The Fire of Home (A Powell Springs Novel)

by Harrington, Alexis

  “Okay, let me know what you find out. I’ve got these county bulletins to go over.” He fanned a short stack of papers at him.

  “Anything interesting today?”

  “I haven’t looked at them yet, but they’re usually the regular stuff—new laws, missing persons, bank robbers, other fugitives. Not nearly as much fun as talking to Granny Mae.”

  Bax gave him a wry look, then stood and put out his hand. “Thanks again, Whit.” He was bone tired from running around half the night, but he was grateful to have his job and another man’s trust.

  As for Milo Breninger, he’d blackmailed his last victim. Bax would make certain of it.

  “Miss Tabitha, those men are back,” Elsa whispered.

  Tabbie lifted heavy lids to see her maid standing over her. She lay languid in the semigloom of her bedroom, the curtains drawn to shut out the afternoon sun, with a cold washcloth on her forehead. She wore only a pearl-gray dressing gown. “Oh, sweet Adeline,” she complained in a groan. “Have they no decency? What time is it?”

  “Just after six o’clock. They’re sorry to trouble you.”

  She pulled off the washcloth. “Yes, aren’t they always? Send them away, Elsa.”

  “I tried, but this time they brought a Vigilance Reserve policeman with them. That Mr. Rinehart insisted on speaking to you.”

  “The Vigilance Reserve!” Her headache pounded so hard, it felt as if it would blow out her eyes at any moment. She caught a glimpse of herself in her dresser mirror and saw that her hair was wilted and crushed. “This harassment is beyond the limits of civility. It’s despicable. Tell Mr. Rinehart that I’m ill and bed-bound. They are not welcome here. I don’t know where Harlan is, I don’t know what he’s done, and if they don’t stop bothering me, I’ll call Mayor Baker’s office and file a complaint. He’s been a guest in my cousin’s home many times, and this new police reserve business he created is his pet project. They’re supposed to protect citizens, not bully them.”

  “All right, I’ll try. Shouldn’t you have dinner soon? You haven’t eaten since this morning. It might make you feel better.”

  Tabbie had managed to entice Elsa to return after promising her a raise, but there were just the two of them here. Her maid now also cooked for her.

  “Get rid of them first, Elsa,” she pleaded. “Then . . . then maybe some toast and tea.”

  Elsa expressed her concern in a grumbled, half-audible comment about Tabitha’s welfare and the thoughtless monsters who were her persecutors.

  Tabbie lay there, waiting for the sound of the front door closing, which she would take to mean that dreadful lawyer, his bumbling assistant, and the volunteer policeman had gone. She hadn’t seen or heard from Harlan since that one night he sneaked into the house, gave her money to keep the house running for a while, had his way with her, and faded back into the night. Not a single word. He had been gone nearly three months, and Tabbie was at wit’s end. No longer an amusing conversation piece to their friends, she’d begun to notice a decline in social invitations, but it was just as well. Having to appear alone at those functions was difficult enough. To be the object of curiosity, speculation, amusement, and undisguised gossip was too much. If Harlan ever came back, they would have to rebuild their lives, start over. But she had a feeling that life as she’d known it with him would never be the same. Then what would become of her?

  They didn’t own this house; it was mortgaged. If the payments weren’t made, the bank would foreclose and she would be forced to go—where? Back to the relatives who had been so eager to unburden themselves of her to begin with? All of the beautiful furnishings and this home that she’d poured so much of her loving attention into just—gone?

  She’d thought of suing Harlan for desertion, and she should. But that wouldn’t be helpful if she didn’t know where he was.

  At last she was sure she’d heard the front door close. In a moment, Elsa reappeared in her bedroom.

  “They’re gone?”

  Elsa nodded, looking as frazzled as if she’d wrestled a bearskin rug out to the front lawn. “I put my foot down and told them they were not going to bother you. What lady in your situation would not be ill and have to take to her bed?” She moved through the room, tidying the bed around Tabbie and collecting cast-off garments. “They might not have been happy, or believed that you know nothing of Mr. Monroe’s whereabouts. I went out on a limb and told them not to come back.”

  “Oh, bravo, Elsa!” Tabbie sat up a bit and clapped her hands, once. “Did you tell them I’ll call Mayor Baker?”

  “I did, ma’am. I think they understand that you are finished with polite cooperation.”

  “Yes, I am. Bless you, Elsa. I feel like a recluse.”

  “But there’s no guarantee it did any good. I’m pretty certain they’ll be back.”

  Tabbie sank back against her pillow, her fleeting sense of victory deflated. The weight of defeat pressed on her shoulders as surely as a pair of oppressive hands.

  Elsa began straightening some trinkets on the dressing table and looked up into the mirror, talking to Tabbie’s reflection behind her. “Forgive me for saying so, Miss Tabitha, but if I don’t speak up I think I’ll burst.” She turned to face her employer. “There’s no excuse good enough for what Mr. Monroe has done to you. To abandon you this way, a fine, loving woman of good family, and leave you holding the bag of his dirty linen to air,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I just think it’s awful. With no word from him, leaving you to worry—I don’t think I could stay with someone who did that to me.”

  Tabbie sighed. “You’re mixing your metaphors, Elsa. But I know what you mean.”

  The maid gave Tabbie a blank look, and she knew the woman had no idea what a metaphor was. She was right, though. Harlan had promised this would all be over soon, and claimed to have an important, anonymous client. Even she didn’t believe that nonsense. She just couldn’t imagine what he was involved in, and he’d dodged most of her questions from the first day of their marriage.

  Had he come up with some crazy idea? Was he already in trouble with the law and simply on the run? That last option certainly seemed possible, given the ongoing talk of financial irregularities.

  She draped the washcloth over a glass on her night table. How could he have left her in this position? she wondered for the thousandth time. She’d become a target for the authorities, gossip, and very real trouble.

  Tabitha glanced around her lovely bedroom in her lovely home and decided she couldn’t stay, waiting for doom. Until now she had only dallied with the idea, but circumstances were growing worse by the day. She lurched to a sitting position. “I need to get away from here. I don’t know what’s coming next, but I know it won’t be good.”

  “Where would you go?”

  “I don’t know—not to my relatives. It would be too easy for these people to hunt me down. I just know I can’t continue to live like this. I certainly wish I knew where to find Harlan, if only to demand an explanation.”

  Elsa put down the hairbrush she held. She cast a couple of troubled, sidelong looks at Tabitha, as if she was mulling over something.

  “What?” Tabitha asked. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know if I should say anything more, Miss Tabitha.”

  “For heaven’s sake, what is it?”

  Her maid put on an agonized expression. “It might only cause more trouble.”

  Tabbie swung her legs over the edge of the bed. The sudden movement made her head swim. “Elsa! If you don’t tell me, I’ll cause you trouble! If it affects me, speak up.”

  Elsa pulled in her chin and looked at her with fearful eyes. “Just before I shut the door, those men were still standing on the porch and one of them said . . . said . . .”

  Tabbie scowled at her.

  “It was Mr. Rinehart. I think he believed I’d already closed the door. He told the
others he has information that Mr. Monroe might be in Powell Springs.”

  “Powell Springs—what is that? Some kind of therapeutic facility, like Battle Creek Sanitarium?”

  “No, miss, it’s a small town east of here.”

  “I wonder how they know that. And why in the world would Harlan be there?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t hear Mr. Rinehart mention anything about that.” She cast another look at her. “But there might be more. He said that Paul Church is missing too.”

  “The gardener? He took my gardener with him?” She pressed two fingers to her forehead. “Ralph stopped coming here at the same time. You know how ragged the yard has become—and my roses, I think they’re a lost cause.” But then, everything seemed lost now, she thought. “Well, I don’t think I have any choice. I’ll have to find Harlan myself.” When that trouble came, she would not be here.

  Amy crowded beside her sister, watching as she listened again to Deirdre’s lungs. She still wore the dress and apron she’d had on yesterday. Spending the night in the bedside chair had covered them with wrinkles. Jess, she noticed, had been able to change clothes.

  Jessica straightened, wearing a frown. “She’s consumptive. I suspected it last night but I couldn’t hear a normal heartbeat because of the methanol. Now it’s speeding up again and it’s too fast. Her lungs are full of crackles and rales. It’s a pretty distinctive sound—goopy, I guess you could call it.”

  Consumption. God, Amy didn’t know anything about taking care of a person with tuberculosis. “I’ve seen it before, but the people who had it were ill for a long time, sometimes years.” She stared at the patient in the bed. Her red hair was a sweaty, snarled mess and the slight gray cast to her sharply boned face made her look as if Death were in the corner of the room, waiting to claim her. “She got sick just a few weeks ago.”

  Jess’s brows rose. “I’ve never seen a case in Powell Springs—oh, you mean not here.”

  Amy nodded, and briefly, an awkward silence opened between them.

  Jess continued, “Those people you saw probably had chronic tuberculosis. Deirdre has the acute form.”

  “What now?”

  Deirdre had floated in and out of consciousness all night, but she’d never really seemed fully aware of her surroundings. Now her eyes fluttered open again and she groped around the bed with her right hand, as if searching for something.

  “Amy?” she croaked.

  She clasped the seeking hand. “I’m here. What can I get for you?”

  “Deirdre,” Jess said, “how are you feeling?”

  “Who is that? Dr. Jessica?” Her voice was thin and weak, and she seemed to be gazing right at them.

  Jess blanched, and involuntarily, Amy clamped down on the hand she held. “Can’t—can’t you see me, Deirdre?” she asked.

  “No, it’s—no. Where . . .” Her voice was as thin and gray as her face. “Where is Tom?”

  “Damn it,” Jess uttered quietly.

  Amy’s blood raced through her veins. “Can you see anything?”

  “No.” The word sighed out of her.

  “Tom came in this morning, Deirdre. He sat beside you for a long time before he went to work. Do you remember?”

  “N-no.”

  Jess took a deep breath and pulled Amy aside. “Blindness is one of the effects of methanol poisoning. Winks lost his sight too just before he died. As for what now, really, between this and the tuberculosis, I don’t imagine she’ll last much longer,” she whispered. “It’s a huge battle for anyone to fight, and she was kind of frail to begin with.”

  “I should have insisted that she see you instead of letting her talk me into getting that cough medicine from Granny Mae.” Amy fought to speak around the strangling knot that formed in her throat, and her words quivered with emotion and regret. “D-did the cough medicine kill her?”

  Jessica studied her sister, a woman who had betrayed her and disappointed her in the worst possible way. Strands of her dark-blonde hair had come loose from their untidy bun and fell around her face. Exhaustion made her look almost as bad as she had the first day Jess had seen her here in the entryway. Naked worry and time had sapped the youthful spark she’d had as a young woman. What Amy really wanted to know was if she had killed Deirdre with a tablespoon and a bottle of poison. What she really sought was mercy. If Jess were vindictive, the sort of person who felt driven to get even, she could lie to Amy and watch her squirm. But regardless of what had passed between them, she couldn’t do that. Her soul was not that dark, her heart not as wicked. So she gave her the truth.

  She met her tired, fearful gaze with an even look. “Not really. It might have pushed her to the edge, but she would not survive her illness.”

  Amy’s eyes closed for a moment—in relief, in gratitude—Jess wasn’t sure which. She released the breath she’d been holding and nodded. “What shall I do for her?”

  “All we can provide is palliative care. You know, try to keep her comfortable. People usually know when they’re dying. I’ll come by a couple of times a day until, well, until she doesn’t need me anymore. When that time comes,” and she made direct and unwavering eye contact with Amy, “all the bedding, her handkerchiefs, and so on will have to be burned.”

  Amy glanced at the bed then back at Jess. “Everything?”

  “Everything. Including the mattress. All soft and porous surfaces, whatever can’t be sterilized. Don’t bother to wash it. Just put it out in the burn pile. You might as well get started with some things already soiled, and be sure to wash your hands with carbolic soap each time.”

  Amy took a deep breath and exhaled. Fatigue was painted on her face with gray strokes. “All right.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Jess went on. “Granny Mae and I might have become friends and managed a truce these past few years, and I still respect some of her knowledge. But she can’t go on cooking up her tonics or anything else with real drugs. I gave up trying to fight her on it because she’s so stubborn and outspoken. But this . . . this is a catastrophe.”

  Amy swept a hand over a loose curl to push it back. “I think Bax has gone to the café to find out who sold her that moonshine.”

  “Good. What did you do with that bottle from last night?”

  “I poured it down the bathtub drain.”

  “All right. I hope Mae quits this on her own, but if I have to, I’ll talk to Horace about reining her in if she doesn’t cooperate. She’s not a chemist or a pharmacist. She’s always done pretty much what she wants, but the mayor’s office ought to be able to put her out of the compounding business.”

  “She’s pretty shaken by this.”

  “Yes, I know.” She looked at the watch pinned to her apron front. “Now I’m off to see Cole and Margaux.” Glancing back at Deirdre, she added, “If anything changes here, call me. Otherwise, I’ll be back late this afternoon.”

  Amy tipped her face down. “Thank you, Jess.”

  Adam paced the floor of the cabin, an unsatisfying pursuit given its small area. He had been living in this dank, grubby shack for nearly a week and he needed to find a way to catch Amy alone in the boardinghouse. Breninger had told him two men and another woman lived under that roof, too. The men would probably be gone during the day, he speculated. He kicked at a pine cone on the floor.

  Speculation wasn’t worth much. It had seemed like a good idea to hide out here, but he realized that he’d need to rely on Breninger and whatever other flunky he could hire to perform surveillance for him. By the time he learned of an opportunity to go to the house, everything could change. And the more people who knew about him and his plans, the higher the risk of word getting around. His chief weapon was the element of surprise.

  He thought he’d been so clever, hiding that book in the back of the closet. How could he have anticipated that Amy would find it there? He paused in front of the
cloudy, vine-covered window, and for a moment his certainty wobbled. Maybe he should have just let her go and been done with it. He doubted very seriously if she knew what she possessed, and this was becoming an extremely trying chore.

  Then his outraged ego and fury rose again. No, by God! She must have known, otherwise she would not have taken it. She was his wife, she had sworn to honor and obey him, and nothing gave him greater pleasure than seeing her dread of igniting his anger reflected in her eyes. She was meant to be with him, to follow him, and do his bidding. Love had nothing to do with the issue. It was simply the natural order of things. His gambling debts and other miscalculations did not excuse her.

  He took up his pacing again. He had no choice, he realized. He’d have to light a fire under Milo Breninger and pay him for the privilege.

  Damn you, Amy, he thought bitterly. He was a busy man. He didn’t have time for this. But he’d get what he wanted, no matter what it took.

  When Bax stopped by the house around two o’clock, he searched the whole first floor but saw no one. Then he climbed the stairs and started looking into each open room. Over the sound of running water, he heard short, gulping sobs. He found Amy at the sink in the bathroom, scrubbing her hands with soap and a small brush as if she meant to take off her skin. She still had on the same clothes she’d worn since yesterday and her apron was dirty. He could see her reflection in the mirror. She looked like a madwoman.

  “Amy?”

  She glanced up at him. Her face was crumpled with her crying, but as soon as she saw him she wiped her face against the shoulder of her dress and her expression became a blank.

  “What’s going on?”

  Taking a deep breath, plainly trying to take control of her voice, she gulped back the tears and cleared her throat. “Fred Hustad is on his way. Jessica sent for him.”

  He looked toward the end of the hall and saw that Deirdre’s door was closed. “Where’s Doc Jessica?”

  “Down—down there.” She inclined her head in that general direction.