The Stills
Page 32
Lily calculates: Arlie might—or might not—have known about the money in the glove box of the automobile. Either way, he thought he was escaping to start life anew—again—in Portsmouth in the southeastern tip of Ohio. And had Arlie simply wrecked, or been drunk while driving, or drank from Luther’s flask, dropping it when he became ill? She would never know for sure.
Dr. Goshen drops his head to his hands for a long moment. Mrs. Goshen puts her hand gently on his back. “We have to tell her the rest.”
Finally, he looks up at Lily. “Luther passed while I was trying to save him. I got him in my automobile, left him in Rossville.”
“And the snakebite marks?”
“I punctured his wrist. Arlie said they’d been to service, so I thought—” He drops his head back to his hands.
“We got in over our heads with Luther and George Vogel,” Mrs. Goshen says. “We know George’s plans for the Murphy farm. If—if we spelled it out in detail for you, would that make things … easier … for us?”
“I can’t make promises, but it wouldn’t hurt,” Lily says. “I’m listening.”
FIONA, NOVEMBER 30, 6:00 P.M.
Fiona gazes up at George. “Darling, I’m feeling so much better.”
They are alone together in their bedroom, getting ready to head down to dinner.
George takes her chin in his hands, too tightly. His smile is tense, too. “That’s good to hear—but we don’t want to take any risks, now do we? With our baby?”
He asks the last question as if there is doubt that she’s pregnant. It’s Abe who must be putting doubts into George’s mind. They’ve been working long hours together.
“It’s just that…” She pauses, considering, but also because it’s hard to talk clearly with his hand vise-clenching her chin. “I’ve gotten close to Elias, tending to him—”
George lets go, pushes her away, so she lands on the edge of the bed. “Have you? He seems quite fine now,” George says. Elias had been caught the day before, coming back from the cabin where Colter is still hidden, and had passed it off as taking a long walk for fresh air, for his health. Elias had been able, though, to hide the dynamite in the woods along the newly made gravel road. He’d been able to whisper that much to Fiona. Thank God.
“Well, physically,” Fiona says. “Emotionally—” She shakes her head to indicate how pitiful Elias has been since Luther’s passing.
“Fine in that regard as well,” George says as he straightens his tie in the mirror. Even here, he insists that they dress well for dinners. Tonight, he’s requested Klara cook sauerbraten, red cabbage, schnitzel. George chuckles. “I think he likes having a patient to tend to.”
He means the boy—Zebediah Harkins, who had finally said that he’d witnessed a man they know to be Luther paying off another man and that the man and Luther had shaken hands and parted ways. The only other thing the boy will say is that he’d been diagnosed with sugar diabetes at the hospital and wants to go home to see his mama, who is sick. When Elias protested that the boy would die without insulin, George had ordered the medicine be brought in—it seems there is nothing that he can’t conjure with his money and his will.
And he’s right; Elias has seemed to find purpose in treating the boy. George refuses to let the boy go back to his family. Fiona is not sure why. Because George wants Elias sharp and alert again, for overseeing the creation of diluted liquor? George can use Dr. Goshen for that.
More likely it’s because George doesn’t believe the boy—neither does Fiona, for that matter. He’s holding on to him—for now, while he might be useful in some way. She’d overheard George and Abe talking about using the boy to trade to Lily, if she gets too suspicious and comes snooping around, for her silence on their plans. Something about knowing that she can compromise. Working on their plans, George seems to have forgiven Abe for his recent flubs and indiscretions.
“Well, I just think Elias might need someone with him at the funeral tomorrow—”
“Abe and I will be with him!” George snaps. “You can stay here, and get packed up. You’ll be going back to Cincinnati in a few days.”
Dammit! Abe really has gotten to him. Already, Fiona’s hold on George is waning. The sooner she can put herself in control, get him and Abe locked away, the better. For now, Fiona says mildly, “All right, darling. You won’t be coming with me?”
“It’s nice to know you’ll miss me,” George says. He comes over, takes her chin again, more gently, but his eyes are still steely. “Abe will accompany you back—just to make sure you’re safe, of course. Shortly after the funeral.”
Of course—George doesn’t trust her to be alone. But why right after the funeral? She considers for a second—oh. Because George and Abe want to be seen at the funeral, supporting Elias in his time of loss.
“Will—will Elias also come with us back to Cincinnati?” she asks as lightly as possible. “I’d like to have a doctor on hand since I’m, well, a bit older.”
“I’ll make sure you have a doctor in Cincinnati,” George says. “Elias will leave directly after Luther’s funeral on other assignments.”
In other words, Fiona thinks, after Luther’s funeral, after everyone gets a chance to see Elias there—because it would be too odd if he disappeared before the funeral—Elias will be conveniently disappeared.
Dr. Goshen will take his place, working on the operations here.
Fiona’s heart quickens. This completely scrambles the plan she and Elias had put together: Fiona would pass along the letter from Colter’s wallet, which Fiona had retrieved on her walk to the cabin this morning, to Lily at the funeral. Alerted that a federal agent is being held here, Lily would come in after the funeral, undoubtedly with others, and George would seek to escape down the completed gravel road. But by then, Elias and Colter will have snuck down to the road, and strung the dynamite across it.
They will just need to set the fuse and blow up the road right before George’s automobile gets there and block his escape.
Or, even, kill him. But if Elias doesn’t come back from Luther’s funeral, what then?
“I’ll be sure to tell Sheriff Ross you send your regards,” George says with a small smile that reveals only the tips of his teeth.
“Of—of course,” Fiona says, and offers up the brightest return smile she can conjure. She stands. “Shall we head down to dinner?”
LILY, NOVEMBER 30, 8:00 P.M.
“With the deputies I have, I think we’ll need about a dozen more men,” Lily says, glancing up from sketching a map of the Murphy farm, the road leading up to it, the layout of the buildings, the hills around it. “I counted less than that at the Murphy farm, but Vogel could have brought in more—”
Lily comes to a halt as Marvena looks as ill as if she’d held a plug of tobacco too long and swallowed a mouthful of tobacco juice.
“Marvena? Are you all right?” Jurgis asks.
The three are gathered in Lily’s office. Ten minutes or so before, she’d finally released both Jurgis and Marvena—after she booked Mrs. Goshen for murder and Dr. Goshen as an accessory. She’d updated Marvena and Jurgis and now was telling them that she planned to raid the Murphy farm, not just because of Vogel’s plans as divulged by the Goshens, but also because she suspects that both the federal agent DeHaven and the Harkins boy are being held there. Lily has spelled out the whole situation and that as soon as they finish speaking she’ll send Benjamin to Columbus to alert Barnaby to come back the next morning with agents. With what the Goshens have told her, she has enough to justify the raid.
At Luther’s funeral tomorrow, she’ll see if Fiona offers any indication that Zebediah or DeHaven are on the farm, useful information to have before the raid, though Lily is still not fully convinced she can trust Fiona. After all, she, like Luther, could be trying to trick Lily on George’s behalf.
Either way, she needs to attend that funeral—especially since she’d let Elias and Fiona know she’d be there. Keep appearances going. Not alarm Georg
e. That will buy time for Barnaby to assemble his agents and get them down here.
Even so, she also needs willing, trustworthy locals who are good with firearms—without being hotheads.
Marvena looks stricken. “It’s—it’s just Fiona came to see me Monday morning,” Marvena says. “She recollected as to how I’d threatened a few years ago to blow up the mines if’n the men weren’t allowed to discuss unionization. She remembered that I’d told you, Lily, that I’d hidden away dynamite sticks. Seems Martin had told her about this. And—and she wanted to know where that dynamite is—”
Lily drops her pencil to her desk. She takes a long, slow breath. The room feels too close, too stuffy.
Jurgis’s jaw clenches. She understands his anger, but wrath isn’t going to help either Marvena or this situation.
“Did you tell her?” Lily asks.
Marvena wipes tears from her eyes. “Yes.”
“Why?” Jurgis’s voice cracks on the simple question.
Marvena turns to him. “Pure ’n’ simple—she offered money for Frankie to get asthma treatments in Cincinnati. And I was desperate, and she pointed out she’d do anything to help her child if he truly needed it, and—”
“I’ve been desperate to help Frankie, too!” Jurgis cries. “But this—this—”
“She said no one I cared about would get hurt!” Marvena exclaims. “I didn’t know about the boy Zebediah being there, and—”
“She came to you on Monday morning?” The question rolls slowly from Lily.
“Yes,” Marvena says.
“Zebediah wasn’t at the farm at that point,” Lily says. “Barnaby told me earlier today that he learned that the boy’s father—really though, it was Abe who went posing as him, I’m guessing—came and got him Monday afternoon.” Lily stares past Marvena and Jurgis, thinking. They quiet, giving her the stillness and silence she needs for contemplation. “So I think Fiona was sincere—at the time she came to ask you about the dynamite, no one was at the farm you’d care about. And why would she ask you for dynamite? It can’t be to help George in some way. He has access to everything he needs, whenever he needs it. So she must have another plan for it. Something to hurt George.”
“I thought she was more’n happy to be his fancy wife?” Marvena says.
“I thought so, too,” Lily says. “But she talked about caring about her son—and yet he is not at the farm with her for Thanksgiving. I’m guessing that was George’s doing. Her aunt Nell, who was supposedly hosting them all for Thanksgiving, has left for Florida.” Marvena and Jurgis look surprised at the notion of such a big change. “And something else—in Dr. Goshen’s confession, when I pressed for every detail, every interaction they’d had with the Vogels, he said Fiona seemed upset when he’d mentioned giving ulcer medicine to her uncle. When I talked to Nell Murphy after her husband’s sudden death, she was adamant that he was perfectly healthy, that she believed foul play was involved. I didn’t believe her at the time, but now I’m wondering if I should have. Mr. Murphy would not have sold the farm to the Vogels, but what if Mrs. Murphy’s hand was forced in some way—and Fiona knows or suspects foul play, too, regarding her uncle?”
Lily looks back at her friends. “I think she wanted that dynamite to hurt or stop her husband somehow. Marvena, did she ever come back, say if she found it?”
Marvena shakes her head. “No. And I have my doubts she could find it—it’s well hid, and she’s not exactly the type suited for backwoods trekking.”
Lily lifts an eyebrow. “I don’t think we should make the mistake of underestimating Fiona. She managed to cleverly get a message to me, right under Abe’s nose.”
“So now what do we do?” Jurgis asks.
“You all gather reliable men here,” Lily says. “And I go to Benjamin—and ask him to take a message for us to Barnaby.”
FIONA, NOVEMBER 30, 8:30 P.M.
“Is it all right if I go check on the boy?” Fiona asks George. She smiles at him as though his word is her command—and God help her, for now it still is. She tries to keep her smile loose, casual, hoping he doesn’t see how much she seethes, how she regards his stolid face—once so comforting—as loathsome.
Fiona inhales slowly. Her head pounds, a sick throbbing just behind her left eye in particular, not just from nerves but because the parlor roils with cigarette smoke.
“It’s just, I’ve overheard the boy crying for his mama. And, well, I hate to complain since it doesn’t usually bother me, but the smoke—”
“Just go,” George says.
“But—” Abe starts.
George cuts him off with a glare. “What in the world do you think she’s going to do?” He dismissively waves his hand, then returns to reviewing his notes.
Fiona quickly leaves the room before George can change his mind and hurries up to the semifinished attic, where a cot has been set up for Zebediah.
He’s sitting up on the cot, a confused and scared expression overwhelming his thin face. He only seems at ease when he talks about his family, especially his mother and his sister Ruth. Fiona’s heart pangs at the sight of his slender shoulders even as he tries to hold a tough posture; he reminds her of her son, Leon.
Elias sits on the edge of the cot next to him, watching as the boy injects himself with insulin. Slowly, Zebediah’s getting the hang of the dosing and process. Elias’s concern is obvious. How can the willingness to kill exist so easily alongside the obvious need to care for others? Fiona will never understand Elias.
She shakes off that concern. She doesn’t need to understand him. She just needs for him to do as she asks.
Fiona approaches the cot. The light from the coal-oil lantern dances with the sharp shadows of the steeply pitched ceiling, casting eerie lines on the walls and on Elias’s and Zebediah’s faces.
The wind outside howls, making Zebediah jump. Fiona smiles gently at him. “Don’t be afraid,” she says. “We have a plan and soon you’ll be home.”
The boy’s face lights up, but Elias looks dejected, as he has ever since he learned Fiona will not be going with him to Luther’s funeral.
Fiona quickly reaches down, into her boot, and pulls out Colter’s letter from home. “Here,” Fiona says to Elias, offering him the letter. “Get this to Lily.”
“She won’t—”
“Yes she will!” Fiona hisses. “And if she won’t talk to you, her mama will.”
“How do you know she’ll be at the funeral?”
Fiona considers. “I don’t—but I’m guessing she will. Her mother values family above all else, and Luther is Lily’s children’s uncle, whether Lily likes it or not, and you’re their great-uncle.”
She looks at the boy, smiles as she asks him, “Do you trust Sheriff Ross?”
He nods.
“You should,” Elias says, a shadow of sorrow crossing his expression.
Zebediah says, “Well, my dad says she’s good people, though it’s weird she’s a lady sheriff. And she’s always nice to us when we work on her farm. And Ruth sent along home-canned apples—and she’s stingy with those. Sheriff Lily said how much she liked them.”
“Good,” Fiona says. She points to the letter Elias is holding. “I’ve put your initials up in the corner, just below the stamp. I think she’ll understand when she sees. Just in case, when Elias passes the letter, he’s going to whisper, ‘Canned apples,’ and quickly point to the stamp.”
She gives Elias a somber look. “You must do this,” she says. She looks back at Zebediah. “We have to get word to Sheriff Ross.”
Elias pats the boy’s shoulder. “I’ll get word. You remind me of my other nephew. Daniel, when he was a boy. Always showed a tougher exterior than he really had on the inside.”
Zebediah frowns. “I’m tough.” He crosses his arms.
Fiona smiles. “Course you are.” She pulls off her watch, almost reluctant to let go of it, it’s such a pretty thing—rose gold chain wristband and a diamond inset for the 12. “Can you tell time?”
“I know, I know,” Fiona says. “All right, tomorrow, when it’s ten thirty, I want you to start hollering, something fierce, that you have stomach pains and you’re going to throw up.”
Ten thirty is the set time for Luther’s funeral. Elias, George, Abe, and probably another man or two will be there. That would leave two men here in the house, a few more out front, and Klara, who had been bringing the boy his meals. But when Fiona retrieved the letter, she’d also nabbed the poisoned stomach medicine, hidden it in the back of a kitchen cabinet. She has been helping Klara in the kitchen, and Klara has started to warm to her at last.
So tomorrow morning, she will make Klara’s customary cup of tea for her, bring it up, whisper how grateful she’s been for how well Klara’s been tending to the boy and everyone else, and wouldn’t just a wee break from taking care of the boy, while the men are away at the funeral, be nice? She’ll have dosed Klara’s tea, just enough so she feels ill, and Fiona will again play the ever-concerned mother figure.
“All right,” the boy says slowly. “I can do that. Then what?”
“Don’t worry about that just yet,” Fiona says gently. It’s better to tell him tomorrow, at the last possible minute. She turns a harder look on Elias, pushes back regret that she can’t warn him that George’s plan is that Elias won’t be coming back from Luther’s funeral. “Just play your part. We’re counting on you.”
LILY, DECEMBER 1, 9:00 A.M.
Lily’s heart trembles—a mix of relief and joy at seeing Benjamin standing just outside her office door. Relief that he is fine, for snow started coming down heavily yesterday evening right after he left for Columbus to track down Barnaby.
And joy that he immediately brightens upon seeing her.
Once in her office, Lily takes her seat, and Benjamin—after closing the door as Lily asked—sits across from her.