“Dead people,” Denny added.
“Ah.” Chandler raised her brows.
“That’s what she says anyways.” Denny sniffed and slapped his palm on his leg. “Welp, I’d better head out. My nephew and I are grabbing a late lunch, and then I’ll be back after I hit up the hardware store.”
Chandler and Margie both led Denny Pike out of the kitchen, their shoes leaving wet footprints on the floor in the hallway. Denny paused at the door, his light-blue eyes raking Chandler’s face. He must have seen something there—she wasn’t sure what—but he offered her a warm smile tainted with something she couldn’t interpret.
“Don’t you worry. Bluff River ain’t known for people getting murdered nowadays. That’s all old history. Leastways by ghosts.”
Margie gave a nervous laugh.
Chandler met her eyes. There was hesitation in them. The kind that insinuated Denny Pike wasn’t telling the whole truth and that Margie had no intention of bringing up the past . . . or the dead.
Chapter Seven
PIPPA
The elephant trainer’s exasperation at her was palpable, yet she’d always liked Ernie—always gotten along with him. The times she had visited the circus grounds without her father or Forrest leading the way, Ernie had allowed her to wander the barns and gander at the menagerie as long as she maintained her distance. But Pippa could tell he wasn’t happy with her presence now. Displeased was probably the best description. No. She caught herself swallowing nervous energy. Annoyed? Maybe both. She couldn’t blame him. Not really. She was the daughter of Richard Ripley, and her presence could only add pressure to the man and the decision before him.
Ernie sat back on his heels, obviously well aware that Jake Chapman had charged from the barn on a mission to retrieve the weapon that would end the calf’s already-horrifying start to life. The baby elephant blinked, but it was her only movement. Still, Pippa noticed emotion shift Ernie’s face. There was a weakness in the man. A good sentimental kind of weakness. The kind that Jake Chapman didn’t appear to have.
“We’ve got to try to get Lily on her feet.” Ernie’s statement was more a mutter than anything.
“Lily?” Pippa’s quiet insertion was ignored. Far more than just the life of an animal was at stake. Her father was never quick to give grace to others.
Dr. Thurston ran his hands over the calf. Massaging its legs, bending each one, and doing other ministrations as if trying to see past the thick elephant hide to the skeleton beneath. The internal organs. To every part of it hidden from the naked eye that could bring about the baby elephant’s termination. He pushed his palm across the calf’s back. “I don’t think she has broken ribs as I’d originally thought. But she’s bruised. No telling what internal injuries she may have.”
“Can’t you just leave her to rest? Just to see if she improves?” Pippa pleaded. She tried not to disturb the calf while shooting a desperate glance at the darkness beyond the elephant row where Jake Chapman had disappeared to fetch his rifle.
Ernie shook his head. “I do that and she’ll waste away for certain. Injured or not, Lily at least has to get in a position where she can eat. She needs nourishment.” He reached for a three-legged footstool behind him and pulled it close so he could sit on it.
“May I?” Pippa extended her hand toward the animal but directed her question to Ernie.
He gave a curt nod.
The luminescent glow in the elephant’s black eyes drew her as they connected gazes. It blinked. The ache behind Lily’s stare was palpable. Her mouth was closed and the corner tipped downward, uncharacteristic of an elephant’s more typical upturned mouth. The kind that gave the impression of a permanent smile. Her wide, leather-like ear lay flat on her head. She blinked again.
“Baby,” Pippa crooned and stretched her fingertips toward Lily. If God could hear her prayers, now would be the time. He was so distant, so militant like her father, but God had been known to do good things. He’d saved animals on the Ark, hadn’t He? Perhaps He would extend a favor of healing to Lily. Preferably before Jake returned on his mission of death.
Pippa brushed her hand over Lily’s forehead and down the base of her trunk. She leaned over the elephant and noticed Lily’s eye following her movement.
“You need to fight, sweet one.” Pippa leaned down, and her lips grazed the elephant’s ear, its skin coarse. The smell of the newborn was almost overpowering, but Pippa continued to whisper encouragement. “We need you here. We’ve waited a long time for you to be born.”
Ernie muttered a shocked oath as Lily lifted her trunk and curled it around the back of Pippa’s neck. An embrace. The first recognition that she might respond.
Ernie shifted, his movement anticipatory. “Keep talking to her, Miss Ripley.”
Pippa did as directed, this time in cooperation with Ernie, who carefully rounded the babe and approached her shoulders. Her heart had risen into her throat at the feel of the trunk encompassing her neck. The embrace was intimate, trusting, and she had locked eyes with Lily. In that moment they were both somehow connected by the reality they were more than just belongings of the Ripleys, of Bonaventure Circus. They had emotion, need, and a desire to belong.
“I’m going to try to coax her to rise,” Ernie explained. “Keep soothing her, Miss Ripley.”
Her whispers were for Lily’s ears only. Pippa reassured the elephant that she wasn’t alone, that she knew what it was to be left behind but that others were here to care for her. Pippa caught Ernie’s quick glance as she whispered, “I won’t leave you, Lily. We deserve more than our mothers abandoning us.”
She hadn’t meant for Ernie to overhear. Pippa met Ernie’s eyes over Lily’s head. He dropped his stare. It wasn’t a secret that she was a castoff child of the circus, yet no one ever spoke of it, certainly not the circus members. That the Ripleys had taken her in and branded Pippa less one of the circus family and instead one of the circus royalties cemented the fact that Pippa would never quite belong in either world.
Ernie shifted his attention to urging the calf into a sitting position. A futile effort considering the calf far outweighed Ernie’s strength. Dr. Thurston positioned himself at the elephant’s hindquarters. They counted together, then urged Lily to rise, risking the possibility that Lily was injured in places they could not see.
Pippa caught her breath as Lily extended a leg and pawed at the straw. She jumped back to avoid being clubbed by the calf’s foot. Lily struggled to rise, a guttural moan escaping her. One of pain and protest. Her trunk swung in the air before bracing against the floor. Ernie urged his shoulder against the calf to assist her, and she repositioned, her body rolling upright onto her knees, her stomach still flat on the floor. She looked much like a dog did when the dog lay upright but not quite ready to spring into a stand.
Lily groaned again and reached with her trunk to lay it against Pippa’s soiled dress.
Ernie swore. “She thinks you’re her mother.”
Commotion outside the pen drew their attention. Jake entered the stall as abruptly as he left, a rifle held loose in his left hand. A twinge of guilt nicked at Pippa as she took no small delight in the surprise that fluttered across Jake’s face.
Another moan pulled from deep in the calf’s stomach.
“She’s in pain.” Jake held out the rifle that was clutched in his hands as if he expected Ernie to take it.
Ernie extended his palms. “No.”
A curse escaped Jake.
Dr. Thurston eyed the gun with hesitancy, as if the doctor in him agreed with Jake, the human in him with Pippa, and the business in him with Ernie. The business side responded. “Mr. Ripley would never condone it. There’s too much of a financial investment at stake.”
“Mr. Ripley can go to—” Jake shot a glance at Pippa, whose eyes widened. He tightened his mouth and bit back his words. “Be human, Thurston. It isn’t right to make the animal suffer.”
“Maybe not,” Ernie interjected, “but there’s such a thing as be
ing too hasty.” He tipped his head at the calf. “I know for a fact that Lily was offered as collateral to the bank for the expansion of the elephant show. Mr. Ripley might well be able to recover, but do you really want to be the one to tell him of the loss?”
“You’re not going to even think about—” Jake’s voice pinched off in desperation as Ernie rose to his feet.
Pippa held her breath.
“Take care of it.” Ernie’s directive sliced the silent tension.
“No!” Pippa cried.
Jake edged past the elephant trainer, but Ernie’s hand shot out and latched like a vise on to the barrel of the rifle. He stared up at Jake, his eyes hard. Jake’s were like gray steel drilling back at his boss. Both men had the same desire—to see the animal live and not suffer—but both had a different necessary end in mind.
“That’s not what I meant.” Ernie gave the rifle a shove at Jake.
Jake adjusted his grip on the firearm. His jaw tightened, and the scar that ran under his left eye puckered white as his face reddened with intensity. “Ernie . . .” There was warning in his voice.
Pippa looked into Lily’s eyes. There was still pain, physical pain, etched in the recesses of that gaze. Yes, she was victorious in rising from the straw and her prostrate position, but would she—could she—eat? Heal? Jake seemed familiar with the suffering of animals, and perhaps his willingness to take its life was, after all, the more merciful path.
Ernie jabbed his finger toward Jake. “You put us in this situation, Chapman. Sloughing off your post. It all could’ve been avoided if you hadn’t been off”—Ernie waved at the door, seeming to have forgotten Pippa’s presence—“drinking bootleg whiskey with Patty and Benard.”
Jake’s expression darkened. “I was coming back.”
“Unacceptable,” Ernie spat. “Now, you need to try to get food into Lily. Get rid of that thing,” he said, pointing at the gun, “and get the large bottles from the storeroom, milk, and a lot of it.”
“Don’t do it, Ernie,” Jake urged. While his tone was firm, his expression held a hint of desperation. “I’ve seen animals suffer. It’s not worth it—not just to save Ripley’s dime. It’s inhumane.”
Pippa looked between the two men. There was so much she wanted to argue and say—shout, really—but she’d learned long ago to remain silent. Not to speak. She wouldn’t be listened to anyway, and it was a miracle she’d even assisted in extending Lily’s life this long.
“We need this elephant,” Ernie said. Dr. Thurston nodded in the background, affirming the menagerie master’s leadership. Ernie eyed Jake. “You’re going to stay by this beast’s side until it’s on its feet, until it’s reunited with its mother, and until that animal walks the ring come next summer.”
Jake opened his mouth to speak, but then snapped it shut when Ernie concluded through gritted teeth, “Or you can answer to Ripley and pay back every cent this circus will lose.”
Pippa couldn’t identify the expression on her father’s face, and the fact that he was unreadable was even more disconcerting than she had originally prepared herself for. Richard Ripley paced the solid wood floors of the entrance hall of their grand home, his two fingers squeezing the bridge of his nose. He stopped, dropped his hand, and crossed his arms over his chest. He stared at the hand-painted scene of sage-green maple saplings on the wallpapered top half of the wall, split into two by a piece of wood trim and painted solid green on the bottom.
Her father’s silence was more nerve-wracking than if he shouted his fury—which, admittedly, she was more accustomed to. She noticed dust particles dance in the ray of light that streamed through the window and land on his shoulder. Dawn had broken over Bluff River and with it came her arrival home. An arrival she’d hoped to keep covert, sneaking in the back door and up the stairway to her bedroom before anyone had awakened. It was not to be. Her father was already moving at the morning hour of four a.m. Penn had been apparently yipping and scratching behind her closed bedroom door. Upon rescuing the distressed dog, Ripley had discovered Pippa’s absence. He’d been surprised, then incredulous, and now . . . horribly unpredictable.
Forrest had been summoned. Summoned as if he was somehow responsible to keep his mouse of a fiancée from turning into a rebellious woman. He’d just arrived at Ripley Manor, and Pippa, having changed into a fresh drop-waisted dress of deep purple, meekly followed her father to greet him. If it hadn’t been for finishing the night watching Lily fumble with and finally suckle the gigantic nipple from the quart-sized bottle, Pippa knew she would have regretted every moment of her own wayward behavior. Regret tainted even more by the fact she’d run from the very person she so desperately wished to commune with.
Forrest cleared his throat.
Pippa waited, just as she was expected to. She picked at a fingernail. If only her father would say something and stop his infernal pacing!
Ripley turned on his heel. He looked through her to Forrest. “You say the calf might not survive?”
Business first. Pippa bit her lip. The concern she held for Lily’s tenuous survival squeezed the breath from Pippa’s chest, but it also held hands with the bitter pang of being ignored. Pity the Watchman hadn’t run away with her, or maybe an elephant trampled her to death. Then her father might have noticed or at least been disappointed in her.
Forrest shook his head. “It doesn’t look good. And Ernie put Jake Chapman, the one who abandoned the mother to begin with, in charge of its vigilant care.”
Pippa’s stomach tightened as she searched Forrest’s face to find some motive behind his statement. Blame? Diversion of attention off of her and her actions? She wasn’t sure.
Ripley’s incredulous bark of a laugh echoed in the hall. “Are you saying the man responsible for this situation is also responsible for fixing it?”
“Yes.” Forrest’s nod of affirmation was met by frigid silence.
Jake Chapman was hardly to blame for it all. Pippa tightened her lips and bit her tongue. Maybe he had left his vigil by the elephant’s side as she labored, but labor could be long. And no one had really given him opportunity to explain.
“What was Ernie thinking? Chapman should be run out of town. At a minimum he should be booted off the grounds immediately.”
“Ernie told Jake that he will owe the bank if something happens to the calf.” Forrest must have already had a long conversation with Ernie this morning. Somehow the details had made their way to him very quickly.
Riley gave a tsk, his eyes narrowing in rebuke of the idea. “His year’s salary would be a pittance of what that elephant is to me. We need that calf alive, not being tended by some nincompoop who doesn’t show the brains to focus on his responsibilities.”
“You know Georgiana Farnsworth will be all over this.” Forrest’s warning sliced through Pippa. Her father stiffened.
“The young woman needs to mind her business and stay home where it’s her place to be. Prancing around town like a suffragette. I predicted this would happen—giving women the vote. Now they think they can comment on everything!”
Forrest gave a short nod. “She’ll try to get the press involved. Georgiana will do anything to shout animal abuse in order to further her cause.”
Pippa could hear the stringent sounds of Miss Farnsworth’s last outcry against the circus—when a camel had broken free and trampled across Mr. Gregory’s front porch, only to be stopped by what Miss Farnsworth considered a “vicious tethering of the animal’s freedom.”
“Well, shut her up!” Richard shouted.
Pippa jumped.
Forrest had no reaction. He was used to Ripley’s outbursts.
“And you.”
Pippa squirmed now that her father had leveled his fiercely black gaze on her.
“Why were you on circus grounds in the dead of night? Alone, no less, and without my knowledge? I expect an explanation and in the presence of your fiancé, who you have also disrespected by making an unwanted spectacle of yourself.”
Wo
rds, answers, she had them all, but could tell him none of them. Her father would demand to see the letters from the Watchman, rage about the outright audacity of a stranger claiming such hold over her, and insist Pippa cease all contact. She couldn’t risk that. She needed to know. It was this man, Richard Ripley, whose overbearing paternity caused an insatiable hunger to find her roots.
He stepped nearer and lowered his face, his eyes commanding her own. “I asked you a question.”
She was six years old again. Tongue-tied. Remorseful and yet horribly frustrated at the restraints over her. A noise captured her attention, and she glanced to the top of the long, winding staircase. Her mother stood there, elegant in her housedress, an expression on her face that, while she held sympathy for her daughter, she hadn’t any more courage than Pippa did to stand in defiance of Richard Ripley.
“You’re not going to answer me, are you?” He raked long fingers through his hair and then dropped his hand with a slap against his leg. “You’re a fathomless pit of disappointment.”
Pippa ducked her head, focusing on a swirling pattern in the marble floor, trying to avoid the soft sound of her mother’s footsteps retreating to her suite.
Forrest cleared his throat. “Pippa did do some good last night.”
Cheers for her fiancé. At least beneath his strictly business-focused manner beat a human heart.
“Really?”
Pippa could feel her father’s censure as he emphasized the word with a raised eyebrow of scornful doubt.
“The elephant calf,” Forrest offered. He took a step forward, which brought his arm within proximity of Pippa’s, and his sleeve brushed hers. For reassurance, perhaps, or maybe to stake some of his claim as her future authority. “According to Ernie, the animal responded quite well to Pippa. It was Pippa who persuaded her to rise and eat.”
Her father’s tone grew low and very, very controlled. “We need to handle this affair before we allow my circus to be run into the ground by placing an inept idiot over the care of the very investment he almost killed. And, Pippa, there is to be no more circus for you at all.”
The Haunting at Bonaventure Circus Page 6
