Linda Castle (16 page)

“A
rrest him? Why?” The hair on the back of Chase’s neck prickled.

“I don’t take any pleasure in this, Major, but there has been—well, I got some new evidence brought to my attention about an old case.” It was plain Mayor Kerney had set the wheels of political machinery turning, just as he had promised he would.

“What kind of evidence?” Chase swallowed the sick feeling. He was walking on quicksand again. He didn’t even know what the crime was, and now there was
evidence.
If this new evidence was anything solid, and he could not remember his past and what part he had played in keeping his grandfather safe, then the old man was surely doomed this time.

“Some anonymous statements place your grandfather in the area of a murder, in Ferrin County. The whole thing happened about two years ago. I had almost forgotten all about it. One of the few cases I was never able to solve.”

Impotent rage began to simmer inside Chase. If only he could remember something—anything—about that time, but at least now he had a reference point from which to begin, and a crime.

Murder.

“Well, Sheriff, can I put on my britches first?” Captain Cordell’s voice made Chase start. When he turned around, he was shocked to see his grandfather grinning broadly.

The old soul didn’t realize his life was in peril. It made Chase even more furious to know that the mayor and his friends would victimize someone who wasn’t mentally competent, in their quest to get their point across.

“Sure, Captain. You go get dressed,” Sheriff Thompson allowed patiently.

For the first time Chase saw his grandfather’s affliction as a twisted blessing. At least he was oblivious to the danger he was in. It was hollow comfort to Chase while he watched the old man turn and walk away with the pistol still secreted in his striped nightshirt.

Chase was waiting outside the jail when dawn broke. Rancy didn’t seem to be in the least bit surprised. He silently unlocked the front door and stepped aside. He mo-tioned Chase toward a door at the back of the office.

He found his grandfather sitting on a crude iron cot with his manacled leg attached to a chain and ring in the center of the rough mortar floor. It sickened him to see the gentle soul in such dire circumstances.

“Can I be alone with him?” Chase asked Thompson.

“Sure, I can’t see no harm in letting you talk with him alone for a few minutes. He never said a word all the way in last night. Hope he hasn’t slipped further—well, you know—further away.” The sheriff cast a sympathetic look at Captain Cordell before he turned and walked to the outer office and closed the door behind him.

The minute Thompson was gone, the Captain rose from the cot and stepped as close to the iron bars as his leg chain would allow. He gestured for Chase to come near while he leaned far enough to wrap his fingers around the vertical iron bars.

“It’s about time you got here, Chase. I was beginning to wonder.”

Chase was taken aback. In all the time he had been home, his grandfather had never acknowledged his identity by using his given name. He put his face against the bars and listened intently.

“These fools have got some trumped-up charges about that Ferrin County killing a couple of years back. I heard Thompson talking to the mayor and some of those other idiots that call themselves the Businessman’s Association, last night after he put me in here.”

“What?” Chase was having a hard time absorbing the lucid way in which his grandfather was speaking. The vacant, out-of-focus look in his eyes had evaporated like dew on a hot morning the moment the outer door had slammed shut.

“I had never planned for you to learn the truth this way.” The old man grinned sheepishly. He ran his fingers along the silver mustache that hung beside his mouth. “But I guess there never would’ve been
any good
time to tell you. I ain’t quite as touched as everyone thinks. I never wanted to bring you in on this, but it looks like I got no choice.”

“You—you’re—not mad?”

“Not any crazier than any other fool that settled this country. Hell, we had to be a little insane to come to a place where we had to fight Santa Anna, Comanche, and the weather all at once.” The Captain’s grin widened.

Chase felt the color drain from his face. He tightened his grip on the bars when his knees went liquid.

“Well, don’t look so damned happy about having a sane relative instead of a crazy one, boy.”

Chase shook his head and blinked. “Sorry, it’s not that. Of course, I’m glad you are sane.”

A million thoughts swam through his head at once. He could not manage to grasp one single idea and sort it from all the others in the face of this information.

“You’ve never been crazy?” he asked in a doubtful whisper. “Not even a little?”

His grandfather sighed and shook his head slowly. “I buried your grandma, your ma, your father, and my sweet Marjorie in the ground behind Cordellane. That is enough to make anybody a little crazy. There was a time when grief made me… odd. Gossip and human nature, being what it is, just kept building it up, making it worse, until finally I was known as ‘crazy Captain Cordell.’”

The Captain looked away and continued to speak. “Parents were never intended to outlive their children, Chase. It’s an unnatural thing, something I hope you never have to go through. No sadder thing on God’s earth, than for a parent to put his child in the ground. For a time I couldn’t accept what happened, especially to Marjorie. Then, as things turned out, it became a blessing in disguise. People ignored me. I was able to come and go, do certain things without having to explain.”

“The charges against you are serious. You could hang.”

“It’s just some nonsense cooked up by Kerney. I could’ve cleared it all up in the beginning, but then you blundered in and lied about us being together that night. I had to keep my mouth shut to keep you safe.” His grandfather frowned at him a bit suspiciously. “I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me where you were that night.”

Chase gulped. This was his opportunity—he could tell his grandfather about his missing memory. He considered it for one heartbeat.

“No,” Chase grated out. If he had not been with his grandfather, then he had no notion of where he was—but the Colt Ira had returned to him made him wonder if he was a murderer. The unknown kept him silent.

His grandfather’s mustache twitched. “I won’t ask again. You’ll tell me if you want to. I don’t supposed you’d care to tell me why you told them I was with you?”

“No.” Chase felt his heart begin to pound and a pain behind his eyes made him wince. A new flash of memory filled his brain.

He remembered his father’s funeral and his aunt Marjorie’s funeral and how his life changed forever after that.

He could feel his own sorrow and humiliation in the regained memory. He felt the bleak isolation and heart-ripping loneliness that he had known as young man, because from that day on, he heard laughter and jeers behind his back. In defense of the mockery, he had pushed himself to excel at everything, hoping the stigma of his grandfather’s madness could not hurt him. But it did. It hurt him in too many ways for a green boy to understand.

Chase felt himself shudder inside while he gripped the cold iron bars. He had lived under a dark cloud of shame that kept him separate from the rest of the world and made him different from other young men. He remembered every painful slur and slight with aching exactness.

A wave of hot anger flowed through him. For the first time since his return he felt hostility toward his grandfather. Now that he remembered the terrible ordeal of his adolescence, his grandfather’s confession of sanity took on new significance for him.

He could no longer look at his aging relative with cool detachment and pity. His raw memories made him very much an unwilling participant in whatever his grandfather had tried to protect with the lie of madness, and Chase wanted—burned for—an explanation.

“I want to know why? How could you have let me grow up thinking you were crazy?” Chase heard the pain in his words.

Captain Cordell sighed and moved back toward the huge ring in the center of the floor. He was so still, for a time Chase wondered if his grandfather had heard him. Then he turned to face Chase.

“I’ve known this day would come. I’ve thought about it for years, but now that it’s here, I don’t know how to explain to you what I did or what compelled me to do it.”

“Do you know what it’s like to grow up under something like that?” Chase’s voice was a harsh whisper. There
were still huge holes in his collection, but the memory of his grandfather’s mental collapse was now crystal clear.

Captain Cordell looked at the floor and ran his fingers over the long, drooping mustache. “I saw the effect it had on you, but you were well on your way to being a man, Chase. I thought—I hoped what I was doing was important enough to justify what you were going through.”

“I was still young, little more than a boy. It mattered what people thought. What could possibly have been so important that you would inflict that kind of pain on your own flesh and blood?”

His grandfather looked up. He narrowed his eyes as if trying to picture it in his own mind. “The lives of hundreds, possibly thousands, of people were that important. Keeping them alive tipped the scales, Chase.”

“What are you talking about? Just what are you involved in?”

He pierced Chase with intelligent eyes. “I don’t want you involved in what I’m doing, for your sake and Linese’s.”

“I’m a grown man now. I believe I have a right to know.”

Captain Cordell moved back toward the bars and lowered his voice. “All right, Chase. I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing. I just hope to God I don’t end up regretting it.”

He whispered so softly Chase had to hold his breath in order to hear the answer. “I have been helping the abolitionists for years. Long before the hostilities broke out, Cordellane was part of the Underground Railroad.”

“Helping get runaway slaves up North?”

“Yep. Mainfield is one of the towns along the way to freedom.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Chase felt the sting of being left out, of being apart.

Captain Cordell shook his head. “Put you in danger? No. I decided it would be better if I was crazy for as long as it was necessary. Nobody was supposed to know this secret. I wouldn’t have told you now, except for your recklessness two years ago. You should come clean right now and tell
Thompson where you really were that night. It’s going to come out eventually.”

For an instant Chase panicked. He had no intentions of letting his grandfather know about his amnesia. Perhaps it was only pride. More likely the reason was the horrible possibility that Chase had not been half the man he wanted to be—not until he remembered. Whatever the reason, he resolved not to tell him.

“I can’t tell him.”

His grandfather glared at him. “Suit yourself, but it isn’t going to be long until somebody starts asking you some hard questions.”

Tiny fragments of new memory swirled in his head but nothing was tangible. He could not tell the sheriff what he did not know himself. He was still dancing on a knife edge, bluffing his way through each day. But while those memories floated, just outside of his reach, he had a hope.

“You probably thought I was a fool for lying for you.” Chase dragged his fingers through his hair. The ache in his head was growing worse, the ringing in his ears more high-pitched, while the memories floated like leaves in a dust devil.

“I thought you were a brave man doing a selfless thing.”

Chase looked up and saw his grandfather swipe at his eyes. The old man sniffed and cleared his throat. “I’m proud of you, boy. Going away to fight has turned you into the man I always hoped you would become. You helped those people just as much as I ever did.”

Chase felt a lump in his throat. It was funny, how the old man’s approval sent a flood of satisfaction through his body.

He thought about all the secrets he had been confronted with since coming home. This was the first time somebody had said something that made him feel good about the man he used to be.

Chase realized he was happy his grandfather thought well of him. The anger at his grandfather’s deception slowly
drained away and he was left with a warm affection for the old man.

“I’m proud of you, too, Grandfather.” Chase reached his hand through the bars and touched the old man’s cheek. “What can I do to get you out of here?”

“I heard Rancy mention a date to Kerney last night. May 30, 1862.”

“What difference does the date make?”

“Get a message to Doralee and her girls. After Thompson talks to her, I’ll be free as a bird, and just as crazy as I ever was. On your honor, you must swear not to let anyone, including Linese, know any different—not yet.”

“I swear, on my honor,” Chase said softly. For the first time since his arrival, he felt he might truly have some honor.

Chase turned and reached for the latch on the door. The need to exact some revenge on Kerney was searing his in-sides. It was all he could think of. He was going to write the editorials the mayor had been wanting. And he couldn’t wait to see the reaction of the Businessman’s Association when they read them.

Linese stopped her buggy just as Doralee and a half-dozen painted ladies stepped out of a fringe-topped surrey parked in front of the jail. Doralee glanced Linese’s way but quickly averted her eyes and acted as if she hadn’t seen her. Linese wrapped the reins around the brake and jumped down to the street.

“Miss Doralee, wait.” She picked up her skirts and hurried forward, while the May heat shimmered up her legs and made her feel like a wilted flower.

Doralee turned and lifted her parasol as if to protect herself from the sun. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Mrs. Cordell, you shouldn’t ought to speak to me in public.” Doralee looked up and down the street, as if she thought the local gossips would already be busy documenting Linese’s
social blunder. “I wouldn’t want you to be shamed ‘cause you spoke to me.”

Linese’s cheeks burned with guilty shame. Up until recently she would have felt the same fear—that speaking to a soiled dove would ruin her reputation. But, lately, she just didn’t care about that so much anymore. Perhaps it was her gratitude for Melissa’s help, or perhaps she was learning that people were just people, that their circumstance didn’t really make them better or worse than anyone else, just different.