Maybe we were already there.
As we went up the stairs to our room, I glanced over the bannister to see the waiter we’d had that morning and the night before. He was looking up at me curiously, and when he saw me looking back, he shot out of sight like a bullet. I wondered what was on his mind, but not for long. I had other fish to fry.
When the door was locked behind us, Eli pulled off his grigori vest and his hat, and I shed the shoes and stockings I’d hated all morning. I sat cross-legged on the bed while Eli took the easy chair. “Tell me how you came to be here,” I said. “You know why I’m here. And I swear you know everything I know.”
Eli took a deep breath, and he let his unhappiness show. “I am not in favor at the court anymore,” he said, as if he were confessing to torturing cats. “My father was a traitor. So no matter how faithful I have been, I’ve been regarded with doubt ever since the plot against the tsar was uncovered.”
“But the grand duke begged off, the guy your dad was backing as the next tsar, right? If the grand duke got pardoned, why didn’t his followers? And their families?” If you forgave the head of the snake, you had to forgive the body, too, seemed to me.
“The grand duke said he was ignorant of this plot to do away with Alexei. He wept with grief that he could be considered guilty, when he loved his nephew so much. My father could not have said that believably; there was too much proof against him. It was a relief to the tsar when Father didn’t have to go to trial, though his death was a great puzzle to everyone.”
Eli’s father had died in a little hotel in Segundo Mexia. Yep, that had been mysterious to everyone but me, Eli, and Eli’s younger brother Peter.
“Even though your father is dead, and he was the plotter, you and your family are in the doghouse?”
Eli looked confused.
“Your whole family is tainted?”
Eli nodded grimly. “Even after my service to my tsar. Even after I have had the privilege of tending to him personally when he was ill.”
“Your older brothers?” His half brothers. They’d had another mother.
“My oldest brother denounced my father, swore his loyalty to the rightful tsar, and gave the tsar an ancient icon, one we brought with us when we escaped, as earnest of his devotion.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I got the gist.
“Alexei has a son now, and he wants to protect that son’s path to the throne more than anything else. Nothing else is as important as that.”
I could see that other things were more important to Eli. I had a lot of other questions about his family and how they would manage, but it wasn’t the time. “I can tell your family’s in big trouble. And I’m sorry. Maybe everything depends on how you do here, huh? And what you have to do here is find the chest stolen from my crew and make sure it gets to the right people.” I paused. He nodded. “So what was in the chest?”
Eli hesitated. Finally, he said, “That is a long story. I want to tell you, and I will, but not at this moment. Too many lives are hanging on it. Let me think.”
I took a minute to recite the alphabet in my head. When I was able to speak without cursing, I said, “Take all the time you need. Who do you believe stole it?”
“First thought? Someone who had no idea what was inside. Someone who happened upon Jake, saw through the splintered crate to the carved chest, decided it was valuable … and saw Jake could not defend it.”
Eli had said that not like it was a thought, but like it was a hope. Whatever was in the chest was powerful. Eli very much hoped it was not in the hands of the enemy, whoever that enemy was.
“Jake would have been waiting for that to happen,” I said. “And he had his gun.”
Eli took a deep breath. “My next guess is that someone was searching through the wreck for the chest and spotted Jake with a likely looking crate. Approached him, maybe to ask if he needed help. That person killed him and took your cargo.”
“Do you know of anyone who would fit that bill?” I asked.
“There are many, many people here in Sally who would do that.”
“Eli, this is like Mexico all over again. You’ve hired me to help you and then not given me the information I need to do a good job. You better rethink this soon. Is there a third thought?”
Eli’s jaw was set hard. He stared at me as if he was trying to send his ideas into my head, because he didn’t want to say them out loud. “Yes,” he said. “My third thought is that the people for whom it was intended stole it, hoping they wouldn’t have to honor the agreement that …”
A knock at the door interrupted Eli. We’d both been concentrating on the conversation, keeping our voices low. I jumped. I’d been too intent.
I had a gun in my hand in a flash, and I nodded to Eli.
“Who is there?” Eli used a calm voice, though I saw his hands were spread and open. He was ready to use magic.
“I brought your drinks, Mr. Savarov.” The voice was a little familiar.
We hadn’t ordered any drinks.
“Leave them outside the door, please,” Eli said pleasantly.
“Sorry, can’t leave glasses on the floor,” said the voice. “Please, sir.”
If he hadn’t added the last two words, we would have told him to take the drinks back. But there was a desperate note when he’d said “please” that made me believe this man was afraid. I met Eli’s eyes and nodded. I got up from the bed and went silently to the door, stood to the left of it against the wall. Eli went to the door and opened it, stepping back quickly as he did.
The man outside was the waiter I’d noticed earlier. He’d served us at breakfast. He stepped into the room, his eyes going from side to side to find me, and when he did he had a gun at his head.
“God almighty, don’t kill me,” he said.
Eli shut the door behind him and took the tray with the two glasses from the man’s hands. He placed it carefully on the little table by the easy chair. “Now, why are you here with drinks we didn’t order?” he said.
“Tell her to put her gun down, please, sir,” the man said.
“My name is Eli Savarov, and this is Lizbeth Rose,” Eli told him. “What’s your name?”
“James Edward Johnson, sir.” The waiter took a deep breath, seemed a bit more composed now that he saw we weren’t going to kill him straightaway.
“You don’t have to call me ‘sir’ every time you speak to me,” Eli said. “What do you need to tell me?”
“I had to talk to you in private, and this was the only way I could think of to do it.” His eyes cut toward me. “Please, lady, put down the gun.”
I lowered it. But I kept it in my hand. “Talk,” I said.
“Where is he?” James Edward asked Eli.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A lot happened in the train derailment,” Eli said. “The chest is missing. Someone took it.”
James Edward looked as though he was going to keel over. “Oh, no,” he breathed. I pointed to the chair, but the waiter shook his head.
Eli said, “It’s just temporary. We’ll keep our promises to you.”
“Maybe the train wreck was God telling us to back down.” James Edward sounded kind of hopeful, and also kind of angry.
“The train was derailed on purpose,” Eli said. “By humans, maybe the Ballard thugs. Not by God.”
I had no idea what any of this meant, but at the moment, that was not my job. My job was to keep this man from harming Eli, or making any outcry drawing attention to us.
But for sure, later, I would understand, if I had to beat it out of Eli.
James Edward didn’t look homicidal. He looked scared. “We’re dead,” he muttered. “They know. I might as well get back to work.” He half-turned.
“But we haven’t even started yet,” Eli said, putting some push into his voice. “There’s so much to do.”
James Edward’s shoulders were slumped. “Like what? Sir?”
“Like finding out where he is,” Eli said. “And get
ting him back.”
“How we gonna do that?” James Edward Johnson looked at Eli like Eli was a fool. I bet he’d never looked at a white man like that before, not with the white man looking back.
“I’m sure someone you know saw something, noticed someone, at the train wreck. Your people were everywhere that day, carrying the wounded, lining up the dead, picking up the debris. White people don’t pay them any attention.”
I heard someone coming up the stairs. I held up my finger to tell Eli and James Edward to shut up. Sure enough, after a moment there was another knock at the door.
James Edward, his face full of alarm, pointed from me to the bathroom door with a lot of you-better in his gesture. I looked at Eli, who nodded. I hurried into the bathroom, glad I was barefoot. I left the door open just a crack so I could hear.
“James Edward, where’ve you been? Excuse me, Mr. Savarov, I wondered if James Edward was keeping you and the missus from your drinks. Every now and then, he does tend to go on.” The voice was hearty, cheerful, and as false as a hair-bow on a pig.
“Not at all, Mr. Mercer,” Eli said. “I asked James Edward for the latest news on when the train tracks would be repaired.”
“All right then, James Edward, duty is done. We need you downstairs.”
“Yessir, right away.”
I could hear him leaving, his step heavy and regular. But Mercer didn’t leave.
“Mr. Savarov, I hope your stay here is going well?”
“Just fine, thank you.”
“My daughter says you are staying on?”
“We are, for the other three days I’d reserved. I certainly hope after that we will be ready to leave. We’ve tracked down a relative of my wife’s who perished in the accident, and there are other friends we’re searching for.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss. I’ve puzzled at your arriving here on your business. But then her relatives being on the train? What a coincidence.”
“Not really,” Eli said pleasantly.
“Of course, of course. Well, have a good stay and be sure and let us know if there is anything we can do to make your time here more comfortable.”
“You can let us charge things to our room,” Eli said, as if he’d just thought of it. “We’ve never been told before we couldn’t do that. Surely that’s the normal procedure?”
“But of course you …” Then Mr. Mercer seemed to catch himself. “That should have been done automatically. That James Edward! I’ll have a word with him. Sometimes you just have to give them a good talking to.”
“I believe Miss Mercer told him not to let us make charges to our room. But if you’re going to correct that mistake, all’s well.”
After a tense moment of silence, Mr. Mercer said, “Good we had this little talk. I’ll let you have your privacy, then.” And I heard more steps and the door closing.
“You can come out now. Unless you want to take another bath?” Eli said. He was trying to sound like everything was fine.
I opened the door and gave my temporary husband a good, hard look.
I didn’t like what I saw.
Eli looked as unhappy as I was. “You’re waiting for me to explain my conversation with James Edward. And I want to. But I swore to a priest I would not tell anyone what I’m doing here. I swore.”
“Swearing is a serious thing, no matter who you’re swearing to. But it’s hard for me to help you—in fact I can’t—unless I know what you’re aiming to do. I have my own goal. I’m obliged to find our cargo so we can make good on our job. Now you want me to help you out. Can those two things go together? Or had we better split up?”
Eli had objected strongly to our separating this morning. Now he hesitated. “I didn’t know it would be so hard,” he said, as if he was talking to himself. He looked at me directly. “I need you, Lizbeth. Our goals march together, for the most part. If I don’t accomplish this, my family …” He stopped.
I wanted to pound him in the head. “What about them?” I said, trying to make him speak.
I could practically see the words inside his mouth, begging to come out, but it wasn’t going to be at this moment.
I looked down at the floor and breathed deeply while I thought. I didn’t have a lot of choices. If I grabbed my stuff and walked out, I had nowhere to go. If I could find a hotel with a vacant room, which didn’t seem likely, I didn’t have enough money to pay for it. And since Eli had paid for the clothes on my back, I’d be pretty damn ungrateful to leave him to fend for himself.
Also, if I became that awful thing in Dixie, a woman on her own, it seemed pretty certain I’d end up killing a person or two.
Shooting someone sounded pretty good right now.
It was lucky the white edge of a note appeared under our door just at that moment. It was even luckier the note was for me. I read it hastily.
Eli waited for me to hand it to him, assuming it was for him, too, but I tucked it in my pocket. (I was lucky the skirt had something so useful sewn in.)
“I’ll be back in a while,” I said, sitting on the bed to put my shoes back on. I decided to skip the stockings. I got a couple of things out of my traveling bag and put them in my new purse, which only held the money from Jake’s pockets. I put on the little straw hat, which did no good at all to keep the sun off my face.
Leaping up, I rooted in my bag until I pulled out a boot. In the bathroom I banged the bootheel hard, sideways, against the edge of the toilet. The heel obligingly went a little crooked.
I nodded to myself and left with the boot under my arm. I didn’t tell Eli good-bye. I tried to go down the stairs very quietly. I succeeded, even in the stupid shoes. The lobby and hall were mostly empty. Only one couple was standing at the desk, checking in. They both looked hot and weary and not interested in anyone else at all. I turned left instead of right at the foot of the stairs, because I’d gotten a hand-drawn map to follow.
I looked just like anyone else as I went out the back door of the hotel, or at least I hoped I did. I was carrying my stupid handbag, wearing the stupid hat, the boot tucked under my left arm. At least I had a knife in the handbag and one strapped to my leg. It was a relief now. The top of the stocking wasn’t interfering with it.
It was midafternoon, and though there was still some activity in the streets—mostly a couple of blocks east, around the hospital—Sally had sunk into a heat-hazed drowse. I figured this was more typical than the bustle of yesterday. I made myself walk slower. I tried to stick to shadows as I made my way through the parking area, then through a little alley, which was as clean as the main street. I came from the shade of the alley into the glare of the sun beating down on the south side of the next parallel street, Singer. Though I didn’t need to, I found myself pulling the note from my pocket to make sure I had the directions right. I glanced to my left and then to my right. Bingo. I headed for the dark green awning over Kempton’s Shoe Repair, trying to keep my pace down to a seemly saunter.
A bell on the door tinkled as I pushed it open. The shop interior seemed very dark after the dazzling day. The floors were bare wood, and the wall opposite the door was filled with cubbyholes holding shoes and leather and all kinds of items I couldn’t figure out in the dimness.
“Yes’m?” The ancient black man behind the counter was hard to see until he stood. As my eyes adjusted, I could see his hair was almost white. So was his mustache. His hands were massive, thick with muscle and scarred all over.
“I’m Lizbeth Rose. Lizbeth Savarov,” I added, just in case. “My bootheel is loose. I’d appreciate it if you could take care of it.” I handed him my boot, and he looked over the heel.
“Yes’m, I can do that,” he said without looking up. “You care to rest in the back room? You can get yourself a drink of water. Mr. Kempton won’t be back for another half hour. I can take care of your repair right now, if that suits you.”
“Thanks so much.” By now I had noticed the door to the left of the counter. I pushed it open and stepped into the back room
. It had one window, which was curtained. There were two people sitting on an ancient sofa covered with dark velvet, worn in places.
“I’m Lizbeth,” I said, tired of wrestling with my two last names. “Are you Hosea and Reva Clelland?”
“Yes’m,” the man said. He was not as old as the shoe repairman, but he was getting a sprinkling of gray in his hair, and his face was heavily lined. She was bent over almost double, and her hair was drawn back in a bun. It was secured with metal pins and a little hairnet.
“You knew our girl?” the woman asked. Her skin was like a pecan shell in color, and her eyes were dark brown. The whites were yellowish. She was thin and looked to be somewhere in her late fifties. Her husband looked healthier, and he’d always been taller and straighter.
“Galilee was a friend of mine,” I said. “My best friend. We lived together for a while, after her son left home to make his own way.”
They regarded me with … it was almost disbelief.
“Really?” said Hosea. He shook his head as if he’d never heard of such a thing.
“We were on the same gun crew.”
“She shot people for a living?” This from Reva. She didn’t seem to know whether to be horrified or proud.
“Galilee guarded things for a living,” I said as gently as I could. I guess I am not very gentle. “Sometimes when you guard things, other people try to take them, and you have to shoot.”
They glanced at each other, a look I couldn’t read. “How did she die?” asked Hosea.
“You knew. You did get Freedom’s letter.” At least I didn’t have to break the news. That was a relief.
“We got it, but we were scared to answer it. They look at the mail here, you know. See who you’re writing to.”
I had to believe them, but this seemed incredible to me. “Galilee died while we were on a job,” I said. I explained that Galilee and I had been in the back of the truck with the cargo, in this case two farm families, who were trying to escape their commandeered farm in Mexico to get to New America. Such people made good human chattel, and bandits had attacked us. They’d killed our driver, and in the resultant crash, Galilee had been thrown out of the back of the truck and killed instantly. I would have said that anyway, but it happened to be the truth.
A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose) Page 9