Indiana Belle (American Journey Book 3) (32 page)

"I suppose they don't," Cameron said. "I was just thinking about something. If I never again see a another person dressed in white, it will be too soon."

Candice folded her arms.

"Is that so?"

"Yes."

"Does that include your bride?"

Cameron smiled.

"Oh, Lord, no."

Candice offered a satisfied smile.

"That's a good answer, Mr. Coelho. It's the only one I'll accept."

Cameron laughed.

"I suspected that."

Candice rested her head on folded hands.

"You're in a good mood for someone who had a stressful experience the other day. Is there something you want to tell me?"

Cameron looked around before answering. Harrison's, the popular steakhouse on Vine Street, was coming to life. He proceeded when he was convinced no one else was listening.

"There's a
lot
I want to tell you," Cameron said.

Candice leaned forward.

"You know something. You know something I don't. You read something in the library that you haven't told me. Am I right?"

"You're right."

"Is it bad?"

"No. It's mostly good."

"Then tell me," Candice said. "Start with the bad news first though."

Cameron smiled.

"OK. The bad news isn't necessarily bad. It's more of a realization."

"You're speaking in riddles again."

Cameron chuckled.

"Let me try again then. I don't think 2041 is for us."

"I don't either," Candice said.

"The whole scene was just too much."

"What do you think happened?"

"The people of that time made some bad choices, that's what," Cameron said. "They sacrificed the very things that made this country great on the altar of expediency."

"Why did everyone wear white?"

"They did because they were afraid not to. When the government has the power to put you away for not showing respect to a president, people do what they are told."

"We would never do that," Candice said.

"You're right. We wouldn't," Cameron said. "We would resist authority, which is exactly why we could never live in that time. The country was too far gone to fix."

"Your time isn't like that?"

Cameron shook his head.

"It's not, but it's drifting in that direction."

"Then what should we do?" Candice asked.

Cameron looked at her thoughtfully.

"We stay here. We stay in 1925 until we have to leave."

"
Will
we have to leave? Will we want to?"

"We might. Bad times are coming, Candice, including an economic depression and a really nasty war, the one I told you about on the train. We will have a lot to consider."

"I feel so ignorant."

"You're not ignorant. You're just not privy to the things I know," Cameron said. "I'll help you with that. I'll share my knowledge when it's appropriate, but I don't want to share everything. I want you to live life like most people. I want you to wake up every morning believing that today will be better than yesterday. That's a gift I can never have back."

Candice fixed her gaze.

"I was so right to marry you."

Cameron smiled.

"You haven't married me yet."

"You know what I mean," Candice said.

"I do. I think we're close enough to talk that way," Cameron said. He pulled a velvet box from his jacket pocket, flipped it open, and placed it on the linen-covered table. "We're definitely close enough for me to give you this."

Candice slid the box toward her, pulled out a diamond ring, and slipped it on the appropriate finger. She admired the ring for a moment in the low restaurant light and then looked at the man who would be her husband in nineteen days.

"It's beautiful," Candice said.

"It's late is what it is," Cameron replied. "I should have bought you a ring in California. You haven't had much of an engagement."

Candice looked at him with watery eyes.

"Oh, yes, I have."

Cameron smiled.

"I'm glad to see the glass is still half full."

"It always will be," Candice said. "As long as I get to spend my life with you, it will be half full and then some. I don't plan to waste my days dwelling on things I can't change."

"What about things that
will
change?"

"I don't understand what you're saying."

Cameron reached across the table and took her hands.

"I did more than catch up on American history at the library," Cameron said. "I caught up on
your
history. I read several issues of the
Evansville Post
from July and August 1925, issues that haven't been published yet, and learned a few things."

"I'm afraid to ask what."

"You shouldn't be. They are all good things."

"Please tell me one," Candice said.

Cameron pulled her hands to the middle of the table.

"I'll tell you two," he said. "The first is that a beautiful young woman is not going to be murdered Thursday night. She's not going to be murdered any night."

Candice took a deep breath.

"How can you be so sure?"

"I can be sure because I've seen the future, Miss Bell. I've read newspapers that don't report the murder of a society editor in July or August of this year."

"But—"

"Don't you see? Your life is on a new course now. History won't repeat itself because I've stirred things up. You won't die this week. You
will
marry next month. You will live a life that's night-and-day different than the one you lived the first time around."

"What's the second good thing?" Candice asked.

Cameron looked at her thoughtfully.

"You're going to set this town on fire, that's what. You're going to start by writing stories that put some very bad men in very good jails. In exactly a month, you're going to publish a story that puts Leonard Heller behind bars. You're going to make a difference, sweetheart."

Candice withdrew her hands and wiped a tear from her face.

"You sure know how to liven up a dinner," Candice said. She looked at her fiancé thoughtfully. "Do you have any more news for me before we order?"

Cameron smiled.

"I don't have any news, but I do have a question."

"What?" Candice asked.

"Are you going to change your name?"

"I was planning to. Does that surprise you?"

"It does," Cameron said. "You've developed a following as Candice Bell and C.L. Bell, so I was kind of surprised to see bylines by Candice Coelho in those upcoming papers."

Candice smiled sweetly and reclaimed his hands.

"That's because you don't know me."

"What do you mean?" Cameron said.

"What I mean, Mr. Coelho, is that despite all my progressive views and efforts to strike a blow for women in a man's world, I'm still very old-fashioned," Candice said. She took a breath. "I'm still a woman who is an awful lot like her mother. I'm still the girl from Griffin."

CHAPTER 58: CANDICE

Wednesday, July 1, 1925

Sitting at her favorite picnic table in her favorite park, Candice Bell, soon to be Candice Coelho, gazed at the Ohio River and decided that the two had a lot in common. Each had taken some crazy turns from their starting point to their present point. Both were about to assume a straighter, smoother, and more predictable course as they prepared to join a larger body.

Candice considered Cameron more appealing than the Mighty Mississippi, which lay 190 miles downstream near Cairo, Illinois, but she liked the comparison nonetheless. Both man and river offered something new and different to their smaller companions.

She sorted a few papers on top of the table and then took a moment to observe the activity in Sunset Park. No matter where she looked, she saw people enjoying a warm summer afternoon. Men strolled with their wives or girlfriends to and from the pagoda. Women attended to young children near the water. Boys threw baseballs. Girls skipped rope. Other children rolled on skates, played tag, or cooled themselves off in the shallow river.

Candice had come to the park to placate a fiancé who still worried about her safety. She told him she would move about only in public places and only in daylight while he retrieved crystals from a cellar, ran errands, and prepared for their wedding. They planned to reunite on Thursday night, the night a society editor and future news reporter would not be murdered.

Candice sighed as she visualized the reunion. She let her mind drift to pleasant places when a not-so-pleasant voice brought her back to the here and now.

"I was told I might find you here," Leonard Heller said.

Candice turned around and saw not only Satan but also Satan's best friend. She tried to steady her nerves as she beheld the drug runner and the attorney she desperately wanted to forget.

"Don't you have better things to do than harass women?" Candice asked.

"I don't," Leonard said.

"I don't either," Richard Paine added.

Candice took a breath.

"What do you want?"

"You
know
what I want," Leonard said.

"I'm sorry, Leonard, but I've promised it to someone kind."

Candice cheered silently when she saw the men react to her comment. Leonard snarled. Richard winced. Neither, it appeared, had expected a lady to speak that way.

"I see that someone isn't here," Richard said.

"No. He's not," Candice said. "He's out doing productive things today. I suggest the two of you do the same."

"I'm afraid that's not going to happen."

"I suspected as much."

"Why are you here, Richard?"

The attorney smirked.

"I'm here to support my good friend and help him send a message to a woman who has been sticking her nose in places it doesn't belong."

Candice scanned the area again, hoping to find a policeman, but she found only people who seemed entirely disinterested in a public harassment. She would have to deal with these cretins, by herself, whether she liked it or not.

"Speak plainly or leave," Candice said. She stood up and glared at the lawyer. "I don't have time to entertain you today. What do you want?"

"It's not what I want," Richard said. "It's what my friend wants. He wants something that belongs to him, something you somehow managed to obtain."

Candice looked at Leonard.

"I have nothing of yours."

"We both know that's not true," Leonard said. "I spoke this morning with my file clerk, my
former
file clerk, and learned that she has been less than faithful to her employer. It seems she provided you with an invoice that does not reflect kindly on me as a businessman."

"I don't have it," Candice said. "I put it in a safe place."

"I figured you had. Even you would not be stupid enough to carry something like that out in the open. I'm sure you have it stored in a place I can't reach."

"You're smarter than you look, Leonard."

The druggist smirked.

"I suppose I am," Leonard said. He rubbed his hands together. "I suspect you are, too, which is why I decided to see you today. I want to give you a chance to exercise your smarts and save yourself a lot of trouble."

"Are you threatening me?"

"No. I'm educating you. I'm telling you that the surest way to have a happy future with Mr. Coelho is to make a piece of paper disappear."

"That sounds like a threat," Candice said.

"It's a promise," Leonard said. "It's a promise that I will not take this matter lightly should you decide to act irresponsibly."

Candice bristled.

"You can take your promise and put it in a special place. I will not give you that invoice. I
will
give it to the police and tell the world of your malfeasance. I will see you hauled off to prison if it is the last thing I do."

"So speaks a foolish woman," Leonard said. "You've been warned, Miss Bell. I will not warn you again. Please consider your next step carefully. Good day."

Candice glared at the annoying druggist and the contemptible lawyer as they stepped away from the table, rejoined the traffic on the park's primary path, and headed toward Main Street. She didn't think that Leonard Heller and Richard Paine were anything more than blustering fools, but for the first time in her life, she conceded she wasn't sure.

She did not know whether history, her new history, was as set in stone as Cameron had insisted it was. She put a hand on her belly as her stomach began to twist. On the day before the day she would not be murdered, she felt a tinge of genuine fear. Doubt set in.

CHAPTER 59: CAMERON

Thursday, July 2, 1925

Cameron pulled the letter from the box, examined it closely, and then tossed it in his satchel. He knew what it contained and decided it could wait.

He had no time right now for lectures on writing etiquette or demands for detailed reports. He had a fiancée to see. Geoffrey Bell did not.

Cameron thought about that fiancée as he walked away from the post office and proceeded toward the Bell residence. He felt guilty about putting his concerns ahead of hers in the past two days, but he knew the feeling would pass. He would more than make up for his neglect in the coming weeks – if the stifling heat and humidity did not kill him first.

The Rhode Islander tugged at his collar and wiped his brow as he drew close to the Bell mansion, a towering Queen Anne that stood out even among the Italianate, Spanish Colonial, and Second Empire homes on First Street. He looked forward to taking his wedding trip to the East Coast and trading his stuffy suits for shorts and sleeveless shirts.

Cameron arrived at the mansion a minute later at ten after five. He rang the doorbell, tugged at his collar again, and waited for the woman he loved to greet him. When no one answered the bell, he knocked on the door. He rang and knocked until Lula Bell threw open the door, caught her breath, and looked at him with eyes that revealed exasperation, frustration, and fear.

"Lula?" Cameron asked.

"There you are!" Lula said. "I just called the hotel. They said you had left. I have been trying to reach you for twenty minutes. Where have you been?"