by Lydia Olson
“Well, then,” Eloise said, taking a deep breath, “I guess we’ll have to convince him I was the one who saw it.”
“Sorry, but you’re not saying you intend to lie to Deputy Wilkens?” he said.
“I plan to tell him the truth,” Eloise said. “I’ll tell him I was there with Wilson, and I’ll risk my honor to save his life. But if I have to add to it the words of that woman as my own, then that’s what I have to do.”
Chapter Twenty
“I don’t know...” Deputy Wilkens stroked his chin.
“What, you think I’m lying?” Eloise demanded.
“Well, you have tried to convince me he was innocent before... even lied then,” he said.
“I only lied so you wouldn’t arrest him before you found proof!” Eloise yelled. “I came to you now to give you the full story, even at the risk of losing my good name. Why would I lie about that, huh?”
“And what exactly is it you’d like me to do?” Deputy Wilkens asked, resting his hands on his belt. “So, you mean to tell me that you were with this feller in a dark alley after the masquerade ball, and there just wasn’t enough time for him to go back and shoot someone?”
“Uh... well, I’m saying he was going the wrong direction,” Eloise said.
Despite what she had discussed with Lawson earlier, Eloise decided it was better not to say she was with Wilson during the shooting. As the deputy said, she had already lied to him once, and if the witness somehow decided to come forward, it would look bad for Eloise to have lied again. Lawson and Eloise exchanged glances, then Lawson stepped forward to speak.
“As it happens, sir, I have a witness that confirmed all this to me,” he put in. “The witness saw a third man step into the alley, saw Mr. Pace run away from the alley, and then she heard the gunshots.”
“Who was the third man?” Deputy Wilkens wondered.
“She couldn’t see his face, but she did see Mr. Pace’s face – and that’s more than any of us saw of the man coming out of the stables last night,” Lawson said. “What do you say, ol’ buddy? Let the man out?”
“I don’t know,” Deputy Wilkens said with the same tone as the first time. “You say you were in the alley with the feller, but what exactly were you... doing... back there? Alone? After dark?”
“We weren’t doing anything serious, if that’s what you mean,” Eloise said quickly. “I mean, nothing inappropriate. We were just, you know, being romantic...”
Deputy Wilkens dropped his jaw, hooted and laughed loudly, and smacked his knee with the palm of his hand repeatedly. His reaction made Eloise want to punch the smug expression off his face, but she knew that wouldn’t be the best decision to make. Instead, she settled with something a little less dramatic.
“Now, you listen to me,” she said, grabbing him by the shirt. “If you don’t stop laughing at me right now, I swear I’ll clobber you. The only reason I haven’t done so already is because you hold the key to an innocent man’s jail cell, and I’m not gonna put his life in any more danger than it already is. Now, I expect you to get that key out right now and open that cell!”
“You think you can give me orders...?” he said, scoffing nervously.
“I can do a lot worse than threaten you, and I think you know that,” Eloise told him. “You’re nothing like the sheriff was. Nobody’s scared of you – not even me. And if you’re sending Will to the hangman’s noose just to make a name for yourself, you might wanna think twice. Because what I’ll do if you send an innocent man to his death is much worse than what the rest of the town will do if you don’t.”
“H-he’s still being investigated,” said the deputy, sweat dripping down his forehead. “I haven’t sent him nowhere. What I don’t understand is why you didn’t come forward with this s-sooner? If it’s true...”
“Wilson didn’t want me to say anything that might hurt my honor,” she explained, letting go of his shirt. “He didn’t want me to admit we were alone together in the alley, and he didn’t want me to admit I’d gone to his room alone in the middle of the night. That wouldn’t look right.
“Even you were quick to assume things, so what would the rest of the town think? But I realize now that he was willing to die to keep me from being looked down upon, and it was wrong of me to expect that of him – he shouldn’t have to die to protect me. I’m fully capable of protecting myself.”
Although Eloise couldn’t see him, Wilson sat against the wall of his jail cell, listening to her pleas to free him. He smiled.
For a moment during his arrest, he hadn’t thought there was anything she could do to help him. He didn’t think Lawson was as dedicated to his case as he was, and he was shocked to hear another voice beside Eloise’s speaking out in his defense.
For the first time since his return to Cayenne, he had hope for the people here.
Not only was Deputy Wilkens much kinder than the previous sheriff – at least when no one else was around – but there were people like Lawson who would look into the case of a complete stranger, just because he believed in justice. If nothing else, he was happy to see that side of this town before the end.
“But you were alone with him?” Deputy Wilkens clarified. “An unmarried, nearly-engaged young woman alone with another man in his bedroom? You see why this might be a cause for concern?”
“I told you – nothing happened,” she said. “I went to his room to see if he was safe and found him bleeding! I only tended to his wounds and helped him into his bed. Nothing else.”
“But you said you were being romantic with him in the alley? That could mean something,” he said.
“So what if we were being romantic?” she retorted. “We only kissed, and then we sat staring at the stars for a while, until I came back to join the party and he got hit over the head!”
“All I’m saying is, if my fiancée was to tell me she was alone in the alley with another man, or that she’d gone into another man’s bedroom for any reason, I’d be concerned that maybe the man was trying to trick her into doing something for him – something she might not wanna do,” Deputy Wilkens ventured. “Do you see why I have my concerns about how this looks?”
“He didn’t trick me into anything!” Eloise yelled. “Lawson and I had our doubts about this before I ever went looking for Wilson. And now we have a witness confirming his story. He wasn’t in the alley when the sheriff was shot, and he didn’t do anything wrong toward me.”
“He kissed an engaged woman!” Deputy Wilkens yelled, slamming his fist on the wall.
“Why do you keep saying I’m engaged?!” Eloise yelled back. “I’m not engaged – who told you that?”
“Y-you’re not?” he asked. “But Mr. McKinnon told me he proposed, and that Mr. Pace was attempting to seduce you by making you trust him with a series of lies...”
“I wouldn’t marry Ryan in a million years!” Eloise interjected. “You can tell him I said so!”
“You mean to say you’re not Mr. McKinnon’s fiancée?” He raised an eyebrow.
“No, I’m sure not!”
“Then why didn’t you tell me the truth this morning, before Mr. McKinnon got here and convinced me Mr. Pace was trying to seduce you?”
Eloise had to admit, she saw now that they could’ve avoided a lot of trouble if she had told Deputy Wilkens the truth from the beginning. She was surprised to see how reasonable and capable he was when he didn’t have all eyes on him. Maybe he was like Wilson, she thought, and the town just hadn’t given him the chance he needed to prove himself.
“Sir, it wasn’t only Ryan I was worried about finding out about this,” Eloise explained. “I know Miss Maudie is close with my daddy, and I didn’t want her listening in on our conversation and telling Daddy I went into Wilson’s room last night. You know what my daddy is like...”
“That I do,” Deputy Wilkens agreed. “Well, I can see there are more questions I need to answer before I can comfortably keep Mr. Pace here, but there’s also more I’d like to know before I let him
go.”
“Can I at least have a moment to talk to him?” Eloise requested.
Deputy Wilkens groaned, looked at the cells, and stared quizzically at Lawson. Eloise smiled and made her best puppy-dog eyes, which seemed to work. After a moment, Deputy Wilkens stepped toward the jail cells and gestured for Eloise to follow.
“Fine,” he sighed. “I need to talk with this feller here, anyway.”
Happily, Eloise followed him to the cells, where Wilson sat in the one nearest the door, leaning against the wall. Wilson smiled when he saw her. He must’ve been able to hear them, she thought. Deputy Wilkens motioned toward Wilson, nodded his head at Eloise, and then returned to the front where he had a hushed conversation with Lawson.
“Will!” Eloise cried, falling to her knees beside the bars.
“Not to worry; I’m okay!” he assured her. “Wilkens is actually a good man when it comes down to it. He’s been talking to me since I got here, and not about anything bad, either.”
“He’s very different when it’s just a few people around, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is,” Wilson agreed. “But Ellie, that doesn’t change all the evidence against me. I think he’s only being so nice because he knows there’s nothing he can do to help me.”
“But Lawson has a witness!” Eloise said.
“I heard, and did you hear what he had to say about that?” Wilson pressed. “Nothing. He knows that the witness can only prove anything if the witness comes forward themselves, and I have no idea who it is – I can’t claim I saw someone in the alley without giving a name! It’ll do me no good.”
“I know it was a woman, but Lawson wouldn’t tell me who she was other than she has a personal relationship with the deputy that will be hurt if he finds out she was with the sheriff last night,” she said. “I don’t know what kind of relationship it is, but it doesn’t sound good.”
“You think it was his fiancée?” Wilson said. “He did mention being protective of her.”
“Could be,” said Eloise. “But what good does it do us if she doesn’t wanna come forward?”
“None,” Wilson replied. “But there’s something else that’s been worrying me since I came out of my room with the sheriff back then. Did you notice Ryan?”
“He was holding my arm behind my back, so I couldn’t very well see him, could I?”
“Yes, but did you notice anything different about him?” Wilson pushed. “I ask because, when I was coming down the stairs, I noticed a smug look on his face – like a smirk – almost like when we were little and he expected your father to be upset with me. Do you think Ryan wanted me to get arrested?”
“I have to say, I do,” Eloise confessed. “I think he still has hope that without you in the picture, I might agree to marry him. He told me... well, he told me that he no longer sees you as he used to see you. You’re no longer one of his dear friends, in his mind.”
“I always worried this day might come,” Wilson said. “Although I can’t say I expected it to be during a life-and-death situation, I always thought one day I would tease him too far or insult and outwit him in just a way that it was no longer fun and games to him. I wanted to talk to him when I got back into town, but after the way we left things... I just couldn’t.
“He’s always been so timid and bad at accepting the consequences of his actions, I thought that teasing him and arguing with him was strengthening his character, so I never stopped. But the last time I talked to him before I left, I learned that he never felt that way. He always saw us as rivals, and he truly believed me to be the bad influence on you and your brother.
“I tried to tell him I never meant to be a bad influence on anyone, and that I wasn’t the liar or the thief he seemed to think I was. But that’s beside the point. Today, the look I saw in his eyes was different than the smug little boy. The way he was looking at me, I felt that he was looking at me like a problem he was finally getting rid of. He wanted me to die.”
“I wanna say he wouldn’t, but I don’t know,” Eloise admitted.
“That’s enough – it's time to go!” Deputy Wilkens said, anxiety in his voice.
Wilkens held his hand out in front of Eloise, as if he was demanding that she take it and allow him to help her to her feet. Lawson scrambled frantically over to them, worry written across his forehead and in his eyes. Before Eloise could figure out what was happening, Deputy Wilkens grabbed her arms and forced her to her feet.
“Time to go,” he insisted. “Time for everyone to go!”
“But what about Wilson?” Eloise demanded, breaking free of his clutches. “Lawson, what happened?”
“Deputy Wilkens, sir,” said Lawson, holding his hands out. “I’m only telling you what she told me. You can ask her for yourself, if you’d like.”
“Sheriff and I been working together for years,” Deputy Wilkens said. “I admit, he done some bad things in his day, rest his soul, but he would never do that! And Myra wouldn’t, either!”
“Sir, I’m only repeating her words; I swear it to ya,” Lawson went on. “She told me she was with the sheriff, and she saw him – the man in that cell there – running away before the gunshots rang out.”
“Myra left the masquerade when I did!” Deputy Wilkens yelled, hitting the wall with his fist.
“Yes, she did – but she came back a moment later, didn’t she?” pressed Lawson. “The sheriff’s been trying to persuade her away from you since they met, and I think you know that! You wouldn’t be so protective of Miss Hastings for Mr. McKinnon if that wasn’t true, am I right?”
“S-she told me about him suggesting things, but she swore she never took him up on any of it,” he said.
“Maybe she didn’t, but last night was different,” Lawson said.
“You’re lying!” Deputy Wilkens hit the wall again.
“H-he’s not lying, sweetie,” someone else said, nervously.
All heads turned toward the door, where a short, plump woman stood, twiddling her thumbs. She clenched her teeth and forced a smile, but Deputy Wilkens’ distress was written all over his face. Without looking at her, jaw dropped, he floated over to a stool and plopped down on it.
“B-but...” he said. “You said... you wanted to marry me...”
“Oh, and I meant it,” she assured him, rushing over to put her hands on his face. “But there’s something I need to tell you – something I told this gentleman – about what really happened last night.”
“What really happened?” Deputy Wilkens cried, smacking her hands away. “Which part are you gonna tell me – the part where my fiancée snuck away to be with another man, or the part where you were gonna let an innocent man hang to cover for your crimes?”
“I suppose it’s... b-both...” she admitted.
Chapter Twenty-One
“You’re free to go, Mr. Pace,” Deputy Wilkens said quietly, unlocking the cell door.
The others in the room stood gawking. Myra had gone now, but Eloise, Lawson, and Wilson were all unsure what they could say. Wilson stepped out of his cell and patted Deputy Wilkens on the shoulder, as if to comfort him. Deputy Wilkens did not look comforted.
“Why don’t you go home and get some rest?” Lawson suggested to the deputy. “I’ll work some more of these leads for ya in the meantime. I’m sure you could use a break after all that.”
“I don’t know that this is the right job for me, Mr. Lawson,” Deputy Wilkens confided. “Now, I can’t help but question everything that man ever told me.”
“I think I would, too, given the circumstances,” agreed Lawson.
