Necessary Evil

by Killarney Traynor

  “How do you know I kept it from my aunt?” My voice was hoarse, foreign.

  “I talked with her. She knows nothing.”

  I flared. “What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing. She still thinks the letter is all right. You wouldn’t tell her, and I didn’t see any reason why she should know. After all, the deceit was to protect her, wasn’t it? Both she and the family business were - are - being besieged by opportunists. You didn’t believe in the treasure yourself, so you fabricated the letter to convince others that it didn’t exist. You falsified history in order to protect your family’s privacy. Isn’t that right, Miss Warwick?”

  He was studying me, those fathomless eyes wide with inquiry and something else that I couldn’t decipher.

  I opened my mouth, but what could I say? That he’d hit the target almost dead center? Admitting that would lead to other confessions, open lines of inquiry that I couldn’t allow. Other people would be damaged – and, anyway, I wasn’t about to expose myself, my farm, or my aunt to his control. Not if I could help it.

  “What do you intend to do with this – theory of yours?” I asked. It was the only thing I could think to say that wasn’t an outright confession.

  Professor Randall looked at his letter. “As a historian, I ought to expose this fraud. We have an obligation to the truth, you know.”

  My heart skipped a beat, but he continued. “But I don’t see the need to do that just yet. After all, this deception could work to my benefit for a short time.”

  “To your benefit?” I laughed bitterly, thinking, again, of our nearly-empty bank account.

  Again, he looked wounded. “No one needs to be ruined by this, Miss Warwick. I told you that before. What I have in mind is more of a collaboration.”

  As I stared, he explained, “As I said, I’m doing research on local activities during the Civil War. Finding the Chase treasure would be a fitting end to my inquiries. My classes get out at the end of June. What I propose is that I spend the summer here, maybe with a graduate student or two, looking for the treasure. If we find nothing, no harm, no foul. If we do find it, I get first rights to publication and Hadley University gets first option on purchasing.”

  I was regaining the power of speech. I couldn’t believe that he expected me to fall for this. He’d gladly cover my deception for what? A chance to live on the farm, to look for the treasure with no more hope of its discovery than anyone else?

  “You must take me for a fool,” I said carefully, and he jumped right in to contradict.

  “No. Despite evidence to the contrary, I think you are probably an intelligent young woman who knows when she sees a bargain.”

  “By which you mean, free room and board for a summer is a cheap price compared to what you could ask for.”

  Randall sighed. “Miss Warwick...”

  This time, though, I didn’t allow him to finish. Instead, I went to the door and stood by it.

  “Goodnight, Professor,” I said.

  He looked at me curiously.

  “I don’t like blackmail,” I added. “No matter what the bargain. You will get out of my house and you will not return. And you will do it now.”

  He hesitated. Then he nodded, collected his things, and shut his briefcase. He held up the copy of Uncle Michael’s book.

  “Might I borrow this?” he asked. “I’ll be in town for a few more days. I’ll return it before I leave.”

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “Just keep it.”

  “Thank you. That’s very kind of you.”

  He slipped it into his wide jacket pocket, looked around the room, and then came to the doorway.

  I looked up at him. He had put his glasses back on and the lens seemed to shield my eyes from his penetrating gaze. He was close enough that I, again, caught the scent of his cologne, and I glared at him. He smiled indulgently down at me, completely unaffected.

  He had been right on too many marks. The letter, its affects, our struggle on the farm. This deception of mine had been my most bold, desperate risk, and its results only just managed to justify it. I had to remind myself, as I stood in the doorway, trying to hold on to my courage, that for all the troubles we were experiencing, the letter had made a difference. We weren’t as bothered, and I hadn’t seen a hole for a week and a half.

  He’s wrong, I thought. It has worked. It just took longer for the full effect to take place. It was worth the risk. It was worth the deceit.

  If only my stomach, the physical symptom of conscience, wouldn’t churn so much. If only I didn’t feel so exposed, so raw, so helpless.

  He will not ruin me.

  As if he could read my mind, his smile broadened.

  “It was nice meeting you,” Randall said, and extended his hand. “No doubt we’ll meet again soon.”

  I ignored the hand, and pinned him with a resentful gaze. “You think you’re so clever, don’t you?”

  “I do,” he said, and reached into his pocket. “And so do you. When you change your mind about my offer, let me know. I’ll be in town for a few days, conducting… Research.”

  He handed me his business card. Had I been able, I would have made him eat it. Professor Gregory Randall might know what he was talking about with the letter, but he’d never had to contend with the likes of Madeleine Warwick before. I could give as good as I got. I wasn’t sure what, if anything, I could do, but I wasn’t about to allow him to trample over everything I was working for.

  I drew a deep breath. “Professor Randall, you’d better…”

  But I never had a chance to finish.

  “Maddie!”

  The sound was more like a shriek and both the professor and I jumped. A door slammed and someone hurtled down the hall, gasping for breath, boots slamming against the hardwood floor. Ellen Gurney, one of my senior students, threw herself into the room, her tiny figure animated with panic. Her white face and wide eyes took in the professor and myself, standing in the doorway. She stopped, gesturing madly, her mouth working without making any sound.

  “Ellen, what is it?” I demanded. Students weren’t supposed to come into the house with their boots on, let alone without an invitation. And what was Ellen doing here so late? No one was supposed to be here but myself and…

  “It’s Lindsay,” Ellen rasped out. She looked ready to cry. “Oh God, you’d better come. There’s been an accident – she’s on the back trail. It’s bad, Maddie. Really bad.”

  Chapter 8:

  Despite all my training, it took forever to run to the scene of the accident. In the panic of the moment, none of us thought to take Ellen’s horse, which remained saddled and tied near the house. We ran three abreast into the silent night. Randall stayed beside me, although he could have outpaced me handily, had he known which way to go.

  Ellen ran next to me, wheezing. She was in her fifties, strong and hearty, but not a runner, and the exertion really told on her.

  “Missy,” she gasped out, referring to Lindsay’s favorite mount. “She’s… hurt… too.”

  We turned a corner and Randall shot out in front of us. Missy was on the side of the road, whinnying and wild-eyed and pawing at the ground. Lindsay was a pile on the path, her left arm flung out and bent at a sickening angle. A few feet away from her, a freshly dug, carelessly refilled hole sat tucked in the darkened bend of the pathway. Missy’s stumbling marks were clearly evident in the soft dirt.

  My knees weakened and I nearly fell. Missy whinnied and I called out, “Ellen, Missy.”

  She went immediately to take Missy’s dangling reins and tried to soothe the mare in a voice that trembled almost as much as my hands when I reached out to touch Lindsay’s prone form. Her face was white, luminescent in the darkness, and blood marred her paleness.

  It was like being in a nightmare. For a moment, my vision blurred, and I saw Uncle Michael in her stead.

  I don’t know how long I would have stared, motionless, had I not noticed the slight movement of her twisted torso. Reality tore throu
gh my cloud of memories. Unlike Uncle Michael, Lindsay was breathing.

  I tore off my jacket and threw it over her, the sudden movement drawing Randall’s attention. He had one hand on her pulse, the other patting his pockets.

  He looked at me sharply. “You have a phone?”

  I already had it in my hand and was dialing with shaky fingers. Ellen came to hover over us, her face white.

  “Is she…?” she asked and I nodded.

  “She’s still here.” I looked up at her and saw Missy tossing her head and dancing in the middle of the trail, clearly terrified and unsteady. Even in the dim light I could tell that she was favoring her front left leg. Another small miracle – Uncle Michael’s mount had suffered a clean break that very nearly sealed his fate.

  “Get Missy back to the paddock and call the vet,” I ordered. “Walk her slow and watch that leg.”

  My voice was gruff, abrupt, but Ellen was too grateful to have something to do to notice. She disappeared while I talked to the operator and relayed their instructions to Randall, who did them without question. When the paramedics appeared, backing the ambulance down the narrow trail, I called Lindsay’s parents and left a message, promising to meet them at the hospital.

  Lindsay was stirring as they examined her, but the paramedics wouldn’t let me hover and told me to stand several feet away. I answered their questions as best I could, indicating the hole that I thought was the culprit. Randall was crouched over it, examining the gouge with the aid of his cell-phone light.

  The paramedic was appalled. “That’s a hazard,” he said, and he looked at me in horror. “This should have been clearly marked off.”

  “I know,” was all I could say.

  I must have looked properly penitent, because his “I’ll have to report this,” was almost apologetic.

  I nodded and when he was finished with me, I wandered off to stand by Randall. I thought I ought to thank him for coming, for helping, but the gratitude was lost in a tangle of guilt, anger, and fear. I stood there, numbly watching his light play over the freshly disturbed dirt.

  When he looked up at me, I thought, He’s going to say it. He’s going to remind me that this is my fault. And it is.

  But when he spoke, Randall said, “There’s something wrong about all of this, Warwick. There’s something very wrong about this.”

  The paramedics called me away – they were leaving. Did I want to ride along? I did, and sat in the back of the cab, watching as a paramedic - a competent looking woman with a professional’s detachment - examined my assistant. I thought she was too calm, too dispassionate, and I remember thinking how fragile and young Lindsay looked, swathed in temporary bandages, her tee-shirt torn to reveal extensive bruising.

  When we arrived at the hospital, doctors whisked Lindsay down the hall and I was left to address her parents in the waiting room. They arrived twenty minutes after I did, frantic and full of accusations.

  I’m ashamed to say that I wasn’t entirely up front at first. I explained that Lindsay’s horse had tripped on the path and thrown Lindsay, and I thought that her arm was broken. I didn’t mention the hole – there are plenty of reasons why a horse would stumble.

  But Lindsay’s father wasn’t a horseman, and he had the layman’s idea that a horse was like a machine and should work at a certain speed with a certain amount of reliability. Accidents were caused by mechanical failures, something that was both measurable and remedial.

  When he asked, “What caused the trip?” I had no choice but to confess.

  “Someone has been digging on the trail,” I said. “They left an unmarked soft spot. The horse stumbled on that.”

  They stared at me.

  “One of your people?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t know who did it.”

  He looked at his wife, whose welling eyes were spilling over.

  “How could this happen again?” she asked, as though pleading with me. “I thought that was all over, I thought that ended with Michael.”

  The lump in my throat made it difficult to answer the question. “I thought so too.”

  “And what is Chase Farms going to do about this?” Lindsay’s father demanded.

  Lindsay’s doctor entered in time to save me from answering the question. Lindsay was unconscious, and had suffered a concussion and a broken arm. They reset the arm bone and expected her to recover full use of it. The medical staff wanted her to stay overnight for observation, and afterwards, she would be on bed rest for at least a week.

  “What about her competitions?”

  I’m pleased to say I wasn’t the one who asked the question. Lindsay’s father was her biggest fan and had helped Lindsay to keep in the riding circuit, even when the family’s financial situation looked shaky. Lindsay had been hoping to qualify for a riding scholarship at the regionals, which were only a few months away.

  “She won’t be riding for a while,” the doctor said. “I know you’re supposed to get right back up on the horse, but her head injury puts her at serious risk. If she were my daughter, I wouldn’t put her on a horse until at least the fall.” He winced and amended, “The autumn.”

  Lindsay’s father sank back into the plastic-padded waiting room chair while his wife, who had said little in the exchange, turned to me with enormous eyes.

  “How could this happen?” she asked in a haunted whisper. “How could this happen again?”

  She might as well have been reading my mind.

  Chapter 9:

  Aunt Susanna asked the same question when I came home a few hours later. She had a sandwich and a cup of hot cocoa waiting when I walked in. I was too upset to eat, too nervous to do anything more than toy with my drink as we talked. My hands shook as I explained about the accident, so much that I had to let go of the mug until the story was over. My feeling of guilt was nearly overwhelming, but there was nothing accusatory in Aunt Susanna’s tone when she spoke.

  “How could this happen again? What would they be looking for?” she asked. “There isn’t anything out there.”

  “I know, I know,” I said, rubbing my forehead. I couldn’t get the picture of the crumbled Lindsay and her broken arm only yards from the abandoned treasure dig out of my mind. And playing round and a round, like a broken record for a soundtrack, was Professor Randall’s soft voice demanding, Tell me, has that letter stopped anyone from trespassing on your land?

  Self-recriminations joined in the chorus. I should have known, I should have checked. Didn’t I run that part of the paths this morning? Or was it yesterday? How did I miss it?

  Aunt Susanna’s voice broke through the clamor in my head. “….And I thought this was done when we found that letter. I thought it proved that there was no treasure, that Michael had been wrong...”

  I looked at her sharply, but she was staring into her half-empty mug, her knuckles white on her elegantly lacquered hands. I noticed the deeply imprinted lines on her face. She suddenly looked old and hard. Something about her expression alerted me.

  “It did,” I said, pushing myself out of my slouch and into a sitting position. “It proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

  “No, it didn’t. We’ve got to close off the riding trails.”

  I gasped in surprise. “We can’t do that, Aunt Susanna. We need them to exercise the horses – half of our boarders are here because of the trails.”

  “Do you really think they’re going to use them after tonight?” she asked. “Once word of this gets around, they won’t go near the trails, and I don’t blame them. No matter what we do, word is going to get out. People are going to notice when Lindsay isn’t there.”

  She was right. Lindsay was an integral part of the day-to-day operations. The damage from this accident was going to be considerable.

  “It’s going to be bad for business,” I said.

  Aunt Susanna snapped, “What are you, made of stone? Lindsay was nearly killed today. This isn’t about business. It’s about people.”

&n
bsp; “Don’t you think I know that? I’m the one who had to bring her to the hospital and explain it to her parents. She’s my friend too, you know.”

  “I know.” She was silent for a moment, then she went on. “I won’t have anyone else hurt, Maddie. We’re lucky, and only lucky, that Lindsay is all right.”

  “I know. Lord, don’t I know it.”

  “We’re closing off the riding trails,” she said firmly, but her voice was softer. “I don’t blame you for what happened, of course, but until we can be sure these awful people stay off our property, I won’t take the risk. If that means we lose the farm, so be it. I don’t care anymore.”

  Her voice caught, exposing the lie. She did care. If we lost the farm, it would not only be the end of a business, but of a historic tradition. Chases had been on the property since the founding of the colony, and now we were the only ones left who cared enough to run it. If we lost the property, the banks would subdivide it and build. Uncle Michael’s heart would have broken at the idea.

  I can’t let this happen, I thought. But what can I do about it?

  We sat in silence for a moment. I wondered how I could convince Aunt Susanna that the trails were safe enough to keep open when I couldn’t even convince myself.

  Then she lowered the boom.

  “What are you going to do about Professor Randall?”