Ashes in the Wind

by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

  “Whatever is the matter, Mindy?” she questioned in wonder, but the girl frantically shook her head, her dark eyes wide with fear and the hunted look of a cornered animal. Realizing that something of a serious nature was disturbing the child, Alaina refrained from going after the men and stayed to comfort her. The girl was trembling uncontrollably and with small fists tightly gripping the cloth, she hid her face in Alaina’s skirts.

  Cole threw down the spade and was about to kneel beside the hole with Peter when he caught sight of his wife and Mindy standing together on the porch. Waving his arm, he gestured her back.

  “Take the child and go inside, Alaina,” he commanded.

  Obediently she did so, though much confused by it all. A short time later Cole came into the parlor where she was, while Peter could be seen racing off down the hill toward the barn. As soon as Cole stepped into the room, Mindy was off the settee, running toward him. Throwing her arms about his legs, she began to sob forlornly. Cole’s face softened with compassion. He lifted the tiny girl into his arms and held her close as she buried her face against his shoulder.

  “Do you know what we found, Mindy?” he asked quietly, and the girl’s nod answered him. She did.

  “What is it, Cole?” Alaina inquired, growing more bewildered. “What did you find?”

  “We found Mindy’s uncle buried beneath the rosebushes. Apparently he’d been there for some time, probably since he disappeared.”

  Alaina sat down quickly, for the disclosure sapped the stability from her limbs. She shuddered as she remembered having turned the earth in that same area only last fall.

  “Peter’s gone for the sheriff,” Cole reported. “While we wait for them, I’ll take Mindy upstairs and have Gilda sit with her for a time. Maybe she’ll be able to rest. No doubt the sheriff will want to question her about what she knows.”

  The small arms tightened around his neck, and Cole patted the girl’s back reassuringly as he spoke gently to her.

  “It’s all right. Nobody will hurt you. We’ll take care of you from now on.”

  As the sound of his footsteps faded across the marble floor in the hall, Alaina sat in the hushed stillness of the parlor. Her strength was drained by the shock, but her mind raced chaotically on several different paths. What fate had brought the gardener to the end he had suffered? Who had buried him? And how, what, and how much did Mindy know about her uncle’s demise?

  “He was murdered,” Cole stated bluntly when he returned. “The back of his skull was crushed, as if someone had hit him from behind. It looked as if he had just tumbled into the hole after he was hit.”

  “Do you suppose he could have been digging it himself?”

  “Very possible, but why? Rosebushes don’t require that deep a hole when they’re planted, and I can’t imagine the man knowingly preparing his own grave.”

  “Then perhaps he was burying something else.”

  Cole shrugged. “Unless Mindy can tell us more on the matter, we can only guess at what it might have been. There was nothing else in the grave, certainly no treasure to boast of.”

  Treasure? The word drifted hauntingly through Alaina’s head, prickling the outer core of her memory. Hadn’t Roberta mentioned something about a treasure in her memoirs? Or leaving Latimer House rich? It had all been in the diary, but where was the book now? And who had taken it? The gardener’s murderer?

  The bedroom adjoining their bathing chamber had been recently stripped and refurnished as a nursery for the anticipated arrival of their firstborn. Even with everything taken out of the room, the diary had not been found.

  Alaina chewed her lip thoughtfully. Should she give credence to her cousin’s meanderings? Perhaps it had just been Roberta’s twisted reasoning at work once again, and it would only be foolishness to take her writing seriously.

  It was Deputy Sheriff Martin Holvag who answered their summons, being acquainted with the family. He brought two men with him, and while they removed the body from the narrow grave and laid it on a canvas shroud, Martin stood on the porch with Cole and listened attentively as the doctor recounted just how the discovery had been made. Alaina had been interested in the roses, Cole explained, and he had set Peter to the chore of mixing manure with the soil. The gardener’s hat had been found first, and that had prompted Peter to probe deeper, therein discovering the body.

  The sheriff’s men gingerly picked through the gardener’s pockets and extracted a plug of tobacco, a knife, a few coins, and from the purse tucked away in the pocket of the man’s jacket, three relatively crisp ten-dollar bank notes. Finding nothing of import, Martin presented the possessions to Cole to keep for Mindy as she was the last of kin.

  “Since he was the child’s uncle and my hired man,” Cole proposed as the men lifted the body into the back of the wagon, “the least I can do is buy him a decent grave.”

  But Cole could only spread his hands and shrug as Martin pressed for more answers. “I’m sorry I cannot add more to the clearing up of this matter. The man disappeared a few weeks before Roberta died. We thought he had run off and left Mindy behind because he didn’t want to be saddled with her anymore.”

  “What about your servants? How well do you know them, Cole?”

  “Mrs. Garth, the upstairs maid, and the downstairs maid were all hired by Mister James shortly before I returned home with Roberta. Except for the gardener, whom I employed after receiving word that the old one had been killed in the war, the rest of the help have been here for a good number of years, and were hired by my father.”

  “Your present wife came after the gardener disappeared, but what about your first wife?” Martin pressed. “Could she have known anything about this?”

  “Roberta disliked the man intensely and thought of him only as no-account trash. But then, she had no time for the rest of the servants either.”

  “Can I talk with Mindy now? Perhaps she can shed some light on this.”

  Cole nodded toward the house. “She’s in the parlor with Alaina. She’s quite upset by the matter, and since I’ve known her, I’ve never heard her speak, so I don’t know how much she will reveal.”

  “You mean she can’t talk?”

  “No, I don’t believe it’s because she’s not able to. It’s just that she won’t.”

  Martin scraped his boots before he entered the house and clumsily doffed his hat as he nodded a greeting to Alaina. She had been waiting tensely on the settee with Mindy, and as he approached them, the girl shrank backward against the seat, pressing as close to Alaina as she could get. Martin squatted down before them to look Mindy in the eye, but she refused to look up.

  “Doctor Latimer tells me that you knew your uncle was buried in the rose garden. Do you know who put him there?”

  Mindy turned pale, and her mouth worked convulsively, though no sound escaped. It seemed as if she were caught in a terror all her own.

  Alaina glanced pleadingly to Cole, taking the child against her and cradling the small, dark head against her bosom.

  “Perhaps this could wait for another time, Martin,” Cole interjected in the girl’s behalf. “As you can see, the child is frightened nearly out of her wits.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll take her to her room,” Alaina murmured, and was greatly relieved when the deputy nodded in acquiescence.

  As Alaina left the room with the girl, Martin broached another subject of concern to him. “I was wondering, Cole, if you might have seen a small riverboat pass on the river—white with red trim, she was. Not too big, a sternwheeler named the Thatcher.”

  Cole had just poured some brandy and handed a glass to Martin. He shook his head. “Not anything recent. About a week or two ago there was one.”

  Martin’s brow furrowed. “This would have been in the last two or three days. No passengers. Just a cargo of plows, wire and cordage. The only thing of real value was a few cases of Winchester rifles. She left the falls last Thursday and was seen passing upriver about ten miles south of here. Beyond that, it
’s as if she just disappeared into thin air.”

  Cole sipped on his brandy. “She could have struck a snag. All that iron on board, she’d go down like a rock.”

  “Well, I’m only asking around,” Martin pondered, draining his glass in a single gulp. He glanced out a front window. “I see they’ve got him loaded and are waiting for me. I’d better get him down to the undertakers.”

  Cole accompanied him to the door. “I believe the man had a room somewhere in town, and there’s an old nag that he and the child went back and forth on. Let me know if you turn anything up.”

  After the deputy’s wagon had rattled off down the road, Cole absently picked up a pile of effects the gardener had left. He lifted the bills and rubbed them between his fingers thoughtfully. They were slick and unwrinkled, yet of a ’63 issue. By their crispness, he could almost assume that they had been tucked away somewhere before being buried with the gardener. He peered closer and realized that the serial numbers of all three bills were consecutive, the last digit being the only one that changed. How could a man who worked as a gardener for six dollars a week have had any dealings with a money house or bank?

  There seemed to be more than a shallow mystery about this whole affair, but be damned if he could say just what it was. With a sigh, Cole swept the effects and the bills into a kerchief and, wrapping the bundle securely, stowed the whole away in one of his desk drawers.

  The gossipmongers reveled in all sorts of conjecture about the finding of the Latimers’ gardener beneath the rosebushes. Some would have it that the doctor had attacked the man in a jealous rage, but they could not definitely conclude as to whether it was because of the first wife, or the second. The fact that the gardener had been middle-aged, filthy, far from good-looking and certainly no competition for the handsome doctor seemed of no consequence. A plumpish matron, with a loosely wagging tongue, was sure that she had seen the present Mrs. Latimer cavorting about the countryside with the gardener just shortly after her arrival. She said as much to Xanthia Morgan while in her millinery shop trying on hats, and though Xanthia felt no loyalty to Alaina, she decried the fact that Doctor Latimer would resort to such measures, even out of jealousy. Besides, Xanthia shrugged, she had heard it from a very reputable source that the Latimers’ marriage was merely a business arrangement and that the doctor had simply taken the young woman into his home out of compassion for her, much as he did Mindy.

  The triple-chinned matron stretched her nearly bald brows upward and looked at the red-headed proprietress with amused condescension. “My dear, it is obvious that you have not seen the present Mrs. Latimer lately.”

  And smugly superior in her knowledge, she refused to explain further, letting Xanthia’s curiosity simmer and stew. After all, Xanthia had put down her speculations as groundless. It would serve the woman right to be the last person in town to know about the expectant state of Alaina Latimer. Business arrangement, humph!

  Xanthia paused at the door of her shop that same afternoon as a large, black carriage swept into town. She would have known it anywhere, just as she would have recognized the tall, broad-shouldered form of the man who owned it. Cole Latimer was in town. The thought raced through her brain. Maybe, just maybe he would come to her one more time.

  The carriage halted before Mister James’s law office, and Xanthia’s pulse quickened a beat or two. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t at her back door. Her eyes fastened eagerly on the darkly clad figure which descended. He looked good, she decided with a smile. Real good. Yet there was something about him that was different, too. Then it dawned on her that he did not have his cane and was walking without a limp.

  He turned back toward the carriage, and her hopes shriveled as a woman appeared in the doorway of the brougham. Cole reached up and carefully handed his wife down and Xanthia realized, as she now saw the young woman clearly, what the portly matron had been so smug about. Despite the lace shawl carefully folded across her protruding middle, Alaina Latimer was obviously well along with child.

  A flare of jealousy reared its miserable head as Xanthia observed the other woman. A child was the one thing she had tried to give Cole, but had been unable to regardless of how hard she had yearned to bind him to her with such a link.

  Carolyn Darvey descended with the assistance from Cole, and the three stood a moment as it seemed questions were presented and answered. Cole drew out his pocket watch and noted the time, nodded to Carolyn’s inquiry, and shrugged as he replied. The Darvey woman moved away, but paused as Alaina stepped back to her husband and lifted her face. Dismally Xanthia watched as Cole accommodated his young wife, kissing her full on the mouth and much more warmly than seemed proper for a public thoroughfare. Raising his head, he spoke to her in an intimate fashion and squeezed her hand as she moved away. Cole smiled and watched her as she joined the taller woman, and it was a long moment before he stirred himself to movement and entered the lawyer’s office.

  Nearly an hour’s passing had occurred when Xanthia came from the back of her shop to find Carolyn Darvey leading her companion through the front door of her establishment. There was a moment of shock as Xanthia and Alaina’s gazes met, but Carolyn was exuberantly examining the merchandise and failed to notice the two women’s discomfiture and the vivid blush that came into Alaina’s cheeks.

  Xanthia stiffly smiled a greeting and refrained from looking lower than the crisply ruffled collar of Alaina’s pale blue dress. Though charmingly feminine, the expensive detail of her gown was apparent at first glance, and her ribbon-festooned bonnet would have rivaled the best in the shop. Xanthia crushed the green monster within her beneath the heel of her will and, with a deep breath, entered the role of proper proprietress.

  “May I be of some assistance to you ladies?” she asked solicitously.

  “I wanted to show Mrs. Latimer those perfectly delightful little baby bonnets you were selling in here at one time,” Carolyn bubbled gaily, completely innocent of her blunder in bringing Alaina into the shop. “Do you still have them?”

  “Of course.” Xanthia stepped past them to open the doors of an armoire and brought out a basket of tiny, puffed bonnets edged with lace or ruffled brims.

  “Now here’s one for a boy, Alaina.” Carolyn held it up for the other’s benefit. “Look at this. Have you ever seen anything so precious?”

  “Cole is hoping for a girl,” Alaina murmured mutedly, wanting desperately to be out of the shop and on her way.

  Carolyn was a bit disappointed with Alaina’s rapidly declining interest in shopping for the baby and, sensing something was troubling the girl, did not press Xanthia to show them more. She couldn’t resist questioning as they left the shop, “Aren’t you feeling well, Alaina?”

  “Yes, of course, Carolyn.” Alaina smiled weakly. “It’s just a bit warm today, that’s all.”

  She stepped out onto the boardwalk, then halted abruptly as she nearly collided with a short, wealthily garbed man who was just passing the shop. She was about to murmur an apology when her gaze raised and recognition set goading spurs of terror beneath her tender hide, blinding all reason. Though he wore his hair longer on the left side to cover his ear, there was no mistaking Jacques DuBonné.

  His gloved right hand held a silver-handled swagger stick and a second glove. Recovering from his own surprise, he raised his left hand to doff his hat, while his dark eyes took in her burdened state. His face hardened imperceptibly as he did so, and with an almost sneering smile, he opened his mouth to speak.

  Pale and shaken, Alaina whirled and stumbled back into Xanthia’s shop, not hearing Carolyn’s worried questions that came in a rush of confusion. As Alaina pressed against a low table filled with hats, her world dimmed and slowly her knees buckled beneath her. Tiny spots of darkness enlarged until all was empty and black, and she never knew that Xanthia Morgan rushed forward to catch and slowly lower her sagging body to the floor.

  “Alaina!” Carolyn gasped in alarm as she went to the red-haired woman’s assistance.
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br />   Kneeling on the floor with Alaina’s head in her lap, Xanthia looked up and stated almost in amazement, “She’s fainted.”

  “I’d better get Cole.” Carolyn said. She was at the door before she paused to glance back and ask. “Will you watch her?”

  “Yes, of course.” Xanthia lowered her eyes to the delicately shaped features of the victor in her game of hearts as the Darvey woman hurried out of the shop. Almost mechanically she loosened the ribbons of the bonnet and, gently lifting the dark head, eased the hat off and laid it aside.

  Jacques DuBonné paused in the doorway of the general store and watched the willowy blond as she ran along the boardwalk. She entered a small office down the street and soon reappeared with a man he recognized as the good Doctor Latimer. Jacques sneered derisively. So, it was the major who had plucked the fruit and left his seed to sprout.

  Xanthia glanced up as the front door of her shop burst open and Cole Latimer came charging through, his concern for his young wife rampant in his face. Much to Xanthia’s disappointment, he hardly glanced at her, but quickly knelt to lift Alaina into his arms.

  Xanthia rose to her feet as Carolyn joined them and gestured hesitantly to the back of her shop. “There’s a bedroom in the back if you’d care to use it.”

  Cole nodded in silent gratitude and went down the familiar hallway with Carolyn following closely behind. When Xanthia entered the room, he had partially opened his wife’s bodice and was bathing her face and throat with a cool, wet cloth as he sat beside her on the bed. Alaina was just rousing from her stupor.

  The thickly lashed eyelids fluttered open slowly, and for a moment Alaina stared about her in confusion, then, as Cole leaned over her, her gaze turned to find him, and she was suddenly against him, her arms tightly clasped around his neck. Xanthia glanced away with a heavy heart as Cole kissed the dark head and lovingly brushed the rumpled curls from his wife’s cheek.