Death of a Winter Shaker (24 page)

Albert shrugged one shoulder and walked to his workbench. “Just a nervous type, I guess,” he said. “She brought me some rags.” He nodded vaguely in the direction of the back door. “No reason that should make her upset.”

As if he were alone, he selected a wooden tool with a sharp edge that Gennie recognized as a planer and began to smooth a flat, rectangular piece of wood. His movements were fluid and precise. He ran strong, thin fingers along its edge to detect any rough spots.

Gennie thought she understood Charity's nervousness. Albert was so hard to talk to. She edged closer to the workbench. Albert didn't seem to notice. She took two more steps. His hand stopped. Without looking up, he said, “You shouldn't be here.”

“Um, I know,” Gennie said, relieved at the opportunity to speak. “But I wanted to ask you a few questions. You see, I noticed that your window upstairs looks right out on the Water House and, well, I wondered if you might have seen anything, anything at all, on the night of the fire. I mean, there might have been some noise, and you looked out, or surely you would have heard the fire, didn't you?”

“I sleep soundly,” Albert said, glancing up briefly.

“Oh.” Gennie took a deep breath. “You see, I was hoping you'd looked out your window. Because I did, and I saw someone running in front of the Water House while it burned. I think it was a woman because she was wearing a Dorothy cloak. It could have been Molly. Or it could have been the person who set the fire or maybe even Molly's killer.”

Albert planed on, and Gennie grunted with impatience. Was this man unable to say more than three words at a time?

“Don't you see how important this is? If you saw anything, anything at all, then maybe we can figure out who killed Molly.”

Albert smoothed his hand over his wood for the longest moments that Gennie had ever endured. This wasn't getting her anywhere.

“Nay,” he said finally, “I slept until the fire bell rang. I saw nothing.” His eyes darted toward Gennie and back again, almost shyly, to his task. “Sorry.”

Gennie's shoulders slumped. “Me, too,” she said.

She turned to the back door. Her eyes on the floor, she lifted her skirt and picked her way through sawdust and wood chips. The floor could use a good sweeping. She was about to mention this when she saw a bundle of old aprons and dishcloths, neatly wrapped with kitchen twine. The rags Charity had delivered. Gennie stopped so suddenly she dropped her skirt, stirred up some sawdust, and sneezed. One cloth peeked out from underneath the packet. The fabric looked like a fine dark blue wool, the kind the sisters used to make Dorothy cloaks.

“Albert?”

The carpenter swiveled on his bench and threw her an irritated glance.

“Are those the rags Charity brought?”

His eyes flicked to the pile of rags. He nodded.

Heedless now of the dust, Gennie rushed to the corner and fell to her knees. She shoved aside the bound-up rags and grabbed the blue fabric. Dirt and pulled threads marred the smooth, finely woven surface, and a large piece had been ripped out of its folds, but there was no mistaking the design. Gennie held the fabric to her nose. The fibers still held the acrid smell of smoke.

“I think I've found something really important,” she said, while her shaking, eager fingers sought the neck lining of the cloak. “If Charity brought this, she must have been trying to get rid of it. Maybe she thought you'd cover it with paint and toss it out and she wouldn't have to figure out how to destroy it. Oh, here it is!” She smoothed out the inner neck lining. “I was
right! M. F. for Molly Ferguson.” She ran her index finger across the initials stitched into the fabric. “It's odd that Charity didn't rip this lining out before she brought the cloak over here.”

Gennie felt Albert standing over her.

“Maybe she didn't have time,” he said, his eyes on the fabric in her hands.

Gennie shrugged. “Must be.” She gathered the soft folds in her arms and pushed to her feet. “I've got to get this to Grady. I mean Officer O'Neal.”

“It isn't proper for a Shaker girl to talk to a policeman. I'll take it to him.” Albert held out his hand.

Gennie wasn't about to let a chance to see—and maybe impress—Grady slip past her. “Oh, Albert, don't be silly. I've talked to policemen before. Besides, I'm remembering lots of things that I need to tell him. Like the fact that Charity wasn't in the kitchen after the worship service Sunday afternoon. I'll bet that's when she met Molly. Maybe that's when she killed her!” Albert folded his wiry arms across his chest.

“Oh, all right, you can come with me, if that will make it more proper.” A corner of the cloak fell from Gennie's arms, and she bent down to recapture it. As she straightened, she again caught sight of the bundle of rags. A few loose rags still rested next to the bundle. One of them was a small piece of fine, dark blue wool, bearing distinct stains. Paint.

The rag that Albert had thrown aside when she entered had been dark blue. She remembered how it had landed, soft and heavy, on the edge of the pile. The truth hit her swiftly. Charity had not delivered the cloak. It was already there on the floor when Charity brought over her kitchen rags. It was Albert who hadn't yet had time to dispose of it or to remove the revealing initials from its lining. Maybe he'd just intended to rip it up and make it unrecognizable.

Albert stood between Gennie and the open back door.

Clutching the fabric with one arm and lifting her skirt with the other, she bolted for the front door. She was young and quick and halfway to the door already. She didn't look back, but she was sure that Albert hadn't expected her to move so fast.

A block of wood twisted her foot. She lost precious seconds regaining her balance, but she didn't fall. She was nearly there. She thought ahead with hope, saw herself burst through the door, run like a wild animal to the Trustees' Office. She dropped her skirt and reached for the doorknob. It turned, but the door didn't budge. She clutched the knob and threw her body against it. She hit solid wood.

She spun around to find Albert a few feet away, moving deliberately toward her, a small, wood-carving knife in his right hand. He paused before her and caressed the wooden handle with his thumb.

“I installed locks on these doors,” he said. “Elder said to go ahead, you never know what mischief the world will make. Gives me more privacy, too. For some of the things I have to do.”

“Now give me the cloak, Eugenie.” His voice had a toneless quality, lacking even the warmth of anger. It chilled Gennie almost as much as the sharp blade pointing toward her. Her knees wanted to buckle. Through force of will, she kept them straight. She clutched the cloak, bunching it in front of her like a soft, thick shield.

Albert inched closer. “Hand it over,” he said, with no show of impatience at having to repeat himself. “I'll get it one way or another. I'm capable of hurting pretty young girls. I think you know that.”

The blade was now within inches of her. Instinctively, she stepped backward, and the doorknob hit the small of her back. He had her wedged in. If she tried to move sideways, he'd go for her at once.

“I won't wait much longer, little sister,” Albert said, tilting his head to one side. “It's too bad, really.
Fredericks deserved what he got, but I'd rather not have to kill pretty young girls. I tried to let the other one live, I really did. I even bought her little baubles when she asked for them. But then she wanted money or she would tell the police what Fredericks had told her about me, what he found out about my past from his hobo buddies. She guessed that I killed him so he wouldn't give me away. She kept wanting more and more so she could leave here. I even hit her, but nothing stopped her demands. It wasn't safe to let her live any longer.”

Gennie was astonished by his talkativeness. Maybe it was there all the time, hidden behind a fake reticence. Or maybe he had finally found a topic he enjoyed talking about. Gennie's bones felt chilled as though she had spent the night in the root cellar. But her mind clutched at this new knowledge about Albert. If she could use it to delay him, to save her life . . .

“So it was you I saw running from the Water House? You wore Molly's cloak so that if anyone saw you, they would think you were a sister. Molly was tall for a girl, so the cloak fit you.”

Albert's face clouded. Gennie thought it might have been a mistake to call attention to his small stature.

“It was clever of you to think of using the cloak,” she said quickly. “But why did you kill Johann in the first place?”

“I just said. He knew about me.”

“We all knew you'd had some trouble with the law a long time ago. Why worry about that? You'd confessed it and been forgiven, hadn't you?”

Albert narrowed his eyes. She had pushed too hard. She grasped frantically for anything she could say, anything that would get him talking again.

“The herb bouquet,” she said, trying to control the tremor in her voice, “what did that mean?”

Albert laughed without humor. “Nearly meant disaster, that's what. Somebody else's fool idea, like
digging Fredericks up and moving him before I had a chance to bury him far away. Somebody tried to make it look like a Shaker did it. I couldn't afford that. Too close to home. They might start looking into my background.”

Gennie nodded in what she hoped was a sympathetic manner. Albert ignored her.

“Good thing I was around when you found him, so I could sneak in and grab the herbs before the police got there. I figured they'd call you hysterical if you even remembered seeing them. Not that it did any good. That sheriff was so eager to blame a Shaker that he believed you anyway.” Albert was very close to her now. “So now you know.”

“Rose knows I'm here.”

“I don't think so, little sister. You'd have said something long before now. Nay, I think we've got just enough time to do this right.”

Gennie fought back the panic rising in her throat. She had to keep thinking, keep stalling him, until someone missed her. Rose would miss her, wouldn't she? If she screamed, would anyone even hear her? Or would Albert kill her instantly?

“You wanted to be a Believer,” Gennie gasped in desperation. “How could you want to be a Believer and kill people?”

“I wanted to be a carpenter!” For the first time, Albert's voice took on some depth. “That's all I ever wanted.”

“But you are a carpenter.”

“A damn good one, too.” He waved his free hand around the room, filled with his handiwork. But his eyes and his weapon still aimed at her. “Everyone says I'm gifted. But people keep interfering. It's the Depression, they said, nobody wants you, no matter how good you are. Sometimes someone would hire me and then they wouldn't pay me for all my beautiful work! That isn't fair, is it?”

“Nay, it's not fair.”

His eyes flicked briefly around the shop, skimming over an unfinished table and an exquisite cabinet.

“They should not have done that to you,” Gennie continued, trying to keep her voice steady, sympathetic.

“Damn right! Damn right they shouldn't have. They got what they deserved.”

Now,
Gennie thought,
now!
She lunged forward, pushing the bundle of thick wool directly into Albert's knife. Startled, he stumbled backwards. His grip loosened and the knife stuck in the fabric. Gennie sped around him in a wide arc. But Albert recovered quickly and sprinted across the floor toward her. He grabbed her skirt, pulling her off-balance. She twisted and fell on her back.

She still held the cloak, the knife stuck in the cloth. If Albert fell on her, the knife would go straight into her. With frantic, shaking fingers she felt for the wooden handle. She encountered the side of the blade first. She cried out as it ripped across her palm.

Gasping with pain, she located the handle and yanked the weapon out of the fabric. She tossed the cloak toward Albert, who batted it aside like a rubber ball. But the maneuver gained her a few seconds. She struggled to a standing position with her undamaged left hand and scrambled out of his reach.

“Stay away from me!” She held the knife in front of her, just as Albert had done earlier. Only her hand bled and shook badly. Albert smiled and strolled toward her, as though now he had all the time in the world. Gennie stumbled backwards. With a swift movement, Albert's sinewy hands grabbed her wrists. He squeezed her right wrist until her weakened fingers opened. The knife clattered to the floor. Albert ignored it and dragged her over to the rag pile as if she were light as a bundle of laundry.

Gennie filled her lungs and screamed for Rose. The
name was barely out of her mouth before it was replaced with a rag, tasting faintly of turpentine and stretched painfully across her teeth.

His bony face tight with concentration, Albert yanked her flailing arms behind her back and tied her wrists with a few loose rags. Pressing on her shoulders, he forced her down onto the rag pile, where he bound her ankles together and tied a final rag over her eyes.

He hoisted her up by the waist and threw her over one shoulder. She squirmed and tried to kick her bound legs, but his grip across her knees only tightened. The slight bounce in his step told her they were climbing the stairs.

They must have reached the second floor, because the climbing stopped. Gennie felt herself heaved backwards into what smelled like a wooden box. For a moment there was silence. Then Albert spoke again.

“Suppose you're wondering why I didn't just kill you downstairs,” he said, so casually he might have been explaining why he had chosen to use a dark stain rather than a light one on a chest of drawers.

“Too messy. Blood. Hard to explain, if anyone comes looking for you before I get a chance to clean up. But don't worry. I'll take care of you later. You'll be so upset over Molly's death that you ran away. I'll fix it up. In the meantime, you'll be comfortable here. As long as there's air to breathe, that is. This was meant for Johann, by the way. You're small enough. Maybe you two can share it.”