Ghosts in the Gulch: An Evergreen Cemetery Mystery (Evergreen Cemetery Mysteries Book 1)

by S. L. Hawke

  That was not the case. We crossed the summit and came out into a late afternoon sun so bright we thought we had died and found Elysium, the heaven of Rome.

  “Well, shit. I’m celebrating with a good rest!” Andrew announced. “You get your letter!”

  4

  Harris House Hotel, Santa Cruz Township

  Emma could see the recent letter from their long lost brother shaking in Sophia’s hands. Sophia hesitated for a minute, then kissed the letter and handed it to Cynthia. Cynthia stared at it and held its single page away from her as if it carried disease. This letter had come from San Francisco, despite the telegram sent five days ago. Cynthia’s dear friend had sent this along as evidence of Jack’s arrival and the new skills he had acquired since his arrival.

  Emma also saw something drawn on the back of the vellum, a boy’s face. She wanted to look more closely but Cynthia flipped it over, studied the drawing with some pain in her face, and then precisely refolded the letter and inserted it back into its stained, well-traveled envelope. She crossed her arms in front of her chest, a gesture, Emma learned, after many months of working side by side with her, that Cynthia was afraid.

  “Why on horseback?” Cynthia shook the envelope. “He could have taken the steamer.”

  “Perhaps he decided to visit an old friend from his army days.” Margaret entered the room with a soft rustle. “I understand one of his friends is Sheriff in the town of Santa Clara.” She asked to see the envelope, which Cynthia handed to her. Emma noticed Cynthia was not too happy with her sister fully exposing her white breast while feeding her baby. Margaret’s third baby suckled contentedly, Margaret holding the child with one arm. These two always acted as if they had some argument between them. Emma theorized that it was because Margaret knew more and shared even less, except to Emma.

  How different these three sisters were from one another. If Emma had not met their mother, Mrs. Eliza Sloan, she would not have believed they all came from the same woman. Cynthia was just a few inches taller than Emma, with blond curls the color of saffron silk. She watched her figure relentlessly, never eating more than a few handfuls of anything at each meal and drinking large amounts of water or tea whenever she could.

  Her older sister, in fact, the eldest of the entire Sloan family was Sophia Harris, who, though slightly larger in height, was only so by a few inches. Her figure was at least three times the width of Cynthia. She had generously thick hair the color of koa wood and smiled readily, embraced heartily, and like her cooking, was warm and comfortable when most needed. Nothing seemed to topple Sophia, even though she cried and complained at the tiniest of crises. Yet when someone died or the boiler in the hotel blew up, she simply grabbed her skirts and got to work, fixing food and drink for everything from broken bones to broken minds. There was no ailment, Sophia believed, that could not be cured by a proper meal.

  Margaret was the most calm of the sisters. She was as tall as Beth (whom Emma did not know as well). Her mahogany-colored hair was never loose, as she was always inventing some extraordinary way to weave it. She had small freckles across her nose and eyes like the sea on a cloudy day. Emma imagined the brother she loved, Jack, two years her senior, looked like this. The other sisters often spoke of the two as if they were twins that came out at different times.

  Margaret extended her hand in silent demand for the letter. Cynthia, annoyed with Margaret’s lack of modesty, and with some irritation, pushed the letter into Margaret’s open palm. Margaret’s eldest daughter opened the envelope and its vellum. She didn’t look at the writing but at the drawing on the other side. It brought a serene smile to her face. Margaret turned the drawing towards Emma with raised eyebrows. Emma saw that the drawing was of a little boy, a happun. She swallowed hard.

  His face brought back memories of her own baby. Emma’s son and Emma’s mother died from measles. Her mother was buried at sea, her son at the local Cemetery. After the burial, the grief of it drove her husband, Liam, into his work. Emma blamed herself for not calling the Western doctor. It was a Western disease.

  He’s like me, she thought sadly, a half white, half Asian child. Her heart went out to the boy. He’s the son Margaret told me about. This Jack Sloan is a mystery indeed. Why now does he return to his family? Because of the boy, and no mother to care for him?

  “Margaret, would you please have some modesty?” Cynthia finally gasped.

  Emma sat down by the fire. She took a basket of peas and began shelling them. Today she was dressed as Juan Arana, the Younger, keeping in the shadows or the stables as much as possible. But word had gotten around about her disrespectful behavior towards a white man. She had to be more careful, or Cynthia and all she had accomplished towards the war effort would be lost. They were there on a rumor that another prostitute had been killed. They were too late; the fresh mound of earth outside Evergreen Cemetery’s fence hid all evidence. The girls at most of the brothels were silent.

  Emma snapped the crisp pod of the pea in her hands. The delicate round peas fell into the bowl between her legs. Emma’s parents were dead. Her husband was murdered. Someone continued to kill prostitutes in town.

  A normal life was not possible here. Why not take chances? Living like this at least gave her a sense of purpose, rather than staying locked up inside a house with a slew of servants running around at her every command. Lives lost are lives nonetheless, poor or rich. No, Emma thought as she broke another pod open. The peas bounced into her bowl. Never should any one person’s suffering be above another’s or should any one person serve another unless they find joy in it.

  “There is no shame in God’s gift of life. This is the true purpose of breasts. We should be proud of our ability to feed babies without any help.” Margaret hugged her eldest daughter and sent her out to keep watch for the mysterious uncle.

  “His son’s name is Hero,” Margaret said as she popped the sleeping boy off her breast and balanced him on her shoulder while she closed the top of her dress. He let out a resounding burb.

  “Careful!” Sophia chimed as she moved some of the bread loaves still rising on the warming shelves behind Margaret that were also too close to the babe’s mouth.

  “Hiru,” Emma corrected, because she knew she could. Margaret loved learning, books, and new ideas. She’d stopped wearing a corset long ago, but then her tall thin body didn’t really need one.

  “You should meet him, Emma,” Cynthia said. Emma quickly looked around to see if anyone else had heard her name. Margaret let out a gasp at such a strong breach of secrecy to Emma’s identity. Emma put the peas aside, got up from her stool and looked into the hotel’s dining room. She listened for a minute. No one was near.

  When Emma returned to the kitchen, Cynthia placed her hands on Emma’s shoulders. ”You can’t go on like this, hiding, pretending to be this…dead boy.” Cynthia squeezed Emma’s shoulders with affection. “Placing yourself in danger like you did with that horrible man Ingram, outside the brothel, has made you visible now.” Emma nodded. Cynthia was always right. Time had come to take the top of the wave, as her brother would have counseled, and ride openly to shore. Emma looked back at Cynthia. “Jack is a widower. You might find you have something in common and he could protect you.”

  There was constant fighting now between the Spanish Royal descendants and the Yankees, or Knights, as Emma came to know them. The Knights, now sometimes hiding under sack cloths, had begun to berate, cheat, bribe, beat or just intimidate Hispanic widows into selling land.

  Emma remembered when the residents of the town saw that her father was simply a foreigner. It was easier, but no less frightening. Emma’s father feared the worst for his land grant, given to him by the King of Spain, just like many of the Ranchos. He refused to leave his home, even to go out into the daylight, for fear of Yankee assassins that he imagined came with covered faces and torches. When Emma’s two older brothers died on a journey from the islands, her father thought it was assassins sent to rid him of heirs.

 
The authorities claimed it was gambling debts, a very similar explanation given to the young dead men of Branciforte Adobe, Emma noticed. Emma’s mother, with Emma in tow, fled to Hawai’i, away, she felt, from both a crazy man and an equally dangerous town. I’m next, Emma thought. She had just lost everything to a man who called himself a Yankee. It’s only a matter of time. McKenna killed Liam for my land. I have to do something about this. Soon, Emma thought. She felt Cynthia’s eyes on her.

  She looked up. “No one can protect me. There is no defense against what killed him. They have to be stopped. That’s why we are all doing this.” Emma saw Cynthia’s chin thrust out and immediately regretted her harsh tone. “I know who killed Liam.” Emma swallowed for a moment. “He needs to pay for what he did. I also think he may be at the heart of what we are trying to fight.”

  “But we don’t have proof of that!” Cynthia argued back.

  “Then we need to find some.”

  “I think Jack might be able to help you with that,” Margaret said softly. But they all knew she was right.

  Cynthia’s entrance into Emma’s life seemed more than chance. Cynthia had come to the estate and asked Liam and Emma to sponsor A.J.’s trip home. Emma, learning that A.J. was widowed and in need of a place for him and his young son to live without fear, was moved deeply. She convinced Liam of the compassion of such an action. Liam, fond of Jonathan Guild and Henry Harris, husbands of the Sloan women, was enthusiastic about having a male Sloan join them in their shared laboratory workshop. Cynthia was also a great purchaser of Liam’s inventions, particularly the water boiler and water pipes running from the well into the house rather than from a pump.

  Henry, too, was a great purchaser of Liam’s designs. Henry had convinced his friend, an engineer at New Almaden Quicksilver Mine, to use Liam’s structural designs. They quickly adopted the procedure and the engineer to implement them, with Liam’s oversight. It seemed like there was enough industry and work for A.J. as Liam’s assistant. Having an extra white man on the property would also be helpful.

  Just as she and Liam were about to send a telegram to A.J., the letters had stopped. Sophia and Cynthia assumed A.J. was killed in Japan, during the uprising there. But Margaret never gave up hope.

  Then Liam met Ian McKenna. Emma feared the worst between them, especially when Liam outbid McKenna and his business partner Towne for a section of Rodríguez land and the rumor of gold on it.

  After that, McKenna was always nearby. He did not like losing, it seemed. Liam was dead a few months later. The moment Emma became a widow, McKenna was waiting, as he had threatened to, burning down the ranch after she had refused him. It was easier now to speak of it, but the ache of being alone was still fresh. “I can’t just let them take what isn’t theirs,” Emma said in a hoarse whisper. Now that this dead brother Jack was found to indeed be alive, could he help her? Would he?

  Emma’s Aunt, The Duchess of the Court of Nikolai, had arrived to keep her company, but truly came into town because she had fled Russia and its wars. She was a kind friend to Mother Eliza Sloan, Sophia and Cynthia, and with their guidance, carefully and discretely, placed Emma’s and her own money in a trust with a banking family in Monterey. It was Cynthia who made sure Emma’s land was now held under Russian claim, and therefore an embassy of that land.

  Money, Emma saw, was freedom from a forced marriage. There was no lack of suitors. Widowhood in a county with too many single men seeking their fortune was a recipe for constant harassment. Here, her Aunt Vera grew into her element. Aunt Vera sent and received help from her brother, the left hand of the Czar. Though Russia was falling apart, her Aunt received a shipload of Cossack soldiers under the command of a sharp-eyed, small man named Virofsky. Her Aunt purchased an old adobe and began building a walled estate, complete with a military gatehouse. They removed to it, and Emma felt safe behind the walls and swords of her Cossack guard.

  Yet, despite the fortress, Emma could not sit at home strangled inside corsets and skirts. Her Aunt assumed Emma was only grieving, and therefore in hiding, but the truth, if the Duchess ever knew, would be in her Aunt’s mind far more scandalous.

  Sometimes, Emma wanted to do as her mother had done here, swim in the ocean, ride openly astride a horse, plant vegetables in the black soil of this blessed place, and help those who could not find freedom have a place of safety, a haven of land under the Imperial Seal of her father.

  Her cousin Eliza often held Hawaiian celebrations that included hula dancing, pig roasts, and canoe rides in the ocean which Emma attended and the townsfolk seemed to enjoy. One year a group of boys challenged the Hawaiians to a canoe race. The Hawaiians, in good faith, appeared to lose, so that relations between the town and the Islands would remain calm.

  “You are just worried that something is wrong because you weren’t told!” scolded Sophia. “For Providence’s sake Cynthia, he’s coming HOME. Let’s be glad. Especially after what happened to him during the uprising in Japan.” Sophia went to lift the large iron kettle to the indoor sink pump. Emma, warming her hands by Sophia’s large iron stove, helped her fill the kettle.

  Emma agreed with Sophia. Cynthia really was wondering why the people she worked for hadn’t informed her first – they being her contacts with the Marshals up north in The Big City. Emma had heard tales of Cynthia’s friend Dorcas and how they had gone through gold mining times together. How Jon, Cynthia’s husband, was a great friend with Arthur Sweeney, Dorcas’ husband, and how the Marshal Service respected women and had made them agents in the pursuit of justice. For the first time since Liam had perished, Emma felt hopeful that, indeed, if Cynthia, Sophia, and Margaret’s brother Uriah were friends with these people, then Jack Sloan, their estranged brother, could also be trusted to fight this battle.

  “What did happen?” Emma asked, glad to be in young boys’ clothes. Skirts, corsets, and layers demanded by European dress made her itch and suffocate. The fragrant air of the estate on Kaua’i was but a distant memory, but sometimes, like today, seeing the large fluffy clouds and bursts of rainbows, despite the freezing air, made Santa Cruz feel like home. Liam would have had his wash plant completely built by now, Emma thought sadly. And our son, little John, would have been nearing his third year.

  “What’s important now is that we have help, I hope. Your brother is pro-Union? Because if he isn’t things could go very badly for all of us, especially for my people.”

  “Of course he is pro-Union.” Sophia took a pan of rising bread dough and placed it on the large work table. She pulled at a large handle and a pulley of pans came out from the wall. With her foot, she pressed a small bellows to keep the oven temperature hot. The pulley drawer dropped small, compressed wood pellets into a small funnel that fed the oven’s main fire. “Not all the men that find Santa Cruz are savage, cruel drunkards,” Sophia said with a wink. “Those old biddies just want you to believe that,” she added with a smirk. “Oh excuse me, that would be the Temperance Society,” she said pointedly, enjoying the rolling eyes of her younger sister.

  “If half the men in this town drank half as much, we’d have gas lamps, and indoor plumbing, safer cleaner streets–”

  “If half the women in this town were allowed to choose when they had children, have their own homes in decent places, and vote, perhaps we would have more money to acquire such things,” Margaret said softly. Emma was always amazed at how still the room would become whenever she spoke. Even her children quieted.

  “Sophie! Sophie!” a man’s voice intruded from the outside.

  “In here, Henry!” she called, making Cynthia jump. Sophia had a voice that could command legions, as her husband, Henry often remarked. Henry was a great lover of machinery, gears, and pulleys. The Masons, with whom he was intimate, benefited greatly from his knowledge, and he never once found shame in learning from his Chinese workers. It was from them that he learned about wall structures and supports, and gunpowder. It was from that that Liam had gotten involved, and the two created a unique formul
a to direct the explosive force.

  “You really think your brother is interested in taking on this battle? After all the war he has seen?” Margaret handed Emma the Japanese lacquer box. Emma shook her head and gave it back. Margaret then opened the box, much to the curiosity of her children, and took out the last three letters and held them out to Emma.

  “Take these,” Margaret said quietly to Emma while the rest of the family noisily set the table and argued about whether or not to have beer or wine.

  “What are they?” Emma flipped the travel-stained vellum over in her hands.

  “A.J.’s letters after he arrived in San Francisco three months ago. Get to know him.”

  “Margaret, I really shouldn’t do this.”

  “Why not? Since when have you, a woman who fled the burning of her property in her night shift, who rescues street urchins from starvation, who heals beaten prostitutes with her heart, ever been afraid of love?” The whole family became quiet at this statement. Emma took the letters with a bent head. Carefully she placed them inside her shirt. Never had the night felt so cold.

  “Well,” Jonathan broke the silence, “Jack or ‘AyJay’ or Andrew, whatever the man wants to be called, will be arriving here tomorrow hopefully with an appetite. As for this evening, I could eat an entire pig. Which reminds me,” here Jonathan rubbed his hands together, “our new brother-in-law is speaking in town next week.”

  “On what? Dear God.” Henry made a flatulating sound with his lips, causing the children around him to giggle. Emma too.

  “I know we are all for the Blue, but he is family, and we need to not entirely be inattentive, but act as if we are a family and listen to him as our County Supervisor.” Jonathan leaned over the large meat pies that Sophia was inspecting as she opened the heavy oven door. He closed his eyes as he inhaled the deep smell of onions, sage, beef, kidney, and liver.