Just a Kiss Away (3 page)

As she rounded the corner just a few blocks from her new home, she saw why he refused to ride them. Horses—ponies really, no bigger than three-month-old calves—struggled to haul a loaded trolley through the street in front of her. She’d never seen horses look so poorly.

She stood there, stunned, immobile, trying to come to terms with something so pitiful and foreign to her. The horses at Hickory House and Beechtree Farms were her brother Harrison’s prized possessions and treated as much. They were almost part of the family. These animals were as thin as the skinny lizards called geckos that scurried all over the island. She’d never been exposed to animals so feeble and sick. The sight turned her stomach. Nothing, not the hot sun, or the crowds would make her set foot on one of those vehicles.

Before she’d ever seen the trolleys she’d make the decision to walk, since that was what her daddy did, and she was eager to please him. Now, as she watched the horses struggle to pull the loaded cars she felt ashamed that her first reason for walking was selfish, only to please the father she so needed to please. Because of her own worrying she hadn’t thought about the animals.

But it was hard for her to understand something she’d never seen. Diseased animals were surely not something she could ever remember seeing. Not in Belvedere, at Hickory House, at Beechtree Farms, or at Calhoun Industries, not at any of the homes of the families with whom they mixed socially. And if there were any, her brothers would have shielded her from the sight.

The LaRue men protected her. She was the last living female in the LaRue family, a respected, honored southern name as old as the hickory trees that lined the long drive of the family estate. Her mother had been a Calhoun, another name that was practically an institution in the state of South Carolina, a place where blood lines determined social acceptance.

Her mother had also been a true lady, cherished and coddled and loved by all the LaRue men. But she had died when Eulalie was so young that the only image she had of her mother was from the picture over the salon mantel and the descriptions by her brothers and the others who’d worshiped and adored her. Like her mother, she’d been sheltered from anything her five brothers deemed the least bit dangerous or unsavory or unrespectable. Other than Madame Devereaux’s—a school she’d been expected to attend, where she’d been escorted to and from that bastion of female propriety in the family carriage—church, and an occasional soiree, she had always been attended by at least two of her five brothers.

Thus she hadn’t mixed much, hadn’t seen much but her well-guarded little world, where everything ran its smooth and normal course, where her name gave her acceptance and opened the magic doors of society, where ladies behaved as such and were in turn cherished and protected by their menfolk.

All except one man, the man whose name she bore, her father. The one man who hadn’t been around to cherish Eulalie was her father. He was the reason she was here, and he was the reason she was so nervous and unsure, wondering how one went about meeting the father she hadn’t seen in seventeen years, wondering what his impression would be. When he finally returned tonight that meeting would take place, and more than anything she wanted it to be perfect.

His heart pounded louder and louder
, booming like cannon blasts through his head. The snake slithered on. Sam exhaled for the first time in almost two minutes. He was free again, almost. He had to get to the river. He moved on, dragging his body through the brush. He could feel the thorn vines scratching through his shirt. A deep mulch of [eaves blanketed the ground, and soon the vines grew sparser. He crawled farther, until wet, loamy dirt as black as a moonless sky covered the ground.

An instant later he was free again. He shot upright and ran on. Birds burst like buckshot from a giant banyan tree. Their dark shadows filled what little sky bled through the jungle overhang. Feathers rained down. Unknown animals screeched and rustled off.

Suddenly he was surrounded by a sea of color—red frangipani, yellow hibiscus, and purple orchids. The sweet smell of tropical blossoms swelled in the air and over his dry tongue and throat. He was in a floral jungle, layer after thick layer of flowering plants. He tore through it. The perfume faded.

Then it was there. Water. He could smell the river. Humidity and dankness swelled around him, signs that the river was nearby. The taste of silty water filled the air. The hum of Spanish and native dialect faded behind him in the distance, replaced by the rush of fast-moving water.

If he could reach the river, he might make it. The Pasig River led to Tondo, outside Manila. The crowded market streets were his only chance of losing the men who chased him. They were Aguinaldo’s guerillas, and they wanted him. He had information on a gun shipment that the Spanish, Aguinaldo, and Sam’s commander, Andres Bonifacio all wanted. If anyone but Bonifacio caught him, he was as good as dead.

Eulalie moseyed around
the corner and there it was. The Tondo marketplace. A bustling, noisy hub of activity where everything seemed to scurry so fast it almost made a lady dizzy. Primitive wagons and gray weathered carts stood in clusters with their gates down, while rainbows of merchandise spilled out into the cobbled square. Everywhere there were merchants hawking their wares.

Drawn by her exotic surroundings, she wormed her way through the marketplace, mesmerized by the colors—a myriad of glistening Chinese silk moires and downy velvets in royal purples, rich dark reds, ocean-deep blues, and glowing saffron yellows piled in teetering stacks of thick and thin bolts that towered above the small Chinese merchants. She moved farther into the crowd, where a cartful of giant tubelike rolls of wool and silk rugs blocked her path to those wonderful silks. She paused, looking around, seeing only native heads and colorful baskets surrounding her.

As she stepped back to find a new path, something caught her eye. She stopped and stared. The Filipino women walked around the circumference of the marketplace with baskets of merchandise atop their heads. Although it wasn’t a new sight to her—the washerwomen back home carried their baskets the same way—these baskets were twice as big, and the women were so small they were almost half-size. The tall baskets held heaps of golden papayas mixed with green and pink mangoes, and some right strange orangish melons that were foreign to her.

Rising from her right was the strong odor of the sea, and she turned toward it. A few carts stood catawampus to her, and they were smothered in a whole mess of dead fish. The fish sellers poured buckets of ocean water over the catch, trying to keep them fresh in the intense island heat of the afternoon. Every time they doused the fish, the odor subsided for a short time. But soon the smell returned and sent her moving away through the crowd and away from its stench.

The excitement and freedom of the frenetic atmosphere of the Tondo marketplace captured Eulalie just like those snared fish. Fate set the line, destiny the hook, and she was lured by her fascination with the crowd, completely unaware of the deep, raging waters toward which she swam, and of how this one afternoon would take her small, sheltered, protected, socially prominent and lonely little life and shoot it all to hell.

A small, square-toed woman’s dress shoe crunched down on his hand. Sam bit back a yell. His free hand shot out and gripped the woman’s foot, wrenching the squat little bone-crushing heel out of the back of his drinking hand.

He grunted in relief; she screeched. He released her ankle and crawled quickly back under the wagon. The shoes shuffled backward before they were swept up with the crowd. He examined his hand. There was a deep gouge between this thumb and forefinger. It hurt like hell.

More boots stomped past the wagon, dragging his attention from his hand. Sam lay still. They passed, and he slowly edged out from under the back of the wagon. It was clear. Only native Filipinos milled about.

Stooping, Sam worked his way through the crowd, ducking when a soldier was near. He moved along, frequently turning his head to the right to check his blind side. He made it as far as the fish vendor. Turning, he looked to the right, then quickly turned left.

A daggerlike object surrounded by a pink blurr flashed toward his good eye. He reeled back. Christ! he thought, instinctively straightening, he’d almost lost his other eye. He stood there staring at the pink parasol bobbing its way through the crowd.

He had straightened to his full height—a big mistake.

A soldier burst from the crowd, coming at him, bolo knife raised. Sam spun left. He spotted the fish vendor with his saltwater pail raised. Sam ripped it from the man’s hands and heaved it at the soldier. Then he ran, overturning two carts to ensure his getaway. Stooping, he plunged into the excited marketplace once again and disappeared into the crowd.

Eulalie could have sworn
someone grabbed her ankle. She’d scoured the ground, but couldn’t see a thing, having been swept along by the moving crowd. One thing she’d learned today was what the word “crowded” really meant. She wasn’t used to hordes of people, and while the crowd did frighten her, it also excited her. The marketplace was a new experience, so different from her calm, peacefully protected life in Belvedere.

The strangest things happened here. That thing with her foot and then, just a few minutes later, she’d been trying to get away from another horrid-smelling fish cart and suddenly there was all this foreign hollering. When she’d turned around, everyone was looking at a man with a water bucket stuck on his fool head. Like the foot-grabbing, she’d paid it no mind and moseyed past an overturned cart.

Only a few feet away was exactly what she sought. A long wagon displayed fans of every vibrant color and pattern. Lining one side of the wagon were some huge baskets, so she stepped around them and made her way to the business side of the wagon.

She just couldn’t decide which one would be best for tonight. There was a darling leaf green silk fan with some birds hand-painted on it. It was more colorful than a new patchwork quilt. Then there was a pale blue one with a wharf scene, ships and all, on it. She held the two fans in her gloved hands and tried to choose. Then the vendor, an old woman with bright eyes and a gummy smile, stuck out the perfect one.

It was deep purple with a bright pink floral design that looked to be the exact color of her parasol—Calhoun pink. She laid down the other fans and snapped her parasol closed. Then she compared the colors. It was a perfect match. To free her hands, she poked her parasol into the dirt, but it wouldn’t stick, so she gripped the parasol handle tightly and raised it higher . . . .

Thwack!
she jabbed it into the soft mound of dirt near the wagon.

It was the oddest thing. She could have sworn she heard some muffled swearing. She stopped fumbling with her purse and looked up. It couldn’t have been the woman. The voice had been a man’s. She looked behind her, but didn’t see anyone.

Shrugging it off as market noise and an active imagination, she pulled some coins from her purse, paid the woman, grabbed her closed parasol, and, fan in hand, sailed through the marketplace, figuring she could find a few more doodads before she had to make her way home.

Sam’s leg hurt like hell.
He let go of it, tore the bandanna off his damp neck, and wrapped it around his aching calf. He couldn’t bloody believe it when that pink umbrella had stabbed his leg. He’d been snaking along from wagon to wagon, working his way across the marketplace. He must have moved his leg too close to the edge because the next thing he knew, a sharp pain sliced through his calf. It had been all he could do not to yell. Instead, he’d sucked in a chestful of air, held it, and exhaled every curse he’d ever heard and a few he’d made up.

He finished tying the knot, hoping the pressure of the bandage would ease the ache in his leg. He turned and glared at the spot where the umbrella assassin stood, but she was gone. Her lucky day, he thought, unsure of what he would have done but knowing full well what he’d have liked to do. But he’d never murdered a woman . . . yet.