What Gold Buys

by Ann Parker

  The physician beat her to it, giving the table rim high above her head a shove. Inez curled into a ball as the table crashed over the top of her and onto its four legs, hiding her from sight.

  “The cemetery,” he muttered. Inez saw his legs move past her at a rapid gait. Moments later, footsteps pounded down the stairs.

  Inez crawled out from under the table as soon as he left the room. She had a momentary flash of Mrs. Alexander, all in white, swaying dangerously with her hand to her breast, whispering, “Une fille. No. No.”

  Inez grabbed her cloak, the weight of the revolver steady against her side, and flew down the stairs and out into the street as fast as her throbbing knee and foot would allow. She looked up Harrison, toward the cemetery. A few late-night strollers were about, but Dr. Gregorvich’s distinctive tall figure was not among them. The cemetery was up and over Capitol Hill, west of town. Tony, running fast, might be there by now. The physician, with his long stride, would close the distance in short order. Inez, with her burning knee and foot…

  “Damnation!” she yelled in frustration. Two gentlemen passing on the other side of the street halted and looked her way. She stopped, feeling ridiculous, as if she were channeling Percy or one of the other Lads with her outburst. An equine snort erupted behind her. She spun to see a fine piebald horse tied to the hitching post in front of Alexander’s Undertaking. No doubt Mr. Pickering’s, she thought, who probably envisioned himself as a dashing prognosticator when he rode the noble steed through the streets of Leadville with his hair whipping in the wind. No matter. The piebald was saddled, and ready to go. Inez needed no further signs from the spirit world as to what to do.

  She freed the reins from the post and hitched up her skirts, which thankfully weren’t of the form-fitting variety, to an indecent height that would have been cause for arrest if any had seen it. Putting her good foot in the stirrup, she heaved herself astride into the saddle and tucked her cloak around her exposed limbs. The piebald didn’t seem to mind a new rider and promptly pointed his nose downtown. “Not that way,” she said, turning him around. “We’re off to the cemetery, on the double.”

  She took him from a walk to a trot, heading to Poplar. Inez hoped to arrive on Twelfth by a parallel route so as to not run into Dr. Gregorvich first. Although, she was sorely tempted to simply chase him down on the horse, trample him, and be done with it.

  Which brought up a troubling question.

  What weapons did the physician have about him? Did he carry a sidearm? Inez could not recall. He didn’t seem the kind to be bristling with hidden hardware, knives up his sleeves or derringers in his pockets. He was an imposing presence, tall and strong, so perhaps counted on that for intimidation and as weapon enough. Anyhow, she hoped to not have to face him. It would be best to reach the cemetery before he did, find Tony, and haul her out of there.

  The time had arrived, Inez decided, to go to the deputy marshal with what she knew, but she needed Tony, and Mrs. Alexander as well. Would the woman agree? Be willing to step forward, if it meant damning her husband?

  The road steepened. Inez scanned the empty street on the lookout for a small figure or a tall one, as she reflected further. She didn’t see Mr. Alexander as the one to tighten the cord around Drina and Percy’s necks. No. That had to be Gregorvich. He had the strength, the hands, the ability to overwhelm them entirely and kill them quickly. He had the nerve, she knew. And he knew about the laces. He knew they were in the hands of the law. He knew too much, and he’d tipped his hand when he spoke to Françoise.

  She pulled up to the gates of the cemetery and looked around. It was quiet as, well, the grave. The new-built Union Veterans Hospital, just east of the cemetery, sat dark. No one was in sight, either coming down Twelfth or within the cemetery. The cemetery was dotted with headstones, larger monuments, even a crypt or two, and included a copse or two of trees that had somehow escaped being reduced to firewood.

  She led the horse behind the hospital. “This is where I leave you for now,” she said, tying the reins to a stunted pine that couldn’t decide whether it was a tree or a bush. “The ground isn’t safe for you to travel over, and we will be much too obvious.”

  The horse didn’t seem to mind, shifting his weight and settling down to a quiet exploration of the withered grasses clustered about the pine.

  Inez pulled her revolver out, wishing she had something with greater range and firepower, and stepped forward, knee protesting, toward the cemetery grounds.

  Chapter Forty-one

  It seemed like she’d been wandering forever around the graveyard, Maman’s sash clasped in her folded arms.

  “Where are you?” Tony whispered. “Maman, tell me! Tell me where! Please!” The tears cooled on her cheeks, stinging and chilling.

  There was no reply.

  There’d been nothing after that command to run! at the séance, when Maman had made the table fly and the room go dark. Now, Tony felt alone. Really alone.

  The only whispers she heard were from the wind, coming off the mountains and making shushing noises around the graves. The little bit of moon danced among the clouds. It was hard to see the potholes and dips and divots among the graves.

  And there were so many graves. So many. Hundreds and hundreds.

  Some had stone markers with names and dates carved in them, many more had wood boards jabbed into the dirt. There were a few white-railed enclosures, and fewer still large stone monuments.

  Venturing out farther away from the gates and all the markers, she came to the area where there were no markers at all. Nothing but corpse-sized heaps of earth. The paupers’ field. Just rows and rows of mounds, they rose and sank, up and down, like a frozen sea of earth.

  There was nothing inside her—no words, no whispers, no visions or voices that rose to guide her through that sea.

  Cold, empty, sad, Tony wandered back to the part of the cemetery where the dead had names. She ended up by one of the bigger monuments, topped with a statue of an angel baby, looking over one shoulder at its tiny wing, looking as sad as Tony felt. She buried her face in the gold-threaded fabric her mother had loved to wear. Closing her eyes, she put her forehead against the stone stamped with the name and date of someone loved and mourned, and let the icy cold seep through her…

  Someone grabbed her, yanked her away, and clamped an arm around her chest.

  She shrieked and struggled.

  A gun fired, close, loud.

  Stone chips showered down on her.

  “Doctor Gregorvich!” It was Mrs. Stannert’s voice, strong, determined. “Let her go! Next time, I won’t miss!”

  Tony was hauled up and yanked around, her attacker holding her back up against his chest. Something sharp as a needle pricked her neck and she stopped struggling, afraid to breathe.

  Mrs. Stannert stood a good ten feet away, the hood of her cloak blown back from her head. The moon came out for a wink of a moment, showing her face shining almost as white as the stone markers around her, with her dark hair blowing around her face. She looked grim, dangerous, wrathful, like an avenging angel who had come to rescue Tony and the little stone baby angel that looked down at all of them. Mrs. Stannert had one bare hand braced on the top of a headstone. The other held a gun pointed straight and steady at her. No, not at her, but at the doctor who was squeezing the breath out of her.

  Dr. Gregorvich’s voice, calm, spoke loud in her right ear, ticklish. “It doesn’t matter if you miss or hit, because if you pull the trigger, this girl dies. That’s not what you want, is it, Mrs. Stannert?”

  Tony knew now what was going on. Dr. G. had his back against the stone tomb and was crouched low, because he was tall and Tony small, trying to hide behind her. One of his arms was wrapped around her chest and over Maman’s sash. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that one end of the gold fabric had escaped and was rippling in the gusty wind, as if waving and signaling
for help. She could hear and feel Dr. G’s unsteady breathing in her ear and against her back, as if he’d run a long way. She blinked hard, trying to rid her eyes of the stone dust. She wiggled her fingers, realizing that her hands were free. He held her high up, near her shoulders. She could, maybe, even reach her pocket.

  The pocket with Maman’s folding knife.

  The free end of the sash, so colorless in the small bit of moonlight that it looked silver, not gold, curled and flapped, as if in agreement.

  Tony inched her right hand over and up a bit, slowly, slowly moving it, inch by inch toward the pocket obscured under the rippling sash.

  ***

  Inez knew Dr. Gregorvich was right.

  There was no way she could kill him, even if she had a clear shot, before he plunged his knife into Tony’s neck. She needed him to move, to come out a little farther….

  “Let’s be rational about this,” he said in a reasonable tone.

  “This does not seem to be a rational situation by any definition of the word,” she responded. She tried to keep her eyes on his hands, the deadly knife, the thinnest slice of his face, not much more than the slice of the moon above, a few days from its full dark.

  “Well, then, we need to decide how to resolve this most unfortunate confluence of events,” he said. “I am thinking, we can stand here and talk until sunup, but I suspect, given the chill of the wind, you will start shivering and your arm will get tired. I can simply outwait you.”

  “And do what?” she rejoined. “What is this about anyway? You killed this girl’s mother, and you killed my colleague, Percy Brown. That does not seem like the actions of a rational man.”

  “Oh, but they are.” He seemed lighthearted, jolly. “That poor Englishman had bled out almost entirely. By putting him out of his misery I acted out of mercy. It was quick, painless, he felt nothing, I’m certain. And I put him to good use. Most specimens I obtain are diseased, old, not good subjects for my studies. To find one in the prime of life, healthy, with no syphilitic brain lesions, is as good as gold. Both he and Mrs. Gizzi, they gave their all for the future. If you want to accuse anyone, I suppose we must lay the blame for this at the feet of Mrs. Alexander.”

  “What?” Inez would have shaken her head, but she didn’t want to lose a chance to shoot him by moving her head an inch. All she needed was for him to move his face out a little more from behind Tony.

  If she could just see his eyes. Even one eye. “That’s absurd.”

  “No, the absurdity lies in her. Or perhaps, I should say, the delusions do. She has been in the clutches of this notion that it is possible to communicate with those who have died. Total nonsense. Her husband and I, time after time, we drew her away from those who fed her obsession. Then, Drina Gizzi took her fancy. Drina, the fortuneteller who sees. As Mrs. Alexander’s physician and her husband’s colleague, I went to see who this charlatan was.”

  Tony wiggled at that, but froze as the pressure of the knife increased. Inez could see the thinnest line of blood gather and weep beneath the blade.

  “Sorry my child, but that is what your mother was,” soothed the physician. “So, I went and met her, this fortuneteller. I talked with her. I tried to conduct some unobtrusive experiments. Her eyes, of course, most unusual. I wondered: could this so-called ‘sight’ have something to do with those eyes? An unusual pathway of optic nerve to the lateral geniculate nucleus, and thence to the cortex? Could the eyes merely be an indication that something more profound was at work in the brain? I became obsessed, I suppose, in my own way. But for completely rational reasons, of course.”

  “Well, in that case, killing her makes no sense, because no more experiments. You have done in the goose that lays the golden egg,” said Inez bluntly.

  “Ah well. It was problematic, because Mrs. Alexander was spending exorbitant amounts of money upon this Drina, who in turn refused to talk with me. She told me to go away, that she didn’t like the darkness she saw inside of me. That seeing business again, which was probably just an excuse. I believe she was afraid of me. Maybe she was afraid I would expose her shenanigans.” He sounded regretful. “But my aim was always and has always been to find the truth. Are you getting cold, Mrs. Stannert? Your arm shaking? You should have worn gloves,” he commented solicitously.

  Inez gritted her teeth to keep them from chattering. “So, you killed her because Mrs. Alexander was besotted with Drina’s visions?”

  “Nooo, not that.” He sounded affronted, as if her lack of understanding wounded him deeply. “As far as her husband was concerned, it was all about the money. When she dropped a minor fortune into Drina’s lap that was the last straw. I told Mr. Alexander I would retrieve the money and arrange it so Drina no longer provided her prognostications. I looked forward to the opportunity to examine her brain more closely. But he had to help me.”

  “The laces.” She said under her breath.

  “Just so. He bought them, a very distinctive pair, and was going to give them to his wife. Instead, he gave them to me, tying him to the deed. Which was only right, as he owed his livelihood to me, given my guidance to him regarding embalming and my endorsements of his business.”

  He sighed slightly and said, sounding irritated, “I should have taken her corpse away as soon as the deed was done. Unfortunately others were about, including that ridiculous voodoo woman. This delay allowed you, Reverend Sands, and the child to find Drina in her deceased state. No matter. I returned, removed her, and it was as if she’d never been. No one noticed or cared she was gone, besides the three of you.” He tipped his head a little as if to see Inez more clearly. “You look positively chilled, Mrs. Stannert.”

  Just lean over a little farther…

  “Why bother with Tony? That I cannot see.”

  “See? Ha! A little joke. Good, Mrs. Stannert, your wits are still about you, so we shall continue our stalemate a while longer. To be blunt, I saw nothing obviously unusual in Drina’s brain or visual system, but we know so little, and I was unsure. What if I were to compare what I found with a near relative? And thanks to Mrs. Alexander’s natterings, I knew Drina had a child, a girl. Perfect! Same sex, and even with the same unusual eye-color variation. Obviously an inherited feature. What else might I see, were I to peer inside?”

  Inez could swear that the hand holding the knife was shaking.

  “I have to find out,” he said. “I must see!”

  Inez heard the deadly little clickety-click of a ratcheting blade and saw a flash of metal under the blowing end of Drina’s sash. Her scream—“Tony, don’t!”—was lost in the crash of gunfire.

  But the shot came not from Inez’s revolver.

  The fragile wing of the tiny stone angel above Dr. Gregorvich and Tony shattered.

  Dr. Gregorvich jerked, turning instinctively toward the sound. His knife hand wavered, and he breathed, “No!”

  Tony ducked her head and plunged her mother’s little caracas into his leg.

  But Inez was only peripherally aware of this. All of her attention was focused on one thing: Dr. Gregorvich’s face, which had turned away from her, now swiveled into view, gimlet eye open wide in shock and pain.

  A perfect target.

  She pulled the trigger.

  He slumped, one-eyed and unseeing.

  Tony ducked, ran to Inez, and wrapped her arms tight around her waist.

  Now Inez was shaking. Shaking so hard that everything seemed to be in movement.

  The gold sash started to blow away. Mrs. Alexander stepped forward, wrapped in a cloak as dark as the night around her, except for the merest of white hem that appeared and disappeared with the wind. The sash tumbled against her, writhing around her feet. She shifted her revolver clumsily to her other hand and picked up the sash. She approached Inez and Tony, holding the sash out like a peace offering.

  “I am so sorry,” she said, almost inaudibly.
>
  “Sorry? You probably saved our lives,” said Inez, arm wrapped around Tony’s shoulders, keeping her close.

  “No. I am sorry, for all this. It is my fault.”

  Inez shook her head. “No. It is not. Dr. Gregorvich…he was mad. Delusional.”

  Françoise was looking at her strangely. “You shot him. You killed him. Is that not trouble for you?”

  Inez thought of her upcoming day in court and the complications of having just shot a prominent member of the community, no matter his state of mind. “It will take time to unravel things,” she hedged. “We must go to the deputy marshal and tell him everything, including your husband’s role in this. I will need to turn over my gun and—”

  Without a word, Françoise raised her firearm awkwardly. Inez saw that, like her small Smoot, it was a Remington, but a larger, heavier, War-era revolver.

  Françoise turned and walked to the physician, his head leaning against the hard stone of the monument. She said, “They all think me mad, you know. But he was the one who was mad. And a murderer. He killed all the hope and faith I ever had for a better tomorrow, for a better life after this one.” She cocked the hammer, pointed the revolver at his head, and pulled the trigger. She repeated this over and over until all evidence of Inez’s shot was obliterated and the doctor’s face was unrecognizable, his brains splattered dark upon the stone, and the hammer clicked uselessly on an empty chamber.

  Chapter Forty-two

  It seemed to Inez that the racket had been enough to wake the dead, but those in their graves—named and unnamed—slept peacefully on. Even among the living, it appeared that no one heard or, if they did, they didn’t care enough to come investigate the cause. The volley of shots brought no one running, no lights came bobbing down the hill from Twelfth. The only thing that stirred was the wind, the clouds limned in silver by the slice of moon, the dead flowers frozen and brown on the nearby graves.