Bullets & Lies (Talbot Roper 01)

by Randisi, Robert J.

  “Very impressive,” he said.

  “Built just after the war,” Harwick said, “when Howard Westover came back from the field.”

  “Was he from here originally?”

  “Yes,” Harwick said. “His wife was waiting for him here, living in a much smaller house in town. They had this built and moved out here. They’ve lived here ever since.”

  “The war’s been over a long time,” Roper said. “Twenty years.”

  “Yes,” Harwick said and nothing else.

  He drove the buggy up to the front of the house and stepped down. Roper followed. Harwick led him up the stairs to the front porch to the front door and opened it without knocking.

  “Wait here, please,” Harwick said in an entry foyer that was larger than most of the houses Roper had seen in town. “I’ll find Victoria.”

  “Victoria?”

  “Mrs. Westover.”

  “The wife?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I thought I was here to see Howard Westover?”

  “Just…wait here. It will all become clear to you soon.”

  “All right,” Roper said. “As you said, I’ve come this far.”

  “Thank you.”

  Harwick walked into the bowels of the house and disappeared. Roper looked around. To the left was a large dining room, with an expensive cabinet filled with bone china, and a long, wooden oak table with a fine sheen to it. To the right, there was an opulently furnished parlor, with stuffed armchairs and a large sofa, with curtains of red-and-gold brocade on all the windows. Above him was a great crystal-and-gold chandelier.

  There was a stairway leading to the second floor. Roper didn’t know how he’d done it, but somehow Harwick had gotten up there. He came down the steps now, leading a woman.

  She appeared to be in her late forties, a handsome woman, tall, slender, with black hair that had a gray steak through it. She was wearing a floor-length dress that looked simple but was, Roper was sure, expensive.

  When they reached the bottom, they approached Roper.

  “Mr. Roper, this is Mrs. Howard Westover—Victoria Westover.”

  “Mr. Roper,” she said, extending her hand. “Thank you so much for coming to see me.”

  He shook her hand. “I thought I was coming to see your husband.”

  “Later,” she said. “But you have actually come here to see me.”

  “So the check was from you?”

  “Yes. And I will pay you the same amount again.”

  “To do what?”

  “Well, to start with, to listen. Do you drink tea?” she asked.

  “I’ve been known to.”

  “Then let’s have tea and talk. Edward, will you join us?”

  “Of course, Victoria.”

  From the look on Harwick’s face, it was clear to Roper that the attorney was in love with his employer. It was also clear that she did not reciprocate. To her, he was just that—an employee.

  “This way,” she said.

  8

  Victoria Westover walked them through the dining room into a glass-enclosed back porch. It looked out onto a back area full of lush green grass and shade-giving trees, and farther out beyond that, a gazebo. They were seated in expensive wicker furniture, and a woman came in and served tea and cakes, setting them down on a glass-top table.

  “Thank you, Miriam.”

  The older woman nodded and left.

  “Mr. Roper, my husband won the Medal of Honor in the Civil War.”

  “That much I do know.”

  She looked at Harwick quickly.

  “I didn’t tell him,” the lawyer said. “He went to Saint Mary’s.”

  “Oh.”

  “Is that a bad thing?” Roper asked.

  “Saint Mary’s is…” Victoria began, then trailed off. “Well, that’s neither here nor there.”

  “With all due respect, Mrs. Westover,” Roper asked, “what is here or there?”

  “Mr. Roper,” she said, sitting forward and clasping her hands, “the government might be taking my husband’s medal back.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “That is what I want you to find out. I want you to go to Washington, find out what the Army is doing, and discover what needs to be done to make sure…to guarantee my husband dies a Medal of Honor winner.”

  “Dies?”

  Victoria looked at Harwick, who nodded.

  “Come with me, Mr. Roper,” she said. The lawyer started to rise, but she said, “Edward, stay and drink your tea. Someone should. After all, Miriam made it.”

  He nodded and sat down.

  “Mr. Roper?”

  He followed her from the room.

  Victoria Westover took Roper back to the foyer and up the stairs.

  “Are we going to see your husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t he come down to have tea?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Upstairs he followed her down a hallway to a door, where she stopped and turned to face him.

  “He’s inside,” she said. “Please don’t react when you see him.”

  “React? How?”

  “Just…don’t act shocked. He…he doesn’t like it.”

  “All right.”

  She nodded, then opened the door.

  “Mr. Roper, this is my husband, Howard Westover.”

  Roper entered and saw a man seated in a wheelchair. A sturdy-looking woman in her forties was feeding him something that looked like oatmeal.

  Roper guessed that if he had known Howard Westover before, he might have been shocked at the man’s appearance. The clothes he was wearing seemed to hang on his frame, which looked like loose skin on large bones. His cheekbones were sharp, his eyes sunken. He looked eighty, not fifty. Eyeing the man’s frame, Roper assumed at one time Westover must have been well over six feet tall and was probably strapping. There was little of that man left, and now the Army wanted to take away his medal.

  “Mr. Roper,” Westover said. His voice was a rasp, and it seemed painful for him to speak.

  “Polly, continue to feed him,” Victoria said. “I’ll talk with him later.”

  She turned. “Mr. Roper?”

  Roper turned to follow her, thought he should say good-bye to her husband, but finally just wordlessly slipped from the room.

  Out in the hall she stopped, hugging herself as if she was cold.

  “He came home injured,” she said. “Since that time his health has simply deteriorated. Worse and worse every year.” She looked at him. “He’s just wasting away. The only thing he has left is that medal. To tell you the truth, I don’t care if they take it away from him after he dies, just not before.”

  “Why tell him any of this?”

  “Because they’ll make a ceremony out of it,” she said. “That’s the way the Army—the government—operates. He’ll know.” She put her hand on his arm and squeezed tightly. “I can’t have that, Mr. Roper. I can’t. I need your help.”

  “Mrs. Westover,” he said, “let’s go back downstairs and talk.”

  9

  They went downstairs, found Harwick pouring himself another cup of tea and eating a second cake. Roper and Victoria sat back down.

  “Mrs. Westover—” Roper began.

  “Victoria,” she said. “Please.”

  “All right, Victoria…why me? I’m a detective. Why wouldn’t you send your lawyer to Washington for this?”

  “Because I don’t have the best lawyer in the country working for me, Mr. Roper,” she said. Roper looked at Harwick, who didn’t seem to react. “But if you do this for me, I will have the best detective in the country. I need the best. I need a man who will do what must be done to make sure my husband remains a Medal of Honor winner.”

  Roper looked at Harwick, who seemed more concerned with his tea cakes than with the fact that his reputation was being impugned.

  “Will you do it?” she asked.

&nbs
p; “Victoria…let me think about it overnight,” Roper said. “I’ll give you my answer in the morning. Is that all right?”

  “That’s fine, Mr. Roper. Thank you.”

  Harwick drove Roper back to his hotel in silence, but when they arrived and stepped down, he said to Roper, “May I buy you a drink? I’d like to talk to you about something.”

  “Sure. You want to come inside?”

  They went into the bar that was attached to the hotel. It was small, with half a dozen tables and a bar that was barely six feet long. Based on its size and appearance, it was meant to serve guests rather than the public. It was still early, so there were plenty of places at the bar and tables to be had. They got a beer each and took them to a table.

  “What’s on your mind, Harwick?”

  “I would like to try to influence your decision about whether or not to go to Washington, D.C.”

  “You want to try to talk me into it?” Roper asked. “I’m going to give it some thought tonight—”

  “No, sir, you don’t understand,” Harwick said. “I’d like you not to go.”

  Roper took a sip of beer while studying the attorney.

  “Why would you want me not to go, Harwick? Victoria is your client.”

  “Yes, she is,” Harwick said. “She’s also my…my friend. I don’t want her to be hurt.”

  “It seems to me all she’s been going through for years is hurt,” Roper said. “It also seems to me when her husband dies, the hurt will stop—that is, unless they take away his Medal of Honor. Then the hurt will go on and on for her.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Harwick said. “The government won’t relent on this. No matter how hard she tries.”

  “You think she’ll be hurt more by the effort?” Roper asked.

  “I do, yes.”

  “Harwick, what do you know that you’re not telling me?”

  The man looked around nervously, then back at Roper. He played with his beer mug but never took a drink, yet he was licking his lips as if they were dry.

  “During the war,” he said, “there was a group of two hundred men who were all awarded the Medal of Honor at the same time. Do you know what they did?”

  “No,” Roper said, “what did they do to deserve the honor?”

  “They reenlisted.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s all. The Army is going to take their medals back.”

  “Seems to me they should,” Roper said. “What did Westover get his medal for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And you’re afraid Victoria will find that her husband got the medal for something as mundane as simply reenlisting?”

  “Perhaps,” Harwick said. “I’m not sure—I don’t know—she might already know why he got it. Mr. Roper, I just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go to D.C.”

  “Well, Mr. Harwick, I did promise Mrs. Westover I would think about it overnight, and I will. I’ll give her my answer in the morning.”

  “Well…all I ask is that you please also give what I said some thought.”

  “Sure,” Roper said. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Yes, all right,” Harwick said. He stood up. “I must be going.”

  “I’ll stay awhile,” Roper said, “finish my beer.”

  “Yes, of course. We’ll, uh, talk tomorrow morning, then.”

  “Yes,” Roper said. “Tomorrow morning.”

  Harwick stood to leave but hesitated.

  “Something else?” Roper asked.

  “I…never thanked you properly for saving my life on the train.”

  “That’s okay, Harwick,” Roper said. “It was my job.”

  “Still…thank you.”

  As the attorney left the bar, Roper couldn’t help feeling that there was something else at play here. Something he wasn’t aware of.

  10

  That night Talbot Roper did a lot of hard thinking in his room.

  Part of Roper’s reluctance to take the job was that he’d have to go to D.C. It had been a lot of years since he’d been to Washington. Also a lot of years since he’d had dealings with the government.

  But then there was the money. He’d lied in Denver when he told Harwick money didn’t impress him. Numbers with lots of zeroes impressed him quite a bit, and Victoria Westover was waving a lot of zeroes in his face.

  And then there was his own curiosity. What had Howard Westover won his medal for? If he deserved it, he should be able to keep it; he should be able to die a Medal of Honor winner.

  The image of Westover in the wheelchair being fed oatmeal came back to him. He shook his head to dispel it, walked to the window to look out at the dark street below.

  He turned, looked back at the few feet he’d walked to get there from the bed. It was something Howard Westover couldn’t do anymore.

  Roper decided to go to D.C., at least to see what the government was planning to do and why. Decision made, he returned to the bed and picked up the Mark Twain novel he’d been carrying with him on his journey. He’d read for a little while to calm his mind of the day’s events before turning in for the night.

  In the morning Roper had breakfast in the dining room. He was not disappointed when the lawyer, Harwick, did not appear. There was something about the man he didn’t like, and it had to do with the way he looked at his employer, Victoria Westover.

  “Anything else, sir?” the waiter asked.

  Roper looked at the man. He was middle-aged and performed his job as if he had been doing it forever.

  “What’s your name, waiter?”

  “Andrew, sir.”

  “Are you from Hurricane?” Roper asked him.

  “Yes, sir, been here all my life. It’s a lovely place to live.”

  “I met two of your citizens yesterday, Howard and Victoria Westover.”

  “Yes, sir, they do live inside our town limits. Nice people.”

  “Are they?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Too bad about what’s happened to him, though, isn’t it?”

  “Indeed, sir. He was a hero in the war, and he has had to pay for it the rest of his life, just…deteriorating.”

  “Mrs. Westover is quite a woman,” Roper said. “Some wives would have left rather than face years of caring for an invalid.”

  “He has not always been an invalid, sir,” the waiter said, “but you are quite correct. She’s a strong woman. We in Hurricane are quite proud to have them living here.”

  “Thank you, Andrew.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As the waiter withdrew, Roper wondered if his opinion was held by others in Hurricane. He decided to take another walk around town, performing his own survey as he went.

  He paid his bill and took to the streets.

  Roper stopped in the shops—hardware, gunsmith, tanners, mercantile—and talked to the shopkeepers about their town. They all seemed to love it, as well as their neighbors. He stopped in a couple of saloons, but even men in their cups had nothing but good things to say about Hurricane, and about the Westovers.

  He stopped in a café for coffee and a slice of pie and listened to the others talk about their families, their businesses, their lives. Hurricane seemed to be populated by people who were happy with their lot in life. In other words, a very strange place, indeed.

  When he returned a couple of hours later, he found Harwick sitting on the front porch, waiting for him.

  “You missed breakfast,” Roper pointed out.

  “Yes, I’m sorry about that,” Harwick said. “I had some work to finish and thought I would give you some more time to think.”

  “Well, I appreciate that,” Roper said. “I actually put that time to good use, took another walk around your fair town.”

  “Have you come to a decision?”

  There was another chair on the porch so Roper pulled it over and sat.

  “The folks in this town think very highly of Howard Westover.”

  “Yes, they do.”<
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  “They like having a Medal of Honor winner as one of their citizens.”

  “I suppose they do.”

  “And they quite admire Victoria.”

  “As they should,” the lawyer said. “She’s a fine woman.”

  “Harwick, is there something else going on here?” Roper asked.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I’m just wondering if there’s anything else I should be aware of.”

  “I believe you are in full possession of all the facts you need to make your decision.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  Harwick waited a beat, then said, “And?”

  “You can tell your employer that I’ll go to D.C., see what I can find out.”

  “And beyond that?”

  “Beyond that, we’ll see. It depends on what I find out while I’m there.”

  “You’ll need to know who to see while you’re there,” Harwick said.

  “That’s all right,” Roper said. “I have my own connections in D.C.”

  “When will you leave?”

  “I’ll catch the next train,” Roper said.

  “Would you like me to purchase that ticket for you?” Harwick asked.

  “No, I can take care of that myself. It’s not a long or expensive trip.”

  “I’ll tell Mrs. Westover your decision,” the lawyer said.

  “And tell her I’ll come back here with whatever I find out,” Roper said.

  “I’ll inform her.”

  “And if you don’t mind, I’ll keep my room here.”

  “That is no problem,” Harwick said.

  “I’ll let you know when I get back,” Roper said. “We’ll talk again, Harwick.”

  “Yes, sir,” Harwick said. “I’ll look forward to it.”

  Roper thought that was a lie, and probably not the first one he’d been told by the lawyer.

  11

  The train ride to D.C. was much shorter than the ride from Denver. In fact, Roper could have rented a horse and ridden to D.C., but he wanted to get there more quickly. His curiosity was getting the better of him.

  When he reached Washington, he went to the Georgetown Hotel and got himself a room at his own expense. The Georgetown was one of the finest hotels in D.C. He got himself a simple room with the usual furniture, but it was all well made with good wood, though not the best. Had he gotten a suite, he would have been ensconced in opulence. He knew opulence, but was not always comfortable with it. And since he was paying for his own room, a simple one would do.