Of Gold & Blood Series 2 Books 1 & 4

by Jenny Wheeler

  Graysie’s voice trembled, and Nathan suspected from the way she shakily picked her way towards them that she was feeling dizzy. Even her willingness to remain at home while he and Sebastian had ridden out to check on the mines—the Ophir and the Ruby—indicated she was not her usual buoyant self.

  Seb picked up on her anxious scrutiny. “Sorry, Graysie, nothing to report. We couldn’t get in. It was all chained and padlocked. You didn’t lock it up, did you?”

  She blinked rapidly and her arms hung loosely at her sides. “No. No, since Vance died I haven’t even managed to get near it.”

  “Well, someone is keen to prevent anyone else from getting in.” Seb had a deep, kindly baritone, and his face was furrowed with sympathy.

  “I don’t understand. Who would do that?” The question was sharp and high pitched, another sign of her stressed state. Minette sidled to Graysie’s side, reaching out her plump little fingers for her skirt like a safety line.

  A few hours earlier, when they’d got back from delivering Willie, Graysie had retrieved Vance’s report from under her mattress and they’d spread it out and gone through it together. Much of what it outlined was what Nathan might have expected. The bombshell came right at the end, after Vance had found what he considered to be good prospects for future earnings.

  However, a recent inspection had found evidence of rogue mining in the northern chamber which butted onto the Ruby, and unofficial work in the Ruby as well, although he knew of none of the town’s laborers being employed there. Illegal operations on one side of the mountain and rogue dealings on the other, Vance’s report warned.

  Nathan turned to Sebastian. “Can you take my horse, Seb? Settle him for the night? I think Graysie needs a sit-down.”

  He leaned down to Minette. Her free hand trailed a small wicker basket in which nestled two newly-laid brown eggs. “Sweetheart, why don’t you take those eggs in to Mrs. Snively and ask her if we could have some iced water out in the pergola? If you’re lucky she might give you a biscuit too. Take it slowly, now…”

  Minette smiled up at him and began a purposeful walk back to the house. With a light touch on her lower back, Nathan guided Graysie to the pergola. As she sank onto the bench seat she wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and gave a tentative laugh.

  “It’s all getting to be a bit much, Nathan. Not sure I can handle any more excitement.”

  “You’re still in shock from this morning.” Nathan cast his mind back to the gruesome blackened corpse, the mutilated dog, Willie’s death-white senseless form, and he gritted his teeth. Coming on top of Weavers’s attack it was no wonder she was overwhelmed. He closed his eyes briefly, willing himself to refocus.

  He’d been desperately hoping he’d have an opportunity to tell Graysie as much as she wanted to know about Charlotte’s death, clear the air, and try and explain the complicated feelings that still warred within him. Guilt that he hadn’t loved her enough. Shame that he’d acquiesced to a marriage he’d had doubts about. He glanced at Graysie’s lost, forlorn expression and realized she was in no state for deep talks. She was just about at the end of her tether.

  “I’ve got this weird feeling like I want to go home.” She stared down at her hands, and then up with a bewildered smile. “Except I don’t have a home… Haven’t had one for a very long time.” She let out a long sigh and shuddered. “If Willie dies…” He saw her lips were trembling. “If he dies I’ll never forgive myself.”

  Twenty Eight

  “Nearly as good as the dim sum and steamed pork buns our old Amah Rose used to make.” Nathan pushed his plate aside with a satisfied smile and patted his stomach. Seb and John murmured agreement.

  “For sure. Who’d have thought we’d be eating great Chinese food together nearly twenty years later and seven thousand miles away from home?” John grinned at his younger brothers. “Although I grant you it’s a long time since any of us called Hong Kong home.”

  “No argument,” said Nathan. “But no matter how long you’re away, the tastes and smells of Queen’s Road are always there, tickling your memory.”

  Nathan looked at his brothers over the remains of their dinner: rice balls and steamed fish, an array of fresh Chinese vegetables usually eschewed by non-Chinese, with salted watermelon seeds, candied ginger, and pickled fruits to finish.

  They were meeting at Seb’s request in the deputy sheriff’s office on the main street. Seb had wanted to brainstorm with his brothers on the murder inquiry which had hit yet another dead end with their ride out to the Ophir that afternoon.

  Vance’s report spelled out the skulduggery that was afoot. They agreed on that. The locked entry was an admission of guilt on the part of whoever was behind all this. They now saw why two supposedly worthless mines might be attractive to the wrong people. But that was as far as it went.

  The chains and padlocks gave them no clue as to who had put them there, apart from confirming the hunch they’d been working on all along. The attacks—the deaths of the prospectors, the extortion and threats towards the female mine owners—were all tied into the real value of the underground ore.

  Seb leaned back in his chair, hands locked behind his head. “We could go back tomorrow with bolt cutters and get inside for a proper look,” he said. “Nathan, meantime it’s worth confirming with Lisette that she knew nothing about the mining going on in the Ruby. I’m pretty sure she’s not seen a dime from it and she still owns around seventy percent, doesn’t she?”

  Nathan nodded. “As far as I know, yes. With Weavers dead we don’t know who owns the rest. Maybe he’d already sold it before he died.”

  Seb grimaced. “She’s being fleeced, anyway. Despicable when you consider her circumstances.”

  Sebastian yawned and stretched his long legs out in front of him

  “Thing is, how can we find out who’s behind it? Apart from the obvious, setting a guard on it. But I’ll wager they’ll probably lay low for some time, maybe give up altogether. They’ll realize we’re onto them if we cut the bolts. I suppose that will stop the illegal activity, but it brings us no closer to finding the killers.” He ran his fingers over his temples and drew them down either side of his face. “I need some sleep.”

  “Let’s cut to the heart of the matter,” John said. “Who are we expecting to find down there? Can we name names?” He challenged them with his dark eyes, just like he’d done when they’d been children, Nathan recalled, and they were working out the rules for some game. “If you set a trap, who would you expect to see turn up in it?”

  Sebastian and Nathan exchanged looks. Neither seemed keen to name names. Then Nathan cleared his throat. “As we’ve noted before, John, de Vile has been rabid about getting his hands on Graysie’s shares. You’ve seen the way he’s gone after her. That display when he turned up at the house when Minette was missing was contemptible. But we won’t ever catch him down there digging.”

  Sebastian nodded his agreement. “You’re right. If he’s behind it, we’ll have no chance of pinning it on him. He’ll have a chorus line of minions doing his dirty work for him.”

  Nathan fidgeted in his chair. “You know what I think, John, but I’m not sure if you’re ready to hear it. Willoughby Martens would be my pick. He’d rather play dirty for easy pickings than play clean and work for it. But I accept”—he put up his hand in an arresting gesture, expecting John’s dissent—“that there’s nothing much in the way of evidence. A mention of him by Weavers and his accomplice that night they nearly killed me. The fact that a Sydney Duck was employed for the hit of Madam Ring. All circumstantial.”

  John regarded him. “I’ve dropped the business I had with him, Nathan. Told him I’m not pursuing it.”

  Nathan’s stomach tightened. “Really, John? You won’t regret it. Was it hard to do?”

  The older Russell shook his head. “Not really. When I considered his proposition a second time, it wasn’t that attractive. But mostly it was because of your ‘character reference’. You know him, afte
r all. Though, of course, I didn’t tell him that. I decided I didn’t want to be involved with someone who’s caused the family grief. Your word is good enough for me.”

  Nathan grinned and, for the first time that evening, felt a weight lift from his shoulders.

  “You’ll live to be very pleased you did, I wager.”

  “What did happen between you, Nat? Why is he so bitter?”

  Nathan shrugged. “Fact is when his father died suddenly a couple of years ago, they weren’t even speaking. Hadn’t been for close to a year. Willoughby disappeared up north on some rapscallion escapade after the old man cut him off because of his crazy drinking and violent fights. He was always getting into fights.

  But when he got news his dad had died he rushed back and played on Charlotte’s soft heart. He was always my wife’s adored older brother… And with her father gone… She just craved having a substitute. Her mother died when she was only small, and her dad was everything to her really, and she to him.”

  He picked at a fingernail. “I guess I failed her on that score. I didn’t understand how much she still relied on him, and when he died she saw her brother as the replacement. She’d always seen him through rose-colored spectacles. She so desperately wanted to believe that Willoughby was ready to turn over a new leaf.”

  He shrugged.

  “She convinced my stepfather to take him on at the investment house. Give him another chance. He’d matured, she said. He recognized he’d been stupid.” He spread his hands wide, palms up, and gave another slight grin. “Charlotte always could be very persuasive. So he got his second chance. He was smart, he was charming when he wanted to be, and he did well at persuading people—particularly women of means with no men in their lives—to invest with us.”

  Nathan got up from the table and walked to a sideboard where a china tea pot sat with classic smooth-sided cups beside it. He paused as he poured out three steaming fragrant green teas and delivered them back to his brothers.

  “I think he thought he had protection because he was family. Thought Charlotte would be his ‘get off scot-free key’. He expected if we picked up on what he was doing we’d turn a blind eye to save her, and the firm, from the public shame. But he miscalculated on both. He just got too greedy.

  “I started finding discrepancies in the banking ledger which he couldn’t explain, and I told Jim. We never publicly shamed him. We quietly reimbursed the clients’ funds and got rid of him.

  “But for months afterward, Jim kept finding more losses. He’d even managed to fraudulently mortgage Jim’s house. It was far worse than we’d ever realized initially. Finally, it destroyed Jim’s health and the business.

  “Sad thing was, Charlotte refused to believe her brother had done anything wrong. Martens got in her ear and convinced her I’d made a dreadful mistake. I was away in Newcastle, north of Sydney, chasing up on export orders when it all blew up.

  “She insisted to her father that she had to come up and explain it all to me, that it couldn’t wait. She got on the overnight steamer with Joshua and sailed straight into the most God Almighty storm we’d seen on that part of the New South Wales coast for many a year—if ever.

  “They were very close to safe harbor but hit a sand bar and couldn’t make the final few hundred yards. The life boats were swamped with huge seas as fast as the crew tried to launch them. Sixty-six people on board, and only one man made it to shore alive. Everyone else was lost. Bodies washed up for days afterwards.”

  Nathan slumped in his chair, chin on his chest, waiting for the piercing pain to fade away. Seb’s chair legs screeched against the stone floor, as he thrust back with an edgy restless rocking motion.

  John sipped his tea in silence, cupping the warm vessel in both hands. Nathan noticed for the first time that his brother’s dark brown hair was showing silver streaks at the temples. He lifted his eyes and regarded Nathan steadily.

  “So that’s why he’s got it in for you? But surely any sane man can see it wasn’t your fault?”

  Nathan flashed him a humorless smile. “He could blame himself or blame me. Take your pick.” He spread his hands open in a helpless gesture. “But I can’t help thinking about the if onlys. If only I wasn’t away so much. Jim did have me out of town a lot. If only I’d understood how much she was missing her own father.

  “She must have felt so desperately alone. I think she just couldn’t face losing Willoughby again so soon after her she’d lost her father. Or at least that’s what I concluded. I never had the chance to ask her. In the end I felt I’d failed her when she needed me most.”

  Seb stood up suddenly, raised his arms over his head and stretched his long frame, and frowned.

  “Willoughby Martens is obviously a complete rotter and a fraud. No argument there. However, if he’s also our rogue miner, I hate to tell you, there’s not a lot the law can do about it. When something like this arises, it’s treated as a business dispute rather than a crime. The parties in disagreement have to go to court.

  “We can go down there and check out what’s happening on behalf of the rightful owners—Graysie Castellanos and Lisette Guilliame—but if we confirm there’s a rogue operation, they’ll have to seek remedy in court. That will be long-winded and expensive.”

  John stood and stretched before sitting down again and nodding to Nathan. “Seb’s right. As a deputy he’s charged with finding the killers, but he can’t get involved in a mining squabble, even if the right and wrong of it seem clear.”

  Nathan nodded. “One thing occurs to me. Do you think, now the rogue operation is out in the open, it might mean the attacks will stop? Or rather, if we made it clear it had been discovered, by obviously cutting the bolts and chains, would it stop it all in its tracks?”

  “How so?” Seb asked.

  “Well, maybe they’ve been trying to keep their secret operations going through this campaign of intimidation and death so as to get as much free gold as they can before they’re discovered.”

  John chimed in. “I see what you’re driving at. Are you suggesting we go up there tomorrow and make a big deal of it?”

  “Maybe,” said Nathan. “Or maybe not.”

  Seb tapped his fingers on the back of a chair. “On the other hand, we could slip in there quietly and wait to see who turns up.” He glanced from John to Nathan, his eyebrows raised. “Question is, which would work best to catch a killer?”

  *****

  Graysie awoke in a cold sweat, struggling to breathe. Moonlight flooded the room, but all around her the house lay silent and peaceful. She lay on her back, staring at the carved ceiling rose overhead, momentarily stunned by her rushed wakefulness. She was panting, as if she’d been in a high odds race she had to win. And then the horror of the image she’d seen in her sleep washed over her.

  A blackened corpse, curved like a pretzel, buried in the ashes. When the firemen had pulled him clear, his arms were charred sticks, covering his head in futile denial. Two glaring rows of bared teeth were the only clue that she was staring at a human being.

  She huddled in a circle and covered her face with her hands, racked by dry sobbing as she remembered what came next. The gruesome spectre had straightened, looked directly at her, and begun beckoning to her. The lips moved around the macabre teeth in a terrible smile.

  She lay in the middle of her bed and rocked back and forth gently, crooning to herself. No, no, no. No more death. No more. No more.

  She was gripped by an overwhelming certainty that the charred man was Nathan, and that if he continued to search for the men who had killed three times already, he would be the next one to die. They’d already tried and missed twice. She couldn’t afford to risk it being third time unlucky.

  Death seems to follow you around.

  Sebastian Russell’s words echoed in her mind.

  Her teeth chattered in the balmy night, and she curled even tighter, pressed her hands closer, sobbing until her rib cage ached, willing the fear to dissipate. When the sobs finally died
away, she lay rigid, eyes wide open, until the first bird calls signaled a new dawn. She knew what she had to do, and she planned to waste no time in doing it.

  Twenty Nine

  Friday, July 10

  “The Sisters offer homes for orphaned children, Miss Castellanos. We are not here to provide accommodation for solo women and children who are passing through.” Tall big-boned Sister Mor peered across her desk at Graysie, her arms securely locked around Minette, who snuggled in her lap, the top of her curly mop tucked just under Graysie’s chin.

  The sister’s voice had a cold, disapproving edge; she could feel Minette tense against her chest as the woman spoke. Even if she didn’t understand fully what the woman was saying, the child detected they were not welcome.

  The religious woman’s face puckered with distaste as she gazed at her, and she could feel the silent judgment: Respectable single women don’t travel around singing with a stray child in tow… This one won’t fit here.

  The nun had a wrinkled forehead and bulging eyes under the shadow of her wimple. Her long thin mouth was set in a tight straight line. She sat slightly hunched as if she had spent a lifetime trying to conceal her unusual height; her arms seemed too long for her body and hung awkwardly at her sides. ‘Mor’—meaning ‘long’ in Gaelic was just right for her, thought Graysie. Long in body and long in face. The only thing she was short on was compassion.

  Graysie had arrived at the Sisters of Mercy school and orphanage full of optimism that she might be able to find simple lodgings for herself and Minette for a few weeks while she got her life sorted. She’d be close to Willie and she’d do anything she could to help his recovery. She’d lie low within the protection of the convent and reduce the chance of being attacked again.

  And she’d distance herself from Nathan to ensure he wasn’t in the firing line any longer either. It had seemed like the wisest escape plan when she’d lain awake in the dawn light. But the longer she sat in Sister Mor’s presence, the less likely it seemed that the church would accept her.