by Beth White
Levi couldn’t place the gruff, Southern voice, though it sounded like any number of Confederates he’d faced in battle. He turned his head into the gun. He’d never seen the face before either, but he knew who it was. Long, greasy gray hair, unkempt beard, eye patch covering some disastrous mangling. The bone structure was aristocratic, the expression haughty. The good eye was a dark cinnamon brown, the pupil dilated as if he’d been a long time in a dark room.
Levi swallowed against a thick tongue. “Mr. Daughtry. I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you.”
“And I you. The Yankee spy who’s been chasing me all over Tennessee and Mississippi.” The tone was taunting. “Congratulations, you were right after all. I was downstairs in the attic. You walked right past me.” Daughtry pressed harder with the gun.
Levi struggled not to wince. “Then you didn’t shoot me.”
“Not this time. Must’ve been that bonehead Scully. Never could hit the broad side of a barn.”
Levi studied the craggy, leonine face, looking for some shred of sanity. “I’m going to sit up,” he said, “so we can discuss this like gentlemen.”
“Go ahead. Looks like your shoulder is boogered up pretty good.” Grinning at his own irony, Daughtry moved the gun but kept it aimed at Levi’s head.
Levi sat up, sweating, agonizing jags of pain making his teeth rattle. He didn’t know how long he had before Selah got back. All he had right now were his wits. And maybe the gun still stuck in the back of his pants. “You’ve been up here before, haven’t you?” he asked.
“I wondered where I’d left my glass.” Daughtry dangled the spyglass in his free hand. “General Forrest gave it to me early on in the war, as a special commendation.”
“Your name is respected in these parts. Not many rich men gave up everything to join the cause.”
“It’s what my family does. I couldn’t pay somebody else to serve in my place. My wife didn’t understand, and the girls begged me not to go.”
“Women aren’t built for battle, that’s true. But your daughter Selah—she’s something else. I’ve never met a stronger woman. You raised her right.”
“She’s a pistol, sure enough. Could’ve married four or five times over, but she was hard to please. Not one boy smart enough or brash enough to bust down those walls of hers.” Daughtry surveyed Levi, mouth grim. “I heard you making up to her one night, and if she hadn’t been too close, kissing you like a whore, you’d be a dead man already. You must’ve been laughing to think you were right here in this house, just like before, eating our food and playing my piano while my wife lay dead upstairs, violated by your men.”
“Daughtry, that’s not what happened. You can read the official reports of the incident—”
“Incident!” Daughtry snarled. “My wife’s murder was not an incident! And you think I’d trust the report of a Yankee officer with every reason to lie?”
Levi’s reply was aborted by the sound of light footsteps running up the stairs.
He couldn’t see Selah behind her father’s crouching form, but he heard her gasp. “Papa!”
Daughtry jerked, the gun wavering as he turned his head. Levi grabbed for the gun but missed, and Daughtry quickly turned back, leveling the gun once more.
“Don’t think I won’t shoot you now that she’s here,” Daughtry said through his teeth. “She needs to see what a coward you are.”
Selah was in the cupola, edging toward him with a bowl of water and some rags in her hands. Her face was pale, horror-stricken.
“Selah, stay back,” Levi said.
She paid absolutely no attention to him, instead went around her father and knelt beside Levi. “You’ve broken this open again,” she said. “I’m going to clean and redress it.” She turned to look at Daughtry. “Papa, move. You’re in the way.”
To Levi’s astonishment, Daughtry obeyed, letting Selah open Levi’s shirt and begin to cleanse and rebandage the wound—a process which hurt like the devil.
Daughtry’s eyes clouded, his expression confused. He seemed mesmerized by his daughter’s capable, gentle hands, ministering to an enemy. “Penelope?”
Selah glanced at him, her smile gentle. “No, Papa, it’s me.”
“I know it’s you,” Daughtry said. “I saw you in the yellow dress. You wore it for me.”
“I wore it for—” Selah met Levi’s eyes, and he understood her plea for him to stay quiet. He saw her love. “I wore it for you,” she said softly.
“I wanted the painting to be perfect,” Daughtry said. “I wanted everyone to see how beautiful my girls were. All of them.” He laughed softly. “All that red hair, all the shades of sunset.”
“I know,” Selah said. “I know you love us.”
Daughtry blinked rapidly. “I do. Even when I’m roaring angry. I shouldn’t have whipped Selah so hard, but she wouldn’t say she was sorry, and you’ve got to quit letting the little darkies play in the house with the girls.”
Selah’s hand jerked. Levi caught it and carried it to his lips. He kept watching for Daughtry’s attention to wander, another chance to grab the gun. Not yet.
“Charmion wasn’t hurting anything, Jonathan,” Selah said. “She just wanted to make something pretty.”
“That’s impossible,” Daughtry said, frowning. “They don’t—they can’t—anyway, it wasn’t right, she didn’t have permission, and everybody was all upset over nothing.”
Selah sighed as she began wrapping a long strip of bandage around and under Levi’s armpit and shoulder. “Jonathan, I wish you’d put the gun down and get washed up for supper. We’ve got chicken and dumplings and butter beans, and coconut meringue pie for dessert.”
Daughtry’s eyes lit. “You know that’s my favorite pie. You’ll play ‘Aura Lee’ for me after supper, won’t you?”
“I’ll sing it for you now, if you’ll put the gun down like I said.” Selah sat back on her heels and began to sing, “‘As the blackbird in the spring, ’neath the willow tree, sat and piped I heard him sing, sing of—‘”
“‘Aura Lee,’” Daughtry finished with her. The gun dropped between his thighs, muzzle down. “‘Aura Lee, Aura Lee, maid of golden hair . . .’”
Selah reached out to take her father’s hand, slipping the gun away with the other. “‘Sunshine comes along with thee . . .’” She handed the gun to Levi. “‘And swallows in the air.’”
Daughtry was sobbing. Head down, as if he were weary to the bone.
Levi cast the gun out the window behind him. He looked over Daughtry’s bent head and saw James Spencer standing at the top of the stairs, gawking at him.
“What in the name of all that’s holy—” Spencer approached before Levi could react.
Selah leapt to her feet, a hand on her father’s shoulder. “James, it’s all right. Levi is—”
“He needs a doctor!” Spencer rushed forward.
Chaos broke loose. Daughtry felt the threat and lurched to his feet, Levi rolled to get out of the way, and Selah screamed.
The sudden movement wrenched Levi’s shoulder, and his vision blurred with pain. Vaguely he was aware of Spencer wrangling with Daughtry right by the open window and Selah shouting, “Stop it! Papa, stop! Mr. Spencer is our friend!”
Gasping, Levi reached for his Colt, found it, squeezed his eyes shut in an effort to focus, then tried to follow the dancing motion of the two men. He couldn’t shoot—what if Selah lunged into the line of fire? His aim was none too steady anyway.
At least Daughtry was no longer armed—but there was every possibility that, in his mania, he could shove Spencer through the window. Panting, Levi prayed for mercy, grace, miraculous intervention.
At last Daughtry gave one great shove, pushing Spencer away, toward the railing around the central opening of the cupola. In doing so, he lost his balance. He fell backward, tumbled out the window, and onto the steeply pitched roof on his back.
Levi had stood on that roof, knew how steep was the incline. The shingling was new and fresh
, but Daughtry’s footing was no match for gravity and physics. He went hurtling and disappeared from sight.
Selah’s scream ripped into Levi, a sound he knew he would never forget if he lived to be a hundred. She rushed to the window, and he thought she might climb through. At the last second, some remnant of sanity made her instead fling herself across the windowsill, prostrate.
He crawled to her, wrapped his good arm around her waist, and pulled her back inside. Hauling her against himself, he held on while she beat at his face and chest, sobbing some incoherent, keening supplication. She gradually stilled, he kissed her hair again and again, and he realized her words had become a monotonous, raspy “no.” Over and over and over. He let her cry until she was heaving in broken tearless gasps.
Levi looked over her head and saw James Spencer kneeling in prayer. He too was crying. Levi rubbed his own wet face against Selah’s temple.
“It’s over, sweetheart,” he told her.
Thirty
IT WAS FAR FROM OVER. The men collected her father’s broken body and laid him out in one of the upstairs bedrooms. James Spencer stood guard, his demeanor as solemn as if he were presiding over his courtroom in Oxford. They wouldn’t let Selah in, so she huddled outside the door on a little ottoman from her parents’ room, arms clasped about her middle, dry-eyed and aching with emptiness.
Scenes from her childhood rolled through her brain one after the other. Did his sins, his outright evil toward their slaves, rub off on her and her sisters? Could they ever do enough good to right the wrong? Now that he was dead, what would God have her do? What did he expect of her? The only answer she could come to was a verse that went something like, “He hath shown thee what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.”
A verse she would have wanted to live by in any case. And round she came back to the beginning again.
She’d been sitting there for some time and must have fallen asleep with her head against the wall. She caught herself falling off the stool and found Charmion sitting cross-legged on the floor beside her, rounded belly cradled in her slender dark hands.
Selah straightened, rubbing her stiff neck. “How long have you been here?”
“A minute.” Charmion’s eyes were tender. “Mama thought you might need a little company.”
Selah smiled her gratitude. “How is Levi?”
“That man don’t never stop. There’s something going on out at the bath house, but he said not to wake you.”
“The—bath house?” She jumped to her feet. “What on earth?”
“I don’t know.” Charmion struggled to her feet as well. “Nathan didn’t want me out there.”
“That’s wise, but—Stay here and keep watch for me, please, Char. I’ve got to go see—” She hurried out to the front porch and stood there, indecisive. The rain had started to come down in buckets, thunder booming like cannon fire, lightning bursting in jagged forks in the distance.
Too much unsettled. Scully, the man who had come here claiming to be her father’s friend, had warned her that Papa was out to murder Levi. Then Papa said Scully was the one shooting from the kitchen roof. Of course the man was no longer in the chair where Levi had told him to stay. And as far as she knew, Wyatt hadn’t been found. Maybe that was what was going on at the bath house.
Taking a deep breath, she walked out into the pouring rain. Within seconds she was soaked.
Selah supposed the pool and bath house were still in bad shape from the years of neglect, though Schuyler seemed determined to make it a featured amenity of the hotel. Uneasily aware of the dangers inherent in a pool and an electrical storm, she wiped her eyes as she reached the front gate. The minute thunder cracked, even if there was no rain, Papa used to make everybody get out of the water.
She was about to turn back for the house when, through the trees, she saw the new carriage and horses. Telling herself not to be afraid, she crossed the muddy road and found herself slip-sliding through weeds and underbrush. As she got closer, the sound of raised voices filtered to her. One was loud, angry, and very young—definitely Wyatt—and the other sounded like Levi. Heart hammering, she got in too big a hurry, slipped and fell. Not that it mattered. Her dress and petticoat were already ruined.
Scrambling to her feet, she stumbled on and made it to the carriage. To her surprise, Schuyler and Dr. Kidd stood beside it, maintaining an odd, anxious silence.
Doc turned with a cautioning finger to his lips.
As Selah quietly approached, Levi’s calm, reasonable tone became clearer. “Wyatt, you’ve got to let us in to take him under arrest. The trap worked.”
“Where are they?” Selah whispered to Doc.
“Wyatt’s got that scoundrel Scully locked inside the bath house. He and Levi lured him in with rumors of stolen Confederate silver on that train that wrecked over at Oxford. But Wyatt apparently had a little more restitution for his father’s death in mind.”
“What do you mean?”
Doc grimaced. “When the boy realized your father and Scully had hunted down and murdered the men who escaped their firing squad at Chickamauga—that would be Wyatt’s father and a man named Carson—he decided he was going to find a way to get even. So he cooperated with Levi’s little hustle—”
“Hustle?”
“It was a set-up, Selah. Now, though, Wyatt’s got his own little electrical trap set in there. All that water . . . if he pushes Scully into the pool, he’s a dead man. We could break the door down, but the boy’s a little out of his head, no telling what he’ll do. He’d be tried for murder himself.” Doc took a breath. “Levi’s trying to talk him out of there.”
Standing in the rain, wet to the skin, Selah felt like she’d been punched in the stomach all over again. “Levi’s—hustle? What are you talking about?”
“Apparently our Yankee hotel agent is a Pinkerton detective who started out trying to root out a gang of train robbers and wound up mixed up in a series of murder investigations.” Doc laughed softly. “I have to admit I was a bit taken aback when I realized I was on his list of suspects! And so were you, at least at the beginning. I presume you’re cleared by now.”
She should have seen it.
All those questions. His gift for eliciting information from anyone and everyone. The unexplained disappearances. The unfinished sentences, half explanations. A seemingly unending supply of funds for expenses incurred, without a real source of income. The notebook in which he kept detailed information on everyone he met. Including me.
Kissing her to get her to talk.
Scam.
She was a dupe, and on top of that, his part in her mother’s death. That had been somewhat explained by the exigencies of war. He’d been under orders.
But this. This two-month-long lie.
L. E. Vine, or whatever he’s calling himself.
He lied to me. Used me to find my father.
Reeling, she lifted her face to the rain, let it wash her in humiliation.
This whole thing was far from over.
Levi pressed his ear to the bath house door—praying for Wyatt, praying for himself, even praying for the man who’d less than an hour ago put a bullet in his shoulder. He wished he could ask Selah to pray too. She seemed to have the Lord’s ear.
Wyatt had gone quiet. Levi could hear Scully’s muffled curses and struggles against whatever bonds Wyatt had devised to keep him confined. The brain of a young genius housed in the body of a distraught teenage boy, bent on revenge—it was not a situation Levi had ever before encountered.
Levi realized his mistake had been in taking Wyatt’s sanguine temperament at face value. The boy had seemed to be rolling with every punch thrown his way, jumping over hurdle after hurdle and landing on his feet. Perhaps there had been signs of this single-minded refusal to listen to reason. Levi Riggins, the great detective, successful solver of crime, capable of hoodwinking Southern rebels into believing he was one of them—
>
Double-crossed by a fourteen-year-old.
Without giving Wyatt too much information, Levi had asked if he wanted to help him in a little law enforcement sting. What teenage boy would refuse an offer like that? So Levi, suspecting Carpenter’s complicity in the ring, planted the fake telegram. Sure enough he took the bait and connected it to Scully on the other end. There was to be a casket of Confederate silver stored in the abandoned bath house at Ithaca.
But Levi had failed to anticipate Wyatt’s plan superimposed on his own—setting up an electrical “experiment” designed to impress his mentors, Kidd and Beaumont, and their partner Quinlan at the university. Wyatt knew exactly what he was doing, setting up the trap that Scully sprang while Levi was occupied in the house. By the time Levi arrived on the scene, the door was locked and Wyatt was in charge.
And what was he going to do now? Talk his way out of this one? Pretend something else?
Truth. Maybe it was time for a little truth to illuminate the murky corners of this situation.
“Wyatt,” Levi said quietly, “I’m going to tell you something I noticed about you, the first time I met you. You want to hear it?” He waited for a full thirty seconds, counting it down.
On beat thirty-two, Wyatt said, “Maybe. What is it?”
“I saw you had every reason to be scared and alone, but you made friends right off and took responsibility for yourself. I can’t tell you how much I admire that.”
“You’re just trying to bluff me, Mr. Levi. It’s raining and I’m tired, and I want to get this over with.”
“Well, you could do that, but I hope you’ll use that giant brain for some common sense for just a minute more. You and Doc, you’re the kind of people who live to help others, and he says you’re getting close to figuring out something really important. Are you sure you want to give that up?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if you, um, fry Mr. Scully in there, it’s not going to go well for you. At the very least you’ll be in prison the rest of your life, and all your experiments will be over. Doc will have to proceed without you.”