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

by S. L. Hawke

  The party went on for most of the night. Guests left in the wee hours of the morning. The Duchess departed in her barouche when the constellation of Orion was overhead. Virofsky accompanied her, as did the rest of the royal guard.

  Emma was missing. I searched the estate for a precious set of minutes knowing that I would not find her. Tomorrow was Sunday, the one we agreed upon. She departed without guard.

  Apparently, many of the men complained of losing their pocket watches or pocketbooks. When the host began a search, these same men grew red in the face and apologized. Suddenly a voice from where no one could say, had announced that a young Hispanic boy seeing to the horses was found with trinkets and had fled.

  There was only one person who could have been the pickpocket. She’d shown me her skills so well, my connection with McKenna was sealed. Sally Towne had worked her way through the male guests with skill, leaving me with the shame of poor security.

  The unexpected arrival of Sally Towne created enough of a distraction among the male guests to make my job of keeping Emma occupied fairly easy. Sally had many admirers that evening, so much so, they had disappeared in her company during the course of the festivities. Whether Sally intended this or not, the Knights would see us as cohorts, so I should feel grateful for this but I was not. I felt betrayed.

  What favors these victims of her charms would owe her, froze my blood. Then I asked the servants if little Juan had left with the Guild and Harris Party. They agreed it was so, but that little Juan did not take anything from the guests. Little Juan was a good boy and had always been outside with the horses, especially after the beautiful white woman with the transparent silk dress arrived. The lowered faces of servants afraid to say anything unpleasant about a white person was enough verification for me that Sally had done more than relieve the men of the party of their wallets.

  Why did Emma leave without her guard? Didn’t I emphasize the danger? After our passionate kissing, our frank talk, I did not feel anything other than agitation. The sensation that she was keeping something from me, that she knew something more, angered me. Frustrated, I kicked over a potted plant.

  “Really, it is not the plant’s fault,” a severe deep voice with an English accent intruded. A man came out of the shadows wearing a black silk Chinese jacket and pants. He was tall, silent, and blond with wide-set pale eyes that reminded me of a serpent’s. He bent down to look at the disheveled plant, then replaced it within its pot. “Hmm, curious, it would have died eventually, not being suited to this abominably hot and dry weather.”

  “I don’t believe we have met.” My tone was irritated. I’d had enough of eccentrics.

  “Well, you haven’t met me, but I have certainly seen a great deal of you.”

  Not again, not another test, please God. I was tired, and frustrated. “You won’t mind if I ask you how?” Here this odd Englishman simply bowed.

  “At the request of the Head of Security for the Duchess Leonovna. I am to see to her Highness’ safety during her—” here the man coughed into his fist, “outings.”

  “Impossible.” I narrowed my eyes in suspicion at him. Surely I would have known. Again, Emma distracted me. An easier thought was that perhaps an English dandy had more skills at being an observer than I.

  “Not really. “ The man gave a very slight smile. “Invisibility is easier when no one thinks they have a reason to be followed. And of course, I did have help.” Here he assumed a more genteel demeanor and extended his hand for a shake: “Shaw-Jones, Benedict — Lord, if I have to say it, but I’m poorer than you and indentured to my employer whom, incidentally, we both share.”

  “Very well.” I took the soft, long-fingered hand and sensed this man was not what he claimed to be. Was anyone? This town seemed full of hidden truths. Virofsky had mentioned he had hired a personal guard for Emma, as he disliked the whole idea of her running around in disguise. We all seemed to be in agreement about this one thing. This charade must stop. “Where is Her Highness?”

  Here, Lord Shaw-Jones put his hands behind his back and began to walk in circles. Not foolishly, but carefully, and with grace. It was bagua or energy walking, from the Shaolin style. “Juan Arana left with Mrs. Guild. They were discussing a certain problem at the Red Salon.”

  “Jesus Christ!” I swore.

  “Yes, well, what your sister does is very Christian. Want to go see?” He stopped his walk and watched me.

  “Does Emma know who you are?” My growl sounded too much like McKenna’s. I had to get my feelings under control.

  “Emma or Her Royal Highness Emma Nishi Pauhani Leonovna, hired me to interpret and develop some of her late husband’s designs. The crass word, I believe, is inventor.” Here Lord Shaw-Jones produced a piece of paper with some drawings on it. “She told me you might be interested in developing something I like to refer to as a hand grenade, or pomegranate, whichever you prefer.”

  My stare must have been comical because it brought a smile from the catlike face of the Lord. His very narrow mustache completed this look by giving him the illusion of having whiskers. He continued: “I rather like intrigue, don’t you?”

  “Emma’s safety is my priority right now. I need to find her.”

  “My advice is to seek her out at your sister’s. As for what happens after that, you and I can certainly handle the rest.” I started to leave, then turned around and came back.

  “I may need these pomegranates for the task I need to do.”

  “Excellent, but only if Her Highness approves.”

  “How long do you think it would take to make, say, twelve?” I took the paper and looked at the design.

  “Not long at all, but getting the proper materials is quite another matter. It would mean making a rather indiscrete inquiry to the local Powder Works, and it would require testing. Both objectives take time.”

  “How much time?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?” Now I was irritated. I took off my collar. “We will talk later. I need to find little Juan.”

  “Don’t let me stop you. But do let me advise you that convincing Her Highness to give up certain freedoms may not be easy.”

  “I can be persuasive. Stay here.” With that I returned to my guest room to find my clothes had been tended and repaired during the party. I quickly changed, with an instruction to Lam to see to Jonathan’s tuxedo. We took horses back down to town, where I went directly to the stables.

  Andrew was there.

  “It’s been exciting, well, relatively quiet actually. But last night there was a small commotion at the brothel.”

  “Another murder?”

  A Chinese boy took my horse. Where the hell was Juan? Odd, how divorced from my mind Emma was from this last night. She was like a dream. It was the woman beneath the boy’s clothing I truly wanted. “What happened?”

  “Prostitute specializing in that pain stuff died this morning but in house, under a doc’s accidental surgery. Your sister has made arrangements for a Christian burial at the local cemetery.” Here Andrew did an odd thing, he put his hands behind his back. I was sharply reminded of my boss, his father, Art. “It’s too late to grab the body for examination and photographic plates. It’s already being prepped for burial. But maybe, well, I heard that the cemetery is easy to access at night.” Andrew stopped and waited for me to understand what he was suggesting.

  “You want to dig this body back up? Why? This one was accidental.”

  “This one is different. She was being treated for wounds inflicted by the last client, our suspect. It might be the proof, leverage, something, say whip marks distinctive to that riding crop I hear the Supervisor carries.”

  “We can prove that?”

  Andrew nodded with absolute confidence. “Tonight would be the best time.”

  I made a circle where I was standing and took off my battered hat. “Today is Sunday. The Whore Killer has tortured and killed at the same time every Sunday. Whoever they are follows a whore to the cemete
ry on the day they go to mourn their previous babes.”

  “That’s today?” Andrew checked his pistol.

  “I need to find…Juan.”

  “Look, nothing happens until dusk. We’ve got a plan in place. Your sister assured me that Juan has been running around doing errands with her for a long time before you showed up. These few more hours won’t matter.”

  I leaned against the stall and shook my head. “What do I do then?”

  Andrew suddenly got animated. “You ever been in an opium den?”

  7

  Santa Cruz Township, nearing noon

  Emma waited out by Cynthia’s trap as she spoke to the Reverend of a different church. She could see a small Chinese boy preparing to ring the new bell in the church’s tower for the noon hour. There were so many Christian churches in town now. Emma ignored all of them, as she only believed in the great Compassionate One, and burned incense every day at the shrine inside her room. Fate, in actions, and in justice, as her mother used to say, governed all.

  The young girl’s body had been tenderly cared for before the undertaker came to remove it. The madam told Cynthia that a woman of some money, but no refinement, had paid the bill and a substantial coin to insure silence. Again. The doctor’s silence was also bought, but Emma remembered other times they had gone to the Red Salon with Wen in tow, to bandage, at times even stitch up the wounds left behind by this monster of man.

  This prostitute had died during an abortion surgery done by this doctor. Thankfully, she died quickly and had been unconscious during the procedure from a blow to the head and…but here the doctor stopped speaking. The client had banged her head against the floor several times during his ‘visit’. Cynthia could get little else from him. The doctor had passed out from the laudanum he took to soothe his nerves.

  This small church was located below the Mission near the center of town. This pastor felt he could save more souls by making services available to them not far from their place of work. He seemed a tireless man with a true understanding of the power of love. His wife worked alongside him with the same passion and intensity as Cynthia. They were new in town and grateful for Cynthia’s friendship and guidance.

  The air smelled constantly of sulfur, charcoal and a sour-roasting smell. Cowell Kilns’ Chinese ran everywhere. The tide was in and brought sewage up the river. Emma covered her face but nothing would take away the smell better than a hot bath when she returned to her estate.

  Cynthia came out of the church quickly and, lifting her hooped skirt high so that she would not dirty the lace hem, climbed up onto the trap without assistance from Emma. She sat down with sharp sigh. “They refuse to bury her within the fence of the cemetery. I have half a mind to go and knock the fence down.” Cynthia suddenly looked excited. “Juan! Take this trap to Evergreen at once!”

  “Cynthia, we can’t just go there and tear down a fence!” Emma could not believe Cynthia’s idea. Both women regarded one another for a moment. “But we can move the fence, after she is buried.” Emma pulled up the reins and jiggled them. The horse complied and pulled them forward up the newly cut road called Towne Terrace.

  “That’s a brilliant idea. But Henry can’t go there; they’ll suspect him enough as it is.”

  “I think I have the perfect person for the job,” Emma said with some pride. Then both women fell silent.

  “Will we still be able to convince one of the girls to go out this evening?”

  Cynthia shook her head. “I thought they might be afraid, but Rosa’s death has made them determined to catch this monster. Even the Madam is in agreement. She knows it’s bad for business and I believe she is not behind this crime. Camille, the maid from Sophia’s hotel, has agreed to play the part of, as she puts it so well, la prostituée.”

  “Andrew will be out there, as will Lam. Let us hope that we can catch and end this nightmare for good.”

  *******

  Chinatown squatted on the mudflats of the San Lorenzo River. Lam navigated the lean-tos until he came to a sturdier complex, built by a man of the town, a judge named Blackburn. These buildings also housed laundry tubs, cigarette-rolling factories, even noodle kitchens. Occasionally there were children, huddled under the lean-tos like abandoned kittens.

  “They are smuggled in from China, along with the women,” Lam said softly to us. The stench of the river sewage, the animal carcass rot that flowed unceasing down river from the tannery upstream, the heavy smoke of the kilns, the muck out from the liveries of nearby hotels and saloons, made me breathe through my mouth most times.

  But it was the sunken, helpless faces that watched us go by, ghosts of the human beings they once were, thinking to find a better life here, but only bringing the suffering and the corruption with them, that most upset me. The Tong were ever vigilant to exploitation and profit.

  “Who is this Labor Lord, Lam? I know you have knowledge of this.” My question was harsh and ended in a cough. A dead cat, maggot-filled, lay next to a water trough where an old woman was washing her pots. We passed an open shed of vegetables, a bright, cheery green among the fetid brown and black of the mud. Charcoal ashes coated everything.

  “They are not the enemy here. They seek only to do what all of you have done, build a new life, a new city, a new influence, to a wild frontier. China is no stranger to this.”

  Finally we came to the back door of the finest hotel in the city.

  “This can’t be right.” Andrew looked up at the three story complex-to-be, its third story incomplete, and the new redwood timbers extending upward like bony fingers or the ribs of a great whale.

  There was a deep red door lined with gold, a symbol of a flying dragon adorning its entablature. Lam opened the side panel, reached inside the narrow hole, pulled on an unknown lever, we both imagined, and waited. Lam held his hands within the folds of his sleeves. Grey hair now fully covered what I could see of his head. He had no queue, which told the community he was a monk, and told the employers he was indentured.

  The door opened without sound. An elderly Chinese man saw Lam and bowed deeply. Lam returned the bow and said something in Mandarin. The smell of incense was heavy inside as well as sickness. I began to itch, trying not to think about what vermin I could bring back with me.

  The oil lamps were covered with dark red paper. I held on to my coat, as did Andrew, as we walked through another dark mahogany door into the rank, sweet smell of the den. Here we found a few women of wealthy families, their servants shaking their hands in front of their and their mistresses’ prone bodies so that we would not look, followed by the Chinese valets of a few men, who lay reclined, some elderly, others too young to know what it was to have pain. No look! No stare! No one here you knowa!

  We came to a beaded curtain and went through it, down a few earthen steps to a breath of fresh air. A vent to the outside was cleverly disguised as an ornamental grate. A small boy pulled on a rope that turned a large pinwheel, creating a draft that circulated the air of the entire den.

  Andrew quickly moved forward, while Lam held back.

  “I will not go further, Ay Jay. But soon you and I will have a task bigger than the both of us. Until then, my place is here. “

  I nodded to him in understanding. For the first time I truly felt afraid of the future. “I’m afraid to know what your mission is, Master Lam.”

  “You are protected by your father-in-law’s forfeited life. You have nothing to fear for now. But soon, payment for your son’s life debt must be made. I will meet you at your sister’s hotel.”

  With a mixture of shame that so great a Master was reduced to this life, and I the mere student held all the cards, I bowed and entered into this lair of the Devil.

  “Never underestimate the value of a good hiding place.”

  The voice was clear, young, and impossibly alive.

  He had died in my arms, that much was very clear. But now he stood before me, in uniform, like a ghost. Fergus McRee came over to me and grabbed my upper arms and shook
them.

  “He seems conscious,” Fergus remarked to Andrew. Andrew smiled and laughed a bit.

  Several emotions ran through me at once. Joy, fear, rage, and anger. The last one came out in the form of a lapel grab and a quick slam of Andrew into the wood panel wall. It cracked, being a false wall.

  “Whoa! It was my fault, completely!!!” Fergus added, standing next to me as I pinned Andrew to the wall, contemplating whether or not to break something. Bone, limb, head. Nothing was enough. I grabbed Andrew’s throat and squeezed.

  “Aaayrgh…Jauuaghh…” Andrew started to gargle, when I simply let go. Then I backed away.

  “You bled….you BLED. ALL OVER ME…It was real blood!” I cried at Fergus.

  “Calm down, man.” Fergus placed himself between Andrew and me. “I can explain.”

  I sat down on a silk-cushioned bench so hard, the old man at its edge fell off of it. He quickly got up and left the room. “This is bullshit. BULLSHIT,” I said, placing my head in my hand, then taking off my hat and crumpling it in my hands.

  “I wore a metal plate on my chest; I also had sheep bladders of blood lining the vest. I thought you could tell, by how much I was sweating. Didn’t I look a bit big around the middle?”

  He was right, of course. I did notice these things but I had decided those details were not important at the time.

  “What the hell did you hope to accomplish?” Leaning against the panel walls I closed my eyes. A headache was coming on and the sickening sweet incense and burning opium smell were making me feel like I was being slowly suffocated. I had to leave.

  “He’s going to run,” Andrew said, which drew me back to him. I grabbed his lapels and made a fist but could not hit him. Instead I lowered my arm. “Hey, I’m sorry, but I myself just found out yesterday. I couldn’t let this go another minute. If you hadn’t been at the Russians’ party you and I would be beating him,” here he pointed at Fergus, “up instead.”

  “My jaw is still sore from your first effort.” Fergus mock pouted. “Now as much as I would like to extend this warm reunion, we have a job to do.” Here Fergus motioned for us to follow him into a more western style room, complete with telegraph, chalkboard, and a large table map of Santa Cruz City and its hills, with some missing sections of the mountains creating flat spaces that bore slips of paper with the lettering “Survey in Progress”. Another man walked out of the shadows of a corner and stood before us. It was Lord Shaw-Jones.