A Desperate Hope

by Elizabeth Camden

  “Alex! Where are the old records of town council meetings?” If she could find them today, it might be enough to get Bruce released from jail.

  “Somewhere up at the new place, probably,” he muttered without looking up at her. “I have no idea.”

  “I need to find them. It’s important.”

  He gathered the papers into a stack and stood. “It will have to wait. I’ve hired two engineers from Boston to design a plan to move the tavern. They’re due any moment, and it’s going to be a challenging job.”

  “Yes, but I need to find those records. They’ve arrested Bruce.”

  A group of men at a nearby table overheard and started applauding at the news. She didn’t expect people to mourn Bruce’s arrest, but she had bent over backward for this town, and a little support would have been nice. Instead, Alex exchanged good-natured winks with the cheering men.

  “Now, Alex,” she stressed.

  “It’s not going to happen, Eloise. Hercules and I are paying a fortune for these engineers, and I can’t dash off on a wild goose chase.”

  “Marie said the Russians were paid in cash instead of scrip. Do you know anything about that?”

  “It was a rumor. Yes, I heard it.”

  Hope took root. If the mayor of the town could testify that Bruce had paid the Russians cash instead of scrip, it might help prove Bruce was being framed.

  “Can you come with me to Kingston and testify to that?” she asked.

  “I just told you I’m meeting with the engineers to save the tavern.”

  “And I’m trying to save a man’s freedom,” she snapped. “I’ve never asked much of you. In fact, I’ve never asked anything of you, but I’m asking now. Will you come to Kingston and testify that Bruce paid the Russians in cash, not scrip?”

  Her arrow must have found its mark, for his shoulders slumped a little, and when he spoke, his voice was calmer. “Eloise, you’re so desperate for that man’s approval that you’ll do anything, even if it means overlooking twenty-three dead bodies.”

  “I’m asking because I love him.”

  Alex frowned as he shuffled paperwork into a satchel and closed the buckles. “I can’t help you,” he said bluntly. “This town has put up with a lot from that man over the years, and frankly, what I saw in that boxcar doesn’t come as a huge shock, so forgive us if we don’t rush to his rescue.”

  The bell above the front door dinged, and two older men carrying traveling bags and yardsticks stepped inside. Alex’s engineers, probably. He brushed past her to offer a hearty handshake to the men.

  “Let’s head over to the tavern where we can talk,” he said.

  She stepped in front of him. “Alex, please don’t go. Kasper is right here. He can send a telegram up to Kingston testifying that you knew Bruce paid the Russians in cash, not scrip.”

  Kasper stood behind the lobby counter, his hand at the ready atop the telegraph sounder. The two engineers took a respectful step back, and she plowed ahead.

  “Please, Alex. It will only take two minutes.” She hated the way her voice wobbled, but Bruce was sitting in jail and might hang for something he hadn’t done. “I don’t think you understand how much I need—”

  The door on the cuckoo clock flapped open, and the annoying bird popped out, its rhythmic chirps interrupting her. It would be useless to talk over that racket, and she waited until the bird retreated into its cubby, the flap closing over it.

  Alex didn’t even let her finish her sentence. “I’m trying to save this town,” he said. “You’re like that cuckoo bird, begging for scraps. Willing to do anything to win approval.”

  The accusation poured salt into a raw, unhealed wound. She’d always been the poor little cuckoo bird—picking up work for her colleagues, dancing attendance on Tasha. Giving her virginity to Alex.

  He opened the door, preparing to lead the engineers to the tavern.

  “Alex, don’t leave!”

  He didn’t even acknowledge her as he headed outside, followed by the two men. She ran after him, but he never looked back. She’d given everything to this town, and the first time she asked for help, Alex waltzed off with his precious engineers.

  She had once intended to stick it out in Duval Springs until the town was fully moved, but why should she stay where she wasn’t appreciated? The comforting security of her normal life in New York City beckoned. Alex didn’t need her, and Bruce did.

  This poor little cuckoo bird was going to prove Bruce paid those men in cash, not scrip. She didn’t know how to do it, but she knew who did.

  She marched back into the lobby and approached the telegraph station. “Kasper, please send a telegram to Fletcher Jones, requesting an appointment for tomorrow morning.”

  Fletcher was an expert in the world of finance and might know how to prove Bruce paid the Russians in cash. She wasn’t too proud to ask for his help, and the moment the telegram had been sent, she raced upstairs to pack her bags.

  It took the engineers four hours to assess the tavern, and it was nearing dinnertime before they were ready to present their findings. Alex sat at a table with Hercules and Sally, all of them grim as they awaited the verdict. Nathan Richards, the lead engineer, gave them a sympathetic smile as he told them the bad news.

  “This building has been modified over the years, with additions and a second floor tacked on. That makes it unstable for moving.” He went on to say that the wall of river rock stretching across the back of the tavern would crumble if they tried to move it. The mortar was too old, and the fireplace in its center a destabilizing force.

  “The only way to save this tavern is to disassemble it,” Nathan continued. “It will be expensive, and it would make more sense to simply build a new tavern of similar dimensions and materials.”

  Hercules lit up. “We can save it by taking it apart?”

  Sally looked equally delighted, and Alex couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across his face. While he didn’t relish the thought of taking this old place apart, it would still be their tavern.

  “How do we go about disassembling it?” Alex asked.

  The engineer shook his head. “It will cost a fortune.”

  “I know, you said that. How do we do it?”

  Both engineers explained the impractical task of pulling the building apart, numbering and transporting each piece, then reassembling it—but they didn’t understand the Duvals’ bone-deep love for this place. If it was possible to save the tavern, he and Hercules were going to do it, even though the engineers estimated it would cost at least fifteen thousand dollars.

  “We’ll find the money somehow,” Sally vowed. “This is our home and our business both. How can we have a new town without the Duval Tavern?”

  Alex grinned at her enthusiasm and turned to the engineers. “Who do we need to hire to help us with this move?”

  Before they could answer, Willard entered the tavern and strode toward Alex. “I thought you’d like to know that Eloise checked out of the hotel a few minutes ago.”

  Alex shifted. He felt lousy for dismissing her so abruptly earlier today, but she was being completely unreasonable. “Where’s she going? A visit to the city?”

  “No,” Willard said. “She checked out. Took all her bags and belongings. Took her maid and the baby. She said they weren’t coming back, and we should put the room up for rent again.”

  Alex rocked back in his chair, stunned that she’d take off so abruptly when the legal case against Garrett would take months or years, while he had so little time to move the rest of the town.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose, a headache beginning to pound. Eloise was sending him a message, but he would deal with it later. He had four weeks to clear out the last of the buildings, hire a specialized crew, and get the tavern moved. Finding records of an old town council vote wouldn’t do anything to prove Garrett’s innocence. He was guilty, and Alex wouldn’t put the move at risk to go on a wild goose chase. For once, he was going to be just as calm and logical
as Eloise.

  “Then go ahead and put the room up for rent,” he said.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Eight

  It was dark by the time Eloise arrived back in Manhattan, but it felt good to be home. Everything felt natural and normal here. It was easy to slip back into the world of anonymity where no one knew her private business or judged her. She couldn’t blame the town for letting her down; it was Alex who had done that. A part of her was still a pathetic cuckoo bird, always desperate to belong.

  Well, she belonged in New York City. It was safe here, where office jobs had predictable hours that never involved working through sleet storms or getting caked in mud or climbing into pigpens. Her first night home, she sank into a hot bath and let the heat unwind the tension of the past few months.

  Fletcher seemed pleased to see her when she arrived at his office the following morning. He held his office door wide, gesturing her inside and guiding her to a chair.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked as he took a seat at his desk, but he didn’t close the office door. While she would have preferred privacy to discuss the pending criminal charges against Bruce, Fletcher had enough respect for her reputation to leave the door open. He was always proper, and she ought to appreciate it.

  “I’ve run into a problem reconstructing some old accounting records, and I don’t know how to handle it.”

  Aside from a single raised brow, he showed no change of expression as he asked her to elaborate. As quickly as possible, she filled him in on the discovery of the dead Russians and the scrip issued by the Garrett quarry as the primary evidence against Bruce.

  “Bruce swears he never paid them in scrip and the note is a forgery planted by the real culprit.”

  “As an insurance policy should the boxcar ever be discovered,” Fletcher added.

  “Exactly.” How nice that Fletcher drew the logical conclusion instead of rehashing a litany of old grievances against Bruce. “Is there any way to track old scrip? The notes all have serial numbers on them.”

  Fletcher shook his head, a sour expression on his face. “Scrip is impossible to trace. It’s a completely unregulated industry, and a shady one at that.”

  “What about old bank records?” she pressed. “If we can prove Bruce drew out large sums of cash to pay his workforce, wouldn’t those records still exist? The documentation would need to be from a bank, not the company’s records, because the police want independent verification.”

  “Those records exist, but I don’t think they’ll help you,” he said. “The bank will have records of the withdrawals, but not what it was expended on. How did someone get a boxcar onto the side of a mountain, anyway?”

  The question stumped her. Bruce and Theodore Riesel shared joint ownership of a private railway to transport their materials from the quarry to the cement factory, and then all the way to the Kingston depot. She’d never seen the cars go off the rails, but obviously someone had accomplished it. The boxcar was discovered a mile from the railway line. Five years ago that spot of wilderness would have seemed a safe place to bury an inconvenient reminder of a terrible crime.

  “It appears we are both woefully ill-informed about railway operations,” Fletcher said. “Fortunately, I know who we can ask. You said it was a Manchester railcar?”

  “Yes, all the railcars they own are Manchesters.”

  Fletcher smiled. “Rudolf Manchester is an old college classmate of mine. I expect he can provide an answer for how railcars are moved in the absence of tracks.”

  He crossed the room to a telephone mounted on the wall beside the window and calmly asked the operator to connect him to the Manchester Railcar Company. Fletcher casually gazed out the window at the cityscape as the telephone call was patched through a series of exchanges.

  “Rudy, good of you to take my call. Jillian is well, I take it?” At first Eloise thought Jillian must be Mr. Manchester’s wife, but as the conversation continued, it seemed Jillian was a dog who’d suffered a mishap the last time Fletcher went duck hunting with his old college friend. Pleasantries were exchanged for a few minutes before Fletcher brought the conversation to the matter at hand.

  “Tell me, if I had a boxcar I needed to move without the benefit of railway tracks, what would be the best way to do it?”

  Not being able to hear the other end of the conversation was frustrating, but after a long pause, Fletcher broke into some hearty laughter. “If it was easy, I wouldn’t have called you! Yes, if I wanted to move it over rough land, how could it be done?”

  She leaned forward but still couldn’t understand the faint, tinny voice on the other end.

  “And where would I purchase an industrial dolly like that?” Fletcher asked, casually bracing his foot on the windowsill as he gazed outside. “You do? And is it profitable? It sounds like a financial sinkhole to me.”

  The temptation to leap out of her chair and grab the receiver from Fletcher’s ear was intense, but at last he placed the receiver in its hook and turned to her with carefully concealed triumph on his face.

  “The answer is an industrial-sized dolly built specifically for that purpose. Manchester makes them, plus a sliding mechanism for moving across uncertain terrain. They sell poorly, but the company feels compelled to produce them as an option. Does Mr. Garrett own one?”

  “I know Bruce doesn’t. I have no idea if Theodore Riesel does.”

  Fletcher smiled. “Rudy is willing to open his archives to us. We shall soon see if either man ever bought one.”

  Fletcher’s prediction was overly optimistic. Although they arrived at the modest building in Queens shortly after lunch, the Manchester Railcar Company’s archivist had difficulty locating records for dolly sales, since it was such a minuscule portion of their business. The archives waiting room was in the basement, its cinderblock walls covered in exuberantly bright yellow paint. It was a perfectly awful room, and time stretched endlessly.

  “I’m sorry to be destroying your afternoon like this,” she said.

  “Nonsense. It’s no trouble at all.” Fletcher shifted in his chair and seemed to be groping for words. “Your cousin Nick is getting married next week,” he finally said.

  She knew about the wedding, of course. As a child she had idolized Nick, but after her parents banished her to Bruce’s house, she didn’t see him for almost twenty years. Nick hadn’t even recognized her when they met again last year, but he’d gotten her the job at the water board, and she was grateful for it.

  “I was wondering if you would like to accompany me to the wedding,” Fletcher asked.

  She stilled. This was what she had once been hoping for, right? A chance to begin a proper courtship with an eminently suitable man. A safe man who couldn’t hurt her.

  “I think that might be a little awkward,” she stammered.

  “Why?”

  “Well . . . being fired and all.” The wedding would be swarming with employees from the water board. How could she possibly show her face among them?

  A flush stained Fletcher’s cheekbones. “I never actually pulled the trigger on that. Your desk is still awaiting your return. When you accomplish whatever it is you hope to discover in Duval Springs, you can come back at any time.”

  She swallowed hard. Did Fletcher know about her ties to Alex and Duval Springs? Should she choose to pursue a relationship with Fletcher, she would need to disclose what had happened when she was sixteen. As poised and proper as she tried to appear, she hadn’t always been so.

  The door to the archives opened, and the clerk lugged in a heavy box and a stack of files. They landed on the table with a thump. “Here’s the box for the dolly sales,” he said. “And files on the sliders. Hardly anyone buys those.”

  It didn’t take long to locate the file for the year the Russians went missing. There had been only three purchase orders for dollies. Two were for companies on the West Coast, but one was from a New York company. It was dated three days after the Russians disappeared.

  And had be
en paid for by the Riesel Cement Factory, and signed for by Oscar Ott.

  The breath left her in a rush. While it couldn’t prove that Bruce had no part in the affair, it was enough to point a finger of suspicion toward Oscar and the Riesels. She dropped the document and impulsively hugged Fletcher.

  Ever the gentleman, he grasped only her forearms and held himself away as quickly as possible, but he still smiled at her.

  “Thank you!” she gasped, for she could never have managed this on her own. “This means the world to me.”

  “Is it enough for me to earn a companion to your cousin’s wedding?”

  “Oh yes . . . yes, I think so!”

  It was only after she returned to her apartment that the sadness hit her. Stepping out with Fletcher would change things. It would symbolize a break with Duval Springs and with Alex.

  But hadn’t she always known this day was coming? Her foray into Duval Springs was merely a chance to dip her toe into a real adventure story, and then retreat back to her normal world. The ending was coming a little faster than anticipated, but Bruce needed her and Alex didn’t.

  Duval Springs was already gone. Most of its buildings had been moved or abandoned, and soon the rest would be burned to the ground. The town viewed through her telescope would forever linger in her memory, an idyllic place she had always longed for but that didn’t really exist. And Alex was a huge part of those memories, where he loomed larger than life with his flashing grin and eager curiosity, the prince of her forbidden kingdom.

  There wasn’t time to wallow in painful memories while Bruce languished in prison. Eloise marched to the nearest telegraph office and sent news of what she had learned to Bruce’s attorney in Kingston.

  Once Bruce was free, she could cut her final ties to Duval Springs and set down roots in New York.

  Hopefully with Fletcher Jones.