Mining for Justice

by Kathleen Ernst

  Chloe chewed her pen for another few minutes.

  Book might cast aspersions on Cornish community

  Chloe remembered Miller’s sarcastic It’s all Cornification comment. The woman seemed to resent stories told about the early Cornish immigrants, and there were still plenty of descendants in Mineral Point who wouldn’t appreciate their ancestors being portrayed poorly.

  Book criticizes some local hero

  Perhaps Miller had fixed her academic sights on some particular revered figure. It was safe to assume that some of the local leaders in the territorial days, even educated professionals, were hard, rough men. A mining frontier was filled with restless souls who relieved their lonely labor by boozing, gambling, and brawling. Slavery was accepted. Settlers fought with brutal zeal to drive Native Americans from the area. Those things, heinous as they were by modern standards, were widely accepted at the time. So … had Miller discovered something else?

  Chloe slapped her notebook closed, slipped it away, and came around the counter to pace. The gift shop was, as Audrey had said, tidy. Immaculate, actually, with merchandise aligned on shelves and tourist brochures stacked neatly. How had Audrey managed to straighten the shop so quickly after the official search? It had taken Chloe ages to make some semblance of order from the chaos left in the cops’ wake.

  Perhaps the cops hadn’t been quite as thorough in here.

  Folding her arms, Chloe considered. Claudia had said that this space had once been used as a workshop and reception area for Bob and Edgar, the two creative men who had managed to save the Pendarvis buildings from destruction. What else had Claudia said? A natural spring runs under the building, and they created a little fish pond right in the floor. We have it covered now …

  The fish pond entrance was probably covered by a bookshelf or something, completely inaccessible. Still, there was no harm in looking.

  Chloe walked down the shop’s first aisle, keeping her gaze down, studying the floorboards. No sign of a hidden fish pond. But in the central aisle, a woven rag rug covered much of the floor. It was an odd choice for a gift shop, where visitors were likely to rumple, if not trip over, the rug. Chloe kicked it aside—and saw a trap door in the floor.

  She crouched and raised an iron ring that sat flush in a well in the wooden hatch. She got a good grip on the ring and pulled. The door was more awkward than heavy, and she raised it with only a brief struggle.

  Water still flowed beneath the building. Bob and Edgar’s little pond no longer held fish, but it still existed. The space was rectangular, about two feet deep. Several iron bars helped support the trap door. The men had added a cement liner. Gravel lined the bottom. Larger stones were piled on one side, out of the water. Perhaps they had once supported potted plants.

  Today, they supported a journal bound in green leather.

  Twenty-Nine

  Chloe reached through the iron bars and grabbed Dr. Yvonne Miller’s journal. Someone may have pushed the scholar to her death, but someone had definitely stolen her journal and hidden it away.

  Chloe shoved the trap door back in place and smoothed the rag rug over it. Back at the counter, she flipped through the journal. Miller’s handwriting was tight and dense. It would take hours to read everything, but on one page, several words and phrases were underlined: slavery … child abuse … Parnell Peavey …

  Parnell Peavey? Chloe closed her eyes, trying to remember where she’d seen that name before. It came back in a flash—he was the subject of the Missing Persons notice she’d found in the Miners’ Free Press. But she’d been studying the newspapers in hopes of learning something about the body found in Adam’s cottage. It seemed extraordinary to find his name in Dr. Miller’s notes.

  Then snippets of remembered conversation exploded in her brain like popcorn. Her gut knotted. “No,” she whispered. It couldn’t be.

  Could it?

  There was one fact she could check. Chloe grabbed the phone book and flipped through until she found the section she wanted. She ran a finger down the page. There. There it was.

  This isn’t proof, she reminded herself. And whatever the answer, it was not her place to investigate.

  She slipped the journal into her totebag. Then she grabbed the phone and dialed 911. “I need to get a message to the Mineral Point police,” she told the clerk who answered.

  “Is this an emergency?”

  “Yes! I’m at Pendarvis Historic Site, but not up with the rescue team at the mine. I really need to talk with Investigator Higgins. If he can’t come right away, please send another officer. I’ll wait at … um … Trelawny House.” She didn’t want to wait here, where she’d found the journal. If anyone saw her disappear inside Trelawny, they’d just think she was working on the collections storage project.

  “Can you spell—”

  The shop door opened. Chloe hung up the phone and tried to compose herself before turning to greet whomever.

  “Chloe?” Evelyn called. “I’m heading home. Shall I lock up the office?”

  “Sure,” Chloe said. She was so conscious of the notebook that she half expected her totebag to spontaneously combust.

  “Are you all right?” Evelyn tipped her head. “You’ve had a wretched day. Maybe you should just lock up the shop and go home too.”

  “I think I will. I don’t expect we’ll get any last-minute shoppers.” Chloe mustered a faint smile. “Have a good evening.”

  After Evelyn left, Chloe locked up and hurried down the path toward the lower property. The clouds were low and dark. Thunder cracked the sky. More rain was on the way. Just what the team on Dark Hill needed.

  But what was happening on the hill, and what had happened to her on the hill, were receding. She imagined Miller’s green journal pulsing in her totebag like Edgar Allan Poe’s telltale heart. Had she screwed up? Her overpowering instinct had been to simply keep the damn thing safe until the cops arrived, but she probably shouldn’t have taken the journal. Shouldn’t have even touched it.

  The trail came out behind Pendarvis House, middle of the three homes on Shake Rag Street. She started to walk past, then stopped. Had anyone thought to lock up the house? Probably not, she thought with an inner sigh. Nobody on staff was even around.

  Her hand was on the doorknob when a roll of thunder shuddered through the afternoon. It almost, but not quite, hid the crack of a gunshot. Splinters of stone flew from the wall.

  Chloe threw the door open, leapt into the small kitchen, slammed the door behind her, and turned the bolt. Her pulse raced. Who the hell was shooting at her?

  She dug the site master key from her pocket with shaking fingers. A discreet modern lock had been installed beneath the doorknob left from Bob and Edgar’s day. She fumbled the key into the lock and managed to turn it.

  But any sense of security was illusory. The shot had come from the site’s upper property behind her. If the shooter had a key, she’d just trapped herself in Pendarvis House. Claudia had said the front door was sealed. There was no other way out.

  Chloe’s mouth felt dry as cotton. She had to find a weapon or a hiding place. Preferably both.

  The kitchen had nothing to offer. She plunged into the parlor—and stopped short. “No,” she moaned.

  Holly sat on the floor in the middle of the room with her dominoes, staring at Chloe with obvious concern.

  Chloe had known fear in the mine, when Bandana Man threatened to kill her. She’d known it moments before, when someone fired a shot at her. That fear paled compared to the cold, soul-crushing terror that came as she realized she’d trapped herself in Pendarvis House with this little girl.

  She scanned the room frantically, then snatched an iron poker from a set of fireplace tools on the hearth. As she turned her gaze landed on the portrait above the mantel. The woman seemed to stare across the room with special intensity. Protect the child.

  Chloe
looked toward the far wall. The room’s only bed sat in one corner. Above the bed was the small ceiling hatch she’d noticed before.

  She darted across the room. “I’m sorry,” she muttered as she leapt onto the gorgeous white-with-red quilt covering the bed. She dropped the poker.

  Holly pointed in horror at the bed: You’re not supposed to touch!

  “Come here, Holly. It’s an emergency. Leave your dominoes for now. Just for now. Hurry.”

  Holly must have understood the urgency, because she jumped up and climbed onto the bed. Her eyes were wide, the pupils dark as midnight.

  “There’s a bad person outside.” Chloe reached above her head and shoved on the hatch cover. It moved easily. “I’m going to boost you up there to hide, okay?” She laced her fingers together and held her hands out for Holly’s foot.

  Chloe wouldn’t be able to eel through the hatch to the crawl space without a ladder, but it wasn’t difficult to get Holly up. The little girl’s head and shoulders disappeared. She managed to get one knee over the edge, and she scrambled from sight.

  “Put the cover back in place,” Chloe hissed, but Holly was already sliding the door back where it belonged.

  Someone rattled the doorknob.

  Please don’t let them have a key, Chloe begged the universe. She jumped down and slapped at the quilt to hide any sign of recent activity. She shoved her totebag holding Yvonne Miller’s journal between the bed and the wall.

  Then she grabbed the poker again, dropped to the floor, and squirmed beneath the bed. Floor or trundle? Trundle, she decided, and wriggled onto the small bed. She was too tall for it, and so lay on her back with knees bent and legs pressed sideways against the quilt covering a lumpy straw-filled mattress.

  Then came a few moments of silence. Was her pursuer leaving? Chloe scrunched her eyes closed, every muscle rigid, hoping against hope. Maybe a patrol car had pulled up in front of the house, scaring the shooter away. Please, please, please …

  In the stillness, the metallic rattle of a key turning the deadbolt sounded shrill. Then came a faint squeak as the kitchen door swung open, and the emphatic thump of it being closed again.

  A slow footstep creaked on a kitchen floorboard. Chloe was scarcely breathing. Thunder rumbled a warning overhead.

  The next deliberate footstep moved toward the parlor door. Chloe opened her eyes. Who was it? Was the shooter a friend of Bandana Man’s, who somehow knew that Chloe had found the cache of drugs? Was it Rita?

  Chloe gritted her teeth so hard her jaw ached. The fireplace poker was clenched in both hands, resting on top of her belly. What would happen to Holly if she, Chloe, were killed? And shouldn’t a cop be here by now?

  The shooter’s first step into the parlor was tentative, probably entering with caution to be sure that Chloe wasn’t waiting just inside the room. A small bureau beside the doorway hid the person from view.

  With one more step her pursuer cleared the bureau. Chloe stared with disbelief at feminine pumps and shins enclosed in nylons. Even knowing what she knew, she had not expected this.

  The woman stopped, perhaps considering the room. There was only one place to hide in the parlor itself—under the bed—and she figured that out fast. “Chloe, come out. I know you’re there.”

  Chloe’s fingers throbbed against the poker. Come closer, she willed. If the woman crouched and fired from the center of the room, there was no help for it.

  One step. Two. Three. Chloe heard a faint rustle of fabric, as if her pursuer was leaning over to peek under the bed.

  Now. She thrust the poker sideways. For the second time that afternoon she felt a cast iron point meet flesh and bone.

  The poker caught Evelyn in the side of her left knee. She screamed a horrible scream and crumpled to the floor. Her cane fell with a clatter. A small pistol hit the floor too, and slid a few inches away.

  Chloe thumped from the trundle and rolled from her hiding place, slamming into Evelyn. The older woman was already reaching for the pistol. Chloe shoved with her toes, stretching for the gun. Evelyn got it first but Chloe grabbed her wrist and squeezed with all her strength. Whimpering, Evelyn hung on to the gun. Chloe slammed Evelyn’s hand against the floor. The pistol spun away and this time, Chloe grabbed it first. She leapt to her feet, pistol held in both shaking hands and pointed at Evelyn.

  The volunteer receptionist was almost unrecognizable. The shellacked hairdo was in disarray. Her pink suit was smudged with dirt. Her nylons were ripped and blood spilled from one knee. Evelyn’s normally placid face was twisted with pain and, maybe, despair. An inarticulate keening filled the room. She stayed on the floor, clutching her knee.

  The kitchen door banged open, and heavy steps hit the floor. Please be a cop, Chloe thought.

  It was not. From the doorway, Gerald gaped at the tableau in the parlor.

  “Where have you been?” Chloe demanded, which was not what she’d meant to say.

  “Taking the maintenance man to the hospital after he had an accident in the shop,” Gerald said. “Do I need to go back? What the hell is going on?”

  Chloe licked her lips. “Evelyn shot at me.”

  “What?”

  “I think Evelyn pushed Dr. Miller down the stairs in Polperro House. I found Miller’s journal hidden in the gift shop. I think Evelyn figured out that I’d found it, and came after me.”

  “What?” Unmoving, Gerald gazed from Chloe to Evelyn and back again. He looked stupefied. And unconvinced.

  “I didn’t push her,” Evelyn quavered. “We had an argument, that’s all. I’d only brought the gun to scare her. I had to make her listen to me! But she stepped back, and she … she fell.”

  “You were trying to do more than scare me just now,” Chloe snapped. Her hands were shaking more than ever. “Who was it about, Evelyn? Parnell Peavey? I just saw the listing for Parnell Peavey Elementary School in the phone book.”

  “Who’s Parnell Peavey?” Gerald demanded.

  “He was one of your ancestors, right, Evelyn? What was Dr. Miller going to write about him? What did he do?”

  “It wasn’t true,” Evelyn wept.

  “Evelyn told me that her earliest ancestor here was prominent enough to have a school named in his honor,” Chloe told Gerald. “Now I’m trying to figure out what she’s so ashamed of. Some of the early leaders massacred Indian people. A few of them owned slaves. But those things were generally accepted in territorial days. So, what could be even worse? Murder, I suppose. Or pedophilia, or other types of child abuse—”

  “That story isn’t true!” Evelyn insisted. “Parnell Peavey was a great man. You sound just like Yvonne. When I loaned her some of my family records, all she wanted to do was twist the facts and make it something ugly.”

  “Jesus.” Gerald looked stunned.

  Evelyn put one palm against the floorboards, as if intending to rise. “Do, not, move,” Chloe warned, but her knees were starting to wobble. This afternoon had just been too damn much. “I could use a little help here, Gerald!”

  Gerald crossed the room and crouched by Evelyn. “Sit up. You can lean against the bed.” He helped the elderly woman reach a sitting position. He sat beside her and gripped her arm. Then he looked up at Chloe. “Go call the police. I’ll stay with her.”

  Chloe chewed her lower lip. Could she trust Gerald? She decided she would, but she was hanging onto the gun. She also fetched her totebag from its hiding place. No way was she leaving that behind.

  Then she backed from the room, through the kitchen, out the door. At that instant the heavens, once again, let loose. Rain drummed the cottage, the flagstone walkway, and her. And Chloe did not care, because a police car pulled up to the curb.

  She waved down the officer. “In here.” Back inside, she pointed at Evelyn. “She shot at me, and came after me to shoot again. She’s admitted to threatening Dr. Yvonne Miller just before
she fell down the stairs on Wednesday too.”

  The cop’s eyebrows rose as he considered the elderly woman sitting on the floor and weeping piteously.

  Chloe didn’t waste time with more details. Instead she threw the bed quilt back and jumped onto the mattress.

  “Chloe!” Gerald cried.

  She pushed on the wooden hatch. This time she felt resistance.

  “Holly, it’s all right,” she called. “A police officer is here. It’s safe to come out now.”

  The hatch moved. A moment later Holly’s frightened face appeared above her.

  Chloe looked over her shoulder. “Gerald, help me.”

  He climbed up on the mattress. Together they caught Holly as she slithered through the hatch.

  Somehow the girl ended up in Chloe’s arms. She sat on the bed hugging Holly close, rocking back and forth. Holly patted her knee. Chloe began to cry, shock and anger and relief and gratitude all mixing together. There was a lot of malice to sort out, but at least the child was safe.

  Thirty

  september 1837

  At least the child is safe, Mary thought, but the severity of the whipping he’d received worried her.

  By candlelight Mary had eased the shreds of cloth from his back and gently dabbed away the blood with a damp cloth. Ezekiel had finally fallen into an exhausted sleep, belly-down on the bed.

  “Should we fetch a doctor?” Jory asked uncertainly.

  “I think not,” Mary said. “For the boy’s safety. A doctor might go straight to Peavey.”

  Andrew paced the small room. “By law, we need to tell Peavey that we’re tending the child.”

  “You’d pass Ezekiel back to the hands of the man who beat him half to death and left him down a mineshaft?” Mary hissed.

  “Not willingly.” Andrew’s face was set in hard lines. “But if Peavey learns that Ezekiel is here, he’ll send the sheriff. We could be arrested for stealing his property.”