful for the lodgings.”

  “Francine’s?” Jonah asked.

  “It was indeed. Mrs. Francine, she was kind to us. Once he was able, Mr. Samuel, must have been three or four days later, he arranged for the burial of his lady. That changed him, I’m here to tell you. Loved his Eliza, he did, and without her he was good and lost. All the worse, that boat with his baby gi
rl on it never showed up. Every day he went out to look and see if it had arrived, and every day he came back to that boardinghouse vowing to do the same thing the next day.”

  “That’s so sad,” Madeline whispered.

  “It was,” Reverend Wyatt said.

  Jonah tried not to let on that he’d noticed both the reverend and his employer had tears in their eyes. Instead, he looked away to give them a moment.

  “So anyway,” Reverend Wyatt said, swiping at his eyes with his sleeve. “It came time to leave Indianola, and Mr. Samuel, he wouldn’t go. He wrote to his mama and told her he was staying until his baby girl came home to him.”

  “So he lived there until he died,” Jonah supplied. “Which was a few years later?”

  “It was 1857. By then there’d been fevers a few times. He’d recovered, but that last time, it got him. I saw to his burial beside his lady wife and then wrote to his mama here to let her know.”

  “What happened to Captain Smith’s ship?” Madeline asked, looking up from her notes.

  “It limped along until he finally got to Galveston. There he set up and waited until he got her seaworthy again. Then I understand he went home to Mrs. Smith here.”

  “And lived to sail another day,” Mrs. Smith supplied. “But we never found our granddaughter. The one my husband called his lost treasure until the day he died.”

  Jonah looked over at Mrs. Smith. “Was the serving girl or the man who rowed that boat found?”

  “The actual name of the man rowing the boat has never been known. My husband learned once we began searching for our granddaughter that his loyal crew member had sailed under an assumed name. It was done then, of course, as it likely is now, so that the man at sea cannot be connected to the family at home.”

  “So the man hid who he really was by giving a false name?” Madeline asked, her pen poised above a page of her notebook.

  “Essentially, yes,” Reverend Wyatt said. “Most of us reinvented ourselves when we left home. Some because of who they were before and some in spite of it. I figure this man who was charged with that baby girl just didn’t want anyone to know who he used to be. Could be he had a family of quality who wouldn’t have approved him shipping out with the likes of us. That happens sometimes.”