“Can you keep a secret?” Mountain Iris whispered. “I may have one more tonic left.”
Mountain Iris rummaged through her collection of colorful bottles. She chose a translucent bottle, added the same gray powder from her black pouch, mixed it well, and closed it with a cork. She placed the small potion on Clinton’s pleading hands.
“Thank you so much, ma’am! Thank you!”
“One drop under your tongue once a day should suffice,” Mountain Iris explained. “Don’t overuse it, let the tonic take its time to heal you. If you rush it, it won’t work.”
Clinton hugged the bottle against his chest. “I’ll treasure it.”
Mountain Iris winked at Clinton. Tiberius gave her a thankful nod, and she smiled warmly. But her expression turned somber as a long shadow appeared on her threshold.
“Well, well. What an unexpected reunion,” Maxwell Donahue hissed.
Maxwell entered the wagon and Tiberius had to squeeze against the wall to let him through. The salesman crouched besides Clinton so their eyes met, then stole the potion from his hand.
He raised the bottle and examined its swirling content under the sunbeams coming in through the skylight. “Excellent, my dear. One of your best concoctions to this date, I might add. May I inquire how much you charged the gentleman for it?”
Mountain Iris tensed. “They’re my tonics. I can do with them as I please.”
“Indeed. But how are we going to survive if you start giving our stock away? Do you want to go back to eating one meal a day?”
Clinton pulled Maxwell’s sleeve. “Please, sir. I have no money. Yesterday you gave it to me for free.”
Maxwell pocketed the vial inside his vest. “That was a sample. This is a finished product. I’m sure you understand.”
Clinton hid his face in his hands and shook his head. Tiberius locked his jaw and glared at Mountain Iris. She looked away, disappearing behind the curtain at the back of the truck.
Tiberius handed Clinton his crutches. “Come on, Clinton. We’re done here.”
Clinton pushed the crutches away. Tiberius waited until he calmed down, then helped him stand. Clinton stumbled and twitched with pain. He leaned on a table and hit the potions on top. Some rolled, fell, and crashed on the wooden floor. Clinton looked around, helpless.
Maxwell grinned. “Don’t worry, my friend. We won’t make you pay for those.”
Tiberius grabbed Maxwell by the lapels of his jacket and lifted him into the air. “I should’ve never let you stay, you leech. Get out of my town.” He glanced at the red curtain and raised his voice. “Both of you. And you better not come back.”
Tiberius placed a red-faced Maxwell back on the floor, away from the exit. Clinton trembled and staggered on his crutches as he descended the three short steps to the ground.
Maxwell followed them outside, pressing his vermilion velvet lapels. “See you around,” he sneered behind Tiberius’ back.
Tiberius clenched his fists so tightly that his nails left red furrows on the mounds of his palms.
XVI
Tiberius and Clinton walked back to town without exchanging a word. When they arrived to Souls Well, Main Street was bustling with late morning activity. Clinton avoided eye contact with every single passer-by.
“Go home, Clinton. Get some rest,” Tiberius advised.
Clinton shook his head. “I have deliveries to make.” He pulled his satchel to the side, limped around a corner, and disappeared from Tiberius’ sight.
The time had come to pay Doc Tucker another visit. Tiberius walked to the doctor’s practice and knocked on the windowed door until two anxious eyes peeked out from behind a thin curtain. Doc Tucker let him in and locked the door.
Lucy rested on the doctor’s examining table, chastely covered with a white sheet that showed some fresh blood splatters.
“Did you find anything?” Tiberius asked.
“More than I was ready to swallow.” Doc Tucker looked Tiberius up and down. “Have you slept at all? Maybe you should have a seat.”
“I’m good standing. What is it, Doc?”
Doc Tucker pulled the collar of his shirt with one finger, as if it had suddenly tightened. “Lucy choked, but she wasn’t choked.”
Tiberius frowned. He had no patience for riddles. “Meaning?”
Doc Tucker pointed to his desk, where a big magnifying glass hung from a metal arm, above a tin plate. Tiberius looked through the magnifying glass and saw a bunch of round, gray pebbles.
“What am I looking at, Doc?”
“Silver.”
“What? Where did you find that much raw silver?”
“Right here.”
Tiberius moved his eyes from Doc Tucker to the silver chunks that shined under his magnifying glass, then stared at Lucy’s corpse, then back at Doc Tucker, bewildered.
Doc Tucker nodded somberly. “And not only inside her stomach. Her throat was completely blocked with pieces of silver.”
Tiberius leaned heavily on the table and the uneven table wobbled, sending the round pieces of silver rolling from the plate to the floor.
Doc Tucker scooped them off the ground and put them inside a small jar, closed it tight with a tin lid, and put the jar into his medicine cabinet. “I know it’s a shocking revelation, Tiberius. But you don’t have to make a mess.”
Tiberius paced around the room, scratching his stubble. “What about those marks on her neck?”
“There’s no bruising or coagulated blood where the skin was cut, which means her heart wasn’t pumping when those marks were made.”
“So, what are you saying? That Lucy had silver for dinner?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Tiberius. No one would do such a thing.”
After a long, tense silence, Tiberius dropped himself into an old wicker chair, feeling suddenly weak on the knees. “Unless someone forced her,” he said.
Tiberius breathed in to control the urge to retch.
Doc Tucker kept his gaze on the whiskey bottles he kept on his window sill. “Maybe. And that’s not all. I found wedges of silver in her lungs. But I can’t explain how they got there.”
Tiberius walked to Lucy. He pulled the blood-stained sheet up and covered her colorless face. Doc Tucker fidgeted. Pearls of sweat covered his forehead.
Tiberius rubbed his temple. “There’s something else, isn’t it?”
Doc Tucker pointed to his medicine cabinet. “Last jar on the top-right shelf. You’ll see it.”
The doctor ran to his bottle and took a big gulp.
Tiberius opened the doctor’s glass-paneled cabinet and peered at his collection of jarred body parts, floating in alcohol and resin. He brought the glass container Doc Tucker had indicated to the window and spun it closer to the light. He squinted…then, a chill ran up his spine.
Tiberius strode back to the medicine cabinet, put the jar back, and slammed the doors so hard their glass rattled. He stood there, numb, listening to his own, heavy breath, trying to erase the horrid image of the tiny body and head looking at him within the amber liquid of the doctor’s jar.
Doc Tucker offered him the whiskey, but Tiberius waved him off. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”
“Lucy was with child,” the doctor answered.
Tiberius paced frantically, the floorboards creaking under his boots. “Goddamnit, Doc.” He glanced at the medicine cabinet and shuddered. “I mean… How long?”
“I’d guess around four months.”
“Four months! I can’t believe she wouldn’t tell me.”
“Any idea about who the father might be?”
Tiberius opened the window, put both hands on its sill, and let the cold breeze take his gut-wrenching shock away. “Yes, but I won’t know for sure until I speak with Madame Valentine.”
Doc Tucker sat down on a stool and brought the half-full bottle of whiskey to his lips. “During the war, I witnessed injuries so awful I could hardly believe them true. Teared up flesh, crumpled and burned like paper ab
ove a flame. Bones that protruded through the soldiers’ muscles, so broken they looked like the branches of a tree hit by lightning. I saw our miners, their limbs nothing but a pulp and their naked bodies covered in deadly frostbite. I buried my own son.”
Doc Tucker glanced at Lucy then drank again.
“I’ve faced enough cruelty to give me nightmares for a lifetime. But this…” He closed his eyes firmly and shivered. “I’ve never seen something as ghastly as what happened to Lucy and her unborn child, nor do I have an explanation for it. I’m sorry.”
Tiberius heard the doctor’s voice, without listening. He could see nothing but shadows around the room “She deserves a proper burial,” he finally said.
“I’ll talk to Father Darley.”
Doc Tucker walked tiredly across his practice and placed his bottle back on the window sill. He grabbed his coat, his shredded scarf, and moved to the door.
Tiberius halted him. “Wait. What are we going to say about how she died? We can’t possibly share the torture part. I need more time to figure things out.”
Doc Tucker sighed. “I’ll think of something. But time’s running out, Tiberius. If what happened to Lucy were to happen again…”
“It won’t.”
Doc Tucker wrapped his scarf around his neck. “You’re the sheriff. I trust you’ll keep us all safe.”
Doc Tucker left and his last words pierced Tiberius’ ears like the screech of nails against slate. Souls Well drowned in a whirlpool of tragedy and horror, and Tiberius was so tired of swimming against the spiraling current. Maybe the truth was that no one would ever be safe again.
Maybe, just maybe, everything would be easier if he gave up and just floated, forsaken and hollow, into the boundless void.
XVII
The setting sun traversed the stained-glass windows of the damp, cold church, and colored the rows of pews with red, blue and green. Tiberius followed the path of votive candles down the aisle to the altar. He glanced inside the open casket.
Doc Tucker had done a good job closing and cleaning the traces of Lucy’s autopsy; Madame Valentine had taken care of the rest. She’d washed Lucy’s body, put makeup on her ashen face, and dressed her in a discreet, white dress. A garland made of intertwined pine branches decorated Lucy’s blonde curls, the farewell gift from her girlfriends at the Silver Moon.
Father Darley agreed to a short, intimate service. They expected a small crowd anyway. No one really cared about the girls of the Silver Moon but the girls themselves. Hardly anyone in Souls Well thought of those women as women, but as china dolls that looked forever young and pretty until they fell and cracked. Beautiful, yes, but in terms of their value to the town, expendable.
Madame Valentine comforted her girls as they sobbed, squeezed together on one of the front benches, both mournful and afraid. Doc Tucker had told everyone that Lucy died of a weak heart, but the girls were terrified of a contagious disease. Souls Well was no stranger to consumption. None of the girls wanted to be the next to leave a young, good-looking corpse. Souls Well had slowly transformed into a shrine of eternal grief and fear.
Tiberius signaled Madame Valentine then waited by the shadow of the confessionary. She left her girls with her son and zigzagged between the pews to join him on the other side of the church, the tail of her long, black dress trailing after her.
“I’m sorry I made you lie to your girls,” Tiberius whispered.
“Maybe it’s for the better. Some of them still have nightmares about Violet’s murder. If they found out that Lucy…” Madame Valentine squeezed the jet rosary that hung around her neck. The beads clinked under her long fingers. “I’ve lost two girls in less than a year, Sheriff. Two. Maybe the violence I left behind in my younger days is catching up to me.”
“Whoever killed Lucy will follow The Tanager to the gallows.”
“I hope so.” Madame Valentine stared at Tiberius with her dark blue eyes. Her red hair, streaked with gray, was pulled away from her face, wrapped in a tight bun. “Is there something else, Sheriff?”
“Lucy. You know everything about your girls. What they do, who they meet, where they go. Is there anything you can tell me? Anything at all.”
The colored light of the stained glass fell on Madame Valentine’s high cheekbones and firm lips. “Lucy’s story is much simpler than any of the other girls. She only met with one man for the past year. He paid good money to make sure she had no other suitors.”
“Whitlock.”
Madame Valentine said nothing. Her silence only confirmed what Tiberius already suspected.
“About where Lucy went, I’m not sure. For the past month or so, she came in and out more often than before, but she diverted the conversation whenever I asked her where she’d been. This much I can tell you, though, her time at the Silver Moon had come to an end. She was leaving us.”
“Leaving? To go where?”
“That I do not know, Sheriff. She came to me at the beginning of the week. She’d decided to leave my house for good, but she wouldn’t tell me why or where she was going next.”
Tiberius glanced at the sobbing girls on the front bench. “Were you alright with her leaving?”
“My girls aren’t slaves, Sheriff,” she replied harshly. “They’re free to leave the Silver Moon if they so please. I gave Lucy my blessing and wished her well. She looked… happy.”
“Did you know she was pregnant?”
Madame Valentine trembled, sat on the far end of the nearest bench, and squeezed her rosary tighter. “I did not.”
Father Darley took his place behind the altar and greeted the congregation.
“You should join your girls, Madame Valentine.” Tiberius offered his arm and walked her back to the front of the church.
“Lucy told me that you and her were sweethearts once,” she said as they made their way back between the pews.
“That was long ago. We were nothing but kids then. It was long before I became Sheriff and she—"
“She moved to my Silver Moon.”
“Yes.”
“I’m truly sorry, Sheriff. We all treasure the memory of our first love. I hope you can still keep yours intact.”
Madame Valentine sat down with her girls. Jesse Valentine and Doc Tucker stood behind them. Jesse pulled Tiberius’ sleeve when he passed by and Tiberius leaned in.
“I asked all the girls and swept the saloon head to toe. Lucy’s things are nowhere to be found,” Jesse whispered.
Tiberius nodded and clapped his shoulder. Then he joined Sarah Anne, who’d just crossed the church’s door and sat by herself at the rear. Her face was half-covered by a black veil.
“Why did you lie?” she asked in a low voice.
Tiberius blinked and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What are you taking about, Sarah?”
“Doc Tucker told everyone Lucy died of a faint heart. You told me she’d been murdered.”
“Keep your voice down, would you?”
Father Darley started his eulogy. His melodic murmurs echoed inside the stone walls, like a voice underwater.
“If there’s a killer on the loose, people deserve to know. Even if—” Sarah Anne lowered her veil and covered her perfect, marble chin. “Even if that killer is my father.”
“Please Sarah, don’t make this more difficult than it already is.”
Father Darley had gone quiet. All the heads turned to him and Sarah Anne. Had they been too loud? After a second of anxiety, Tiberius realized Father Darley had invited him to come up and say a few words. He could almost feel Sarah Anne’s burning gaze on the back of his neck as he walked down the aisle.
Tiberius took his place behind the pulpit and cleared his throat. “Lucy and I grew up together. I loved her like a sister. Everybody who truly knew her loved her. She was a good girl. With a big heart. Big dreams. It’s unfair that sickness—”
Sarah Anne stormed off. The slamming of the heavy wooden door rumbled like thunder and interrupted Tiberius’ speech.
Why, Sarah? Why? Tiberius feared he might have lost his lover’s trust.
Souls Well had never had an official undertaker. Traditionally, the families of the deceased took care of the burial, but Lucy had no living relatives. Tiberius and Madame Valentine chose a place for her grave by the churchyard, under a small, fragrant pine tree. Far enough from the grim hill that held the empty graves of the miners.
Afternoon turned into evening as they put Lucy into the ground. People snuggled under their coats and shawls and left in small waves, until just Tiberius, Madame Valentine, Doc Tucker and Father Darley remained.
“I’d like to stay for a while longer,” Tiberius told the rest.
When he was alone, Tiberius grabbed his hunting knife and corrected the message Souls Well’s carpenter had so hastily carved on Lucy’s cross:
Here Lies
Lucy Moon Lulu DeLune
Beloved friend.
XVIII
As Tiberius patrolled the graveyard, the silence put his mind at ease. He’d finally escaped the chaotic noise of the past few hours. The quiet cemetery brought him peace. He stayed vigilant, but keeping his eyes open was an extraordinary effort; his energy abandoned him with every step he took.
Tiberius took another stroll around the churchyard. He tiptoed under Father Darley’s ajar window. The priest had asked him to delegate his patrolling, as Tiberius was in obvious need of sleep. Tiberius had refused. He was tired, yes, but the weight of his revolver on his belt reminded him of his mission. He had to protect Lucy. No one would touch her ever again. No one would disturb the sleep of Souls Well’s dead.
Tiberius placed his forehead on one of the church’s walls. He rubbed his hands against the damp moss and wet his face. Tiberius leaned against the cold stone, ignoring the sudden chill creeping down his spine. He lowered his hat and listened to the moaning wind and the chirping crickets.
When Tiberius opened his eyes, the blackness had turned blacker. The flame of his lamp had died, leaving only the gleaming full moon with its dim, satin halo. Had he dozed off? For how long? Tiberius marched towards Lucy’s grave, guided by the moonlight that covered the graveyard.
Silver & Bone (American Alchemy - Wild West Book 1) Page 8
