“She took in laundry and sewing. She cooked for the sick and elderly. She made the best bread in the state. My wife often sent me to pick up a loaf for breakfast, fresh out of the oven.”
“I’m sure it was delicious. And Ruth didn’t have any children?”
“You sure are interested in a woman who was dead before you drove into town. If that’s the case.”
“What?” I didn’t follow what he was saying.
“Meaning you could have been in town before Ruth was killed, for all I know.”
It wouldn’t be the first time that strangers in town took the blame for local scandal. “Impossible, since someone has been watching me since I arrived.” I smiled. “Forgive me. Curiosity is unbecoming. I apologize. I got caught up in the drama of a tragedy.” His disapproval of my unfeminine pursuit was clear. “Would you mind telling me about the gentleman I just met outside? Michael Trussel.”
“He took a shine to you. I could see that right off.”
“He has an interesting job.” My cheeks ached from the false smile I wore.
“Yes, he’s a traveling salesman of medicinal products. He’s very knowledgeable about folk healing, using plants and such. He’s not from around here, but he gets on with all the healers and doctors who buy from him.” He arched an eyebrow. “He’s been keeping company with Melissa Gomes, the deputy’s younger sister. Take it from me, that’s not an anthill you want to step in.”
“Funny, he didn’t mention anything about a romantic interest.” I pretended I didn’t understand that I was being warned off. I looked at the candies he had on the counter. Brightly colored jelly beans filled a jar beside Necco wafers, clove gum—a favorite of my husband’s—and caramel creams. I picked up a pack of gum. “I’d like this and a pack of cigarettes. Camel’s.”
“We don’t sell cigarettes to ladies. It’s against the law.”
“It’s for my friend, not for me. And there’s no law against women smoking.”
“Maybe not where you come from, but you should take that up with Lucais Wilkins.”
“Is Lucais Wilkins the sheriff?”
“Might as well be. He’s the head of the church board. He and the board make the laws and the deputy enforces them. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of Mr. Wilkins or Deputy Gomes.”
“No, I don’t. Like I said, the cigarettes are for my friend.” I tried one more time.
“Then he can buy them.”
It was pointless to argue even though I wanted to. I put the gum back. “Is there anywhere I can purchase some healing spring water? I’d like to take some to Elizabeth.”
“She’s gonna need more than spring water to heal that baby of hers.” His eyes were as cold as a dead fish. “I don’t think we have anything here in the store for you, Miss. You should wait outside.”
“Thank you.” I should have known not to ask for cigarettes. If I’d been thinking, I wouldn’t have, because in this town the pleasures men took for granted were not permitted for women. If smoking could be considered a pleasure. I kept trying but didn’t care for it. Still, I’d been hoping to surprise Reginald with a new pack. He’d smoked his last cigarette on the drive over. It would also have been an excuse for me to follow him into that office building. I was itching to find out what was going on.
The sun outside was brighter and hotter than before, if that was even possible. The high-collared, long-sleeved dress I wore stuck to my body with sweat. Even my shoes were hot. I longed for the short set I wore in Mobile with sandals. In this regard, Reginald suffered as much as I. Decent attire for a man included a long-sleeve, starched, white shirt and flannel slacks. A businessman would add a bow tie or tie, belt, or suspenders, possibly a waistcoat or vest and a jacket. I was about to sit down on the rocker and wait for Reginald when I saw him leave the administration building and walk toward me. Little spurts of ashy dust puffed around his feet.
I started to get up and meet him halfway, but he needed cigarettes. There was nowhere else to buy them. He dropped into the chair beside me that Michael Trussel had only recently vacated. “These people are unbelievable.”
“I tried to get you some tobacco but they wouldn’t sell to me.”
Heat touched his cheeks and he shook his head. “I can’t wait to get out of here.”
I stood up and went back inside the store and asked for a glass of water. Vernon McKay gave it to me without a word. When I gave it to Reginald, he drank it quickly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“What happened?”
He lowered his voice to a whisper. Vernon was watching us through the open front door. “They’re going to hang that man tomorrow. They don’t care if he’s guilty or innocent. They started building the gallows the minute he was charged. This is nothing short of murder.”
“We should go to Victoria and send a telegraph to Uncle Brett. Maybe he can get the governor to intervene.”
“There’s not time,” Reginald said. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. “There isn’t any time to get official help.”
“What are we going to do?” My only talent was talking to the dead. So far, I’d been useless on this case. I’d only stirred up the men of the town to dislike me.
“I don’t know, but we have to do something.” Reginald’s misery was clear in his voice and eyes.
“Drive me to Ruth Whelan’s house. Maybe there’s something there, a clue, some evidence to the real killer.” When Elizabeth had recounted her visit to the dead woman’s house, I’d felt her horror. I didn’t want to go, but I had to.
“Even if we found something, I’m not certain they would listen or accept it.”
“We have to delay the trial. If they hold court tomorrow, Elizabeth will go there and try to speak for him.”
Reginald leaned in closer to me, his body almost humming with tension. “If she does that, they’ll hang her right beside him. Whatever is going on in this town has people looking for someone to blame. They’re all angry. They hate outsiders, anyone different. McEachern and Elizabeth are considered outsiders, suspect by definition. That’s one strike against them. McEachern came to town and became successful where others failed. He’s independent and thumbs his nose at Lucais Wilkins’s rules. Elizabeth is educated and without a man. These things, in a place like Mission, are enough to bring down a death sentence.”
Reginald wasn’t exaggerating. Growing up on the streets of New Orleans and in orphanages, he was very well aware of the dark impulses that motivated some people and always ruled a mob.
“I’ll be right back.” Reginald stepped into the store and I heard him ask for Camels.
“Might be best for you and the missus to leave town before dark,” McKay said.
“I’ll leave when I’m ready,” Reginald answered, “unless you know a reason I should go.”
“Nope, no reason. Just watch yourselves. There’s still panthers in the woods and some wild boars. Easy to get hurt out in the woods and hard to get help.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
Reginald came out the door and signaled for me to walk with him. He lit a cigarette and offered me one but I declined. I was headstrong, but I didn’t like smoking enough to make an issue of it on the public street. I had no doubt we were being watched. Almost as if I’d called them forth, I saw two men at the end of town. The same two I’d seen earlier. They stood at the side of the empty road staring at us. I noticed again how their hands hung at their sides and they stood perfectly still. Watchers. But what did they watch for?
We strolled, unhurried, to the car. Reginald opened my door and shut it once I was seated. In a moment he had the car started and in motion. I reminded him of the gasoline shortage in Mission.
“Good thinking,” he said. “I’d hate to get stranded here.”
“Let’s check out Ruth Whelan’s place and then drive to Victoria to fill up the tank. I am going to contact Uncle Brett and see if he can get someone up here. It’s possible he can have some influence. What we need to do is
come up with a way to delay the trial.”
Reginald laughed until he glanced over at me and realized I was serious. “I suppose it can’t hurt to try to delay the trial somehow. How do you think we can do that?”
“Maybe we can find something at Ruth Whelan’s place that will throw doubt on Slater McEachern’s guilt.”
Reginald drove out of town and when the road forked, he took the left-hand lane. At my questioning look, he explained. “Mrs. Logan gave me directions before we left this morning.”
“I’m having dinner tonight with a traveling medicine salesman. I’m hoping he might give us some information about what might have happened to Ruth. Who had a reason to want her dead. If Slater didn’t do it, someone else did. That’s what we need to focus on. Michael knows the area and he’s an observant man.”
Reginald gave me a look. “You work quick.”
“It’s not like that.” My flush belied my words. Michael Trussel was a good-looking man.
“All teasing aside, are you sure it’s safe to carry on with a man you don’t really know?”
I shook my head, slightly embarrassed. “I suspect that an unmarried woman is scarcer than hen’s teeth around here. I’ll be careful. Besides, we don’t have any other leads.”
“Remember, pull information from him and don’t give any. It’s like a poker game.”
“I wish you could go to dinner with him,” I said and meant it. Reginald was far better at gathering information from the living than I was.
“Is he handsome?” Reginald asked with a wink.
“Very. And smooth. He was a Pinkerton. He came here looking for a man who was murdered. I thought at first it might be Elizabeth’s brother, the missing Ramone. But Michael said he was an heir to a Boston banking fortune.”
The humor dropped off Reginald’s face. “Of course Ramone could have lied about who he was.” He tapped the steering wheel as he thought. “Be really careful, Raissa. The Pinkerton agents have always been above the law. They have reputations as being more lawless than the criminals they pursue. They’re dangerous.”
He’d succeeded in unsettling me. “I will take care.”
“Give away as little as possible. Play to his ego and extract as much as you can.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “Now let’s see what we can find at Ruth Whalen’s place.”
Chapter 8
Unlike the farms that had been painstakingly cleared out of the thick forest, Ruth Whelan’s cottage was set deep in the woods with no attempts to tame a yard. The trees grew close around the frame house with a porch just big enough for two rocking chairs and a butter churn. As we pulled to a stop, I saw someone inside the house, staring out at us. A woman.
“There’s someone in the house,” I said.
“Good. Maybe they’ll have some answers for us.” We got out and walked onto the porch, our footsteps ringing loud on the wooden planks with the sound of emptiness. I knew then there was no one inside. No one living. “Ruth is here.”
“Can you talk to her?”
“I’m going to try.” Reginald knew that spirits seldom communicated in a straightforward manner. They used symbols or feelings or mental pictures to send messages. I wasn’t looking forward to what images I might receive from a woman who’d had her skull split with a meat cleaver. Still, it was why we’d come here. Elizabeth couldn’t tell us who the killer was, but from what I understood of the murder, Ruth had faced her killer as he’d swung the murder weapon. Ruth had known her killer well, from what I’d learned from Elizabeth’s dream.
The front door wasn’t locked. Why would it be? Ruth was dead. Stealing didn’t seem to be a problem in Mission. A first glance around her little house indicated that everything remained as it had been when she was alive. The small living room, complete with a sofa and chair near the fireplace, had several books on an end table. The works of Mark Twain. Ruth had been a reader. The hutch against the wall held dishes with a pretty floral pattern. Delicate. The arms of the sofa and chair were covered with tatted antimacassars that showed real skill. Ruth Whelan seemed to have been a very feminine woman.
In one corner the drawers of a desk had been dumped onto the floor, the contents scattered about.
As we went farther into the house, I saw the carnage. The kitchen table had been almost cleaved in two. A dark reddish stain crusted on the floor and over the sink and drain board. It would seem Ruth had been standing at the sink when she was attacked, just as Elizabeth had recounted in her dream. Glass was scattered on the floor where something had been broken. Suddenly a miasma of remnant emotion—violence and fear—hit me just below my ribs with a sharp pain. When I doubled over, Reginald caught my arm.
“I feel it, so I know it must be terrible for you,” he said, eyeing me with concern.
“I’m okay.” The impact lessened, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw things slither away. Not ghosts, but remnants of fear and anger. Ruth Whelan’s house was filled with bad things.
A rhythmic creak came from a bedroom. It was a short shush, shush, creak. Shush, shush, creak. Shush, shush, creak. Over and over, not slow but not fast. “Do you hear that?” I asked Reginald.
He shook his head.
There was no one alive in the house, but it wasn’t empty, either. I took a breath and stepped toward the sound. Madam Petalungro, a talented medium in New Orleans who had decades of experience dealing with the dead, had taught me that I could withstand even the darkest energy if I took precautions. To that end, I wore a necklace with bits of iron on it. In a battle with a succubus, I’d learned the value of being prepared.
Reginald stepped in behind me as I moved toward the gentle sound. As I stepped into a bedroom, I saw my breath condense in front of me, though the house itself was hot and closed and nearly suffocating with the smell of old blood.
I stopped just inside the doorway, Reginald close up against my back. The room had been completely wrecked. The bed was flipped, the mattress gutted as if someone had cut it open to look for something. Dresser drawers were pulled open and the contents thrown on the floor. The things that Ruth Whelan valued had been trashed.
But that was not what kept my attention. Framed against a big window was a bassinet with yards and yards of blue gingham material. The bassinet slowly rocked, the material rippling and creating the shushing sound. There was no hand to rock the cradle—that I could see. But it moved to the left—shush, shush, creak—and then swung back to the right. Shush, shush, creak.
“What do you see?” Reginald whispered, his breath also condensing in the bitter cold of the empty room.
“A bassinet by the window. There’s a baby there.” I could hear the cooing.
“There was no baby here,” Reginald said. “The deputy said Ruth was a widow and had no living children.”
“I think that may not be true.” I watched the little crib rock back and forth in a motion meant to soothe a child, the same motion a mother’s hand might make.
“Why would Gomes lie?”
“Because Ruth Whelan was more than just a convenient companion for the men of this community. She also had some medical training. She helped the local doctors and nursed the sick.” A sadness, so heavy, settled on my shoulders. I thought my spine might snap under the weight of my realization. “Ruth Whelan helped women get rid of babies they didn’t want.”
“I see.” Reginald had spent years in New Orleans in a lifestyle that I knew little about. Abortionists were common to him in the world of prostitutes and grifters that had been his childhood. The flesh trade was a way to survive. He’d managed to stay above the worst of that life, but he was not innocent or naïve.
The little dead baby and its crib vanished. Heat flooded the room, along with the stench of blood and gore that had permeated the kitchen. I gagged and turned away, going out onto the porch and leaning against a rail as I coughed up the water I’d drunk at the grocery.
Reginald helped me to one of the rockers and lit a cigarette. “So, either the murderer was after something
in the house, or someone else came here to search.” He hesitated. “It could have been the deputy. I get the idea he’ll do whatever he has to do to protect his master.”
“Lucais Wilkins.”
“The man who rules Mission with an iron fist.”
I took a steadying breath. “He runs everything according to the dry goods merchant. He runs the church, the town, the justice system. Mostly he has the final say on what women can and can’t do. This is not a good place for a woman. I believe Lucais wants this property. Or something that is or was on it. He’s willing to see a woman murdered and a man hanged to get what he wants.”
“Do you think that man you met today, the Pinkerton agent, works for Lucais?”
“I do.”
“Then you’d best be on your toes.”
“I will.” I stood up, feeling less nauseated. “Let’s see what this house has to offer.”
Now that I knew what to expect in the house, I was prepared for the smells and the oppressive heaviness that Ruth Whelan’s murder left behind. Reginald and I began a search for a journal, diary, or list. I believed—and so did he—that whoever killed Ruth did so to remove information she had. It was possible she’d gotten too bold and attempted to blackmail some of her wealthier clients. It had happened before. If she was the town prostitute, she’d known plenty of secrets that a lot of people would want buried. If she also performed abortions, she would have had information that could lead to a death penalty. For all involved.
I pulled out drawers in the kitchen and checked to see if anything had been tacked to the bottoms of the drawers. I checked coffee and flour canisters. In the pantry, where so much hard work had gone into jams, preserves, pickles, jars of tomatoes, corn, and butterbeans, I held each jar up to the light to see if some paper had been slipped into the contents for safekeeping.
A Visitation of Angels Page 7