by Kaki Warner
He told the Cheyenne about the fire and the Chinese worker’s death. “The fire was set on purpose, and the Chinaman’s death wasn’t an accident. Some think an Indian did it because the man’s long braid was taken. But I figure if an Indian had done it, he would have taken scalp with it. Right?”
Thomas shrugged. “I am not French so I do not take scalps. They stink.”
“And I doubt it was another Chinaman,” Ethan went on. “He’d have no need of the pigtail. It could have been someone from another railroad, trying to stop work on the bridge line. Or someone who didn’t like the Chinese. Or maybe a prospector or trapper.”
“White people. You cause trouble wherever you go.”
“Know anything about prospectors living in the canyon?”
Thomas looked over at him. “I know everything that happens in the canyon. It has been my home for many years.” He faced forward again. “There were two.”
“Were?”
“One died.”
“How?”
“Rocks fell on him.”
“You saw him? Where?”
“Three miles past your wooden trough.”
“What about the other one? Weems, I think he’s called.”
“He wanders still. I think there is something wrong in his head. Why else would he dig holes like a mole, searching for yellow rocks?”
They rode in silence as Ethan mulled over this new information. The remaining prospector had to be the same man who had reported seeing another surveyor at the other end of the canyon. Ethan definitely needed to talk to this Weems fellow. “You should have told somebody when you found the body.”
Thomas gave him a derisive look. “Why? He was just another dead ve’ho’e. I have seen many. Almost as many as dead Cheyenne.”
“Do you think the landslide was deliberate, or an accident?”
“It was hard to tell. But the pouches in his long pants had been pulled out.”
“You mean his pockets were turned inside out?”
Thomas nodded.
Had the dead man’s pockets been searched before his fall or after? The ground in the canyon was rocky and unstable. Maybe the prospector had been looking for something in his own pockets. A compass. A penknife. Something to eat. Maybe he had accidentally triggered the slide. Or maybe he had been pushed to his death, and someone had tried to make it look like a rockfall. “Was he buried?”
Redstone shrugged. “If so, coyotes had dug him up.”
So it could have been murder or an accident. “We need to talk to that fellow Weems. Brodie was supposed to locate him. If he hasn’t been able to, do you think you could find him?”
“Of course. I am Cheyenne.”
Fifteen
It was dusk when Thomas and Ethan reached Heartbreak Creek. Although he was anxious to see Audra, Ethan wanted to check with Brodie first, to see if he had found the miner he wanted to question.
Reining in before the sheriff’s office, he looked through the barred window and saw it was empty. “Where you headed?” he asked the Cheyenne.
“The Brodie house. I have a message from Prudence Lincoln for her sister.”
“If the sheriff is there, tell him what you told me about the dead prospector. If he wants to discuss it, he can find me at the hotel.”
Redstone nodded and turned toward the bridge that crossed Mulberry Creek. Ethan cut through to the backstreet and the livery.
His hands were much better now, and he was no longer wearing the splints, so he was able to tend Renny without Driscoll’s help. It was dark when he headed to the hotel. As he stepped up onto the stoop, he glanced through the dining room window and saw Audra at a table with the Rylanders and a man he didn’t know. A slim redheaded man, wearing spectacles, and talking as much with his hands as his mouth. The way Audra was smiling at him brought a twist in Ethan’s chest.
Forgoing a stop by the water closet, he went through the hotel’s back door, down the short hallway to the dining room, and straight to their table.
“Evening,” he said pleasantly, removing his hat.
Everyone but the newcomer smiled in welcome.
“When did you get back?” Tait asked, rising to offer a handshake.
“Just now. Thomas Redstone came with me. He’s headed over to the Brodies’ house.” He glanced at Audra and was gratified that she seemed pleased to see him. She was wearing a dress he hadn’t seen before. The color made her eyes look greener and her flush pinker. She had never looked more beautiful.
“Miss Pearsall,” he said with a nod. “Mrs. Rylander.” Then his gaze settled on the newcomer, who hadn’t risen, but had stopped eating to regard Ethan with a puzzled look.
“Peter,” Rylander said to the newcomer, “this is Ethan Hardesty. He’s with the railroad. Ethan, this is Peter Bonet, the new editor of the Heartbreak Creek Herald. He arrived this morning.”
The newcomer remained seated, and didn’t offer his hand. Puzzlement gave way to speculation. “Hardesty? From California?”
Ethan froze, too addled to respond. A buzzing began in his ears.
The man smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile and it didn’t reach his eyes. “You were the architect, weren’t you? On that hospital renovation north of San Francisco.”
The buzzing grew louder. Ethan struggled to think. Aware of the others listening, he turned to Rylander. “We have another dead man,” he said through tight lips. “If you want to discuss it, or if Brodie comes, I’ll be in the Red Eye next door.” Then he spun on his heel and left the room.
He was on his second drink and his nerves were finally beginning to settle when Brodie and Redstone came through the saloon door. He waved them over. Before they’d reached his table, Rylander came in behind them. Even though there was an entry into the saloon from the lobby of the hotel, Lucinda Rylander kept the door locked. Ethan suspected that in some future renovation, she’d get rid of it altogether.
Pushing the incident in the dining room to the back of his mind, Ethan signaled the bartender to bring three more glasses. As soon as the three men were seated, he asked Redstone to repeat for Tait what he’d told him earlier.
The Cheyenne recounted finding the dead prospector, where the body was, and how long he thought the man had been dead—by now, at least a month.
“I hope you buried him,” Brodie said.
Redstone shrugged.
“Hell.”
“That’s about when that other miner, Weems, reported seeing the surveyor in the far end of the canyon,” Rylander said. “Which means the surveyor was in the area when the prospector was killed.”
Ethan nodded. “Opportunity and motive, assuming he had been sent to stir up trouble.”
At the bar, three sluice workers got into an argument. Brodie looked over. When the voices grew louder, he said, “Hey.”
A single word, spoken in a calm tone, yet it brought instant results. It was apparent to Ethan that even though the sheriff considered his position only temporary, he had a firm grip on the town. In fact, judging by the respectful looks and deferential greetings sent their way, the three men sharing his table were the power of Heartbreak Creek.
The barkeep brought their glasses.
Brodie and Rylander each took one. Redstone asked for ginger beer instead.
After pouring whiskey into his glass, the sheriff took a sip, shuddered, then looked in disgust at the amber liquid in the bottle. “I miss Wallace.”
Rylander snorted. “You miss his whiskey.” To Ethan, he explained that the earl kept a private store of Scotch whiskey behind the bar. “Tasty stuff.”
“Every time I drink this,” Brodie complained, “my eyesight seems worse.”
“That is because you are old,” Redstone said.
The sheriff reared back to glare at him. “No older than you.”
“Why do you think this
death is related to the Chinaman’s?” Rylander asked, bringing the conversation back on track.
“A hunch. But if I could question the miner, Weems, I’d know for sure. Have you located him yet?”
Brodie shook his head. “Haven’t seen him or his partner.”
“He had a partner? Could that be the dead prospector you found, Redstone?”
“Maybe. I have seen the two of them together.”
“Then we’ve got to locate Weems as soon as possible, because he could be a target, too.” Ethan pushed his glass away. Folding his arms on top of the stained table, he looked at the other men. “How many deaths have there been since we started this project?”
Brodie thought about it. “Three. The tree-cutter, the Chinaman, and this prospector.”
“What do they have in common?” Ethan didn’t wait for an answer. “They’re all missing something. The tree-cutter’s watch. The Chinaman’s pigtail. I don’t know if anything was taken from the prospector, but Redstone said his pockets were turned inside out. Which probably means they were searched. Which might mean something was taken from him, too.”
“So?”
Ethan had a sudden memory—
—standing at her dresser, the box of stolen trinkets in his shaking hand. Looking up into the mirror. Seeing her behind him and watching her face change when she realized what he held.
“They were dying anyway.” Leaning into him, she rubbed her bare breasts against his back. He could feel the hard nubs of her nipples and knew she was aroused. Hungry. “I just helped them along.”
“You killed them, Eunice! They were your patients. They trusted you.”
“And I gave them what they needed.” She laughed, her breath hot on his neck. In the mirror, her eyes were as soulless as a viper’s. “Think of me as an angel of mercy.”
Then he saw the blade—
With effort, he pushed the image away. “I’ve heard that some killers like to take mementoes of their kills.”
Rylander glanced at Redstone. “Like scalps?”
“Those are trophies of war,” the Cheyenne said defensively.
“I’m talking about people who kill randomly for the fun of it,” Ethan explained. “Or because they have some warped urge that drives them to do it. The trinkets they take from each victim help them relive the murder.”
And fuel the need to do it again.
“But these deaths don’t seem that random,” Tait argued. “If the murderer is the same person who set the fires and vandalized the sluice, then he’s got a purpose. To stop the railroad from coming through the canyon.”
“If that was the sole reason, then why take a keepsake from each victim?”
“We don’t know if he took anything from the dead prospector,” Brodie reminded them.
“That’s why we need to talk to his partner. As soon as possible. These killers don’t stop. Not until they’re caught.”
Or killed.
Redstone rose. “I will find him.”
“Need help?”
“From a white man?” Laughing, Thomas left the saloon.
Brodie pushed back his chair. “I better go, too. Brin tried her hand at cooking again, and I promised Ed I’d scrape the ceiling.”
After the sheriff left, Rylander remained. Anticipating questions, Ethan prepared himself. A part of him was almost relieved to have it all out in the open. But another part of him dreaded the reactions. He liked and admired this man. And the others he had met in Heartbreak Creek. And Audra. He’d been reviled for his failure once, and it had cost him his career. What would he lose this time?
“I don’t much like him, either,” Tait said.
Ethan frowned, confused. “Who?”
“Bonet. He’s officious and arrogant. Plus, he doesn’t like railroads.”
“How do you know?”
Tait swirled the whiskey in his glass. “I have friends at the Pinkerton Agency. They sent me a file.”
Ethan watched a greasy skin rise on the inside of the glass and waited.
“Apparently, he had a brother who worked for one of the Eastern lines. Died in a tunnel explosion. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have encouraged him to come. Or let Luce encourage Miss Pearsall to work for him.”
Audra was working for him? Ethan didn’t like that idea. “So why did you?”
He gave a crooked smile. “Luce wanted the town to have a newspaper.” Tait took a sip, returned the glass to the exact spot on the stained table, then leveled those probing gray eyes at Ethan. “They sent me a file on you, too.”
And there it comes.
But oddly, now that the moment of truth was finally at hand, Ethan was more relieved than apprehensive. “What did it say?”
“That you’re an architect. That you designed a glass wall at the Salty Point Marine Hospital. And nearly three years ago, on October twenty-first, an earth tremor brought it down, killing three people. Two construction workers and a nurse.”
“They call them earthquakes.”
“No criminal charges were brought against you,” Tait went on. “Yet you were blamed. Why?”
“Because I insisted on putting glass where stone should have been. It was my first commission. I wanted to design something no one else had ever dared.” He gave a bitter laugh. “And with good reason, it turned out.”
“What happened?”
More memories burst into Ethan’s mind—
Eunice laughing, her arm rising and falling. A searing pain in his back. Another across his shoulder. His shoes slipping on blood as he stumbled from her bedroom into the work area. Yelling at the two workers to run. The ground shaking. Then a thunderous explosion as eight hundred panes of glass shattered and rained death down on top of them—
He closed his eyes to block the images, took a breath, and opened them to find Rylander studying him. “Glass isn’t stable,” he said. “The panes I insisted on using were too big. When the tremors started, they cracked. It was like twenty cannons going off all at once. Then they fell.”
“An act of nature,” Ryland said.
“An error in judgment,” Ethan countered, “that cost three lives.”
Rylander stared silently into his glass. The sluice workers left and the barkeep began wiping down the empty tables. “The report also said you settled money on the families of the two workers who died. Out of your own pocket.”
“They were good men. They had children depending on them.”
“And the nurse?”
“Ethan . . . help me . . .”
He could have saved her. When the tremors started, he could have pulled her with him under the workbench. Or later, after the shaking stopped, when he saw the shard of glass sticking out of her chest, he could have tried to stop the bleeding.
“Please . . . Ethan . . . help me . . .”
Instead, because they were worth saving and she wasn’t, he had gone to help the two workers who hadn’t escaped before the glass fell. Of all the poor decisions that led to that tragic day, leaving Eunice Eckhart to die was the only one he didn’t regret.
“She left no family behind.”
* * *
“It was rather strange the way he stormed out,” Lucinda said, studying Audra over the rim of her coffee cup.
The men had left an hour ago—Tait to meet with Ethan in the saloon, and Mr. Bonet to return to his unpacking. Audra knew she should go upstairs to relieve Winnie, but it was so pleasant to share a few quiet minutes with Lucinda in the nearly empty dining room. “It did seem odd,” Audra admitted.
“Almost as if he was jealous of Peter.”
Audra forced a laugh. “Oh, I doubt that.” In fact, she thought Ethan’s abrupt departure was more likely due to Mr. Bonet’s mention of the hospital in California, rather than any feelings of jealousy. Still, it had been surprising. And uncharacteristic. Despite
his teasing, Ethan wasn’t a rude man.
“So what do you think of him?”
“Of Mr. Hardesty?”
Lucinda laughed. “Oh, I know what you think of Mr. Hardesty. But what about Mr. Bonet?”
“An interesting man,” Audra hedged. In truth, she found Peter Bonet rather confusing. He seemed friendly enough, but there was an intensity about him that was a bit off-putting. Granted, both of the Rylanders were rather intense, too, but they didn’t seem so . . . pushy about it.
Or perhaps it wasn’t that at all. Perhaps what bothered her most was that Peter Bonet reminded her so much of Richard Villars.
“Well, it’s apparent he’s interested in having you work for him,” Lucinda said. “Will you accept the position he offered?”
“How can I not? It’s a wonderful opportunity.” Being a small-town newspaper clerk might not have been her dream, but it would certainly pay the bills and keep her skills honed in case she ever got the courage—or the time—to begin writing on her own.
Lucinda’s face brightened when a tall figure crossed the lobby. “There’s Tait. Maybe now we can find out who this new dead person is.”
After pausing by the serving station to pour a mug of coffee, he continued on to their table. Settling into the chair he had occupied earlier, he sat back and regarded his wife with a knowing smile. “Let the interrogation begin.”
Lucinda swatted at his shoulder. “So? Who died?”
“A prospector.”
“When?”
“Maybe a month ago.”
“And you think it’s related to the other deaths?”
“We’re trying to determine that. How is your father, Miss Pearsall?”
“What? Oh.” Rattled by the abrupt change in subject, Audra made an offhand gesture. “Fine. His cough is much better, thank you.”
“I’m pleased to hear it.” Mr. Rylander continued to look at her, a bland expression in his gray eyes.
Audra finally got the message. “Well. I should go. Winnie is probably wondering where I am.” She started to rise.
