Rekindling Trust

by Sandra Ardoin

  Scientifically accurate? What normal eight-year-old spoke such words?

  “We can’t get too close, Timothy.” Sarah Jane grabbed his legs and started pulling her brother from under the porch. “You’ll scare Mrs. Taffy.”

  Ever since learning the stray cat she’d brought home weeks ago would be a mother, the little girl never failed to add “Mrs.” in front of the feline’s name.

  “Let go, Sarah Jane.” Timothy started kicking his legs in an effort to force his sister to release her hold.

  “No. Come out of there.”

  “Children, stop.” Edythe pulled her daughter away from the porch and stood her up, then did the same with her son. “Mrs. Taffy doesn’t need the added strain of two squabbling children. Let her do as she must. We’ll see the kittens when she’s ready and not before.”

  “But my experiment.” Timothy crawled out from under the porch and held up the watch, an old one his father had given him.

  “We’ll find you another experiment. Tomorrow.”

  Sarah Jane sat in the grass. “I wish I was a doctor.”

  Timothy scoffed at his sister’s proclamation. “Girls aren’t doctors.”

  “They are too! Besides, I don’t want to be a people doctor. I want to make animals well.”

  Edythe lowered herself to the ground next to Sarah Jane, careful not to get grass stains on her skirt. “Animal doctors are called veterinarians.”

  She had never heard of a female veterinarian. While she preferred her child grow up to be a wife and mother, she had no doubt that if the intrepid Sarah Jane Westin sought such a vocation, she would find a way to make it happen. How had such a weak-willed woman birthed three children with such tenacity?

  As they sat in the waning light, Edythe wrapped her arms around her twins and hummed to the muted sounds of a neighbor’s piano. Soon, all three of them were humming the tune and rocking together from side-to-side.

  This was how life was before Lamar died. It was the way it should be. Every day should bring this feeling of contentment and well-being. She sighed. There was one thing missing—one someone.

  She glanced up at the second floor. Andrew watched them from his window. Trapped in his bedroom for nearly a week now, he was missing so much in life, in the lives of his siblings.

  Edythe’s smile only earned her a scowl from him. With the dwindling light, she assumed it was a scowl. Maybe it was what she’d expected to see, because it had become most familiar to her. Whatever his expression, it lasted mere seconds before he disappeared into the room.

  This horrid situation must be resolved, because honestly, she wasn’t sure which was worse for Andrew—spending his days alone and imprisoned in this house or having limited freedom to roam the grounds of a reform school.

  BARRETT LAID DOWN HIS fork and pushed his plate away. He had spent over an hour in his kitchen, attempting to take his mind off this building conflict over Andy’s predicament, the reunion of sorts with Edy, and more important Barrett’s recent, unwelcome reactions to her.

  His groan resounded off the dining room walls. He’d asked God to prevent his mouth from piercing her like a sword. He hadn’t asked for their relationship to be become a feather that tickled his mind with compassion and sweet memories. Was it too much to expect something in the middle?

  He left the dining room and put his half-eaten supper of steak and potatoes in the icebox. He’d save it for after church tomorrow.

  Barrett entered his office, dropped into the chair, and shuffled through files of former cases scattered across his desk. Even that didn’t keep the disturbing thoughts at bay.

  How had Lamar Westin managed to gain Edy’s respect and free her of Judge Hayden Danby’s iron-fisted control? Westin succeeded where Barrett failed. In the end, though, Westin failed as well.

  For the first time, Barrett acknowledged that something good had come from Wynn’s arrest. Unlike Westin, Barrett had been blessed by a narrow escape. He couldn’t imagine, neither would he tolerate, bowing to the judge’s rule, and suspected that same rebellion against the man’s dominance lay behind much of Andy’s attitude.

  Barrett tossed an old file aside and leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. So why didn’t his narrow escape feel like a blessing? Why did thinking of Edy bring regret?

  Maybe, for her son’s sake, he should stop fighting them both. That didn’t mean he trusted in Andy’s innocence regarding the fire and Mr. Stark’s injury. It only meant that, even if he were guilty, both mother and son needed support.

  Frantic pounding on his front door interrupted his thoughts. His quick steps to the foyer competed with the continued beating on the wood. “I’m coming. Don’t knock the door off its hinges.”

  The pounding stopped, and he opened the door. Mary Quincy stood on his porch. She stared up at him with red-rimmed eyes that shouted of desperation. “Mr. Seaton, I’m sorry to bother you on a Saturday evening, but we need your help. Please, please come with me.”

  She’d turned toward the street when he touched her arm. “Wait. What kind of help?”

  She raised a shaky hand to her forehead. “I’m sorry. I’m not thinking clearly. The police have arrested my husband, Jeremiah, and he needs a lawyer.”

  Barrett stepped aside. “Please come in.”

  “But—”

  “Your husband isn’t going anywhere, Mrs. Quincy. Come in and tell me what happened.” He led her to a chair in the office, urged her to sit, and took his seat behind the desk. He’d get more clarity from this woman if she followed his example and calmed down. “Now, tell me why Jeremiah was arrested.”

  “He’s been accused of...of stabbing a man.”

  Barrett’s muscles grew rigid. “Did he?”

  “No.”

  Despite the vehement denial, a wife’s account was certain to be biased. “Were you with him when it happened?”

  “No.”

  “Then you can’t be certain.”

  Her mouth pinched. “I know my husband.”

  Barrett picked up a pen and pulled a notebook toward him. “I’ll need details.”

  “All I can tell you is what he told me.” Mrs. Quincy ducked her head and kneaded a handkerchief in her hands. “It started when he got into a disagreement in a tavern.”

  The clerk at the general store had said Quincy drank too much. Was he also prone to violence? “Was it a disagreement or a fist fight?”

  “He said it started as a disagreement, but the man swung at him, so he swung back.”

  Barrett wrote as she talked. “And?”

  She shrugged. “That was it. When he knocked the man to the floor, Mr. Swain threw them both out. Jeremiah left.”

  “I need all the facts, Mrs. Quincy. Leaving anything out will not help me to help your husband. What was the argument about?”

  She bowed her head, heralding news neither of them would find helpful to her husband. “He was fired from the brewery not long ago. The man had accused him of drinking during the day.”

  “Your husband knew the victim beforehand?”

  She winced when he used the word victim. “His name was Claude Dulong. He worked in accounting at the brewery and claimed my husband was drunk one afternoon.” Before he could ask, she rushed to say, “But he wasn’t. He’d only had a beer with his lunch.”

  Barrett paused his scribbling, his pen suspended over the paper. “So Dulong reported him and that’s when he was fired?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is the man dead?”

  She dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief and nodded.

  “After Swain threw them out of the tavern did your husband go straight home?”

  “The police arrested him before he...”

  He cocked his head, urging her to continue.

  “No, he didn’t come straight home. He went to another tavern.”

  Barrett wrote down the name she gave him. “Was that where the police found your husband?”

  “They found him at McMullin’s Livery. He left t
he second tavern and went there to get his horse.” She hesitated. “But they found Mr. Dulong by an old shack on a lot near Swain’s.”

  “Swain’s isn’t far from the livery.”

  “No, sir.”

  Barrett hadn’t met the husband but found it hard to picture his mild-mannered housekeeper married to—much less defending—a cold-hearted murderer. “How much had your husband had to drink before the fight?”

  “He told me he’d had a couple of beers.”

  “And after?”

  “He said he’d only gotten to the second place when he turned around to come home.”

  Barrett smoothed his close-cropped beard. Two beers, maybe three. Personally, he’d never cared for the taste of alcohol in any form, but if Quincy told his wife the truth, Barrett figured that amount probably wasn’t enough to stab someone in a drunken rage—especially if that someone was accustomed to drink. “Do you believe your husband is innocent?”

  “With all my heart.”

  The strength of her answer gave him hope, but he’d heard such proclamations from spouses in the past. He’d heard similar from Edy in her defense of her son.

  “My husband is not a drunk or a violent man, Mr. Seaton. It’s true that he likes to visit a tavern now and then.”

  “Why go to a second tavern?”

  “The quarrel shook him up.”

  “And he was angry?”

  “I suppose.” The admission was a whisper. “But he said by the time he got there he’d calmed down and wanted to go home.”

  Good old Jeremiah had an answer for everything, but how truthful were those answers? Was he as innocent as his wife believed?

  “Will you help my Jeremiah, Mr. Seaton?”

  He dropped the pen and stood. “You go home, Mrs. Quincy, and I’ll meet with your husband.”

  A relieved smile graced her face. “Thank you, Mr. Seaton.”

  At least the prospect of a new case would take Barrett’s mind off Edy for a while.

  THE EMERALD-COLORED earrings dangled from Edythe’s ears, a present from Lamar on their last anniversary. Flicking the right one, she watched its reflection swing in the dressing table mirror. She’d learned years ago the jewels were nothing but paste.

  At breakfast, Edythe’s father had reiterated his command that she wear the emerald gown this evening. His cheerful charge only served to heighten her nerves. The clock in her bedroom read six thirty, but how she wished to crawl into her bed and pull the covers over her head.

  Weakness. I must no longer appear weak.

  The last time she found herself in the position of fending off her father’s idea of a suitor, she’d expected to fight it knowing Barrett would be at her side. The expectation turned out to be as false as his promise to write to her weekly.

  In her mind, she heard Verbenia urge her to pray for wisdom, but prayer had done nothing the last time the judge chose her groom. How was she to trust in prayer when God had decreed that children obey their parents? When, through His inaction, He took her father’s side against her?

  She straightened the gown’s neckline and plumped up the puffed sleeves. She’d adored this gown, one of the last sewn by Madame Marie before the doors of her shop closed. Now, she wished she hadn’t bought it.

  Her father burst into her room without knocking, his face a masterpiece of mottled anger. “What is the meaning of your behavior, Edythe?”

  Skittish over his tone, she turned to face the mirror, away from his glower. “What have I done?”

  He seized her wrist and wrenched her around. “Don’t turn away from me.”

  She tried to pull away. “You’re hurting me, Father.”

  He eyed his hold on her and let her go with a hint of regret in his expression and a slight shove away from him. She bumped the dressing table, caught her balance, and rubbed her throbbing wrist. Already, a bruise rose, along with the fear she tried to hold back. “You’ve never hurt me, not even when I was a child.”

  “I’m sor...” His voice faded on what sounded like the start of an apology. “Had I been more prone to physical discipline, it might have taught you not to sneak around with a man behind my back.”

  Edythe wanted to deny her father’s claim, but his words were true. Long ago, she’d met Barrett without his knowledge, certain he wouldn’t have approved of his daughter courting a man whose ambition was to become a lawyer. How ironic that the judge never found himself to be as loathsome as others in the profession.

  “No matter the work I put into raising you as a proper young lady, Edythe, you grew into a woman as deceitful as your mother.”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Then I suppose you thought I would approve of you hiring Barrett Seaton.”

  Edythe’s throat grew dry. “It’s to help Andrew.” Could she sound any more like a scared five-year-old?

  “You cannot help someone bent on self-destruction.”

  “Andrew is my son. I’ll never give up on him.”

  “If you insist upon letting Seaton worm his way back into your life and the boy’s, so be it. But mark my words. If I see that man anywhere near this house, I will have him arrested for trespassing.”

  He marched out of the room. The door slammed and Edythe flinched.

  Her fingers quivered as she reached up to restore a curl displaced when her father shoved her. She was nothing like her mother. For one thing, she would never abandon her children, no matter what they had done.

  She walked out of the room more certain than ever that she and her children didn’t belong in this house. That certainty was all she and her mother had in common.

  Edythe’s steps faltered. Maybe she was more like Mary Ellen Danby than she wished to believe. Her mother had shown no more courage in confronting the judge than Edythe, so she escaped this house with someone else and never returned.

  If only she had taken her child with her.

  Chapter Twelve

  In a small room inside the police department, Barrett questioned the officer who had arrested Jeremiah Quincy. “What about witnesses?”

  “No witnesses to the stabbing.” Officer Souter picked a piece of lint off his uniform as though bored by the conversation. “Plenty of witnesses to the fight inside the tavern.”

  Barrett scribbled in his notebook. “And the stabbing took place near Swain’s?”

  “Behind an outbuilding on a lot about fifty yards away.”

  “What happened after the fight?”

  “Mr. Swain tossed them out. He said they went their separate ways. Dulong turned down an alley close by. Quincy went the other direction.”

  “He watched them leave?”

  “Not for long. He went back inside.”

  Had Jeremiah turned around and followed Dulong? “I was told Mr. Quincy went straight to another tavern after the fight.”

  Office Souter shrugged. “If so, he didn’t go inside.”

  “Did anyone see Mr. Dulong cut through the alley to the lot on the other side? Was that the direction he’d take to his house?”

  “No one’s come forward to say they saw him, sir, and he’d have gone in the opposite direction to go home.”

  “So, there are no witnesses to say the men exchanged words in that lot or after they went their separate ways?”

  “No witnesses to another conflict, though Quincy claims he bumped into a man near the head of the alley on his way to the livery.”

  Barrett frowned. “Who?”

  “No idea, sir. We’ve found no one to support his statement. As far as we can surmise, the men carried on their disagreement in the shack where Quincy stabbed Dulong. Simple as that.” The officer’s voice had taken on an edge.

  “What about the weapon involved? A knife?”

  “Yes. We found it near the body.”

  “May I see it?”

  Barrett waited until the officer fetched the knife. He examined the six-inch blade and the burled-wood handle. “A nice piece.” If it weren’t coated in dried blood.


  “The man was stabbed six times.”

  His pencil slid across the paper. Six? Mary Quincy hadn’t mentioned that fact. “You arrested Mr. Quincy at the livery?”

  “Yes, sir. He was wearing bloody clothing. He said it was from a livery horse.”

  Barrett made a note to talk to the livery owner about an injured horse. “What was Mr. Quincy doing when you found him in the livery?”

  “Saddling his horse.”

  “Did he seem in a hurry?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Was he combative when you arrested him?”

  Souter leaned back in his seat. “No. He came along peaceable.”

  “So he was calm?”

  “I wouldn’t call it calm, but he didn’t fight us.”

  Barrett tapped the end of his pencil on the notebook. “Did you find it peculiar that a man would stab someone so many times—indicating rage—then a few minutes later calmly saddle his horse, and when arrested, accompany the officers without a struggle?”

  The policeman shrugged. “I’ve been doing this job for over fifteen years, sir. It doesn’t take long to learn there’s no such thing as peculiar. People do odd things for odd reasons.”

  “Have you spoken with the livery owner?”

  “Yes, sir. The livery was closed all day. Quincy told us he left his horse in the corral and a few coins in a box McMullin keeps in his tack room. We didn’t find any money.” Souter crossed his arms, signaling an unwillingness to consider Quincy’s innocence. “Anything else?”

  “One more question. Has Mr. Quincy ever been in legal trouble before?”

  “Not that we have record of. Not in Riverport, anyway.”

  “Thank you, Officer Souter. I’d like to speak with Mr. Quincy now.”

  While he waited for Quincy, Barrett wrote down the timeline as he’d heard it thus far. Jeremiah left his horse at the livery, then went to Swain’s, which was only a few buildings away. He and Dulong saw one another, had words and an altercation, then each went his own way.

  He stopped writing. Why had Dulong cut through the alley and entered a vacant lot when he lived in the opposite direction? Where was he going?