The Bride's Prerogative

by Davis, Susan Page

  Cyrus straightened and looked about. He focused on Ethan and lifted his free arm.

  “Chapman! Quick! Come over here.”

  Ethan blinked. He didn’t sound drunk. He raised his chin and stepped into the street. Lord, let me not have to mix it up with Cy tonight, please.

  He was only halfway across when Cyrus lunged down from the walkway and met him in the street.

  “It’s old Mrs. Peart!”

  “What?” Ethan stared at him. Was the man right out of his befuddled mind?

  “Millicent Peart. In my office. Go look.”

  Ethan struggled to make sense of that. Only one thing to do. He walked over and stepped onto the sidewalk. His boots thudded with each step to the office door. It was nearly dark inside. Before his eyes fully adjusted, he spotted a huddled figure on the floor near the cold box stove. It couldn’t be. He stepped closer and stared down at her. Cyrus’s words began to make sense. The poker lay beside her. He bent down and then stood up quickly. No wonder Cyrus had emptied his stomach. There’d be no question of how Milzie Peart died.

  A shadow darkened the room even more. He swung around. Cyrus stood in the doorway, staring at the crumpled form on the floor.

  “What happened?” Ethan asked.

  “She was in here when I came over to lock up. Almost didn’t see her.”

  “Can you light a lantern?”

  Cyrus hesitated, and Ethan didn’t blame him. The sight was bad enough in the gloom. When Cy reached for the kerosene lantern that hung over his desk, Ethan held out his hand. “I’ll do it. You go ‘round to Dooleys’ and fetch Hiram for me, would you?”

  Cyrus’s brow cleared. “Sure. I guess he’ll need to build another box. Oh, matches are in my drawer.” He nodded toward the desk.

  When he’d left, Ethan stood still for a moment. Lord, show me what to do. This is getting scary, and I’ve got no notion how to stop it. Please, Lord.

  Slowly, he moved around the desk and opened the top drawer. Sure enough, a box of safety matches rested inside. He lit the lantern and adjusted the wick. He had no reason not to look at Milzie again. Might as well get it over with.

  He set the lantern on the edge of the desk, pulled in a deep breath, and turned toward the body. From the distance of three yards, the brutal destruction of her skull wasn’t evident. He took a step toward her, bracing himself. Footsteps hurried along the boardwalk outside, and he paused. A moment later, Hiram appeared at the door. His gaze bounced from Ethan’s face to the still body on the floor. He grimaced.

  “Looks like someone took Cy’s poker to her,” Ethan said.

  Hiram nodded and inched closer.

  “I suppose we need to look her over a little better than we did Bert.” Ethan forced himself to approach the body. Blood ran over the floorboards around her head. He knelt down, careful to stay out of it.

  “Poor thing,” Hiram said softly, crouching beside him.

  “Where’ll we take her?” Ethan asked. “Livery stable?”

  “I sent Cyrus to ask Griff. Old Cy was white as my granny’s Irish table linen, and he didn’t seem eager to come back here.”

  “Understandable.” They sat staring down at her. “I hear a good undertaker can fix a person up so’s they look natural again,” Ethan said.

  “It would take a lot of fixin’.”

  “Yeah.” Ethan swallowed back bile. “Maybe we should get an old blanket or something to put her on before we move her.” Hiram nodded. “Gert might help clean her up a bit.”

  “Don’t want to ask her.”

  “Me neither.”

  After a long pause, Ethan said, “Maybe one of the older ladies?”

  “We could ask.”

  Between Milzie and the door lay a grimy flour sack. Ethan leaned over and pulled it to him. Lumpy metal items clanked together. He opened it and peered inside.

  “Cans and a wad of newspaper.” He pulled out a pair of dark stockings.

  Quick footsteps heralded a new arrival, and they both looked toward the door. Phineas Benton entered, panting and adjusting his waistcoat. “Gentlemen, can I be of assistance?”

  Ethan stuffed the stockings back into the sack and stood slowly. “I don’t think so, Pastor. This woman’s good and dead.”

  “So Mr. Fennel informed me. He stopped at my house on his way to fetch the smith.” Benton doffed his bowler hat and looked at the body with mournful eyes. “Is there anything I can do to help you, Sheriff?”

  “Well, Hiram and I were just saying we should get a blanket or something to put her on and tote her over to the livery. We usually lay folks out over there because we don’t have a … what you’d call a mortuary.”

  “Indeed,” Benton said. “Perhaps I can find something, though most of our bedclothes were newly donated by the parishioners.”

  “Ask my sister, Gert,” Hiram said.

  Benton glanced at him and nodded. “Thank you. Shall I go now?”

  “Please,” said Ethan.

  The preacher turned to go then looked back. “My wife will, of course, volunteer to assist the ladies who prepare the body for burial. I believe she was acquainted with Mrs. Peart, though I myself had never met her.”

  Hiram and Ethan exchanged looks.

  “That’d be fine,” Ethan said.

  “Perhaps Mrs. Walker would help, too.”

  Ethan doubted that, but he said nothing.

  “Gert will probably want to be there.” Hiram looked down at the floor.

  He was right; Gert would want to do a last service for one of the shooting club members and a senior resident of the town. Ethan still didn’t like the thought of her seeing this grisly sight and handling the bloody corpse. “There’s time to worry about that later. Just see if Miss Dooley can give us something to wrap her in, and we’ll get her over to the livery.”

  “It shall be done.” Benton tipped his hat and flitted out into the night.

  Ethan looked at Hiram, whose lips twitched. “Yeah, he strikes me that way, too. A mite formal for Fergus, but his heart’s good.”

  A moment later, Griffin arrived with Bill Stout and Ned Harmon, who had planned to sleep in his hayloft. The parson returned with a ragged old bedspread, and they began the grim task of transferring the body.

  “Easy now,” Griffin said as he carefully slid his arms under Milzie’s torso. “Get that cloth under her head when I lift it.”

  Ethan was glad he’d wound up with Milzie’s feet. He might have joined Ned outside vomiting if he’d taken the spot Griffin had. This wanton destruction of an old woman took him back to the atrocities he’d seen during the Indian wars.

  Once Milzie’s head was covered, things moved along quickly. The old woman wasn’t very heavy. Bill and Griffin started carrying her out, but Griffin paused and shook his head.

  “Just let me carry her, Bill,” the big man said. “You come along and make sure the blanket ain’t draggin’ or nothin’.”

  Ethan called after him, “I’ll be over in a few minutes, Griff.” He turned back into the room. Phineas stood near the desk, his hat in his hand, with the air of a footman awaiting his command.

  Hiram, however, knelt near the pool of dark blood.

  “Ethan.”

  “What is it, Hi?”

  His friend reached into his pocket and pulled out a jackknife. He opened one blade and bent low over the stain. Using the blade, he prodded at something resting in the blood.

  “For your collection,” Hiram said softly. He stood and wiped the small object on his shirttail then held it out to Ethan.

  “What is it?” Benton asked.

  Without looking, Ethan replied, “An 1866 Indian head penny.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Much later that evening, Gert poured coffee for Ethan and Hiram at the kitchen table.

  Ethan rubbed a hand across his eyes. “Thanks. Mrs. Benton will come after breakfast with Annie Harper, and you can all go over to the livery together to work on the body.” When he glanced up at her, the dark shadows
beneath his eyes stood out. A few weeks of sheriffing had aged him. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Of course. I wish I’d done more for her while she was alive. She never begged outright, but I could see she was hungry.”

  Ethan blew on his coffee and took a sip.

  “Libby said she pilfered a few things from the store,” Gert said. “She felt sorry for her and started giving her leftovers—broken crackers, dented tins, the last pickle in the barrel.”

  Hiram’s eyes spoke to her with his direct gaze and quirked eyebrows.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I’d best tell Ethan.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Mrs. Benton and I drove out to Milzie’s place this morning to visit her.”

  Ethan’s brows shot up, but he waited in silence.

  Gert cleared her throat. “We, uh, got a surprise. Milzie’s cabin had burned flat.”

  “What? When did that happen?”

  “No one seems to know. Milzie wasn’t home, but we saw signs that she’s been living in the cave up the hill where Frank tried to mine.”

  Ethan nodded. “I know the place.”

  “Well, she wasn’t anywhere around, so we stopped at the Robinsons’ on the way home. Lyman and Ruth said they didn’t know. Can you imagine? They live that close to her, and they haven’t been up to her place since last winter. Ruth’s been poorly this spring, I guess. She said Milzie stops in now and again, and they usually give her something to eat. But when we told them the cabin was burnt, they seemed shocked. Lyman took on a case of guilt, saying he ought to have checked on her. But they’d seen her several times this spring, so they figured she was the same as usual.”

  “Too bad. I think your shooting club did more for her than anything.” Ethan raised his cup again.

  Gert went to the pie safe and took out the leftover flapjacks she’d saved. “I figure it had to happen in the night, and no one saw the smoke. The last Lyman could tell me for sure that he’d seen it standing was early February. You two want a pancake with jam?”

  Ethan looked at Hiram before answering. When Hiram nodded, he said, “Don’t mind if I do.”

  Gert put the plate on the table between them and took the jam pot from the cupboard. She gave them each a knife, and they set to work spreading the flapjacks with jam, rolling them up, and wolfing them down. She’d meant to save them over for Hi’s breakfast with a couple of eggs, but no matter. These two had done a man’s work this evening, and they deserved a snack.

  Ethan ate three and then licked his fingers. “Sugar’s good for folks who’ve had a shock.”

  “How shocking was it?” she asked.

  “Worse than Bert. A lot worse. I hate to have you ladies see her like that.”

  Gert shrugged. “Someone’s got to clean her up. I mean, you can’t just bury a person all …”

  “Her clothes are right filthy, too.”

  She sat down at the end of the table, with Hiram and Ethan on either side of her. “We should have done more.”

  Hiram scrunched up his face as though he’d eaten a mustard pickle. “Do more for someone else.”

  “That’s a good thought,” Gert said. “I felt like a hypocrite after Apphia and I saw how she was living.”

  “It’s not your job to make sure everyone in Fergus is eating three square meals a day.” Ethan’s face flushed a bit, and he added quickly, “Though I’m grateful for the meals you’ve served this stray.”

  “Well, I think Hi’s right that we can do more for other people. There’s a lot of folks living hand to mouth around here. How long since anyone’s seen old Jeremiah Colburn, for instance? He’s got a flock of sheep on his place east of here, but I don’t recall seeing him for a long time.”

  “I heard Zach Harper mention him the other day,” Ethan said. “He’d come and wanted to trade three roosters to Zach for a hen. He gave him two.”

  “Well, good.” Gert rested her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. “I just hate to think of these poor old people dying alone.”

  Hiram drained his coffee cup and set it down. “Milzie wasn’t alone.”

  Sadness swept over Gert, and a painful lump rose in her throat. “I’ve been thinking about it.” She pressed her lips together and nodded. “I don’t know what Milzie was doing in Cyrus’s office tonight, but it could have been anyone who was attacked—anyone who went there at the wrong time. It could just as easily have been Isabel who was murdered.”

  Ethan frowned, and the lines at the corners of his eyes deepened. “Hiram told me about the other night when Isabel saw the man in the alley.”

  Gert wasn’t surprised that her brother had told Ethan the tale. They talked a fair amount when she wasn’t around, and Hiram took Ethan’s new responsibilities as seriously as Ethan did. “What if she’d gone looking for her father tonight instead of that night?”

  “Yes.” Ethan turned his cup around slowly, as though studying its design. “I’ve kept an eye out since, for men loitering about in the evening.”

  Hiram inhaled deeply. “You think that fella might have killed Milzie?”

  “I don’t know. What do you think?”

  Hiram set his jaw for a minute then shrugged.

  “Well, I have ideas about who killed Milzie,” Gert said.

  Ethan eyed her cautiously. “Plan on telling me?”

  She hesitated. She wouldn’t want him laughing at her. On the other hand, she’d had nothing to do but think while he and Hiram did their duty over at the Wells Fargo office tonight. Maybe she’d had more time to cogitate on it than either one of them had.

  “Who found Milzie’s body?” she asked.

  “Cyrus Fennel. He’d been over to the Nugget. I saw him leave the saloon carrying a bottle. I left shortly after he did, and I saw him come out of his office all in a dither.” Ethan gave a grim little smile. “I thought he was drunk. He got sick.”

  “So did Ned Harmon.” Hiram stood and took his mug to the stove, where he refilled it with coffee.

  Gert started to tell him he’d be awake all night if he kept drinking coffee, but she thought better of it. Hiram was thirty-three years old, and he could drink coffee if he wanted to. “So Cyrus was the first to see the body.”

  Ethan nodded. “So far as we know.”

  “And who found Bert Thalen’s body?”

  “Uh … I guess it was Cy—hey, you don’t think—” His forehead furrowed like a plowed field. “You’re not saying one of our leading citizens is going around killing folks, are you?”

  “I’m not saying anything. I just think it’s very interesting that we’ve had two murders in this town in the last six weeks, and the same person found both bodies.” She looked at Hiram. “Don’t you find that interesting, Hi?”

  He pursed his lips and nodded.

  Ethan slapped the table. “You two beat all. Cyrus was here the day Bert died, to pick up his rifle. I saw you shoot it, remember?”

  “Yes. But he left here, and we started eating supper.”

  “He said he found Bert dead and then ran over to the Walkers’, looking for the mayor.”

  “And at some point, he told Griffin Bane,” Gert added.

  “That’s right. I think Cy saw him on the street. And I recollect he found the mayor in the emporium, so pretty near everyone in town heard about it.”

  Gert nodded. “And tonight he goes into his office alone and comes out yelling murder.”

  “Not exactly. But you’re right that he found both bodies.” Ethan pushed back his chair. “Gert, you’re almost making me believe it, and that’s not good. I saw Cyrus just a few minutes before he sounded the alarm both times.”

  “Think on it,” she said.

  “I will. But right now I’m heading home to get some sleep. I’m frazzled, and there’s a lot to do tomorrow.” He reached for his hat and set it firmly on his head. “Wish I’d brought Scout over here instead of leaving him at the livery.”

  “Milzie’s all covered up,” Hiram s
aid. “You won’t have to see her again.”

  Ethan nodded without meeting his gaze. “Well, good night. Thanks for helping out, Hi. And Gert, thanks for the eats and the advice.”

  She watched him go out and close the back door gently behind him.

  “What’s the matter?”

  At Hiram’s question, she realized she was scowling. Just the fact that she was disappointed exasperated her. She clawed at her apron strings. “That man.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  “I know it.”

  Hiram cocked his head to one side and waited.

  “He called me Trudy last week, and I said …” Still her brother waited. She wished she hadn’t started. Her face was heating up, and she hated that. “Why did you tell him about that anyway?”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “If you’re mad, I am.”

  “I’m not mad. Not at you.”

  “At Ethan?”

  She tugged the knot loose and pulled off her apron. “I told him I didn’t mind, but he went back to calling me Gert.”

  “That bother you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want me to call you Trudy?”

  “No.”

  Hiram nodded and carried his and Ethan’s dishes to the worktable and set them down. He walked over to her and stooped to place a light kiss on her cheek. “Didn’t mean to cause a stir. Though some folks beg to be stirred.”

  He took a candlestick from a shelf and lit the taper, then shuffled off through the sitting room.

  “Humph.” Gert lit a candle and blew out the lamp.

  CHAPTER 26

  Milzie’s funeral drew far fewer mourners than had Bert Thalen’s, though the Ladies’ Shooting Club was well represented. Libby stood between Gert and Apphia in the graveyard near the schoolhouse, while Phineas Benton gave a proper sermon. The only other men present, besides Ethan and Hiram, were Griffin Bane, Micah Landry, and a half dozen old-timers who had known Frank Peart. Through gossip at the emporium, Libby had learned that the curious paid their respects at the livery stable before Hiram sealed the coffin.