Newman sat up a bit straighter in his seat. “Of course, I would. You didn’t need to tell me that. I would have done that anyways.”
Grant nodded. “I figured as much, but I want there to be some clear rules for keeping the gold.”
Newman smiled. “You don’t know how much this means to me, to us. Patsy and I can go somewhere and start over. We won’t have to stay here and battle things out.”
Jesse squinted and started to sputter. He didn’t know what to make of what Newman was saying. Grant could tell that he wanted to speak his mind, but his father thought better of it and just clenched his jowls tight under his whiskers. Jesse Grant, even silent, could be a figure of stern disapproval. Years of living with Hannah Grant had taught him well.
Grant could understand the thoughts though. Newman would have a rough time of keeping his secret here. Small towns didn’t keep hidden lives. The town would know in a matter of months, and the trouble would begin. Grant had heard of secret organizations springing up in the South that lynched blacks who even looked at a white person. A full-fledged relationship was trouble brewing. Yet Grant also knew that money could grease enough wheels to make life easier for the both of them. Cash seemed to break down even the strongest of barriers and buffer the rich.
“So I’m assuming that you agree to these conditions?” Grant stood up and stretched. Yesterday’s activities and the long hours of sitting and explaining how they came to be in an abandoned root cellar had taken their toll on him. He was used to being more active.
Newman stood too, reminding Grant with his sticks that he’d helped save his family yesterday. “Deal by me.” Instead of offering Grant his hand, Newman held out a package of leather bound notebooks.
Grant took the offering with some shock. He hoped that Newman wasn’t offering him a cut of the treasury for not telling the government. He would be mightily offended and consider changing his mind about the deal. The notebooks were held together with a piece of gray ribbon. Grant untied the knot and let the ribbon fall to the floor. He opened the first book and nearly choked on his tongue. The books were the lost journals of Jefferson Davis.
Grant leafed through the pages of the first book. The Confederates would want these books almost as much as they did the gold. Rumors had abounded that Jeff Davis wasn’t in his right mind during those last bleak days of March and April. Anyone who thought his government could continue to function as it moved in railcars from city to city was a few bullets shy of a full revolver. Davis’ attitude had been one of fighting for the cause at all costs, ‘til the last man fell. He’d wanted to abandon the East and continue a guerilla war from Texas. The loss of life would have been tremendous and the war would still be puttering on. Most of the men who opposed this view resigned from the government rather than continue to fight with the strong president.
Even so, his arrest had sparked a furor both in the South and abroad. He’d been near walking dead when they arrested him. Just a man with a few troops left to protect him. The melancholia had set in on him as bad as it ever had for Lincoln. Davis’ fugue state had begun to lift during the six months he’d spent in prison, but people still clamored for his release on humanitarian grounds. If these notebooks could prove that Davis had gone around the bend, the legitimacy of the Confederacy would be dealt another blow. No one wants to think their cause led by a mad man.
At first glance, Grant could find no signs of insanity in the prose, but he wasn’t qualified to judge the man’s sanity. He would leave that to others. Davis’ prose was clear, but not straightforward and precise like Grant’s. He’d earned a reputation for his writing that had served him well in the Army. Soldiers would become confused with vague orders. Clarity of writing made that less likely. Still Jefferson Davis had recounted without outlandish detail the final days of his administration, the only president on American soil except for the Federal government to ever exist. The books needed to be preserved.
Grant decided to put them away for another time when he could study them at his leisure. More’n likely, the details would tell him about the former president’s state of mind. He tried to imagine what Andy Johnson would say about retrieving these journals. They had been given up for lost when the troops who arrested Davis couldn’t locate the books. Their disappearance only led credence to the claims that their contents needed to be hidden from the Federals.
As Grant started to head upstairs to see Julia, Jesse started asking Newman about his commission for setting up the deal.
Chapter 20
That night, Grant couldn’t sleep. He decided to stroll the streets of Bethel at the cock’s crow. He still wasn’t satisfied with Mrs. Brown’s guilt in the murders. She had confessed to the assaults and to trying to steal the map from their room at Newman’s house. But she had steadfastly denied any part in the killing of Woerner and Halley.
Grant knew that he couldn’t leave town until this matter was properly resolved. Yet his schedule was tight. Julia would be pushing him to move on soon, and head towards Cincinnati where the receptions would be more to her liking. Galas, speeches, and cheering crowds. Grant enjoyed the attention and the recognition of his success, but he dreaded the milling, teeming people who would be there. Bethel was more comfortable to a simple man where the village people could be counted in hundreds. Yet even here, people expected a certain behavior now that he had found success. He was now a man who clamored after accolades in their eyes, a famous man and not one of them.
He passed by Woerner’s house. It was a long shot, but maybe he would find something inside that would tell him what he needed to know. Grant craved certainty, now that the war was over. All the hard decisions lie ahead for the nation. War had been straightforward compared to the impending political battles of Reconstruction. He wanted to face Washington with a clear conscious on this matter. He took the long front walk to the door and opened it. The door wasn’t locked, and Grant went inside. The smell of neglect had already begun to set in. It wouldn’t take long in the damp, dusty days of fall for rot and decay to set in. He’d seen it all over the South.
Grant started with the staircase again. It seemed a logical place to look as Woerner had spent his last few moments alive there. He walked up and down the stairs, but found no signs of tampering other than what he’d seen before. He descended the stairs and noticed a long white thread on the bottom step. Grant stopped to pick it up. The strand looked like a piece from a linen cloth. Or from someone who did tatting. Grant knew of only one person who associated with this case that did this kind of work. He took a long deep breath and tried to think.
He wasn’t sure how to approach this additional evidence any more than he’d sure certain how to deal with the gold. Life held so many gray decisions, where nothing was black and white, right or wrong. He wasn’t sure of what to do. He could handle this situation in so many ways. In the war, he pushed ahead no matter what the cost in lives or bloodshed. Grant just didn’t think of defeat and therefore, it didn’t happen. He just thrust until he found a weak spot in the enemy to exploit. He thought that the most practical approach in this matter too, but wanted a second opinion. His family would rule based on their own purposes at this point. Jesse would consider the money, and Julia would want the most expeditious route.
Grant looked out the front window and saw the steeple of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He decided to talk to the Reverend Evans. Perhaps he’d have a less biased opinion of the situation. He also knew the suspects and was likely to know more of what the ethical solution might be.
Grant strode over to the church, never breaking his fast pace. The doors to the chapel were open, and Grant went inside. There would be none of the social chitchat or donations today. He was not his father in many ways. Grant had questions to be answered. He wanted to know what the preacher knew about this town, and how it might relate to the crimes.
He stepped into the apse of the church and found Reverend Evans standing in a pile of gold coins. The man looked up wearing an expression of
raw lust on his face. His eyes were the size of the coins. His glazed look amazed Grant. As if the reverend had a glimpse of heaven. Evans stood there for a second and regained his composure, becoming the meek pastor once more.
“General Grant, what an unexpected pleasure. What brings you back to our church? Your mother was a big supporter of ours, but I certainly can’t compare anyone to our Clarissa Halley. She brought over another sizable donation.”
Grant looked at the pile of money and tried to calculate the amount. He didn’t have his father’s flare for money, but that was not a new thing. He’d had his financial failures rubbed in his face for too long to forget it. He wished he knew how much Newman had parceled out to the widow, but even without an accurate number, he was pretty sure that Clarissa Halley’s entire portion lay on the floor of the church right now. “When did this happen?”
“Last night. She’d received a windfall from her family and wanted to share it with us. The Lord is at work.”
Grant didn’t relish the thought of a non-Sunday sermon. He’d heard enough of that on the weekends without adding to it now. Especially from Reverend Evans who had shown his true colors when he thought he was alone. The greedy man who was planning his next building campaign should stumble over words about how the Lord worked. Grant wondered how much pressure he’d put on the widow to make a contribution. Would he resort to blackmail to get his hands on the money? Grant wasn’t sure why someone would hand over their entire parcel without a fight. “Indeed He is. Sometimes, we just don’t know what ways the Lord works.”
The reverend nodded. “How true. I didn’t know that Clarissa had any rich kin, and yet she’s made two sizable donations to the church. I don’t know what we’d do without her.”
Grant nodded. “How much did she give?”
The reverend smiled, and motioned Grant to follow him to the back of the church. “We can’t discuss the specifics of another member of the congregation’s giving, but the sum is over one thousand dollars. I simply can’t believe it.”
“Did she indicate why she did that? From my understanding that was the entire sum she received from her inheritance. It’s not a tithe. And with her husband dead, I would think that she would need all the money she could get for security.”
Evans paused a moment, as if to think about the ramifications of taking the woman’s last dollar. Evans might have decided to shake her down for it. Perhaps he needed to re-read the verses about the widow’s mite. “Well, to be honest, she indicated that she didn’t want the money. She didn’t give me specifics, but apparently the source of the cash was distasteful to her. Giving it to the church was her way of doing penance for it. Making amends with her Maker.”
The minister seemed to believe that money could be purified like a soul, merely by giving it to someone who wanted it as much as anyone else. Evans had plans for it, just like the Browns had, and just like the Confederate government had. “Can that be done? Can you buy forgiveness?”
The minister’s lips pressed into a thin white line. “She’s not buying forgiveness. She’s making amends.”
“To who? Her children won’t have a comfortable life. She’ll have to work or find someone to support her.”
“She’s going to live with relatives in Maysville next week. They’ve kindly agreed to take her in. She’ll be selling the house, and she indicated that she’d have enough to live on from that.”
Grant knew Maysville, a little town on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, just across the water from Ripley. Many Ohio residents had come from Maysville, a popular crossing point of the river. Jobs were a bit easier to find in Southern Ohio, where industry had started to take root. The quiet, private ways of the people traveled across the river with them though.
Kentuckians had not been as badly touched as the rest of the South. The Border States had been problematic throughout the conflict. Most of Northern Kentucky had been protected from battle during the war, because of its proximity to Ohio and the North. Even Jesse and Hannah Grant called Covington, Kentucky home now. The most intense fighting had occurred south of the Mason-Dixon Line. As such, most of Ohio didn’t consider Kentucky to be the enemy as they did with Virginia and Georgia and other states where heavy battle had taken place.
Kentucky would never have been allowed to secede. Lincoln could not have stood for his home state to go with the Rebels and lose another free state in those first dire days of the war. Even so, as many Rebels came from Kentucky as loyalists. For every Lincoln, there was a Breckinridge, who had once been Vice President of the U.S, and had offered his services to the C.S.A.
Fortunately, the South had made an error in sending troops to Kentucky early on. That gave Lincoln sufficient reason to protect the state from the aggressors and install troops in Kentucky. Those troops never left the state until Appomattox.
Yet for most of Bethelites, Maysville might as well be the Oregon territory. It was out of sight and out of mind of the people who had to focus on today for their existence. “What about her children? Won’t they need to be protected and cared for?”
“God protects all of his own, General. Just as he watches the lilies in the valley, he watches over us. Clarissa will be well-provided for by the Lord.”
“And just what will her money be used for here? Feeding the poor, rebuilding from the War?” Grant strolled up the reverend’s desk and looked at the papers without disturbing them. He’d learned the old trick of reading memos upside down from his years in the Army. The papers mostly dealt with the plans for an added wing to the church, a separate space for the choir, and a large new office for the pastor. Words like mahogany, and Italian marble shot off the page at him. Grant doubted that Evans would know what God wanted from the money.
“We have a number of missions here in town that will benefit from this munificence. The entire landscape of the town will be changed.”
Grant sighed. He could tell that he wouldn’t get very far with the Reverend. The money had started to leech out of the original group into society, causing havoc wherever it went. Grant winced at the thought. He could fight a war over political philosophy, or the concept of a strong Federal government or even to free the black men of the country, but he couldn’t stand the thought of fighting a war to fill the coffers of a few. The thought sickened him in a way that few others did. He couldn’t bear to think of the bodies rotting in Cold Harbor for the want of the almighty greenback.
Even Grant’s own foibles during the war came from money. He’d received much grief for having issued a proclamation in the South, barring Jews from profiteering during the war. Black marketers made a fortune off of Southern cotton, which in turn bought guns and ammunition to shoot Grant’s soldiers. The merchants indirectly aided the South in continuing their fight against the Union. Few people had known that Jesse Grant’s partners in the illegal cotton trade were Jewish, and the order effectively threw his father out of the war zone. Grant had taken care of a family problem with a racist edict. He knew that, but had to protect his own reputation. By the time he rescinded the edict, Jesse had been well schooled in what he could not do in trade.
Grant had been chastised for his anti-Semitic behavior, but it had found a better home in him than the thought of his father making Greeley’s headlines with stories of Jesse’s shady methods of making a dollar. The man had even had the nerve to write to Stanton requesting that the Department of War buy saddles from his store. By then, Grant and Stanton knew each other well enough that the suggestion didn’t harm their working roles. Yet here stood a man of God, a man of the cloth, and he was just as tempted as any of the black market bandits who had made his life a misery during the war. Was this to be the way of the world after the War?
Grant made up his mind and took the back exit from the church. Though not as he intended, Grant knew what had to be done now.
Chapter 21
He’d no sooner got to the Halley place than the door opened. Grant had come straight from the church here, not wanting to waste more tim
e. He and Julia wanted to continue this trip, and he didn’t want the killer to slip through his fingers before he could stop this gold lust.
“I’ve been expecting you.”
Grant looked at Mrs. Halley with his brows furrowed. He didn’t know how that could be. He’d only come to his conclusions a few minutes ago that made his visit here necessary.
“You might as well come in. Don’t want all the neighbors to hear this. Or maybe they should.” She held the door for him and let him pass. Grant recalled the day of Halley’s funeral and how crowded the house had been. Now there was only the rhythmic clack of a grandfather clock.
“Then you know why I’m here?” Grant was still puzzled by the woman’s words. Certainly she couldn’t have any intuitive powers so great to know his mind.
“You want me to confess to killing my husband and Adam Woerner.”
Grant’s eyes widened. He had been expecting a long discussion, leading up to the accusations. Here she had come out with it before they’d even gotten comfortable in their chairs. “Um, well, yes, I guess I would like that.”
“Very well. Is there something you need me to sign? Or should I tell Crosson or a judge?”
Grant’s jaw about got splinters from hitting the floor. “A signed confession would be sufficient, I guess.”
“Hmm, very well.” The woman went to the next room and returned quickly with a sheet of paper and a fountain pen. She tapped the nib into the ink well and started to write. “Is there anything in particular that you wanted to know?”
Grant suspected a prank. No one could be this ready to incriminate herself for two murders. It wasn’t right. His children denied taking sweets with less equanimity than this woman admitted to taking two human lives. “How did you know that I was coming?”
US Grant Mysteries Boxed Set Page 32
