Love Almost Lost

by Irene B. Brand

  Ellen didn’t sleep at all, and when morning came, she watched Karen and her friends pack their possessions into the jalopy so they could head back to the city.

  “You’ll have to solve your own crimes, Peaches. This country life is too wild for us.”

  “I’m glad you’re going, Karen. No one seems to be safe around here.”

  “Why don’t you leave too, Peaches?”

  “As soon as I can.”

  “What are Mom and Uncle Bruce doing down here?”

  “They didn’t come by my invitation, and I want them to leave. Bruce has tried to sponge money from me.”

  “Yeah, and from me too. He came down to our camp yesterday and tried to bully me into dividing with him.” Her blue eyes hardened, and she reminded Ellen of Timothy. “I’m not giving either of them anything. They’ve wasted more money than I’ll ever have. You might think I’m scatterbrained, Peaches, but Granddad taught me the value of a dollar, and I’m saving most of my money. He told me my trust fund would take care of me financially all of my life if I’d manage it correctly, and I intend to.”

  “Please stop your drinking and chasing around, Karen, if you want to live the way your grandfather wanted you to.” Ellen kissed her cheek. “Come see me when I return to Cleveland.”

  She heard the telephone ringing while she watched Karen’s departure, and Bentley met her at the door.

  “Mrs. Fannie is on the line, Madam. She seems quite upset.”

  Fannie’s voice shouted in Ellen’s ear, “Ellen, you come in here right now! I told you digging up the dead would come to no good.”

  Unable to calm Fannie enough to get any rational statements, she said, “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  She found Warren and Thompson eating breakfast in the kitchen. After hearing Fannie’s strange message, Warren said, “I’ll go with you. Thompson, you keep an eye on things here.”

  Fannie was still hysterical when they reached Daltonville, but her sister told them, “Those people on the island have discovered a bunch of people buried in one grave.”

  “That isn’t unusual,” Warren said. “Many Indian cultures buried in that manner.”

  “Yes, but those bodies aren’t that old,” Fannie stated. “Lane Dalton reported to the sheriff this morning, asking Thurman to call in some federal authorities to check it out. He didn’t want locals disturbing the remains.”

  Warren dropped the lethargic air he’d exhibited since his arrival at Arrowwood. “They don’t come any more federal than I am. Let’s go back to Arrowwood, Mrs. Hern. I’m going to the island.”

  “What are you going to do?” Fannie called after them. “When can I come back to Arrowwood?”

  “In a few days. I’ll let you know,” Ellen said as she ran after Warren.

  “Where’s the key to your boathouse?” Warren asked when he parked in the Arrowwood driveway.

  “In my pocket.”

  Warren held out his hand, but Ellen shook her head. “If I give it to you, you might not let me come with you.”

  She started running down the hill, but Warren kept pace with her.

  “It won’t be pleasant,” he said.

  “I haven’t had a pleasant moment for a month, so I’m not expecting anything else now.”

  When they arrived at the boathouse, she handed the key to Warren. The big motorboat was no longer chained as it had been three days ago, but loosely secured to the ramp with a rope. They settled into the boat, and Warren guided it toward the river.

  Several men stood on the sandbar, and Ellen said to Warren, “The big man is Clyde Thurman, the sheriff. The other officer is Sid Pauley. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m publicly taking over this investigation. I’d hoped to stay incognito, but if there’s a mass grave here, I won’t let some hick sheriff mess up the evidence.”

  Lane and Thurman were arguing, but they stopped when Warren brought the boat to a sudden halt and helped Ellen out on the sandbar.

  Thurman walked forward importantly. “No visitors allowed on the island, folks. We’re having an investigation.”

  Warren flipped open his coat to display a United States marshal’s badge, and he reached into his pocket and brought out a leather case holding his papers.

  “I’m taking over the investigation, Sheriff. You’ll be acting under my orders.”

  Ellen’s gaze hadn’t left Lane’s face, and his face registered surprise at Warren’s announcement, but he expelled his breath in apparent relief.

  Warren ignored Thurman’s blustering protests and turned toward Lane, who extended his hand.

  “I’m glad to see you, Marshal,” he said in a sincere voice. “I’ve been trying to convince the sheriff that this may be more than a local problem and that we needed help.”

  “Your help is here, Son. Show me what you’ve found.”

  “This way,” Lane said and started up the bank. Not caring what the others thought, Ellen fell into step beside Lane and took his hand. The smile he gave her stirred Ellen’s heart.

  “Yesterday we expanded our dig,” he explained as they walked. “We moved out twenty feet from where we’d been checking, moved away dead logs and debris, dug a trench about two feet wide and ten feet long. We didn’t find any evidence that a village had extended in that direction. We intended to cover up the ditch, but this morning, we found a bone that animals had dug out of the dirt.”

  Lane pointed out the spot to Warren. “At first, we were jubilant, thinking we’d uncovered a Hopewell burial site, but when we removed the rest of the dirt, we discovered that it wasn’t a prehistoric grave at all. There are bits of clothing and leather from a much later period. We stopped digging, and I went to notify the sheriff.”

  “You did the right thing, Dalton,” Warren said. “I’m not touching this grave either until I’ve called in some federal experts to examine the remains. You and your young men are deputized to stand guard over this grave until my men arrive.” He turned to Ellen. “Mrs. Hern, go back to Arrowwood and send Thompson to me.”

  He said to Thurman, “Will you have your deputy take Mrs. Hern over to the island?”

  Thurman nodded stiffly. With a smile of encouragement to Lane, Ellen released his hand and followed Sid to the river.

  “Sid, what’s going on? Who could be buried there?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Hern, but it’s going to be a mess.” His gaze refused to meet hers.

  “Mrs. Hern! You used to throw spit wads at me in school—that oughta put us on a first-name basis.”

  “All right, Ellen. There are lots of evil things going on around here, and when the news comes out, this county is going to explode.”

  “What evil things? If you know something, Sid, you should tell Mr. Warren.”

  “I’m taking my time. I’m not going to speak until I’m sure.”

  Ellen didn’t see Warren for two days, and it seemed like an eternity. When he did arrive, he said immediately, “We’ve found out what happened to those Italian strikebreakers, Mrs. Hern.”

  “You mean. . . ?” Ellen stammered.

  “There are twenty skeletons in that grave, every man shot through the temple. The clothing remnants point to around 1912, and there was one Italian coin. It looks like a mass execution, and I’m willing to wager that some union organizers rounded up those guys, took them to the island, executed them, and dumped them in a mass grave.”

  “Dad can’t be blamed for that. He was in jail when those men disappeared.”

  “It’s obvious now why Dalton and his men have been harassed. The people involved in that crime are getting scared. And no wonder they didn’t want a newcomer like Mr. Hern owning this property. Maybe he found evidence your dad was framed. This house may have harbored several secrets, and if Hern tried to capitalize on them, he had to be eliminated.”

  “I’ve had about all of this mystery I can stand. Surely nothing else can happen.”

  But Ellen had cause to remember those words when Fannie telephoned th
e next morning, and in her, “I-told-you-so” voice, said, “Sid Pauley is gone now.”

  “What do you mean? Is he dead or what?”

  “Disappeared. Nobody has seen him since day before yesterday. Carol is in terrible shape.”

  Warren had been standing beside Ellen when the phone rang, and she held the receiver so he could hear Fannie’s words. Anger glared from the marshal’s eyes when she turned toward him.

  “He disappeared the day he said he wanted to tell me some things. I should have pinned him down right then.”

  “I’m going in to see Carol,” she told Warren. “She’s the best friend I’ve ever had.”

  “I’ll go to the island this morning, but Thompson will be here. Send him over when you get back to tell me what you’ve learned.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if we aren’t dreaming all of this.”

  “We must be closing in on dangerous information. Somebody is getting scared. I’m going to start investigating everything and everybody.”

  Eight

  A pale Carol greeted Ellen at the door of her cream-colored bungalow. She threw her arms around Ellen. “I might have known you would come. My sister is keeping Charlotte for a few days. I’m in no shape to look after her.”

  Ellen sat beside Carol on the davenport and took her hand. “What happened?”

  “This is Thursday, isn’t it?” Carol said with a dazed expression in her eyes. “Sid left Tuesday morning to go to work, and I haven’t seen him since. The sheriff said he sent him to Indian Island to work with the federal investigators, but he didn’t show up. The sheriff thinks the boat sunk, and he drowned.”

  “Sid Pauley could swim like a fish.” Then Ellen remembered her narrow escape, and she said, “Unless he had an accident like mine.”

  At Carol’s puzzled look, Ellen described the boat explosion that had almost taken her life.

  “Is there a madman loose?” Carol whispered. “And who’s in that mass grave on the island?”

  “Those Italian strikebreakers who disappeared several years ago. Everyone assumed they’d left on their own, but apparently not.”

  “What does all of this have to do with Sid?”

  “He knew something. He admitted as much the day Lane discovered those bodies. Do you know what it was?”

  Carol shook her head. “For the past few months, he’s been worried, although he pretended to me that he wasn’t.”

  “I might as well tell you, Carol, that there’s some question about the nature of Timothy’s death; and if he was murdered, then the sheriff’s office here didn’t report it at the time. Maybe Sid knew something about a cover-up in that investigation. Or perhaps he’d heard something from his father about the murder of those Italians.”

  “It could be that Mr. Pauley had something to do with that, but surely Sid wouldn’t have known it.”

  “Let me know if you hear anything,” Ellen told her, reluctant to leave Carol but knowing there wasn’t anything else she could do now.

  Even at Arrowwood, Ellen couldn’t find peace of mind. On her return, Margaret and Bruce accosted her the moment she walked into the hallway.

  “A word with you, please,” Margaret called from the drawing room. With an inward sigh, Ellen stopped.

  “We want to know what’s going on. What’s this about a mass grave on the island?”

  Ellen briefly explained, and Margaret lamented, “At least you could have told us. This place is creepy. We might be murdered in our beds.”

  “Why don’t you leave?” Ellen pleaded. “With all that’s on my mind, I don’t feel like having guests.”

  “You don’t seem to mind having John Warren sleeping next door to you,” Bruce said with a smirk.

  “John Warren is a federal marshal who’s investigating Timothy’s death. His presence might keep all of us from being murdered in our sleep.” Bruce’s face blanched at her words, and he caught the side of a table for support. Ellen continued, “I want you to leave.”

  “We’re afraid to—” Margaret broke off suddenly when Bruce flashed an angry glance in her direction.

  “You come up with some dough, sweet stepmother, and I’ll leave quickly enough. You don’t think we enjoy your company either, do you?”

  Ellen answered wearily, “You won’t get any money from me.” She spoke with determination, but she wondered momentarily if it might not be worth the price just to get rid of them. Once she paid, though, Bruce would never stop pestering her.

  Because his purpose at Daltonville was no longer a secret, Warren rented a room in the town’s only hotel, and Fannie moved back to Arrowwood. Ellen felt more secure when Warren occupied the room next to hers, but Fannie was eager to return.

  The house seemed empty without Warren’s imposing presence, but Ellen had bought a Bible in Daltonville, and she spent many hours each night reading passages that had meant a lot to her at one time. It had been so long since she’d feasted on God’s Word that Ellen’s spirit was renewed. In spite of her worries and fears, she was convinced that God was in control of her life. She searched the Scriptures to find direction for her life when this crisis ended. Many times, she read aloud from one of the Psalms.

  “ ‘For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. . .and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.’ ”

  Ellen was desperate to see Lane and talk to him about what was going on. She mailed a note, hoping he would get it.

  Since we can’t meet on the island, let’s meet in front of the post office in Daltonville at noon tomorrow. If you can’t get away, I’ll come the next day, same time.

  But Lane was waiting when she arrived, and he got into the car with her. A few miles out of town, Lane said, “Turn at this next driveway to an abandoned farmstead. Drive behind the house, and maybe we can have a little privacy.”

  “It’s probably dangerous for us to be isolated like this, but we can lock the car doors. Have you learned anything yet?”

  “No. Warren’s men have done a lot of snooping around. He has his own men on the island now, and no one else is allowed.”

  “What do you think has happened to Sid?”

  “I’m sure somebody killed him, but we may never know.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you who Warren was. All of the staff at Arrowwood, except Bentley, are his people, but the marshal had sworn me to secrecy before we left Cleveland.”

  Lane pulled her to him and gently rocked her back and forth in his arms. “Ellen, let’s not talk about these crimes. That’s all I’ve heard for days. Can’t we just enjoy being together without thinking of it?”

  She wound her arms around his waist and melted into the warmth of his embrace. “Sure, Lane—I’d like that myself.”

  She felt the soft caress when his lips feather-touched her hair. Silently, they clung together, close enough to feel the other’s heartbeat, and Ellen willed her mind not to think at all. Words had never been necessary between them, and she rested in his arms, drawing strength from him.

  Lane was so quiet, she wondered if he’d gone to sleep, but he roused, saying, “We shouldn’t stay here any longer. It isn’t safe for us to be unguarded, but I had to hold you. You’re the only stability I have in a world that seems to be in chaos.”

  His lips slowly descended to meet hers, filling a void that had been in Ellen’s heart for nine years.

  “As long as we’re together, everything will turn out all right,” Lane said as he released her. Tears of happiness glistened in Ellen’s eyes as she started the car and headed to-ward Daltonville.

  A week after he disappeared, Sid’s body was found fifty miles downriver where his clothing had snagged on some wicket gate locks. He’d been shot in the head. Ellen went to see Carol at once.

  “I suppose you think I’m crazy,” Carol said, “but, actually, it’s a relief to know what happened to him. I’ve been having terrible thoughts of how he might have been tortured to tell what he knows. At least it seem
s that his death was instantaneous.”

  “You be careful yourself, Carol. Somebody is getting scared, and they may think Sid told you what he knew. Even if you suspect why he was killed, don’t breathe a word to anyone.”

  “I won’t, but honestly, I don’t have any idea.” She hesitated. “I did find something in Sid’s desk. Maybe you should look at it.”

  She went into the bedroom and returned with a slip of paper. “Mr. Warren,” Ellen read aloud, “you’re in for a surprise. Watch out for L. . .” The sentence was incomplete, as if Sid had been interrupted.

  “And you don’t know what it means?”

  Carol shook her head.

  “I’ll see that Mr. Warren gets the note. I don’t know whom Sid could have meant by ‘L,’ but Warren might. If I were you, I wouldn’t try to remember things Sid may have said. You’re better off not to know. I’d invite you to Arrowwood to stay with me, but you wouldn’t be any safer there.”

  Ellen went by the marshal’s office and delivered the note to him personally, but when he read it, he gruffly said he didn’t know what Sid had intended to write. It was obvious he didn’t have time for Ellen, so she left, thinking his attitude was different when he wanted something from her.

  “For two cents I’d start investigating the crimes myself,” she muttered as she turned the Rolls toward Arrowwood.

  That night, Warren arrested Lane in connection with the mass murders. When Fannie relayed the news she’d learned from her sister, Ellen was stunned, and before she regained her composure, Thompson came to see her. Ellen hadn’t seen him for several days since Warren had him patrolling in one of the motorboats.

  “Warren doesn’t trust any of these people anymore, and he wanted to be sure no one tampered with the evidence. I spent a lot of time lurking around, looking at things, and I guess I’m to blame for your boyfriend being locked up.”

  Ellen’s heart hammered, and her hand clutched her throat.

  “Why?”

  “On suspicion of the involvement in the death of those strikebreakers.”

  “What evidence is there against him?”