Carried to the Grave and Other Stories Page 21

  “Oh, child.” Kate pulled her close. “You’re not going anywhere you don’t want to go.”

  They thanked the families for tending to Grace for a few hours and the Indian man led them up the trail. Grace carried her satchel. Paddy guided the automobile up the hill, only cursing twice. Then he drove back to the Petermans to let them know the lost lamb had been found. They declined the offer of a hot drink by the fire, though when Laura suggested Grace spend Saturday with them, Kate readily agreed. With all the people who came into Jewel Bay to pick up groceries and tend to other errands, Saturday was Gossip Day, and with the discovery of the second candlestick and the focus on Frank Lang, tongues would be wagging. Grace did not need to hear the idle talk.

  And Kate would find a moment, and a way, to speak with Laura alone. They had much to discuss.

  ∞

  Back in the Murphy kitchen, the fire in the cookstove crackling and the kettle on, Kate wished she could ask her mother or Alice for advice. How could she keep her promise to Grace?

  First things first. Keep her warm and feed her, though she had been well treated down at the lakeshore. Kate had made her remove her boots and stockings and change into a dry dress—her school dress had gotten dirty and damp as she’d made her way through the brambles and undergrowth to the lakeshore.

  Now she sat on the floor, hugging the dog. In her clean dress.

  But it was good to see her acting like a child, this young girl who’d been forced to grow up too soon. She needed a place where she could run and play with other children, and without fear.

  Kate set a steaming mug of coffee in front of Paddy and filled her teapot with hot water. The way she was going through the tea, she’d have to speak to him about ordering a decent supply sooner rather than later. Thank goodness for the small packet Laura had given her.

  As if knowing the time for play had ended and the time for talk begun, Grace rose and sat in the third chair, the one they had stopped at the parsonage to fetch on the drive home.

  “Did you have a plan, girl?” Paddy asked gently. “Or were you so set on getting away?”

  “No! No. You’ve both been so good to me. I—” Grace bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I heard what you two said last night, and then the way you were talking to Miss Lang, Kate—I knew I couldn’t go back to Chicago, but I never meant to worry you.”

  Kate squeezed her hand. “We know that. But we need to talk about your future. Miss Lang has a friend in Pondera, the woman who arranged for her to teach here. She has a lovely home not far from the county high school, and a grand piano and—”

  “Can’t I stay here? With the two of you? I don’t mind sleeping on the cot in the front room. I don’t.”

  Kate and Paddy exchanged glances again. “We’ll need some sort of legal permission, I expect,” Paddy said. “From the courts, or your grandmother.”

  “She’d give it. She hates me.”

  “Oh, Grace. She doesn’t hate you,” Kate said. “You—you remind her too much of your mother. Losing a child is the hardest thing in the world for a parent and it feels, I think, like a failure. A failure to protect the most precious thing in the world.”

  Grace sat silently.

  “I’ve seen it more times than I’d like,” Paddy said, “back in Ireland and in this country. It breaks a soul, it does. It’s not the natural order of things. The older generation wants to pass on first. I can’t blame her for being angry, only for taking it out on your father and letting it keep her from knowing you.” He smiled at her. “Because you’re a grand girl.”

  “Oh, Paddy.” Grace slipped out of her chair and threw her arms around him.

  “I’ll talk to Daniel Gibson,” Paddy said over her shoulder. “See what we need to do to make it legal, at least for now.”

  “And you and I will write to your grandmother again,” Kate said, though what they would say, she had no idea.

  ∞

  But there was still the matter of who had killed Reverend Haugen. Kate spent much of the evening thinking about it, and much of the night, as she lay awake next to Paddy. The man could sleep through anything, a trait he attributed to growing up as the fourth of seven and then two weeks in steerage at twelve as he and his oldest brother crossed the stormy Atlantic.

  By morning, she had worked out part of the puzzle. She worked out another piece while kneading bread dough. The tricky part would be to talk to Laura Peterman without terrifying her. Clearly, she was in a difficult situation and had confided in the reverend. Now that Kate had been in the Peterman home and seen how husband and wife treated each other, the obvious affection between them, and the health and happiness of their children, she no longer believed James Peterman a violent husband or father.

  But the drawing nagged at her, as did her memory of the dismay on Laura’s face when she saw Kate pondering the monogrammed coin purse.

  They’d agreed that Laura would drive the buggy into town late morning to fetch Grace from the Mercantile. Kate and Paddy would drive out after closing to pick her up. Laura had promised Grace a chance to play the grand piano, a beautiful instrument that had struck a deep chord in Kate’s soul.

  Grace’s letter to her grandmother lay on the table. Kate resisted the temptation to read it, instead slipping it into the envelope with a note saying simply that she and Mr. Murphy were pleased to keep the girl, who was excellent company and a good student, with a deft touch at the piano and with the needle, until plans could be finalized. What those plans might be, she did not elaborate. Could not say yet. Not until they’d gotten advice from more experienced minds.

  When the baking was done, Kate wrapped up an extra loaf, tucked it in the basket Laura Peterman had given her alongside a jar of strawberry jam, and she and Grace set out.

  “Where are we going?” Grace asked.

  “To pay a call.”

  Anne Lang came to the door wearing a calico dress and an apron, her guarded expression easing at the sight of her visitors. Then her brow dipped. “I’m not sure I should invite you in.”

  “We’re not afraid of Frank,” Kate said firmly. “Or of talk. But we can’t stay. I wanted to bring you some fresh bread, and ask if there is any news.” While she didn’t want Grace to overhear idle gossip, she and Paddy had told her everything they knew about the search for her father’s killer.

  “None,” Anne said. “Daniel’s been able to keep the sheriff at bay, and I’ve been able to keep Frank busy. He’s out back with his chickens right now. The way he clucks and flaps his arms like wings, they think he’s one of them.”

  That put a smile on all their faces.

  “It helps,” Anne continued, “that Ivan believes Frank is innocent. But that doesn’t explain the discovery in his woodpile.”

  “What if,” Grace said, her voice tentative, “someone wanted us to blame Frank, or even Mr. Gregory, to distract attention from the real killer?”

  The older women looked at her in astonishment.

  “I read a book where that happened,” she said.

  “Not a book I gave you,” Anne replied. “But I’ll grant the possibility.”

  Who, though?

  Kate and Grace said their goodbyes and continued on their way. Grace dashed across the street to slip the letter in the slot at the post office—always fun, even for a girl of eleven.

  In the Mercantile, Kate set Grace to work dusting shelves. Not long after, Laura arrived, Elizabeth behind her.

  “The younger two are home with their father,” Laura said. Kate remembered James’s comment to Paddy about leaving Jewel Bay. This family had the means to move, but would they? If the reason were compelling enough. Kate needed to probe carefully.

  “This could be one of the last warm days,” she said. “Maybe we could stroll down to the bridge. If my dear husband can spare me.”

  “Oh, go on with yeh, lass,” Paddy called from behind the hardware counter, where he was weighing out nails.

  The girls dashed ahead. “Grace seems no worse for the adventure,
” Laura said as they strolled down Front to Bridge Street. “Though she certainly made her feelings about returning to her grandmother’s house clear. Have you decided what’s to be done with her?”

  How Grace’s future had become Kate’s decision, she wasn’t sure. Merely because she’d found the reverend’s body, or had fate had a hand in it?

  “What would you do?” Kate asked. “Knowing what you know about the grandmother, and that there is no other family.”

  “I would keep her,” Laura said, then held up a gloved hand. “And no, that’s not an offer. I have my hands full with my three. But she seems genuinely happy with you and Paddy. And too much change at a time like this could be very difficult.”

  Anne Lang had said much the same thing.

  They had reached the wooden bridge across the river, only a few years old, though there was already talk of replacing it with a new steel structure. In unspoken agreement, they stopped mid-span to watch the water coursing down the flume behind the power house, creating the invisible electricity that sparked so much growth and excitement.

  The girls had crossed the bridge and were now down by the river, safely back from the water’s edge.

  “The power company, the bank—think of all that’s happened here in such a short time,” Kate said.

  “And the Mercantile. We are lucky women, to have such forward-thinking husbands, who work hard and love us so, despite our faults.”

  “Laura.” Kate faced her new friend, droplets of water splashing up from the river and misting the side of her face. “I can see you love James dearly, and your children, too. But—and forgive me the intrusion. We have not known each other long enough for me to speak so freely, and I wouldn’t do it if it weren’t for Grace.”

  Apprehension clouded Laura Peterman’s lovely face.

  “But,” Kate went on, “I know you were speaking with Reverend Haugen regularly. Not about new altar cloths or cushions for the pews. About something deeply personal. And I wonder if it might in any way be connected to the tragedy that befell him.”

  It occurred to her in that moment that she might have chosen an unwise place for this conversation. Laura was several inches taller than Kate and a good deal stronger. If she had swung a silver candlestick at Reverend Haugen, what would stop her from pushing Kate over the side of the bridge and into the rushing river?

  “Oh, Kate,” Laura said. “I was so afraid that James had done something rash. But when the second candlestick surfaced, I knew I’d been mistaken. I thought—I feared that the reverend would feel compelled to reveal our secret and that James killed him to keep him quiet.”

  She paused, a hand to her chest, collecting herself.

  “And he feared that’s what you had done,” Kate said, just loud enough to be heard above the river noise.

  Laura’s eyelids fluttered closed then opened again, her hand traveling from her chest to her mouth and back. “With James’s prominence in the community, would any decent minister dare keep a secret like that? Even with children involved?”

  What secret, Kate did not ask, but waited.

  “James,” Laura Peterman said, the single word rising and falling like the water from the flume as it struck the river, rose, and fell again, “is not my lawful husband.”

  Nothing this gracious, graceful woman could have said would have shocked Kate more. And yet, it explained the fear. And the monogram.

  “I was married young, in Philadelphia, where I was reared. My late father’s lawyer arranged the marriage, as I had no family but had come into a bit of money. He believed I needed a husband to manage it, even though the law allowed me to do so myself. The marriage was not a success. My husband was a gambler and the money was quickly gone. He drank to excess. He became violent at the drop of a hat.”

  Kate repressed a shudder. “And the law?”

  “The law could not help me.” Bitterness clung to Laura’s words. “We no longer lived in the city. There are women in the cities who help women in need. I had no such recourse. But I did have a friend. She gave me shelter and bought me a railway ticket to Pittsburgh, where her family took me in.”

  “And that’s where you met James.”

  “That’s where I met James. My husband had made clear that divorce was out of the question. He would see me dead first, he vowed, and I believed him.”

  “That’s why you and James came west, starting over as man and wife.”

  “Thirteen years ago. It’s been everything a marriage ought to be. Then the children came, and James dotes on them. We have been so happy, and so intent on building our new life that I rarely gave the past any thought.”

  So what had caused the two of them to confide, separately, in their minister?

  As if she heard Kate’s musing, Laura answered the question. “Until my lawful husband tracked us down.”

  “The man in the drawing,” Kate said, understanding now. “He threatened to reveal that you and James are not legally married and your children are illegitimate.”

  She could well believe it of the odious man Laura described. But she could not believe that Reverend Haugen would have revealed the truth. Nothing she had seen in his demeanor or heard since his death persuaded her that he would have acted so cruelly. He might have helped the distraught woman obtain a quiet divorce and remarry, if a few years late, but he bore his own scars from the past. He would have done nothing to put a family in danger.

  “The truth would have ruined James’s reputation. Everything he’s worked for, all his business interests. The children would have been shamed. We would have had to leave Jewel Bay. Unless we paid him a monthly sum.”

  “Blackmail. That’s vile.”

  “We were on the verge of agreeing to pay when he saw the candlesticks in the church. He became enraged. That’s when he came to the house, when young James saw him from the tree. He no longer wanted money. He wanted blood.”

  Now Kate was confused. “The candlesticks?”

  “They were a wedding gift,” Laura explained. “From my father’s lawyer, the scoundrel who arranged the marriage. No doubt bought with money siphoned from my inheritance. I had kept them all these years as my security, thinking I could sell them if I became truly desperate. But the church here was so plain, so unadorned, it needed a touch of beauty, and we were doing well. James was doing well—”

  She was interrupted by a shout. Kate followed the sound and gasped. There was no mistaking the man in the drawing. The man she’d seen near Ivan Gregory’s house. Thaddeus London. And he was standing amid the rocks at the water’s edge, holding Elizabeth by one hand, Grace by the other.

  “That’s him, isn’t it?”

  Hands to her lips as if in prayer, Laura nodded. How foolish they had been, letting the girls go on ahead, caught up in their conversation, not noticing the man watching their every move. But what to do now? Even if they could get to the girls in time, they couldn’t fight him off.

  Think, Kate.

  They needed to get help. But Laura would not budge. It was up to Kate. Suddenly the Mercantile seemed so far away.

  A whizzing sound came from the bridge’s wooden planks. Ivan Gregory’s nephew, riding Reverend Haugen’s bicycle. The boy grinned and raised a hand but Kate stepped into his path, forcing him to swerve to a stop. She grabbed the handlebars.

  “Ride! Ride to the Mercantile as fast as you can. Tell Paddy there’s trouble below the bridge and he must come. Hurry!”

  The bicycle wobbled as the boy rode off, standing on the pedals to urge it forward. Would he be fast enough?

  The scene on the riverbank had not changed, the girls tugging one way, London the other. He glanced up at Laura, the evil spreading across his face. And though she did not have the history Laura had with him, had never been his wife or his victim, Kate knew the terror Laura felt for Elizabeth, because she felt it herself for Grace. For both girls, of course, but Grace—Grace was hers.

  “Stay here. Help is on the way. Distract him if you can, then send the men d
own when they come.” And with that, Kate Flannery Murphy grabbed her skirt and ran as fast as she could, across the bridge and down the slope.

  As she crept closer, she saw London look up at the bridge again. He threw a wicked laugh into the wind and dragged the girls closer to the water.

  The cold, rushing water, the riverbed studded with hard, jagged rocks. If any of them went into the river, they’d be swept into its depths and smashed against the rocks. It was mid-October, the birches and vine maple changing color, the air warm enough that she hadn’t even grabbed a shawl in her eagerness to talk with Laura Peterman. But the water was cold. It would batter and beat them and suck them out into the bay.

  “I know who you are,” she shouted. “I know why you’re doing this.”

  “Do you?” Though the river was loud, his words were short and sharp.

  “It doesn’t have to be this way.” She pushed closer. “Let them go. They’re children. They’ve done nothing to you.”

  “They’re nothing to me,” he replied. “They are nothing.”

  They’re everything to me.

  “You don’t have to do this.” Could she get closer? Damn this heavy skirt. She put a hand on a rock and stepped around it, gasping as the cold water flooded into her boot.

  The girls had seen her now and began to struggle, twisting London’s arms this way and that. Grace’s foot caught between two rocks and she fell. As London tried to regain his balance, he lost his grip on Elizabeth. He swung his free arm, striking her in the face. Kate watched in horror as she fell, hitting a large rock, slippery with mud, and slid out of sight.

  It was only a moment, a moment that took forever, a moment Kate would never forget.

  “No!” she screamed and rushed forward. London was lashing at her now as she stretched her hand toward Elizabeth. She heard him cry out, a cry of pain, and then Grace was beside her in the water, fighting to grab hold of Elizabeth. Where was London? She couldn’t see him. She had to get the girls out of the water, but she couldn’t let that evil man get them first.