US Grant Mysteries Boxed Set

by Jeffrey Marks

  As it turned out, Grant didn’t have long to wait. He sat in the parlor with Julia and little Jess. His son yearned to divine other places to dig in town. The boy had managed to trace lines across the map, connecting the four points that had been marked on the map. The lines intersected in two points, and Jess was fervently trying to convince his father to dig the following morning for more treasure.

  Newman came quietly into the room. He smiled to watch the boy play with the map and try to determine what existed at the sites marked by the intersections. When he discovered that one of the locations was the Methodist Episcopal Church, Jess decided that perhaps another tack was needed. He started studying the points again, trying to arrive at a combination that would lead to gold. Fortunately, he treated the matter like one of his penny novels and didn’t seem to realize that at least two men had died for that treasure so far.

  Grant was well aware of the dangers involved. He didn’t put much faith in the boy’s daydreams. He doubted that any adult would feel threatened by Jess’s vivid attempts to hunt down the gold. As yet, no one had shown interest in the map. Either the killer knew where the gold was or he bode his time to retrieve the map.

  Grant didn’t notice Newman at first, until the man sat down in an empty horsehair seat. He looked tired this evening, and Grant wondered if he’d been having trouble sleeping. With all the activities he and Julia suspected their host of, Newman should be nigh exhausted.

  “Sam, I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday, and I just don’t see how it could have happened.”

  Julia got up, leaned down next to Jess and helped him gather up the map and pencils. They left without a word, but the look in Julia’s eyes meant that she would be told everything at a later moment.

  “You’re referring to Halley’s death?”

  Newman nodded. “Clarissa loved Chris. I don’t see how you can think that she killed him in cold blood.”

  Grant tugged on his beard for a second. Despite his desire to talk to Newman about all of this, he hadn’t expected the man to give him such wide latitude in bringing up the subject. Still it was rather natural. The intervening decades had narrowed their topics of conversation. This type of activity was bound to get some jawing. Murder didn’t happen very often in a small town. After four years of bullets whistling past your head, milking cows and raising tobacco had to be dull in comparison. Grant found himself missing the command of men, though not battle and bloodshed. “Well, I do know that the doctor isn’t quite sure now of his diagnosis. Apparently people are talking that Mrs. Halley killed her husband. They expect him to do something about it.”

  Newman averted his gaze, pretending to be fascinated by the floor. “There’s nothing they can really do about it, is there? I mean, can they prove poison?”

  Grant sputtered for a moment. He hadn’t mentioned poison to Newman nor had he told him that there was no way to determine if some fatal drug had been administered. Grant wondered again if he’d been confabulating with Mrs. Halley about these matters. “Well, technically, no. But you know the saying, where there’s smoke.”

  “There’s a bunch of old gossipy clucks. That’s all I know.”

  Grant decided to lead with a forward charge, the best method in his eyes. He wasn’t big on looking back. “Those same old hens are saying that you have something going on with Mrs. Halley. That’s the reason why people are speculating about murder.”

  Newman raised himself up out of his chair using just his arms. He stood there without his sticks, one leg holding him upright. Without assistance, the missing leg was that much more noticeable. His fists clenched into balls as he stood there. “Who’s been saying that? I’ve done nothing wrong with her. Nothing.”

  Grant patted his friend on the arm. He felt the hard sinewy muscles in his biceps. If someone was going to dig for that treasure, Newman with his arms built up from crutching would be an ideal choice. Grant wondered if perhaps he had already indulged in some searching on his own. Even if he had, Newman hadn’t shown any signs of helping when the troop had dug out on Circus Street. He’d looked as though he wasn’t capable. “I’m not saying you did, but I did see Mrs. Halley over here one day. She actually came through the backyard if I got the logistics correct. That can look a mite sneaky.”

  Newman sighed and sat back down. “Well, she’s been helping me -- with a personal problem. That’s all. It’s easier to go to the backdoor in this place. It’s so big that sometimes Patsy doesn’t hear folks at the door. So Clarissa goes to the back door to make sure that Patsy answers.”

  Grant nodded and tried to look sanguine. Of course, Newman would have pat answers to his questions. If he had any sense, Newman knew that people would talk. It was natural. Yet his reaction to the gossip seemed real – and intense. It still pained Grant to read the accounts in the newspapers of his deeds, most pure calumny. Newman had it easy.

  Grant cleared his throat to give himself a chance to think. He didn’t want to offend the man who shown them kindness when the Halleys were grieving, but at the same time, the rumors were difficult to ignore, especially if they led to murder. “Well, there’s also been talk about Adam Woerner and Mrs. Halley as well. People seem to think that she threw you over for him.”

  Newman barked out a hoarse laugh. The sound brought Patsy from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron as she stepped into the room. “Is everything ok?”

  She let the apron fall and patted it back into place. Newman stood up again and let her have his seat. He moved to the loveseat next to the chair and sat down awkwardly. “General Grant here seems to think that Mrs. Halley and I are having an affair.”

  Patsy put a gnarled hand to her mouth and tittered. “Oh, I see. My, my.”

  Newman reached out a hand and patted the black woman on the knee. “I think it’s best that I tell him.”

  Patsy frowned for a second, her eyes narrowing with some emotion. The expression cut deep lines across her face that told Grant she was older than he first thought. Maybe ten years older than his own age, fifty if a day.

  Newman smiled at Grant and looked down at his one leg. Grant couldn’t see what emotions were running through the man’s eyes as he began to speak. “Clarissa and I are not having an affair. Patsy and I courting.”

  Grant was glad for the cover of his beard. Otherwise, his jaw would likely have cleaned the floor. He tried to stay calm and look at the couple, but now that he knew, the relationship seemed obvious. The pair looked at each other like schoolkids with a crush. She giggled at the sound of his voice and for a moment looked ten years younger than before. “Well, that’s not what I would have expected for an alibi,” he finally mustered.

  Newman settled back on the seat and sighed. “Well, you might as well hear the whole story. I met Patsy down South during the war. She was a slave. She’d had a pretty hard life. When we freed the slaves, we were just north of Atlanta. The Rebs started firing for all they was worth. I was hit. A Reb ball pretty much shattered the bone in my lower leg. I knew it would probably have to come off, but I didn’t want to give myself up to the Rebs. I’d heard the stories about the prison camps – if I’d only known it was worse. I knew my leg would come off if I was captured. So I hid out in an abandoned barn. Patsy heard my moans and come to see about me. She was still working at a neighboring farm, helping with the little ones. She took care of me for a few days, but the Rebs caught up with me before they left the area. I couldn’t put up much of a fight and surrendered.”

  Grant nodded. He’d known that Newman had served under Sherman in the march to the sea. He’d heard that from one of the men in town. That one expedition had significantly shortened the war and saved Lincoln’s re-election. Grant figured it would be a few years before Sherman’s name could be spoken in the South, except when preceded by a curse word.

  “Anyway, after the war, we came back through that way. We’d already found the gold, Young was dead, and the rest of us weren’t faring all that well. I’d had my leg amputated in Anderso
nville. I didn’t get any ether, just sawed off at the knee. It was hard as hell to ride for any length of time, so I decided to stop off and say thank you to the woman who took care of me. Well, I won’t be too specific, but she was in a pretty bad way by the time I got there. Nothing to eat, Sherman had burnt it all. Nowhere to live and the landowners had taken it out on her for helping a Yankee. I took one look at her again and knew that I wanted to repay her kindness.”

  Grant looked at the two of them. They appeared happy in this house. Even if no one knew of their true relationship. Grant had to admit that he’d never foreseen these consequences in freeing the slaves. He couldn’t imagine that a presidential candidate could ever get away with this type of forbidden love, but what difference did it make to Newman who had enough money as it was. Provided that they could find the hiding place for the gold. He hoped the man had set some of it aside. But with that much available, why would he have bothered? Grant didn’t know what Newman could do without the money. Farming required two legs, and usually a family’s worth of help.

  “So she rode back with me. She actually made the journey a lot easier. Patsy sat behind me astride the horse and held on to me around the waist. Well, after four hundred miles like that, you get to know someone. Originally, I’d just brought her back as an act of charity, but as we talked and grew close I wanted more. I love her, Sam.”

  Grant was glad that Julia wasn’t present. He was far more tolerant of the black population than she was. He saw the people in terms of humanity, troops, and politics; Julia remembered them as her playmates and the people who tended to her needs. She viewed them as kindly caretakers and demi-family. In her world, the seamier side of slavery didn’t exist. The Dents didn’t rend apart families or use the slaves for their own deviant pleasures. His father regaled the family with sordid tales of inhumanity to convince his family and anyone who would listen that slavery was an abomination.

  “She resisted at first, but finally she admitted that she sparked me too. So we’ve been hiding this from the town ever since.”

  Grant stroked his beard and tried to follow the story to its conclusion. “So I don’t understand how Mrs. Halley fits into all this. You could be sleeping with her as well.”

  Newman shook his head. “Clarissa found me and Patsy together one day. We were sharing a hug in the kitchen and she came in the front way. Like I told you, many times we don’t hear people at the front door. She saw us and became a staunch ally to us here.”

  Grant wondered. Why had a small-town country woman taken up the rallying cry for a cause that even the most fervent abolitionists didn’t advocate? He’d be hard pressed to see Charles Sumner or Harriet Beecher Stowe take a similar stance in miscegenation. “Do many people know about you two here?”

  Patsy shook her head. “We can’t tell folk, General. We’d be run out of town.”

  Newman shrugged. “She wants to keep it quiet, so we do. She stays with me, cooks and cleans, and the world thinks of us as servant and homeowner. A natural arrangement for a widower. They don’t need to know anything more.”

  Patsy cackled. “For all the world, a wife might as well be a housecleaner. We don’t get to vote or do much of nothing. I’m findings it’s not a big step up from slave.”

  Grant knew that Julia would disagree. Despite the limitations put on her by society, she still stood at the helm of their family ship. She had raised the two boys while living a continent apart from her husband and still took care of their needs. These two would not be having children, so that issue would be moot.

  “Will you keep our secret?” Newman’s face was the pleading look of innocent youth. Grant knew that it would just be a matter of time before more people saw what was happening and the outrage started. For some in this part of the country, their relationship would be worse than if Mrs. Halley had kilt her husband. Grant had heard of Southerners that lynched men for this kind of behavior.

  “I won’t tell a soul, on my honor. So what do you know about Mrs. Halley and Woerner?” Grant tried to steer the conversation back to the murders and away from personal distractions. He operated better on the plane of strategy than with human emotions.

  “I don’t know. I mean, it’s possible. Woerner was known for that. He charmed a few women in Belle Island. One of them tried to help him escape. That’s why they shipped him to Andersonville. The Rebs didn’t know how much pillow talk she’d done. They was concerned that she’d told him things that could get back to the Feds, being so close to the line and all.”

  Grant decided not to press his host any more. He’d learned enough to safely rule out Newman’s affair with Mrs. Halley. Still that left the widow and the third victim of the killer. Grant stood up, and Patsy joined suit. He went off in search of his wife and son, glad that he didn’t have to hide his love from the world.

  Chapter 15

  Grant heard sounds at the top of the stairs and decided to join his family. He was sure that Julia was anxious to learn everything that had transpired downstairs. She was not one who took kindly to being left out of things, and Grant rarely excluded her from anything troubling his mind. Little Jess though was still too young to hear the affairs of adults. The Grants tried to shield their children against life’s darker side. Grant wasn’t sure how well they would be able to protect their children in an environment like Washington D.C. where fallen women practically camped on every street corner. Politics and prostitution were the two big draws in the nation’s capital.

  For all its isolated aspects, a town like Bethel was a good place to raise children. Grant had enjoyed his years in Ohio, even though he rarely returned to this part of the world for more than a few days at a time. At this juncture in his life, he really couldn’t call anywhere home. No matter how many cities gave him houses, he was still a vagabond. There was enough time to sit at home after his stint in the White House.

  He made it to the top of the stairs and slowly opened the door to the room, in case Jess was already sleeping. After a hard day of running around and whooping, the boy sometimes couldn’t keep his eyes open past dusk. The door creaked and Grant heard a series of scuffling noises from inside the room. He opened the door the rest of the way to see a figure brush behind the curtains. Grant entered the room to find it in total disarray. The trunks had been opened, carpetbags scattered on the floor. A dagger protruded from the top of one steamer trunk, an ominous beacon of the intrusion.

  Grant marched across the room and looked out the window, but the person had skedaddled, long gone into the night. A porch stretched along the second floor around to the front side of the home. The thief could easily have jumped from anywhere along here. Grant tried to look over the edge of the upper level porch, but he couldn’t tell where someone had escaped. The crisp night air invigorated his senses, but there was nothing to learn. The landscape was quiet beyond the chirp of crickets. He went back to the room and sighed. He thought about asking Patsy to do the clean up, but after Newman’s recent admission that might be considered crass.

  Grant had managed to stuff everything back into the trunks and had started on the carpetbags when Julia and Jess entered the room.

  “Lands sakes, Ulys. What are you doing to our clothes?” Julia came over to inspect his work, more methodical about her packing strategies than any of Grant’s generals.

  “I didn’t do anything. I found them this way when I came upstairs.” Grant picked up a pair of long johns and stuffed them to the bottom of the bag. “Someone has been going through our things.”

  Jess held up the paper he’d been carrying. “At least they didn’t get the map. I’ve had it with me the whole time.” He gripped a rolled-up tube of paper, and waved it like a baton.

  Grant scooped up an armful of clothes from the floor and deposited them in the last of the bags. The room looked somewhat presentable at this point. Whoever had been here had obviously not found what they were looking for. The destruction had been contained to their luggage at this point. The bedding and furniture were intact.
The handstitched quilt undisturbed. Grant knew these were no souvenir hunters come calling. The intruder had wanted the map, just as Jess claimed.

  Grant looked at his wife, who possessed an annoyed air about her. Julia wasn’t happy to have a stranger paw through her petticoats and bustles. She was a private and proper woman. If the treasure hunt had the air of a picnic before, now it would hold much higher stakes in the estimation of Mrs. Grant. She did not suffer intrusions gladly. Julia trundled Jess off to the bathroom. Patsy had left a tub of steaming water for the boy, apparently aware of how dirty seven year-olds could get. She left him splashing and came back to the room.

  Grant waited while Julia did a quick inventory of their possessions. He was amazed at how fast she worked, a woman used to servants and slaves. He recalled their years at Hardscrabble, the home he’d built by hand, and how she had pitched in to make money for the homestead.

  “Nothing is missing, Ulys. But you didn’t expect that there would be, did you?” She stood up and brushed lint from the front of her navy-colored dress. The high lace collar reminded him of Mrs. Brown.

  “Not really.” Grant proceeded to tell her everything that had happened downstairs with Newman and Patsy. Julia pressed her lips into a thin line during several points in the story, but she never spoke a contrary word against her host.

  When he explained how he’d seen the intruder escape, a glint came into her eyes. She looked around the room again and frowned. “The Browns. It had to be the Browns. That – woman and her tatting.”

  Grant shook his head. “Anyone could have broken in and looked for the map. I think that the whole town has to know that we’ve been digging in an abandoned lot yesterday.”

  “But by all rights, the Browns –“

  Grant interrupted her. “By all rights, the money belongs to the United States Treasury, but I’m pretty sure that Hugh McCulloch didn’t rummage through our unmentionables. Barring the Secretary, anyone in this town has just as a legitimate right to the money as Newman or Brown.”