Frail Blood

by Jo Robertson

  "It's far more than shocking. It's abhorrent and unspeakable. And illegal." Malachi's jaw tightened and the muscle writhed beneath the skin. "What else did you find out?"

  "I don't think Mr. Machado knew. He may not know even now. The three of them – Aaron, Phoebe, and Mrs. Machado conspired to cover up the truth. I believe the argument between the parents and Aaron was a scheme of Mrs. Machado to separate the siblings and prevent ... further involvement."

  "What about Joseph, Jr.?"

  "I have to assume he did not know his true parentage." She ran a shaky hand over her eyes and closed them briefly. "But Phoebe's erratic and wild behavior at the time indicates she was a very emotionally disturbed young girl."

  "Do you think Aaron forced himself upon her?"

  "Does it matter now?"

  Malachi rose and stretched his legs, raising his arms over his head and twisting about at the waist. Then he sat down close to her and took both her hands in his. "You've done very well, Emma. I'm terribly sorry I did not listen to you this afternoon."

  She heaved a sigh of relief, hardly realizing how much his good opinion meant to her. "What will you do now?"

  "Unfortunately, nothing yet."

  At her cry of surprise, he hurried on, "The defense of Alma remains the same. But this will be grounds for an appeal, should she be convicted. If she's acquitted, as I hope, we can pursue a proper investigation into the real murderer."

  Emma began to protest, but realized she must accept his decision. An immense weight lifted from her shoulders now that she'd unburdened herself to Malachi. "Who could possibly have murdered Joseph?"

  "Alma fired the wounding shot to the shoulder. She probably dropped the weapon and fled in horror when she realized what she'd done." He tilted Emma's chin upward and stared hard at her. "You understand that she must stand in reckoning for that, regardless of the trial's outcome."

  Emma nodded.

  "Someone entered the room after she'd run away, assessed the situation – perhaps this person had even listened to the two lovers quarrel – and took advantage of Joseph's weakness."

  "And that person shot and killed Joseph Machado," she whispered, hardly believing a family member could do such a thing.

  "Yes, someone in the Machado family – Phoebe or Aaron or Mrs. Machado – committed parricide." At the moment, however, Malachi thought not of parricide – the death of an individual by a close family member – but of infanticide, and specifically of Constance and her heinous act of betrayal against the very nature of motherhood.

  The silence lumbered between them for long moments.

  "When will you tell me about her?" Emma asked suddenly.

  He gaped at her. "What? Who?"

  She stared at him silently for a long moment. "I don't know, but when you think of her, you have a – a distant look on your face." Her expression was compassionate, almost pitying. "I noticed the night we – when we – afterward ... " Her voice trailed off.

  His first instinct was to pretend he didn't understand, but she was too intuitive to believe a prevarication.

  He heaved a long sigh, wondering how she'd diverted him off the original topic of discussion. "I was married," he began, not daring to look at her, but feeling the shock of his admission unsettle her as she sat beside him on the sofa. Her body went rigid with an emotional withdrawing. "I was a young jack-a-nape then, callow beyond belief."

  "Did you love her?"

  He turned to face her, sweeping the strands of fire from her forehead. "I thought I did, else I would not have taken her virginity."

  He saw the shocked slit of her black pupils against the warm brown irises, and something else quavered in their dark depths, something that shook like the pain of betrayal. "Don't look at me like that, Emma."

  "You can understand my confusion," she said gazing steadily into his eyes. "Do you generally go about deflowering young virgins?"

  The barb was meant to wound, but he would not rise to the bait she threw him. "That was badly done, Emma."

  She had the grace to lower her eyes, her cheeks tinged with color.

  He rose and crossed the room. "I meant to marry her from the start or I would not have bedded her. We made a hasty marriage when we discovered a child was on the way."

  "But you are not married now ... are you?"

  He whirled around. "Of course not! Whatever you may think of me, know this, Emma. I would never cheat on a wife or a lover."

  "What happened to her then? And the child?"

  "He – he died. Or at least I prefer to tell myself that." His face felt like marble, mirroring the hardness of his heart. Constance's betrayal still ached after all these years even though he knew now he'd never truly loved her.

  "You cannot imagine she harmed your child!"

  "I prefer not to imagine anything at all about Constance's perfidy, but the child arrived early and was dead shortly after birth." He smiled bitterly, feeling the acrid taste of remorse on his tongue. "But that was not the only betrayal of my darling wife."

  His voice sounded harsh in his own ears, but he could not help that. Emma had asked for the truth about the kind of man he had been, and he would give it to her. "My wife was anything but a virgin. In fact, within months of our marriage, while her belly grew large, I learned that she'd slept with half the men in San Francisco."

  "Oh, Malachi." A world of compassion lay in the tenderness of her voice as she rose to stand before him.

  "The child was not mine, but it still hurt to lose him – a boy. All along I'd thought of him as mine and the loss was ... palpable, as if part of my soul had been ripped out. Strange, isn't it? And I was not even the boy's father."

  "And then?"

  "I wanted to thrash her, but I was persuaded by my level-headed and reasonable friends simply to leave her." He smiled to take the edge from his quip.

  "She used you."

  "That she did, Emma dear, but as I said, I was young and foolish."

  She touched his forearms lightly. "I'm not like Constance." The tenor of her voice signaled a slippery purchase.

  "You as good as lied about your virginity," he retorted, regretting the words the moment they slipped from his mouth to muddy the widening gulf between them.

  "Yes," she whispered after a moment, "and I'm sorry. I – I wanted to experience the ... excitement of being with you and I went about it the wrong way."

  "You guessed I'd refuse if I knew the truth."

  "Yes," she admitted, "but I wanted you so much I risked fooling you. I'm sorry now."

  He was touched by the admission and wanted to believe it was he alone she wanted, not just any man to satisfy her curiosity about sex and passion.

  "No wonder you were so angry with me," she murmured.

  "But look how well that turned out." He laughed, stepped back lest his feelings for her overwhelm his good judgment. "We are now colleagues and friends."

  "You should not have put me in the same class as that woman," she warned.

  Chapter 24

  "More sinn'd against than sinning." – King Lear

  The crowd of people jockeyed to find a seat on the benches of Judge Underwood's courtroom. Everyone clamored to witness the last comments of the two attorneys in the most sensational trial of the county. Emma was wedged between Stephen on her left and a large, florid man on her right who reeked of tobacco and manure.

  Prosecutor Fulton's remarks were unimaginative, but thankfully brief. He recounted the murder in lurid detail, re-enacting the supposed actions of Alma Bentley as she strapped the pistol to her ankle, traversed the distance to the Machado home, and confronted her lover. Fulton spat the last word as if it were a vile taste on his tongue.

  His entire summation lasted ten minutes. By the smug look on his face, Emma was certain that he was confident he'd made a cogent argument. She observed the faces of the twelve men who alternately followed the peacock of Fulton's posturing and darted glances of something like pity toward Alma Bentley.

  As Malachi began
his concluding remarks to the jury, his words struck her deeply. Alma was a poor, uneducated woman, he said, one who depended upon the kindness of her employers for her livelihood. And yet, one of these very bastions of responsibility betrayed her trust and confidence, seduced her with promises of marriage, and then cast her aside without a qualm.

  Malachi recounted the witnesses who'd testified to Alma's sweet nature, her naiveté, and lack of sophistication. He spoke of her ignorance. Emma felt a stab to her heart.

  Her gullibility. The knife thrust deeper.

  Her sorry, weak spirit so easily tempted by a womanizer. Her final act of shooting Joseph Machado was the last step of her descent into moral corruption. Without such a man as Joseph, Alma would never have committed such a heinous sin.

  Emma could not breathe. She despised the role Malachi had thrust on Alma, one of a weak woman, unable to choose right from wrong without a man's guidance. A woman so frail she was led into the sins of fornication by a man.

  Emma trembled. Did Malachi really believe this? If so, he must believe that she, too, was as fragile and corrupt a vessel as Alma Bentley.

  He concluded his remarks, after which Fulton rose to add to the prosecution's summation. Emma could wait no longer. She fled the jammed courtroom, the sad, dreary form of Alma Bentley, the whole sordid mess of a case that put a woman on trial for craving passion and sexual pleasure.

  It was not right!

  #

  The jury retired for deliberations after Judge Underwood's instructions delineating the specific charges and their meanings, as well as their duties as jurors. Now the long delay began, Malachi thought.

  The wait could be hours, days, or weeks. In his experience, there was no way to predict how long a murder trial would take to come to its conclusion, but he suspected the shorter the verdict, the less well the outcome bode for his client.

  He spoke words of encouragement to Alma and watched her being led away to her stone cell. A weariness he'd not felt in a long time settled in his bones and muscles as he looked about the now-empty courtroom for Emma. He saw Stephen Knight jotting notes as he sat in the second row behind the gallery divider.

  "Stephen," he called as he strode toward the older man and extended his hand in greeting. "How are you?"

  "Just finishing the notes for the weekend edition."

  "Perhaps you should wait. The jury may return a verdict before then." Malachi smiled because both men knew a conclusion that soon was highly unlikely.

  "I'm preparing three versions of this edition."

  "Three?"

  Stephen laughed at the perplexed look on Malachi's face. "One delineating the summations, another for an acquittal – "

  "And a third for a guilty verdict," Malachi concluded, finally understanding. He patted the older man's shoulder. "You are a wise man, Stephen. I'm pleased Fulton's attempt to smear your name had the reverse effect."

  "Don't worry about me. I am a survivor of many inequalities."

  Malachi looked around the room. "Have you seen where Emma's got to? I expected her to wait for me."

  "She rushed out before Charlie spun out his second line of manure," Stephen said frankly. "She seemed upset, but I thought it better to leave her be."

  Malachi didn't have to ask why. He knew that his line of argument for Alma's defense offended Emma. He wished he'd had another option, but unfortunately, that one was his client's only hope for an acquittal.

  He hadn't been able to read the jurors' faces, but he believed she might have a chance. God, he hoped so. Alma Bentley did not deserve to face a hangman's noose.

  "No mention of where she was going?" he asked Stephen.

  Stephen shook his head, a sad look pulling his eyes down into a sad, puppy-like expression. "No, but she was more than a little disturbed. Perhaps you should find her."

  But everywhere Malachi looked for Emma over the next several hours, yielded nothing. She was not at The Gazette office, nor her home. He even risked the wrath of her parents and rode the distance to their palatial home in Sacramento for nothing but a chilly reception.

  Where had Emma gone? What mischief was she likely to get herself into? Malachi remembered the last time she'd run off in search of her own investigation and a lump of ice settled in his chest at the thought of what might happen to her if she again behaved so foolishly.

  #

  The train ride from Sacramento to Bakersfield took Emma less time than she had supposed. When she stepped down from the car onto the surprisingly sturdy platform of the train station, she looked about for a conveyance to take her to the home of Aaron Machado.

  Undoubtedly Malachi would consider her actions foolish – unplanned and impetuous. Once again. And perhaps he was correct, but when she'd watched him present his concluding remarks to the jury, she felt an overwhelming urgency to ascertain the truth about the murder of Joseph Machado.

  She could do nothing for Alma in court – her fate was now in the hands of the jury – but Aaron Machado, the older brother, seemed like a good starting place to unravel the mystery. Abhorrent as it was she had more than a niggling suspicion that the man might've fathered the slain Joseph, Jr.

  The very notion of such a liaison sent prickles of revulsion and disgust over her skin, but she was not so naïve as to believe such conduct was impossible. Particularly in a household fraught with such dark secrets and careless adults as in the Machado residence.

  The elder Machado son resided in a small bungalow at the edge of Bakersfield surrounded by more dust than Emma had ever seen in her life. Raised in the lush San Joaquin Valley amid the long growing seasons and plenteous fruits and vegetables throughout the year, she'd hardly considered how barren the area looked this time of year.

  But today she was grateful for both the lack of heat and lack of rainfall.

  A long span of dirt and whirling eddies of dust gathered around the house and its outbuildings. Today an aura of desertion lay around the place although she glimpsed a chicken coop at the side of the house and a horse corralled nearby.

  While not exactly prosperous, Aaron Machado seemed to have made something of himself in this thriving railroad town. Perhaps he didn't need or covet his father's money after all.

  Taking her courage in hand, Emma rapped sharply on the door. After a moment of silence, she knocked again, this time more loudly.

  At last, she heard a shuffling of feet and the door swung open. A large, beefy man with features eerily similar to Joseph Machado, Sr., stood in the door frame, silhouetted against the dark interior.

  "Yes?" he growled, standing in shirt sleeves and trousers, his suspenders dangling from his waist. Obviously she'd interrupted his evening meal because a large cloth was tucked into his shirt neck and his jaw was smeared with grease.

  "Mr. Machado?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Mr. Aaron Machado?"

  The man raked his eyes over her apparel, taking in the finery of her suit, her broad-rimmed hat, gloves, and jewelry, nodded his head and softened his tone. "How may I help you?"

  "I'm Emma Knight from Sacramento. May I have a moment? I – I've come to speak to you about your brother Joseph." Emma hesitated and looked back at the horse and cart which had driven her to the outskirts of town.

  She belatedly weighed the wisdom of her hasty decision to approach Aaron Machado alone. She risked far more than her reputation by entering his house.

  Would the driver wait for her to finish her business even though she'd paid him a considerable amount to remain? Her experience at the river dock in Sacramento had made her decidedly skittish on the matter.

  However, she took a deep breath, girded up her loins, and ploughed on. "May I come in?"

  Machado's stolid face remained blank and his voice silent, but after a moment he opened the door wider, allowing her entrance into a small, but tidy sitting room. "Excuse me a moment," he said, waving towards a large overstuffed chair.

  When he returned minutes later, he'd donned a jacket, although not a neck cloth, and
wiped at his face, presenting a much less threatening appearance. This boded well. Although he did not offer her refreshment, he began cordially enough by waiting for her to be seated before plopping himself down on the shabby sofa opposite the chair he'd indicated for her use.

  "Now," he began, threading the fingers of his beefy hands, "what can I do for you, Miss Knight?"

  How to begin such a delicate and potentially dangerous topic? Emma clutched her handbag tightly, feeling the outline of her father's purloined Deringer through the soft fabric. "I – I thought perhaps you could tell me something about your brother's early life."

  "He'd dead now," Machado answered bluntly. "Why do you want to know about his life now he's gone?"

  "I'm helping to investigate his murder."

  Machado shook his head as if the dreariness of his brother's death was a mere irritant, but Emma detected the twitching of his hands. "I hardly knew little Joe," he answered, drawing a blunt finger down the side of his nose. "I was a grown lad when he was born."

  "But you were there the night of his birth?"

  He glanced at her suspiciously. "Who told you that?"

  "Mrs. Henderson. The midwife. She seemed to think that you cared very much for your little brother."

  "Humph, damned busy body – begging your pardon, miss." He rose, jammed his large hands into his trouser pockets, and stared out the front window to the dirt and Joshua trees dotting the surrounding land. "I left when Joe was a little fellow, two or three, never been back."

  Emma twisted in her chair to watch him. "If you don't mind my asking, why is that, Mr. Machado? Why did you leave?"

  The man kept his back to her as he barked out a harsh laugh. "She wouldn't let up. Kept after me like a mad woman. I – I thought after the babe was born, she'd let it go, take care of him, leave me alone, but ... "

  His voice trailed off and when he turned to face Emma, the ragged look on his face spoke of grief and agony the likes of which she'd never seen.