The girl shook her head back and forth. “No, sir, I promise. I didn’t know what to do. I should have said something. Mrs. Whitman generally does what she wants. I don’t like to confront her about anything. She… she might hurt me, like she has Mr. Whitman.”
“She has… hurt Mr. Whitman? Do you mean physically?”
“Yes, she slaps him and pushes him around.”
“Mr. Whitman is… was a large man. How did she manage that? He didn’t fight back?”
“He didn’t want to hurt her. She didn’t do much damage to him. He laughed it off. But if she were to smack me like that, it would probably knock me unconscious.”
“Oh dear. All right. Does she do this a lot then?”
“Leave after a fight? Yes, sir. But she wasn’t fighting with anyone tonight, was she?”
“I don’t know. Where does she go when she leaves?”
“Oh, I have no way of knowing that.”
“Do you have any idea where she might be going when she leaves like that?”
Again, the woman shook her head. “No, sir. But Gerald might know.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, sir. He shows her attention on purpose so that she will share with him and he can tell us what’s going on. He hasn’t mentioned that, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t know. He might have just not shared that information with me and Lucinda.”
Joshua nodded. “You have learned how to manipulate your employer.”
The woman shook her head. “She has always been a cruel woman to work for. We all knew it. This is her house and she will relieve someone of employment faster than anyone I know. She grew up in this house and the employees don’t usually stay long. I have heard stories about how Mrs. Whitman used to be a sweet and loving little girl. She had close friends – not just Mrs. Youngblood, though the two of them were close. Thick as thieves, they were, until Mrs. Whitman grew up and married Samuel. They lied to her and said she would be well taken care of by Samuel. When it was discovered that they had married her off and were only willing to provide a small stipend to live off of, Mrs. Whitman was furious. She has been unhappy for these last nine years. Mr. Whitman did his very best. I swear he did. I watched him go from being a lively, entertaining man to a bitter drunk in these last few years. I’ve felt sorry for him.”
“When she returned to this house, she was bitter and angry because of the forced marriage? She turned her back on her old friends?”
“I’ve heard tell that she is not the same woman at all. She is a bitter, angry woman who I reckon has maybe lost some of her mind.”
“Has it gotten that bad?”
The woman shrugged. “It seems like it to me, sir. However, she did just lose her husband. So how can I judge her behavior?”
“Don’t you think she’s been acting out a little longer than just the day since she lost Samuel?”
“Yes, that is true.”
“Is Gerald at the stables?”
“I believe he is in the kitchen. I’ll go with you.” The woman turned away from the statue and walked purposefully toward the dining hall. She went through the door, glancing behind her to make sure he was following her. “Please be careful, sir, the steps here are very narrow.”
Joshua looked down at his feet as he went down the steps. Pam was right, they were very narrow.
“Sorry for the heat, sir,” Pam said, looking at him as he wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “We haven’t opened the windows yet.”
“You need to do it. A person could suffocate in this heat.”
“Pam! That you? What you doing out there?” They could hear a booming male voice come from another part of the kitchen. The big man came around a corner and looked at Joshua in surprise. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were there.”
Joshua shook his head. “No need and no time for it. Please tell me, Gerald, about when Cynthia leaves the premises when she is upset by something. Where does she go? Has she ever told you?”
Gerald was a tall, muscular man with a hawkish face. Joshua thought for a moment that the man’s head looked small on top of his broad shoulders. Gerald’s face crumpled in confusion as he listened to his question. Gerald glanced at Pam, who shrugged her shoulders.
“I told him that sometimes Mrs. confides in you. We are very much hoping you know where she usually goes.”
Gerald shook his head, looking upset. “She hasn’t talked to me like that for some time now, I’m afraid. I don’t know where she goes now when she leaves.”
“It may be the same place she sought refuge when she was a child. I ask you again, where would she go? It’s important that we find her.”
Gerald was quiet for a moment. Joshua could tell he was thinking hard. ”Is this because Mr. Whitman was killed?”
Joshua nodded, but his frustration was mounting.
“I liked him. I don’t know how he stayed with Mrs. Whitman. They were not compatible at all. I enjoyed working for him. Not Mrs. Whitman, though. She was downright mean.”
“That’s what I’ve heard. Right now I think she has put Laura Youngblood in danger. Please tell me if you know something… anything would be helpful. A place to start. There must be something you can tell me.”
“Well, I do remember that she would go up that back trail behind the house. When you have traveled the path back to the main road about halfway, there’s a hidden trail that you’ll miss unless you know about it or you’re looking for it. It’s not very wide. There is a slow running stream up that way and an old shack where she used to play with her dolls and her animals. It’s on the edge of a cliff. You don’t know the edge is there until you’re on it. It’s beautiful up there, she said. She said it relaxed her to go there. I don’t know if she would still go there though. I can’t imagine that shack still standing.”
“Why not?”
“It’s real run down now. It was built nearly fifty years ago for an old hermit living on the land, back when it belonged to Mrs. Whitman’s great-grandfather. When she was a little girl, she liked to be there because it’s very isolated. I don’t think anyone has been up there for a long, long time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ON THE EDGE OF A CLIFF
ON THE EDGE OF A CLIFF
Laura watched Cynthia until she turned and began to walk back toward the wagon. She scooted back to the middle and waited, her heart pounding in fear. She didn’t want to go over the side of that cliff. Instead of approaching the door to the wagon, Cynthia seemed to be walking away from it. Laura could hear her feet squishing in the wet grass from the previous rain. She heard the door of the old shack creak open. Then close.
Laura knit her eyebrows together in confusion.
She moved her body quickly, hopping lightly across the floor of the wagon to peek around the canvas covering again. Cynthia was gone. She must have gone inside the old shack. Laura looked around, trying to recognize where she was. She shook her head. She’d never seen this place before. The shack looked deserted. The door was practically falling off its hinges. The roof was slumping in. The walls were barely standing.
Laura sat back and stared at the other side of the wagon, not comprehending where she was.
They could be anywhere in or around Wickenburg. Anywhere at all. As much exploring as she and Cynthia had done as children, there was no way they could have seen it all. Cynthia had never brought her here.
She heard the back gate open again and scooted herself to the other side of the wagon as quickly as she could. Cynthia looked at her. Laura didn’t like the look on her face. She wasn’t in touch with reality anymore. She wasn’t even sure the woman saw her. She might have been seeing a monster for all Laura knew.
“I can’t trust you, Laura. I’m going to have to throw you off the cliff. Or maybe I’ll burn you alive. In that shack right there. What do you think? Both are pretty scary if you ask me. But you didn’t ask me, did you?” Cynthia cackled like a crazy woman.
”No, Cynthia, I’m your friend, I…”
> Cynthia reached in and grabbed Laura by her feet. “I’ve heard enough from you. Keep your mouth shut or I’ll gag you again. Is that what you want?”
Laura tried to kick her off, but Cynthia was too strong. She grabbed Laura’s ankles and dragged her to the gate. She reached in and pulled her out by her dress and eventually her hair. With one arm wrapped under one of Laura’s arms and the other wrapped around Laura’s neck, Cynthia dragged the woman down the gentle slope and over the grass and rocks to the edge of the cliff. She stood there for a while, Laura’s hair balled up in her fist. She held Laura so that she was forced to look over the edge.
“Don’t… don’t…”
Cynthia laughed. “Don’t… don’t…” she mocked Laura.
Laura couldn’t keep the tears from streaming down her cheeks.
Cynthia held her tightly, pushing her gently every so often to scare her into thinking she was going off the edge.
“Please... please…”
“I’m done listening to you speak, Laura. Soon, you won’t be able to say anything at all. Then I will have my peace. I will have my justice.”
“Justice?” Laura’s terrified voice echoed across the canyon. “I have done nothing to you, Cynthia! Nothing!”
“You enchant everyone you meet. I know you had your eye on my Samuel. You had your own good man there and now Joshua, too.”
“Cynthia, Cynthia, you’re wrong!”
“Stop saying my name! You are not my friend!”
“We have always been friends! I never wished harm on you!”
“Then you are more foolish than I thought,” Cynthia hissed. “I wished harm on you every day of my life.”
“But why? Why? What did I do to you?”
Cynthia’s grip became tighter on Laura’s hair.
She grimaced in pain. The cut on her head was seeping blood again. She could feel it dripping on her skin.
“I’ve already explained this to you. Why do I have to keep repeating myself? I won’t. You know what you’ve done. You do know that you will not be found, right? The only other person who knew about this place was my husband, and he will not be giving them any directions, will he?”
“Where are we? Please, at least tell me that. I… I’ve never seen this cliff before.”
Cynthia looked at her. “We are in a place so isolated that not even my mother or father knew where it was. My brothers and my sister didn’t know where it was. No one has ever been here but me. And once I brought Samuel.” She said his name with disgust. “It was a mistake I didn’t make twice. I doubt that he would be able to find it, even if it were possible to ask him.”
She said the words with such disdain, Laura wondered if there had ever been a spark of goodness in her soul. She was suddenly glad that the Whitmans had never been able to conceive. Thank you, God, she prayed quickly.
Cynthia took a step toward the edge, pushing Laura closer. Rocks spat out from under her feet, plummeting over the edge.
“Wh…what are you doing, Cynthia?”
Cynthia looked at her, bringing her mouth closer to Laura’s ear. “We are going to go to our husbands, Laura.”
Fear sliced through Laura painfully. Every muscle in her body tensed. “No, Cynthia. No, no.”
Laura began to cry. Chills of fear ran over her skin when Cynthia continued to whisper in her ear.
“I have no one to care for, no one to keep me here. You don’t have anyone either. You could never have loved James the way I could have. I would have been everything to him. He would have been my king.”
Laura cried softly. “You had a good husband. Samuel was a good husband.”
“I never loved him.”
“Well, I loved mine,” Laura pushed back against the edge of the cliff, feeling her feet slipping below her. “Stop pushing me, Cynthia. Stop pushing me! I don’t want to die here.”
“You’re going to,” Cynthia hissed. “And so am I. We’ll be better off. I promise you.”
“No, no, no…”
Cynthia pushed her and she felt herself losing her balance. She screamed and fought against the cloth tied around her wrists. Her right hand was bound tight to the cloth around it, but her left was not as securely trapped. She could feel it edging toward freedom.
If only she could get her hand free, just one hand, she might be able to catch something if she did fall. Or she might be able to push Cynthia off the edge and save herself. She shuddered. She didn’t have time to think about how traumatic that would be to her. However, Cynthia had killed James and Samuel and she was trying to kill her. She had to do something. She twisted her hands until she thought the rope might burn off all her skin. Once more, Cynthia pushed at Laura. She giggled, wrenching Laura back to safety just as she thought she was going to fall.
Laura let out a short scream and dropped her head so that she was looking at the ground directly below her feet. She couldn’t look out over the edge anymore. The breeze picked up and she thought how fresh it smelled, how much she had always enjoyed a fresh spring breeze. She wanted to feel more breezes. She wanted to see sunsets and sunrises. She wanted to see them with Joshua.
Cynthia raised her eyebrows. “What are you doing? Posing?”
“Do you really want to fall to your death, Cynthia?” Laura asked.
“Oh I won’t know about it. I’ll take some poison and when I go over, I’ll already be dead. I will not feel it when I die.”
“Poison isn’t painless, Cynthia! You will feel it!”
Cynthia tightened up behind her and stopped pretending to throw her off the cliff. “No, it’s painless.”
“No, it isn’t. I read about it in an article in the paper. It’s not painless. It’s a horrible way to die.”
Cynthia pulled Laura away from the cliff. She turned her to look directly in her eyes. “Why would you tell me that? Don’t you want me to suffer?”
Laura looked at her through compassionate eyes. “No, Cynthia. I always thought of you as a friend. This enemy thing is new to me. I don’t want you to suffer. I never have.”
Laura was screaming for Joshua in her mind, knowing there was no way he could hear her. She pulled as subtly on the cloth around her wrists as she could. It wasn’t easy with Cynthia looking directly at her. Laura wanted to keep her talking and away from the cliff. There had to be a way out of the situation. Laura was sure that she was supposed to have a life with Joshua Crawford. She had fought against it and failed miserably. It may have been too soon for traditional society, but when love happened, it happened, and could not be denied.
She had fallen in love with him. She suspected he felt the same way about her.
Her tears stopped. She had to be courageous. She stared at Cynthia, keeping her face calm and neutral, if not a bit friendly. ”I feel sorry for you, Cynthia, I really do.” She edged herself slowly away from the cliff, wishing her ankles weren’t tied together. The loose cloths Cynthia had used were not very secure. Cynthia had not thought this through sufficiently.
“I’m sure God will forgive you for what you’ve done, Cynthia. He is very understanding of the sins of humans.”
One of the few things Laura and Cynthia had never talked about in depth was religion or spirituality. They attended church and functions. They went through the necessary motions. Nevertheless, it was never a specific topic of conversation for them. Laura hoped to use that element of surprise to catch Cynthia off guard. She only needed to drag out the conversation until she could get the cloth strips off her wrists.
She’d made a plan and with the grace of God, it would work. She had to keep Cynthia talking until she could escape.
“It’s been twenty some years,” Cynthia asked sarcastically. “You want to talk about religion now? You want to talk about God?”
“Why have we never talked about it before, Cynthia?”
The woman pushed the pitchfork around in the hay, spreading it out a little. “Why?”
“Yes.”
“We go to church. We pray to God. Wha
t is there to talk about? Is this what you want to talk about before you die? You want to say you will be going to Heaven but you won’t see me there?”
Laura was amazed that Cynthia was taking the bait. She recited one of the few Bible verses she knew by heart and asked Cynthia if she knew what it was.
“No. You don’t need to recite Bible verses to me, Laura. You know what you’ve done.”
“Matthew 7:5 says to remove the plank from your own eye before you remove the splinter in someone else’s. You aren’t supposed to be the judge or the executioner, Cynthia. It’s not your decision to make.” When she stopped talking, a strong breeze blew past her, lifting her hair and covering her face. She lowered her head and looked into the direction of the wind to get her hair out of her eyes.
Cynthia stared at her. “Today it is, Laura.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
IN THE NICK OF TIME
IN THE NICK OF TIME
It seemed like a hundred years to Joshua, waiting for Adam and Nate to return. He stood on the porch of the Whitman house, staring out into the bright setting sun, watching for a sign that they were coming. When he finally heard the sound of horse’s hooves on wet ground, he breathed a sigh of relief.
He went down the steps and vaulted up onto his horse. He turned it around and went up the road to meet them. They slowed down as they got closer and stopped a few feet from him.
“Do you have news?” Adam asked, holding his restless horse in place.
“Cynthia might have taken Laura to a remote shack she frequented as a child. I’m not sure what state of mind the woman is in, but if she is capable of murder, I reckon she’s capable of anything.”
“I find it surprising that the woman is responsible for any of this at all.” Adam shook his head. “I’ve seen some wild stuff happen here, but… well, doggone if it was always men causin’ the problem.”
An Unexpected Dilemma Bride_Family of Love Series_A Western Romance Story Page 16
