“And what about Melissa Gomes? Was this payback for betraying her with another woman?”
“Oh, believe me, that’s going to be another level of pain.” He wiped his bleeding face on his shirt sleeve. “The deputy sets a great store by his sister, and the locals aren’t going to appreciate the fact that I was taking you to dinner.”
“Maybe you should talk to my uncle sooner rather than later.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
He groaned and I wondered if he had internal injuries. This was no place to try to check him over. “Is there a doctor in town?”
“Not one we can go to. The doctor is part of this too. He can’t be trusted.”
I climbed through the backseat and over into the front until I’d wiggled behind the steering wheel. I had little hope the car would start, but it did. If the wheels hadn’t been knocked askew, we might be able to go.
I put the car in gear and eased off the clutch and gave her some gas. The car lurched forward, making both of us cry out in pain at the harsh jolting, but we moved. I gave more gas and eased the clutch with more finesse. It took some patient maneuvering, but I got the car turned around and headed back toward Mission. The only place I knew to go was Elizabeth’s. But if Michael was seriously injured, he’d need more medical care than I could give him. “Is there a doctor in Victoria we can go to?”
“I’m okay.” Michael gripped the door to keep from being jostled as I lurched down the road.
I didn’t believe it for a minute. We’d both taken some hard licks, but Michael had taken the worst of it. “Elizabeth can check us out and we’ll decide from there.” If we had to drive to Birmingham or even Mobile, that’s what was going to happen. Somewhere we’d find suitable help.
I drove slowly down the road, the wind coming through the shattered windshield tossing my hair into my face. It was hard to see, and I diligently watched the sides of the road for any would-be surprises.
“I’m sorry this happened, Raissa.” Michael was leaning back against the seat. He didn’t complain, but I knew he was hurting.
“Me, too.”
“They know you and your partner are here for some reason other than scouting property for your uncle.”
“They know because you told them?”
“No. I keep my own counsel here.”
We came to the turn off and I swung south on a wider road. “Who killed Hildy Morse and Ruth Whelan?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know or won’t say?”
“A little of both.”
I drove in silence for several minutes. “A man’s life hangs in the balance. A man who may be innocent. How can you live with that?”
“No one is ever truly innocent.”
He sounded defeated, and I worried that he was hurt worse than even he knew. “Tell me about Slater McEachern. No one else in town will.”
“You need to stop asking about him or Hildy or Ruth or anything else. Mission views the things that happen here as no one else’s concern.”
“There’s a bigger law, a larger system of justice than what Lucais Wilkins runs here.”
“I wish that were true. The man controls everything in Mission. No one can stop him.”
Michael’s voice was growing weaker, and he sounded completely exhausted. “Tell me about McEachern.” I repeated my request. I wanted to hear his opinion, but I also wanted him to keep talking. I was worried about a head injury.
“I haven’t lived here all that long, but I’ll tell you what I know.”
I focused on the road, on driving with care and being prepared for anything as Michael’s voice spun out the details of a man I only knew through prison bars.
“McEachern came down here from New England, where he’d managed a sawmill for a big company. There was some kind of family tragedy. Whatever it was prompted him to start a new life. He bought some land and set up a business of cutting and hauling timber. He was hardworking and minded his own business, up until the last few months. I don’t know what happened, but Lucais got it in for him. The murder charge is the final straw. Lucais always wins, Raissa. That’s what you have to understand. He always wins.”
Not always. That’s what I wanted to say, but Michael was agitated. Until I knew he was not in physical danger, I didn’t want to upset him more. “And Hildy Morse? Who would hurt a child?”
“Depends on what that child saw. Hildy roamed the woods around Mission. She made the journey through thick woods from her home to Ruth’s. It was possible she’d seen something she shouldn’t have.”
“Do you think Hildy knew who killed Ruth?”
“I don’t know. I find it too coincidental that she accidentally fell down a well. The child was an aggravation to her mother, but she was smart. Too smart.”
“So you knew her?”
“A little. Everyone in Mission knew Hildy. You’d be standing at the grocery and turn around and she’d be there, hoping you might buy a sweet for her.”
“She roamed about on her own. Where was her mother?”
“Mrs. Morse had her hands full with George Morse. Hard drinker. Never had money to pay the bills. Mrs. Morse took in wash and ironing. Sold jams and preserves from wild fruit she picked. She worked. Hildy was on her own a lot.”
I was a little taken aback. “I thought it was against the law to drink in Mission.”
“It’s against the law when Lucais wants it to be against the law. George worked for him. Still does, I assume. That’s the only way the Morse family has hung on to their farm. Martha does most of the planting and harvesting. She didn’t have time to go chasing after Hildy all day long.”
“And there’s no school for the girls, I hear.”
“Education is a bad word around these parts when it’s associated with women, or most men, for that matter.” He brushed at the blood that had dried on his forehead. “You’re doubly cursed, Raissa. Not only independent, but wealthy and educated. Lucais wants you gone yesterday.”
We passed through the town of Mission, a place of dark and empty buildings. It seemed almost a mirage, it was so unsubstantial and gone so quickly. When we came to the edge of town, I saw the two familiar men standing on the roadside. They wore the typical slacks, white shirt, and suspenders of the Mission men. Their hands hung at their sides and they watched.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter. Just keep going.” Michael had pushed himself up to a taller sitting position. “Whatever they do, don’t stop. It’s bad you’re driving, so don’t stop.”
I gripped the steering wheel, afraid they’d step out in front of the car as the man in the green hood had done. Instead, they remained motionless and let us pass. At last I turned down the lane that led to Elizabeth’s house, hoping that Reginald would be there. As cowardly as I felt, I wanted to leave. Not in an hour or ten minutes, but in that moment. I longed for my uncle and the way he could put my fears to rest.
“You okay?” Michael asked. He was staring at me.
“I am. But I’m worried about you, Elizabeth, Callie, and Reginald. I want to go home.”
Michael cleared his throat. “It would seem Lucais’s little ploy with the green hood has achieved its purpose.”
The words scalded me, but not enough to overcome my worry and fear. “I don’t care. Think me a coward. I came up here to help a man I don’t know, and the only thing that’s happened is that a child is now dead. What else will happen if Reginald and I remain?”
“I wish I could answer that.”
We turned into the long driveway to Elizabeth’s house. The narrow path was dark, pressed tight by trees and foliage. I’d only gone a short distance when a great fluttering rose up out of the woods, blocking out the narrow strip of visible sky. Something passed over our heads. “What was that?”
I stopped the car and got out. A dozen huge birds with vast wingspans burst out of the trees. The sound of their wings was like a storm, flapping wildly in an attempt to lift their
heavy bodies up. They clipped the limbs and tops of the oaks in their struggle to become airborne.
A large black wing nearly touched my cheek as one of the massive birds swept past me, flying low along the roadway and finally lifting into the night sky.
“What the hell?” I brushed at my face. “What was that?”
“Buzzards,” Michael said. “They’re everywhere here in Mission. I’d almost be willing to believe they’re dark spirits, come to visit tragedy on the people of this community.”
His words sent a chill down me. “Why would you say that?”
“I see them often. Always before something terrible happens. Now they’re here, on the way to your friend’s house. I’d take it as a bad omen.”
Chapter 15
Reginald had not returned, a fact that squeezed my lungs with worry. My immediate task, though, was Michael. He might be seriously hurt. I hadn’t had a chance to really examine him, we’d been so intent on getting away. Luckily, judging from the way he got out of the car when I stopped in Elizabeth’s yard, he was much improved.
Elizabeth gave one cry of alarm before she led him into the kitchen and began to clean away the blood so she could assess his injuries. Remarkably, his wounds were superficial. He’d slammed into the driver’s door of the car hard, but his bruising was minimal. On the other hand, I had a goose egg on my forehead where I’d struck the dash, and my shoulder and ribs were already purpling from bruises.
“Looks like you took the worst of it,” Elizabeth said.
“I guess.” It didn’t make sense. It was Michael’s side of that car that took the hardest blow. Yet I was going to be the one who looked like I’d been in a battle of fisticuffs. Now that I was in a place of relative safety, I was exhausted. I wanted to lie down and sleep, if only for ten minutes. Elizabeth seemed to read my mind. She took me to her bedroom and covered me with a light quilt. “I think I should call the doctor.”
I remembered what Michael had said—the doctor wasn’t to be trusted. I wasn’t hurt that badly. “No. Truly, I’m fine. I’m tired. If I can nap for ten minutes I’ll be ready to go.”
“Would you watch Callie while I tend to Michael?”
“Of course.” I snuggled the baby against my body.
“If she bothers you, let me know.”
The clean scent of a breeze riffling through pines came from Callie’s dark curls, which were soft against my cheek. “She’s fine right here.” I was asleep before Elizabeth could even respond.
I woke up in the darkened bedroom hours later. The old house sighed softly around me, settled for the night. Everyone had obviously gone to bed, and I wondered if Michael had stayed or gone. And Reginald? Had he come here or returned to Hattie’s? I thought to get up, but the baby was so warm and comforting that I lingered in the bed.
Callie had wriggled onto her back, and she entertained herself by reaching for her toes. She made the soft cooing sound that brought to mind the mindless clucking of roosting pigeons. When she turned her head to look at me, her soft gaze was like a touch.
Alex and I had planned on children. Three, a mix of boys and girls if we were lucky. We’d talked about the family we would have and the course our lives together would follow. We’d decorated, in our imaginations, the safe and warm house with a big, welcoming kitchen where I made our favorite dishes for the children as they grew up and went to school. Alex and I would grow old, sitting on the front porch, reading books and discussing anything and everything. We hadn’t reached for an extraordinary life—only a happy one filled with love. He’d gone to war with a lingering kiss and a promise he’d be home as soon as the Kaiser’s ass was thoroughly kicked. It was the only promise he’d failed to keep.
Emotion set a hard lump in my throat, but when I looked into Callie’s eyes, the pain faded. The longing remained, and suddenly I saw Alex. He was lying on the ground, his uniform torn by the bullets that had pierced his chest and legs. The smell of blood was everywhere, and the dirt around Alex was pitted by shells. Cries came from the foxholes where other young men suffered and died. In the distance men shouted orders in German. I knelt beside Alex, capturing his hand and holding it as tightly as I could. Holding him to me even as he prepared to leave me. I was surrounded by screams and smoke and his fallen comrades.
“Please don’t die,” I begged him.
“It doesn’t hurt,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt. Don’t remember me this way, Raissa. Think of us on the porch, white-headed and content with a full life behind us.” He coughed and blood bubbled at his lips.
“Alex! Don’t go. Please. Just stay a while longer.” I pressed his hand to my heart. “Please don’t leave me.”
“It doesn’t hurt, I promise.” He coughed again, pinkish foam gathering at the corners of his mouth. “I’ll wait for you.”
He meant he would wait for me on the other side, but that wasn’t what I wanted or needed. He was my husband, the man who anchored me to life. He was the biggest part of my life, and I pressed against the wounds to hold the blood in, to keep him alive.
“I love you,” he whispered. And he was gone.
Callie gurgled and kicked her feet, one of them thudding softly into my arm. Her little webbed hand brushed at the tears on my face. “It’s okay,” I told the baby quietly. And it was. I’d seen my husband die, but I’d been able to be with him. He had not died alone.
Callie began a soft moan, a sound I’d never heard her make. She pumped her hands, but this time in what I assessed as agitation. “Callie.” I whispered her name into the tiny coils of her ear. She began to make yet another new sound, this time with great urgency: “Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh.” I leaned up on my elbow to see if anything was wrong with her. She turned away from me and looked toward a corner of the room, her little protest cry growing stronger. This, from the child who had never shown the first sign of any distress. When I tried to get her to look at me, she kept thrashing and turning to face the corner.
Outside the window I heard the rush of large wings.
I froze, and Callie fell immediately silent. A shadow fell across the window, and I realized that someone, or something, stood silently in the corner of the room.
“Who’s there?”
I didn’t expect an answer and I wasn’t disappointed. The entity seemed to gain volume and solidity, tall and as big as a strong man. Dense. Impenetrable.
I pulled Callie into my arms and started to ease off the other side of the bed. Whatever this was in the room, I sensed it had great power.
“Stop.”
The male voice that came to me was deep, commanding. My limbs stopped. I couldn’t tell if I was held in thrall, or if I was so scared I couldn’t move.
“Raissa James.” It spoke my name and I realized I had to be in a dream, but this was not like any dream I’d ever had.
“Who are you?” I was startled by the sound of my own voice.
He stepped forward. The large set of wings attached to his back folded down, and he came to stand beside the bed. “I am Gabriel,” he said.
He was nothing like the angels I’d been taught about in Sunday school. This man was a warrior. He wore a large knife sheathed at his waist, and the muscles of his naked chest rippled as his wings pumped lightly behind him. I had doubted Elizabeth when she’d claimed that an archangel was the father of her child. Now I no longer did. This creature was breathtaking, but filled not with light, but darkness.
Again, a large entity flapped by the window outside the house and little Callie made her uh-uh-uh sound. I thought of the buzzards. Were they really buzzards, or something else?
“What do you want?” I asked.
“I can show you the truth. Are you willing to see it?”
This wasn’t a ride I wanted to take. I’d seen the truth of Alex’s slow death on the battlefield. I’d held his hand as he took his last breath. I didn’t want to see Ruth Whelan’s brutal murder. But there was something I did want to see.
“Hildy Morse. What happened to her? Can you show me t
hat?”
He came toward me and sat on the edge of the bed. My disobedient limbs refused to help me escape. “Take my hand.” He held his out.
I didn’t want to. I fought against it, but my own hand lifted and my fingers wrapped around his. Something akin to an electric shock rippled through my body and I had the most peculiar sense that I, too, had wings.
“You’re attuned to the other truths,” he said.
“I don’t want to do this.” Even as I held his hand a panorama of images swept through my head. Moments from the past, fragments of laughter, the scent of my mother’s baking pound cake. The touch of Alex’s hand on my thigh. My mind and body seemed filled with sensual fragments that were so intense I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness. At last the images stopped.
“You asked about Hildy Morse.”
I find myself outside a farm house. The yard is scraggly with weeds and bare patches and the back porch of the house sags. It’s a place that needs a loving, caring hand. Wash hangs on a clothes line, and a thin woman in a faded dress comes out the back door and throws a pan of potato peels out to chickens that peck aggressively at the food and each other. The woman hurries back inside.
In a paddock with some of the fence almost down, an old mule stands in the shade, watching me. I’m pressed against the side of the barn, watching the house. I duck back when the woman looks my way. I’m hiding from her. When I look at my hands, they’re strong, with hair on the backs of my fingers. Dark hair. My callused palms show embedded dirt, and my fingernails are rimmed in black. The tail of a white shirt hangs out of my pants, which are cinched tight at the waist.
From the other side of the barn, I hear a child singing a nonsense song. Her thin, young voice is clear and she carries the melody easily.
“Peepin’ through the knothole of Grandpa’s wooden leg, who’ll wind the clock when I’m gone? Go get the ax, there’s a flea in Lizzie’s ear, for a boy’s best friend is his mother.” She finishes the verse with a burst of self-applause.
I peek around the corner of the barn to see Hildy drawing in the dirt with a stick. “This is the kitchen,” she says as she marks off an area. “And here is my bedroom.” She outlines another small section. “Where will my dolly sleep?” She continues drawing in the dirt.
A Visitation of Angels Page 13
