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

by S. L. Hawke

  4

  Four days later... Rancho Carbonera, in the hills above the Branciforte Villa

  Faustino walked his horse into the yard without much greeting. The chickens scattered, the dog came wearily up to him, but the cocina was smoking and that meant one thing, his aunt was cooking. No wonder no one was here. His aunt’s cooking could lay waste to nations, Faustino thought. He entered the cocina to see his little cousins all seated at the table looking as if they were going to be punished. When they saw him, the children all got up and scrambled over to him.

  “Uncle Tino! Uncle Tino!” They ran and clung to him as he lifted them up and hugged all four of them. His aunt appeared in the doorway to see what all the commotion was, cried out, dropped her basket of masa corn, and hugged him.

  “You have come just in time for the news! Your cousin Conception is getting married!” His aunt stirred a pot of something that may have been chili verde or beans, or? Faustino smelled it and pulled his face away. His aunt frowned and went outside to get the meat for tonight’s fandango. Faustino watched the door until he knew his aunt would not return for at least fifteen minutes, then to the giggles of his small cousins, he began to quickly pick off a few dried chiles from their hanging twist, several dried stalks of the dandelion green, thyme, oregano, and some rosemary. He rubbed them all in his hands and crumbled the herbs over the stew. Grabbing at his aunt’s molcajete and its pestle, he took the dried chili pod, crushed it with some garlic cloves and a few seeds of anise that came from Mexico. He hesitated for a moment, closed his eyes to remember, then picked off two buds of lavender and threw that into the pestle. He grabbed the oil pot and put some olive oil into its well, then quickly added some almonds and one cacao nib.

  One of his young cousins went to the doorway to watch for their mother as Faustino worked quickly, adding salt, putting his special mix in the stew along with water. Then with a few big strokes, he stirred the pot. Finally he sat down, just as his aunt came back with a side of beef. She went over to the stove and put on the kettle. He helped her salt and rub down the side of ribs she had cut from the beef side hanging in the root cellar to age.

  “Who is Conception marrying? That pimple-headed boy from Rancho del Oso?” Faustino got up to look at the side of beef. Then his aunt looked dourly at him.

  “A gringo.” She tasted her stew. She straightened and tasted her stew again. “I swear,” she took Faustino’s cheeks in both hands and pinched them, “You are a blessing to this house. Even my cooking gets better when you come home!!!” She kissed him on both cheeks just in time to hear horses and a full wagon of chattering voices appear outside the cocina.

  “A gringo?” Faustino said mostly to himself as he went outside to greet the rest of the Carboneras. His uncle nodded solemnly to him, his older cousins greeted him with slaps and laughter. The girls were all giggly, some from nearby ranchos come early to preen and prepare themselves for tonight. Conception was at the heart of all of them.

  “Tino! Tino!” Conception ran up to him and hugged and kissed him overly much.

  “EH eh eh!” Faustino mock spat as if she were diseased.

  “Tino, you must, you MUST cook for my wedding. Please PLEASE or I will die!” Conception never looked more pretty than today. That was why the wedding would happen soon. This gringo and Conception had started a baby growing. Faustino could always tell. It was a gift, from his seer grandmamma and from his mother, who thought often Faustino should have been born a prescient girl destined to work with the medicina.

  “What is the hurry? Unless you are already baking something, eh?” he teased. Conception slapped Faustino on the top of his head then hugged him. He went out to the wagon with his arms around his cousin, enjoying the envious looks of some of the young men who had also come early to set up torches, candles, and cut paper decorations. The family worked to clean up and move heavy tables and benches made from the oaks and madrones nearby over to the arbole.

  “His name is Guillermo.” Conception set down the baskets of fresh strawberries and some nopales cactus pads. She also had lots of lettuces and greens, and some tubers. The last of the winter onions and a few potatoes were in the larder basket already with ground masa, and of course beans. But Conception placed a few bags on the table that made Faustino cry out with joy.

  “A gift from your friend, up on the hill.” Conception smiled demurely. “Rice, sugar, pineapple, and this funny radish.”

  “Oh the Gods are great!” Faustino cried out with joy. “Miha, I will cook for your wedding.”

  Conception hugged him and, shooing the rest of the children from the kitchen, pointed to her father to steer her mother away from the cocina with a new shawl, new wool, and some chocolate. Faustino took off his woven sweater and rolled up his sleeves.

  “I thought Auntie said he was a gringo?” Faustino talked as he placed the stew on the warming stones near the fire and began to sharpen a cutting knife on the table.

  “He is, but he wants to be one of us.”

  “Are you sure he doesn’t just want to get our land?”

  “Guillermo is calling himself Pacheco,” Conception said quietly.

  Faustino could not believe what he was hearing. A gringo that wanted to become one of them. Then he started hacking into the meat, thinking of A.J. Sloan and his beautiful Castellano. A.J. was already one of them, with his manners, his voice, and his honorable ways.

  “He is a good man and has 10,000 head of sheep, a house in the mountains, and he is Catholic,” Conception said, but Faustino could not hide his own broken heart. “What is it, Tino?” Faustino forced a smile.

  “I am happy for you, my sister,” he said with a tired smile. Conception held him tenderly.

  “Your father and mother will forgive you. Give them time. They will forget, when you bring home the love of your life.” Conception laid out the sectioned ribs and filets of meat in a straight line on an iron pan. She smelled what was in the mortar and added more chile and garlic, some salt and some honey with mustard seed.

  Faustino began to chop an onion and cry.

  I will never be able to bring him home, my cousin. Never, Faustino thought.

  5

  Santa Cruz Township, near the Spanish Mission

  Juan saw to the gelding as I wandered into the center of the town square where I could hear a band playing. Folk were leaving, some muttering about the bad state of the war, others wondering how they were going to purchase certain comforts of life.

  “Jack!!” My old name was called by Jonathan again. I could see him on a makeshift podium. The Confederate Flag was draped across it like a coffin cover. “Where have you been? You’d better explain yourself to Cynthia.”

  “I was in the back of the crowd — a little carriage accident made it hard to get here.” The lie came out so easily, I startled myself.

  Folk dispersed, generally in one direction.

  “Jack!” A new voice hailed me with a desperation I found alarming. I was embraced suddenly by a tall woman with my mother’s face and height but with a lump between us. She started to cry, throatily, her black bonnet pushing back to reveal a blond braid. It was my baby sister, Beth, now a pregnant woman. “Thank God. Thank GOD!”

  “Shall we all come over to the Hotel?” The voice was familiar as it roared loudly to the crowd. There were shouts of “Yea”. Folk shuffled down the wooden slatted sidewalks adding to the general clatter, in the direction of the long, two story hotel at the other end of town. Somewhere someone fired off a pistol in the air. I looked toward the direction of the voice I had recognized as belonging to the man who had laid a whip to his mare back at the Rodríguez Gulch. I found him.

  “That’s your new brother-in-law,” Jonathan mumbled to me and nodded at the gregarious politician without smiling. “Tread carefully, lest you anger the womenfolk,” he added.

  Towne appeared to be caught up in his lively crowd. Jonathan angled his head in the direction of our shared brother-in-law. I took Beth on my arm and followed Jon
athan and Cynthia towards the end of town.

  We followed him to a hotel with a grand ballroom and a solid crystal chandelier that boasted of surviving a shipwreck off the northern section of the coast. The Grey Coat flag proudly hung from the interior balconette and a band played a somber rendition of “God Save the South” which I had heard only once, as a rebel frigate, The Whore, sank in San Francisco Bay.

  Henry and Sophia did not make an appearance it would seem. The Union Flag with its diamond-shaped pattern of stars had always hung proudly outside Harris House, so attending such a gathering would not fare well with their patrons. But Jonathan and Cynthia came to keep Beth company, as I was supposed to have done. Now, men were joined by women who were not wives. Cynthia gasped in disdain as one couple drunkenly began to engage in kissing and fondling across a billiards table. Jonathan tried to prevent his wife from pulling the man by his suspenders off the woman, who was in fact a prostitute, but to no avail.

  Someone jumped over the bar, popped open a cask, and put his mouth to the spurting contents.

  “Sodom and Gomorrah here we are,” Jonathan muttered to me. Beth looked away and choked up as her husband, now jacketless, stood up on the bar pulling a strange woman into his arms. Towne toasted the freedom of choice of a nation, and to donate to all those poor widows and children who were in the South, suffering because we insisted on splitting the nation in two. Grabbing a spittoon from someone in the crowd, Towne asked for donations to be placed therein and then, handing the spittoon to the lady who had joined him on the bar, he jumped down and shook hands with all the crowd, like a true politician.

  The ballroom was made entirely of a glass ceiling. The building heat of the crowd vented through a few shutters, but a haze of smoke seemed to hover at the ceiling like a spirit bent on malfeasance.

  Beth’s sobs took my attention for a moment in her direction. Suddenly I understood that this man who tried to lash out at me with a whip was the John Towne, my sister’s new husband. Wheels turned inside my head as to what should happen next, but instead I said to my baby sister, “Well then, let’s get you to the wagon. You shouldn’t be out here you know.” I looked at her, smiling, and brushed her cheek. She half smiled, like me, and looked down as I held her trembling hands and tried to reassure her that all this was just part of John’s job as a politician.

  There was pleasure in the man’s eyes as he beat his horse, as I remembered. The next thought turned my stomach.

  Did he take pleasure in beating my sister? Did he beat her?

  Towne turned away from his crowd and came towards me. The man who had raised his slave whip at me earlier in the day was shaking hands with folk, slapping backs, greeting a loyal, trusting constituency. Folk were dancing, drinking, pulling off their clothes like some scene from Dante’s epic poem, or the Biblical accounts of Gomorrah before all were turned to salt. I was not a religious man or even, dare I say, a Christian, but this raucous scene was no place for a woman in my baby sister’s condition.

  “Jack, please take me home,” Beth said, clinging to my jacket sleeve.

  Towne came towards us and then froze for a minute as he recognized me in the crowd. His bright, round blue eyes followed my arm to see Beth clinging at me, as she used to do when she was small and grew frightened.

  “John, I am going back to the house,” Beth announced as she stood hanging tightly to my arm. He ignored her and focused entirely on me. I undid Beth’s arm and sat her down, amidst protests. “Jack, I am fine!”

  “Now Beth, let the man introduce himself.” Towne tipped his felt bowler hat. “Sorry about our earlier misunderstanding, but the Soquel Road is full of thieves.” He broke into a wide grin, as if some childhood prank had been played, and I was the innocent victim. My left hand made a fist at my side.

  “My brother is not a thief!” Beth cried. Cynthia had squeezed between a prostitute and a stranger working on getting to know each other too well and, freeing herself with a sharp smack in the face of the stranger, came over to Beth and took her hand. That brought on tears. Towne narrowed his eyes as his large-toothed smile turned into a strange parody of a grimace.

  “Brother???” He closed the distance between us. “Not the big, bad brother named after the biggest failure of a president there ever was.” Towne stood there and did not extend his hand. “Andrew Jackson Sloan?” he said carefully as if I were to be put on some sort of list.

  “Talk politics at the house for God’s sake!” Cynthia intruded. “After all Supervisor, Jack just dropped a slab in your precious widows’ pot. That should feed an entire state of widows and orphans.”

  “Cynthia—” I warned, but saw what she was doing. I had to follow through. I’d only put a twenty dollar gold piece in there. I’d have to get more from Andrew if I were to go the road Cynthia was leading me down.

  “How would it look if you lost your first child in a saloon?” Cynthia came in for the kill.

  Even Jonathan had no words for this. Cynthia had gumption beyond us men.

  ”Please, I must get home!” Beth begged me. I held her arm and patted her gloved hand, then helped her move through the raucous and dirty crowd until finally we were all out onto the side walkway. I found a bench that had a view of the beachhead and made for it. Once Beth was seated, Cynthia joined her. Dusk was approaching.

  “Jonathan has gone to get our wagon.” She patted Beth’s arm. Beth moved away from her. Cynthia gave me a look that said ‘Now it’s up to you’ and I shrugged, pretending they were behaving as sisters were, always in a fight about something.

  Thunderous noise and a dusty cloud on the trap road alongside the beach head announced the arrival of a group of men into our sight. They were riding hard on horseback, from the direction of the ocean side of Capitola town. They were making their way towards the now dispersing crowd. Their leader rode his horse with complete expertise rare in most men. The crowd cleared the street onto the sidewalks to make room for the posse as the men came up to the hitching posts in a single dusty group. The leader, I assumed, since he rode in the center and front, dismounted with the fluid grace of an expert cavalryman. He swung his rifle upon his shoulder as if it were an extension of his body.

  “Are you joining us?!” Towne called into the crowd of cavalrymen. He had followed us outside but I think it was because he knew these men were bound for this place. They exchanged some words and what looked like money from the spittoon. The leader of the posse looked over at us, then studied the growing crowd of rigs, going straight up into some of the nicer traps and peering inside. There were a few startled female exclamations and shouts of indignation, but he did not stop until he had visited all four well-oiled barouches and put-together traps on the dusty center street.

  “That’s John Towne’s business partner, Ian McKenna. I hear he is at the heart of a lot of misery in this town. Schwann over by the inlet employs him to patrol his beach head. A few years back he shot transients that terrified his daughter and niece while they were picnicking.” Cynthia took out a fan and cooled herself. Towne returned to the sidewalk.

  “I had no idea you were so soft on widows and children,” Towne said mildly, almost with some surprise. “Thank you for your contribution to the…cause.”

  “Supervisor.” I tipped my hat. “I’m always interested in causes that allow me to skirt the government’s scrutiny.” I gestured at McKenna who was still scanning the streets for someone. “Your friend looking for someone?”

  “He’s always looking out for ruffians. Better you met me on that road today than him.” The fake smile and the wheezy laugh seemed more comical than fake. “MCKENNA!” he roared. Towne did, however, look a bit uneasy with me, which pleased me greatly.

  The cavalryman straightened, like an alert dog to its master’s bidding, and crossed the urine- and manure-filled road in a few strides. He did not climb onto the sidewalk boards but remained in the roadway. The brim of his hat shaded his eyes.

  “Come back to the house!” Towne heralded, but did not i
ntroduce us.

  “I might. If the royals are there,” McKenna spoke softly, like a hiss, but all Scottish.

  “Royals?” I inquired. “The name’s Sloan.” I introduced myself.

  “Yes.” McKenna did not elaborate but I could feel his appraising study nonetheless.

  “A bunch of Russian Royals with a half exotic Hawaiian princess tossed in there somewhere, like one of those ridiculous salads they serve at my brother-in-law’s hotel.” Again, the laugh. I looked at the womenfolk. My sister Beth trembled. “McKenna’s sweet on the little princess.”

  McKenna came up the steps slowly, like a man making a strategic decision. His rifle dropped to his left side, one hand on the trigger. He was also left-handed.

  “Gentlemen, let’s get the womenfolk home.” I went over to my sister but Towne stepped between us. “She’s my wife, did she tell you?” He smiled and pulled her up, roughly, making me reach over to steady her. Cynthia caught Beth’s other arm.

  “Of course she did,” Cynthia added. “In fact, she asked Jack to help with your campaign. Jack has money to spend and invest.”

  “You two get to know each other.” Towne gestured to McKenna, just as Jonathan pulled up alongside with a surrey. I helped Cynthia up while Towne pushed Beth onto her seat.

  “See you back at the house?” Beth called. “It’s the new one. They are calling the street after John.”

  “I’ll find it,” I reassured her.

  “Careful, A.J.…” Jonathan said with a salute, but his sights were on McKenna. I nodded and tapped the brim of my hat. McKenna looked away into the street, again scanning every trap that went by.

  “Sloan? Some say that’s an Irish name,” McKenna said as he watched the street. Who was he so intent on finding?