Badlands

by Melissa Lenhardt

  “That is the worst compliment I’ve ever heard.”

  “Tell one last enormous lie, and you’ll never have to lie again.”

  CHAPTER

  30

  Cigar, Glover?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  I selected a cigar from the box James Kline held out to me and nodded my thanks. I snipped off the end as Kindle had taught me and leaned forward for the light James offered, puffing a few times until the tip was lit, inhaling deeply and exhaling. “Excellent,” I said, amazed I’d managed not to cough. A warm sense of well-being flowed through me, and I puffed again. I was growing to like the taste and feel of smoking cigars. Besides the feeling of complacency, practicing smoking for almost two days had transformed my voice from a deep alto to a rough tenor perfect for my disguise.

  The role of Samuel Glover had been surprisingly easy to slip into. He was a doctor from upstate, a friend of a friend of the Dockerys, who was appealing to Hazel to fund a hospital for indigents in Buffalo. It had the dual benefits of being an easy subject for me to converse on, and also being a subject my fellow diners would care little about and know less about. As such, I was able to give short, succinct answers and spend more time asking questions. No one looked twice at the little man with a full beard and spectacles. Meeting James in the parlor before dinner went off without a hitch, though I had an almost uncontrollable urge to slap him across his hirsute face. James shook Samuel Glover’s hand, spoke politely, and let his eyes wander off. I followed his gaze to Beatrice Langton.

  I’d survived dinner without raising suspicions and was now smoking cigars and drinking brandy with the men in the billiards room. It was the part of the night I’d most looked forward to. It offered me the best chance to learn something new about the Langtons, as well as giving me access to a sanctum I’d always longed to join. Now that I was here, I realized it was as shallow as the women’s conversation in the drawing room, only the subjects were different.

  “Why are you smiling, Glover?” James asked. “You must tell me the joke.”

  “Oh.” I chuckled. “I was thinking of something Hazel—Miss Dockery—said today. She didn’t mean it as a joke, but I can’t help but find it humorous. If she is to endow my hospital she insists it should offer privileges to female physicians.”

  “Miss Dockery is known for her eccentricities.”

  “Indeed she is. I was warned as such, but never expected such a demand.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “Apparently she’s been inspired by Catherine Bennett’s case. She’s quite on her side in the whole matter.”

  James’s head jerked back. “Did she know Catherine?”

  “Only slightly. Dr. Bennett examined her once. She, Miss Dockery, wasn’t impressed with Bennett’s lack of enthusiasm for Hamlin’s Wizard Oil.”

  James laughed. “I would imagine not.”

  “Did you know Dr. Bennett?”

  James paused. “We were childhood friends but had grown apart over the years.”

  I stared at the tip of my cigar. I’d expected the lie, but to hear it stung. “Indeed?”

  “Yes. I couldn’t agree with her decision to pursue a man’s profession instead of something more suitable.”

  “Such as marriage?”

  James scoffed. “I doubt there are many men who would put up with her independent streak.”

  I drank deeply from my brandy snifter. “I read in the Times she’s back in town.”

  “It would seem so. Idiotic thing to do. They’ll find her and hang her.”

  “Do you think she did it?”

  “Of course. Who else?”

  I chuckled, when really I wanted to gouge James’s eyes out. “I wouldn’t know. I’m from Buffalo, remember? How is Mrs. Langton holding up?”

  “Beatrice?”

  “Yes. I would imagine it would be a tax on her nerves that this Bennett woman has returned.”

  “Beatrice is made from stronger stuff than that. She’s confident the police will find Catherine and arrest her. She didn’t have many friends to begin with. She has fewer now.”

  “So it would seem,” I murmured. James didn’t seem to hear.

  I studied James. He looked extremely well and prosperous. His clothes were of a finer cut than they had been a year earlier and he now had long, bushy sideburns that made him look older than his thirty-two years. “What is it you do for a living, Mr. Kline?”

  “I’m a lawyer. I’ve recently been made partner.”

  I hid my shock behind exclamations of congratulations. James had always been a middling lawyer. How had he gone from delivering papers to George Langton at almost midnight to partner in a little more than a year?

  “I heard Langton was going into politics before he died.”

  James looked at me full on for the first time. “Why are you so interested in the Langtons?”

  I held James’s gaze steadily as I puffed on my cigar. “One of us has to keep the conversation going, and since you don’t seem too interested in me, why should I feign interest in you?” I blew smoke in James’s face. “Excuse me while I search for someone more interesting to converse with.”

  I watched the billiard game and answered when spoken to and asked a few inane questions, but James’s question had spooked me. I needed to deflect attention from Samuel Glover, and became more of an observer than participant. No one seemed to mind. They were likely afraid I had wangled the invitation with Hazel to ask for money.

  Bored with billiards and wondering when we would be released to return to the women, I sat down in a wing chair and hid behind a newspaper. I was reading about Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall when I heard James’s name. I turned my head slightly to the side and saw Judge Sheridan standing near my chair talking with another man I couldn’t see.

  “I don’t like him, and I know George didn’t. Didn’t trust him a lick. A fawning climber, and you’ve helped him get there.”

  “But his kind is the easiest to control, Bertram. As long as we have someone in the state house who will do what we ask, it doesn’t matter who it is,” Sheridan said.

  “That’s all George was to you, wasn’t he? Someone you could control.”

  “He was a beloved son-in-law. You know I was devastated when he was murdered by that woman. As was Beatrice.”

  Bertram Langton scoffed. “She seems to be over it now.”

  “It’s been over a year. She’s a young woman who is very much in love.”

  “George is rolling over in his grave.”

  “George would want Beatrice to be happy.”

  Bertram Langton walked away without answering. “Let’s rejoin the ladies, shall we?” Langton said to the room at large.

  I folded my paper, placed it on the table, and rose as Judge Sheridan walked past, his narrowed eyes never leaving Bertram Langton’s back.

  “Word to the wise, brandy and cigars with the men is the same as tea and cakes with the women. Its enjoyment depends on the company.”

  “Did you find out anything interesting?” Hazel asked.

  “Yes.” I watched James go straight to Beatrice Langton and her face light up when she saw him. My stomach twisted as a repulsive idea began to form in my mind.

  “Well, what?” Hazel said.

  “I will tell you later.” I moved across the room and sidled my way into a conversation with Bertram Langton and an elderly woman. We spoke on generalities, the weather, travel, the woman’s longing to travel across the country by rail.

  “It is a long, arduous journey,” I said.

  “Oh, have you done it?”

  “Once. Only to Cheyenne.”

  “I hear Cheyenne is perfectly heathen. Is that true?”

  I smiled. “Mostly, but there are good people to be found everywhere.”

  Bertram Langton smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s a nice sentiment.”

  “You don’t believe it?” the woman said.

  “I used to.”

  The woman’s f
ace fell and she moved off rather quickly. Langton smiled and shook his head. “Never fails.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “Allude to George’s death and they scurry away, like rats.”

  “George was your son?”

  “Yes. You haven’t heard the story? It’s all over the newspapers, once again.”

  “I have, but I wasn’t sure of the relation. Let me offer my condolences.” My throat constricted. “I hear he was a good man.”

  “Yes, he was.”

  Langton’s eyes were riveted to Beatrice and James.

  “I suppose you are as eager as everyone else to see the Bennett woman hang for her crime,” I said.

  “If she did it, I am.”

  “You don’t think she did?”

  “I know he wasn’t having an affair with her. If she wasn’t a spurned lover, what motivation could she have possibly had to kill George?”

  “Maybe it was one-sided, on her part. He refused her.”

  He nodded. “I believed that for a long time.”

  “What changed?”

  A bell rang and Bertram Langton’s face hardened. I followed his gaze along with everyone else’s to the front of the room. James and Beatrice stood in front of the fireplace along with Judge Sheridan. “Our host, Bertram Langton, gave me permission to speak to you tonight. First, I want to thank Bertram for his hospitality and wonderful company. We, Bertram as the father-in-law, and I as the father, would like to announce our daughter’s engagement to Mr. James Kline.”

  The reaction in the room was part gasp, part knowing exclamation. Servants materialized with trays of champagne. Beatrice beamed up at James, who put his arm around her and looked at her with an expression I’d seen directed at me once before, long ago. “James has been a staunch friend of the family during the last year,” Judge Sheridan said. “Imagine our pleasant surprise when their friendship turned to love. Bertram told me, and I agree, George would be happy for them both.” Sheridan raised his glass, as did the rest of us. “To the bride and groom. May they have a long, happy, and prosperous life together.”

  I raised my glass, said, “Hear, hear,” and drank. Bertram Langton lifted his glass to the couple, placed it on the nearest table, and walked out of the room.

  CHAPTER

  31

  The fire in Hazel’s library crackled and popped, the only sound in the room after I finished telling what I’d learned at the Langton’s. The clock on the mantel chimed two a.m., but none of us were tired, or moved to retire to bed. I’d charted a path through the library and paced, trying to keep my body working at the same speed as my mind.

  “Would you take off that beard?” Kindle said.

  I waved my hand in dismissal. “Not yet.”

  “This Kline fellow was your friend?” Henry said.

  “Yes. My oldest and dearest. So I thought.” I didn’t look at Kindle, who knew my relationship with James had at one time been intimate. “He told me about Langton’s death, and the accusation against me.”

  “And encouraged you to leave town,” Hazel said.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think he killed Langton?” Henry asked.

  “Because he was in love with Beatrice?” I shrugged. “Maybe. But my friendship with James was known to George Langton. I would think if George knew James was having an affair with his wife, he wouldn’t have conversed so complacently with me the night he died.”

  “You think he would have asked you about it?” Hazel said.

  “No. But he didn’t seem upset until the end of the conversation, when we spoke of medical school. We never spoke of Beatrice or James during the entirety of our relationship.”

  “Kline kills Langton and covers it up by blaming you so he can marry Beatrice Langton. Is that our working theory?” Kindle said.

  I threw my hands in the air. “I cannot imagine James killing someone.”

  “We know everyone has it in them,” Kindle said.

  “But James was not in love with Beatrice.”

  “He wouldn’t have told you if he was,” Kindle said with maddening certainty.

  “You don’t know anything about him,” I snapped.

  The silence was almost complete. Kindle appraised me. “No, but I know men, and there’s not a one alive who would tell a former lover he was in love with another woman.”

  Hazel’s and Henry’s eyes widened. “You and Kline?” Hazel said.

  I turned and waved my hand in dismissal again. “Once, years ago. It was meaningless.”

  “He asked you to marry him,” Kindle said.

  I turned on him again. “What does this have to do with George Langton? Nothing.”

  Henry said, “It would explain why he framed you for the murder.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “You think James framed me for Langton’s murder because I turned down his marriage proposal? Seven years ago. He’s felt slighted for seven years? Thank you, Henry, for thinking I am so enchanting that a man will spend nearly a decade pining for me, but it’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Laura,” Hazel said, “what is more upsetting to you? The thought that James killed George or that he framed you for it?”

  I covered my mouth, surprised to feel the fake beard, and closed my eyes. “We don’t know he killed George.”

  “But we do know he framed you,” Hazel replied. I opened my eyes to Hazel’s compassion-filled face. The eccentric spinster was gone, replaced by a woman I suspected understood betrayal all too well.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  Kindle came to me and pulled me into his arms. I cried silently into his shoulder, trying to come to terms with the biggest betrayal of my life. How could James have done it to me? How could he have risked my life like that? His actions led to Maureen’s death, my capture and abuse at the hands of the Comanche, and the deaths of all the men who had chased after us. Lorcan Reed. Cora Bayle. Dunk. The loss of Kindle’s eye. For a year, I’d blamed it all on myself, my impetuous decision to leave instead of staying and fighting. Now I knew I’d been expertly manipulated by a man whom I trusted, whom I loved like a brother, and whom I thought loved me the same.

  I pulled away from Kindle, looked up at him. His head jerked back. “The beard,” he explained.

  “If Kline killed Langton, where was the judge?” Henry asked.

  “What?” Hazel, Kindle, and I said in unison.

  “The judge is the one who interrupted your conversation with George the night of his murder, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “He wanted George to return to his guests?”

  “I think so.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I know few details of the night, other than what I experienced.”

  “According to the papers, he went to his library from the billiard room and never returned,” Hazel said.

  “I was treating George and Beatrice’s daughter. She was recovering from chicken pox. I’d wanted to get to their house earlier in the day but had a childbirth that took longer than I expected. George wanted to talk to me when I was done, to see how Elizabeth fared.”

  “Beatrice didn’t?” Hazel asked.

  I shrugged. “I assumed George would tell her.”

  “Could Judge Sheridan have killed him?” Henry asked.

  “Why?” Kindle said.

  “George told him he wasn’t going into politics. That he was going to medical school instead,” I said.

  “Seems a thin motivation,” Kindle said.

  “It’s not,” Hazel said. “You forget, Beatrice was originally engaged to George’s brother, and he and George were two very different people. As fond as I was of George, I would imagine having him for a son-in-law would be a tax on a man like Stuyvesant Sheridan.”

  “Enough to make his daughter a widow?” Kindle said.

  “If his daughter didn’t love her husband? Yes,” Hazel said, her eyes brightening with the possibility. “Think of
it, killing George frees Beatrice of a weak husband, but she retains the money. George and Beatrice had a son, who will inherit. Bertram Senior isn’t going to turn out his heir.”

  “Or his heir’s mother,” Henry said.

  “The judge kills George and gets Kline to help cover it up,” Kindle said.

  “He tells Kline he’ll further his law career,” Henry said.

  “Kline asks for a partnership, and Beatrice,” Hazel said.

  “No,” I said. “James would further his career, I have no doubt. But I think his feelings for Beatrice are real.” They looked at me in astonishment. “I’ve seen that expression on James’s face before.” My face flamed with embarrassment. Henry and Hazel looked away.

  “We can’t prove any of this,” Kindle said.

  “Judge Sheridan isn’t going to confess,” Hazel said.

  “Kline has everything he’s ever wanted. He’s not going to turn on Sheridan,” Henry said.

  “You’re right. All of you,” I said. “But I know who will.”

  “That’s Langton’s,” Hazel said to me, nodding to a carriage that had turned the corner and was pulling up alongside the Langtons’ house.

  “For someone who doesn’t socialize with them much, you sure do know their habits and equipage.”

  “I’ve lived across the square from them for thirty-five years.”

  “Wish me luck,” I said, and crossed the street two houses up from the Langtons’. I smoothed down my beard, adjusted my glasses, and walked with a masculine purpose toward the carriage. Langton came down the steps sooner than I anticipated, throwing off my plan to accidentally run into him. The footman opened the carriage door.

  “Mr. Langton,” I called. He looked the other way, then mine, startled. I raised my hand in greeting and increased my pace. “Samuel Glover,” I said, when I reached him. I held out my hand.

  “Of course, how do you do?” He gripped it with less strength than I expected.

  “Very well, thank you. Going home today.”

  “Oh,” Langton said. “You were visiting Hazel Dockery, correct?”