Weak Flesh

by Jo Robertson

  "Who else? She must've mentioned someone else."

  "Her father, I suppose, although she wasn't afraid of Mr. Carver."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Her father was very indulgent. Nell could make him do her bidding easily enough." Hayes stood and wandered to the window, his back to the room.

  "But then, Nell believed everyone would dance to her tune." He sounded resigned rather than bitter, as if he'd gradually come to an important understanding about the woman he'd married.

  Gage rested his hip on the edge of his desk. "Who else did Nell believe she had such influence over?"

  "No one – " He interrupted himself. "Well, perhaps. She seemed quite confident that Mr. Nolan liked her." Hayes turned to face the Marshal. "I don't mean in a romantic way." He wrinkled his brow in a nearly comic way. "After all, he's married and a much older man."

  Gage nearly snorted. Oliver Nolan wasn't so many years older than Gage himself. "Did you observe any peculiar behavior between them?"

  Hayes frowned. "No, of course not. She spent a great deal of time in the Nolan household, but she enjoyed playing with Emily, the Nolans' daughter. And visiting with Mrs. Nolan who's been ill this past year."

  "And you never imagined a romantic relationship between the two of them?" Gage held up his hand to forestall Hayes' objection. "Be objective, Mr. Hayes," he warned. "No lingering glances, no accidental touching of the hands?"

  Hayes' expression went very still and the blood drained from his face as he staggered against the window pane. "No," he whispered, "no, it cannot be."

  #

  Meghan leaned against the wall and sank to the floor, exhausted from even this minor exertion. She dropped her head onto her knees, her back against the wall, and steeled herself against an overwhelming sense of defeat.

  Forcing herself to think of Gage now, she recalled the tiny moments they'd shared, and tried to draw hope from the memories. Tried to believe Gage would find her.

  He'd wanted her to watch the interview with Michael Hayes, she recalled, because he trusted her judgment. She tried to smile, but her mouth felt numb. She touched her lower lip, felt the swelling and cracked lip, and remembered something else about the attack.

  The bastard who'd taken her had struck her viciously while she struggled against him!

  She allowed herself to remember the rest – the restless night, being unable to sleep for worry about Gage's recovery from the snake bite. The bizarre behavior of the Jolly family when she visited them.

  Her beautiful, but wild friend Nell, whom she hadn't really known at all, but whose image plagued her to find her killer. Michael Hayes, who'd married Nell and kept it a secret.

  The Klan robes hidden in Oliver Nolan's house, the man's arrogant face, his angry voice ...

  Nolan! Oliver Nolan had caught her trying to break into his locked desk drawer. He'd been viciously furious with her, and he kept hideous reminders of his affiliation with the Klan. He'd threatened her when she tried to leave his house the last time.

  She pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples. Nolan had – he'd – good God, had he followed her to Gage's boarding house, lain in wait, and trailed her into the woods where he attacked her?

  Was Oliver Nolan Nell's murderer?

  She suddenly remembered the dance card and the mysterious name Ned Osborne. N. O. – O. N. – the inversion of the letters of the unknown man's name. Was that Nell's code for Oliver Nolan? Had Nell been romantically involved with Mr. Nolan, a married man? Was Ned Osborne code for Oliver Nolan?

  A fierce trembling took hold of Meghan's arms and legs, her entire body shaking as if a wild hurricane had swept her up in its fury. What better reason to have killed her friend? Had Nell baited Nolan? Blackmailed him?

  Even if Nolan had killed Nell, what reason would he have to kidnap Meghan? Was he afraid she'd come close to learning the truth?

  Oh, Nell, what foolishness did you embroil us all in?

  Once started, the tears wouldn't stop, and Meghan broke down in helpless sobbing so very much unlike the brave, strong investigator she was determined to be.

  #

  By eight o'clock the sun had risen dully in the eastern sky and the usually prompt Bailey hadn't arrived at the Station House. At eight-thirty Dr. Bailey had frantically informed Gage that Meghan hadn't returned home last night.

  At first Gage was livid, praying this was another of Bailey's thoughtless actions, that she was off interviewing yet another suspect. The alternative was unthinkable. At nine o'clock he sent every available deputy out to search for her.

  By mid-morning, however, he authorized the fire wagon to make a round throughout the city, clanging its bell and shouting through a megaphone that an emergency town meeting had been called for noon at the park in front of the Station House. The largest gathering area in town, it would hold the biggest crowd.

  Nearly everyone, except the sick and elderly, or those incarcerated like James Wade, showed up.

  "Meghan Bailey's missing," Gage began, working hard to keep the tremor from his voice. "No one's seen her since last night, when she and Dr. Bailey retired for the evening."

  He wouldn't admit to Bailey being with him, no need to besmirch her reputation unnecessarily. "We must organize a search to find her."

  "The lass could be visiting someone about town," a man shouted from up front.

  "My deputies have thoroughly searched every known place where Miss Bailey might be," Gage returned.

  "Wade couldn't have done this one," another man exclaimed. "He's locked up tight, isn't he?"

  "What about Michael Hayes? Why did you release him?" someone else asked. "Maybe it's him?"

  "Hayes is not a threat," Gage assured them. "He's been released to the custody of Dr. Harris, his mentor and friend in Chapel Hill."

  "Do you think the same person's got Miss Bailey as took Nell Carter?"

  God, Gage thought, pray not, but his gut told him Meghan had come too close to the truth about Nell and, by doing so, put herself in danger. He felt the urgency of his task, along with the monumental terror that Bailey was dead.

  Perhaps even she lay at the bottom of the Pasquotank River, her small, determined body battered and bruised, ugly marks around her neck. Her wild, messy hair floating and waving in the water like a dozen sooty scarves.

  He shook himself back from the panicky nightmare of his own imagination.

  "I have no idea." His voice sounded strained through the megaphone. "Right now, we're manning a search. I've divided the town into grids. Officer Pruitt will organize you into groups of ten and assign each to a grid with a specific leader."

  Deliberately, he spoke with efficiency and authority to keep the crowd's panic – and his own – at bay. But the images of Nell's cold, pale body, along with the Cherokee woman and what the soldier had done to her dead, splayed body, kept flashing through his mind.

  Christ! He couldn't let anything happen to her. His Bailey, he suddenly realized with a force that was palpable, a blow like knife blade to his heart.

  By design, accompanied in the search by Dr. Bailey, Gage took the grid in which their neighborhood lay. Gage wanted to have a closer look into the Nolan household for he hadn't seen Nolan among the crowd searching for Meghan, an oddity in itself.

  At first there was no answer, but after a persistent bang on the knocker, they heard footsteps in the foyer. Young Emily Nolan opened the door.

  "Hullo," Gage said, trying his friendliest voice. "Is your father at home?"

  The girl dropped her eyes shyly and toed the hardwood floor with one small slipper. "Papa's gone," she said at last.

  Good, Gage thought, but where? "Well, then, your mother."

  Emily looked over her shoulder to where the wide circular staircase wound upwards out of Gage's view. "Mama's still in bed. She's sick."

  A long silence followed and something about the girl's demeanor sent a warning bell off in Gage's head. Meghan had worried that Nolan abused the young girl.

  "May I
come in?" he asked, speaking not from his normal cool logic, but some primal part of his brain that drove him on. Following the slender thread of suspicion hinted at by Michael Hayes.

  Silently, the girl stepped back, holding the door open for him and Dr. Bailey, and after closing it, walking ahead into a small sitting room.

  Emily took a place on the sofa and looked up at Gage with some kind of ancient knowledge in her eyes. He removed his hat, sat across from her in a dull-colored wing chair, and leaned forward to capture her attention.

  "Emily, you seem ... sad today. Is something the matter?"

  She shrugged one thin shoulder.

  He tried again. "Your mama is very ill?"

  Another shrug.

  "Has she been sick long?"

  Emily nodded, paused, and then added, "Mr. Nolan says she's terribly sick."

  Mr. Nolan? He'd thought Oliver was the girl's natural father. Had Meghan known he was the stepfather? The family had been fully entrenched in the community when Gage mustered out of the Army last year.

  He glanced briefly at Dr. Bailey who nodded briefly. "Oh, Mr. Nolan is your step-poppa, then?"

  She wrinkled her tiny nose and clenched her fists tightly in her lap. She sat ramrod straight and hardly seemed like a little girl at all, so quiet and still was she.

  Gage wasn't sure how to approach the girl. When he remembered Bailey as a child, he realized she'd hardly ever sat properly. She fidgeted and squirmed like a young boy even when she started to grow into a young woman.

  He'd always thought the difference was in not having a mother in the home, but now he wondered if it weren't simply ... Bailey.

  Bailey, whom he'd forever been bailing out of trouble.

  Chapter 35

  Dr. Bailey spoke in his deep, soothing voice. "You remember me, don't you Emily? I'm Dr. Bailey who attended your mother when she was ill." A wan smile tugged at the girl's mouth. "You seem upset. Are you worried because your father is gone?"

  Emily shook her head vigorously.

  "Because your mother is sick?" Dr. Bailey pressed.

  She bit hard on her lip and shook her head slowly, but Gage fancied he saw some confused emotion cross her young face. He stood and knelt on the floor beside the girl. "Is there something about your mama's illness that disturbs you?"

  There! He saw it again. Some knowledge or fear to do with her mother being sick. "Has your mama been ill a long time?"

  Emily shook her head again and looked up hopefully as if she wanted him to ask the correct question. But what should he ask? He glanced desperately at Dr. Bailey.

  "When did your mama become sick?" the doctor asked.

  Emily answered, but her voice was so low neither man could hear.

  Gage held his ear to her mouth. "What?"

  "When Mr. Nolan became my step-poppa," she murmured. "He says she'll surely die."

  Gage saw the echoing horror and suspicion in Dr. Bailey's eyes as the silent, ugly word poison hung in the air between them. No one spoke for several long moments while Gage tried to imagine how he could follow such a tenuous lead.

  Suddenly Emily plastered an artificial smile on her face and, completely off topic, echoed the words Megan had reported earlier. "Papa likes to play dress-up, you know."

  Gage remembered how infuriated he'd been with Meghan's meddling at the time. How he'd ordered her in no uncertain terms to cease her infernal interference in the investigation.

  Of course, being Bailey, she hadn't left off mucking about at all, and now she was in trouble.

  "I must speak with your mother," Gage said quickly. "Would you tell her right away that Marshal Gage has come on urgent business?"

  #

  Meghan forced herself to walk the perimeter of the shack. Less than halfway around, she discovered slight gaps in the wall through which cold air emanated.

  A door, she thought, some kind of rough opening without a knob or handle on the inside. She shoved hard to no avail.

  The bastard had barricaded her in from the outside!

  Even if she threw her full weight against the door, she couldn't hope to budge it. Nevertheless she tried until her side and shoulder ached with the effort and her head spun dizzily.

  She slumped against the wall. It was hopeless.

  Crouching down, she tried to find an opening under the door. She jabbed her fingers beneath the bottom, but even as small as her hand was, the space was too narrow. Bending further still, she inhaled deeply and detected the fecund odor of wet dirt and sodden foliage – marshland.

  The Great Dismal Swamp? The smell there was unlike any other area on the coast.

  Continuing her way around the edges of the room, she squatted in what she thought was the farthest corner from the door and relieved herself. Then she inched forward, searching for the belt she'd left to mark her starting place. She retrieved it within minutes.

  Part of Papa's confederacy uniform, the belt had a heavy brass buckle on a thick leather strap. When she'd left home dressed as a boy, she had wrapped the belt several times around her waist to secure the trousers, but now she might use it to defend herself.

  Making her way to the next corner, she sank to the floor, clutched her improvised weapon to her chest, and waited.

  #

  Emily Nolan returned to the parlor a few minutes after she left to take her mother the message from the Marshal. She descended the stairway slowly, her eyes wide and her face white as newly fallen snow.

  Her mouth trembled so she could barely stutter the words out. "M – m – mama won't wake up."

  Dr. Bailey rushed up the stairs with surprising speed for a man his age, Gage close on his heels.

  At the top of the stairs, Gage yelled, "Right, I think."

  Inside the bedroom Mrs. Nolan lay half on, half off the bed, her upper body dangling over the edge, her arms flung outward. Her face was chalk-like, her unbound hair tangled in strings across her face.

  "Quick!" Dr. Bailey ordered, hauling her onto the bed. He pressed fingers to her neck, then laid his ear to her chest. After a moment he shook his head. "She isn't breathing. No pulse."

  Arranging her on the pillows, he smoothed her hair from her face and pulled the covers up to her shoulders. He lifted her lids to inspect her eyes and examined her fingernails.

  "Dead?" Gage confirmed. "How long?"

  "Too many minutes, I'm afraid, her body's very cold." The doctor frowned. "It's not unexpected. Mrs. Nolan has been ill a long while. I'm not her physician, of course, but it's well known in town that she's suffered from one or another ailment in the year the Nolans have lived here."

  Gage walked around the room, examining the dresser top where Mrs. Nolan's hairbrush and mirror lay, along with various cosmetics, beside a chest which contained expensive jewelry. He noted no sign of Mr. Nolan's personal items and only female clothing hung in the armoire.

  The single nightstand next to the bed held a variety of vials of medicines – a prodigious amount, in Gage's estimation. "Can you identify these drugs?" he asked Dr. Bailey.

  The doctor picked up each bottle and perused it carefully. "Smelling salts, laudanum – common for female ailments." He handled a dark-colored, well-corked bottle, unstopped it and sniffed. "Medicinal hydrocyanic acid," he muttered. "It's often used for convulsive coughs or painful stomach afflictions."

  "Isn't it poisonous?" Gage asked.

  "Yes, in large doses, or even small doses administered over a period of time." He bent his head to Mrs. Nolan's slack mouth. "Ah," he exclaimed. "A bitter almond odor." He shook the near-empty bottle. "I'll wager she died from cyanide poisoning from the contents of this vial."

  "Accidental?"

  Dr. Bailey shrugged. "With her numerous complaints and with this as evidence," he waved the bottle in the air, "her doctor would likely rule it an accidental death. Perhaps even a suicide."

  "And without the vial?"

  "Natural causes, no doubt."

  "Let's locate Mr. Nolan and see what he has to say about Mrs. Nolan'
s medications."

  "I'll find someone to tend to the child," Dr. Bailey offered, his lips set in a grim line. "Be honest with me, Tucker, do you think Mr. Nolan is responsible for the death of this poor woman?"

  "I was hoping Mrs. Nolan could tell me something about her husband's activities in the last several months." Gage turned away so the good doctor wouldn't see the hopelessness in his eyes.

  #

  Meghan heard the man enter the room before her eyes adjusted to the bulky mass near the spot she judged was the door. With his arrival the very air smelled indefinably wicked, palpable enough to take her breath away. She hovered in the corner, very still, her eyes wide open, straining to see through the thick darkness.

  A sliver of pale light had entered the room for a second before the door slammed shut behind the intruder and then the sound of heavy boots trod across the boards. She hunched on the hard floor, trying to make herself as small as possible.

  After a brief moment of silence, she sensed the light brush of something across her cheek like the gossamer threads of a spider's web. She jerked away.

  How could he have found her so easily in the dark?

  He laughed viciously. "So you're awake at last," he chortled, "and still alive. I thought I might've smacked you too hard or doused the cloth with too much chloroform."

  Chloroform! That accounted for the bitter taste in her mouth. "Bastard," she ground out, glaring furiously at him although she knew the effort was wasted, for surely he could not see her face in the dark.

  Even that proved wrong at the sudden flare of a match beyond which she could see nothing. He chuckled as if amused by her attempt at bravery.

  "I'm going to enjoy taming that wild nature, Miss Meghan." He suddenly groped at her bodice, found her breast, and gave it a hard, vicious tweak.

  She bit back a cry of pain, but tears filled her eyes. "Tucker Gage will have your hide for this." She spat the words out and wiped the tears from her eyes, scuttling backward from the reach of his filthy hands.

  The meager light from the match flicked out.

  His low growl was more menacing than if he'd shouted. "I'm going to break you, Meghan Bailey," he whispered from somewhere beside her ear. "I'm going to crush you until there's nothing left of you."