Weak Flesh (12 page)

Sometime later, Bailey had prepared tea and biscuits and served them on a pretty tray. Gage had not engaged in such niceties for some time and felt strange amid the delicate bone china and sterling silver.

"Thank you, Meggie," Dr. Bailey said as he took a cup and saucer from her. "Now, tell us about this dance program you mentioned. I must admit I know little of such things, but I can't imagine what significance it has for Tucker's investigation."

"My thoughts exactly," Gage said.

"Ah, as I said, it's not the card itself," Meghan answered, "but the place where I discovered it." She smiled triumphantly and waited for the obvious question.

Gage indulged her. "And where did you find this mysterious dance card?"

"Hidden," she said. "Hidden in a very clever place, I must say. I didn't think Nell had such nefariously ingenious ideas in her head."

"Must've learnt them from you," Dr. Bailey said with a pretense at gruffness.

Meg's father had hardly come to terms with his daughter's tomboyish ways, Gage thought. As he recalled, Bailey had always been in one scrap or another as a child.

"Indeed," she said proudly.

"Don't try to draw out the suspense, Bailey," Gage said dryly as he watched her over his teacup. "Where was the item hidden?"

"It was sewn into the cushion of an occasional chair in her bedroom." She leaned toward Gage with a grin on her face. "Stuffed deep into the batting so it was nearly undetectable. Do you have any idea what wit it took to devise such a hiding place?"

Her father lifted his bushy brows. "Something hidden in such a place certainly speaks of a clear intent that it not be found by accident."

Gage nodded and reached for another biscuit. "I agree. Nell meant the dance card to remain hidden. But why? It seems harmless enough?"

"We must figure the meaning of it, Gage, but we can be assured it is of great significance." Meghan paused dramatically. "And I believe it got her killed!"

"Oh, I say, Meggie. You can hardly jump to such a rash conclusion." Dr. Bailey looked to the Marshal. "Don't you think, Tucker?"

"What's on the card, Bailey?" Gage asked, ignoring the doctor's question for the moment. "Let's have a look at it."

Ignoring her own cooling drink, Bailey reached into her skirt pocket and relinquished the card.

Gage turned it over in his hands, reading first the front and then the back. "A list of men's names."

He raised one brow at her. "I must agree with your father, Bailey. What do you think the names mean? Except for the fact that Nell danced with these fellows, of course," he added mockingly.

"Don't be obtuse," she said. "I don't expect you to know these gentlemen, having been away for so long, but here – " She snatched the card from his hand and gave it to her father. "What do you think, Papa?"

Dr. Bailey peered through his bifocal lenses. "Hmmm, yes, yes, local fellows all of them except – except Michael Hayes." He harrumphed loudly. "Well, we know who Mr. Hayes is now, don't we? But who the devil is Ned Osborne? I thought I knew everyone in town. Is he from the next county, Meg?" `0

Bailey shook her head slowly from side to side, grinning like an idiot. "I have no idea who this Ned Osborne is, I've never met him, and I'm sure Nell has never mentioned his name. In fact, I'm quite certain no such person was at the dance at all. I was in attendance at the soiree – you were too, Papa, if you remember – and no mysterious Ned was there."

She pursed her lips, crossed her arms, and challenged Gage. "So what do you think about that, Tucker Gage?"

"I think we'd better find out who knows this Ned Osborne. Perhaps Mr. or Mrs. Carver, Susan Carver, or one of the other young men who danced with Nell."

"But you agree it means something, right?" Bailey pressed.

Gage shrugged. "It's too early to say." He watched her spirits drop at his words. "Was there anything else? Perhaps a coded message or something hidden within the folds of the thick paper?"

"Now you're making fun of me," she complained.

"Not at all, Meggie," her father said. "Tucker is simply suggesting that we look for something else on the dance card."

He pressed down the card at its edges, running his thumbs over the corners and turning it over and over. "Ah," he said at last. "Look here. There's some thickness at the corners and the pages are beginning to separate."

Bailey's face leapt with excitement. "That's brilliant, Gage. Perhaps there
is
something between the pages."

Gage stood up and leaned over Dr. Bailey. "Careful now. If this turns out to be some kind of evidence, I don't want it damaged."

"Scissors, Meg, get your sewing scissors," Dr. Bailey said.

Bailey returned, not with scissors, but a thin-bladed razor. "Ah, perfect," said her father. "Here, Tucker, you do it. My old hands are not steady enough."

Gage knelt on the floor in front of Dr. Bailey, Meghan leaning over his back, one hand on his shoulder. "Be careful, Gage," she warned. "Don't ruin it."

Carefully he inserted the edge of the razor between the two thick folds of paper until he'd separated the bottom edge of the dance card. He placed a little pressure on the sides, created a gap and blew gently.

A tiny scrap of folded notepaper fell onto his trouser leg.

#

The cleansing bite of the fine Scotch whiskey rolled over Aaron Sharpe's tongue and slid smoothly down his throat. He held the glass up to the light on his desk and studied it. He hadn't been Aaron Sharpe, he mused, for a long time, but alone in his study on days such as this one, he mourned the boy he'd once been.

The boy Aaron had been forced to flee Missouri far sooner than he wanted to. His pa had been killed in a raid, things had gotten too hot for Aaron, and he'd left for Virginia shortly afterward.

He'd been young and foolish then, and more than a little scared, but he'd adapted quickly. That'd always been his strength – reinventing himself into what people wanted, taking full advantage of the tools that presented themselves to him.

Refashioning himself in Virginia, he'd learned how to dress correctly, speak properly, and mingle with the upper crust of southern society. His charm and good looks were his greatest – and only – assets.

He'd scraped and fought, bartered and lied to get what he needed. For a long time his clothing consisted of rags and his belly was never filled. He had no money, but eventually found he didn't need it.

Women were eager to keep him, pet him, care for him, and eventually he grew unwilling to risk his money, prestige and comfort for his other ... pursuits. In order to survive, he'd savagely tamped down those strong urges, those oh-so-exquisite pleasures.

He'd been like a thirsty man in the Sahara for every one of those long, chaste Virginia years.

Until Mildred and her siren of a daughter.

Nothing unnatural there, he told himself, because the girl wasn't really his daughter. A step-daughter was like any other woman, not a blood relation at all. And the girl was nearly of an age for consent. Wasn't seventeen the same as a fully-grown woman?

She'd liked her mother's handsome, young husband. He'd known that even while the flesh on his neck had turned a cold clamminess that chilled to the bone.

But if Mildred had found out. God, she would've howled like a mad woman and raised all sorts of hell. While he'd gotten away with minor indiscretions during his wife's illness, she wouldn't turn a blind eye when it came to her precious daughter.

He had no choice but to do something about the girl before she confessed to someone, the pastor, the authorities. They wouldn't believe her at first. His reputation was too impeccable to be called into judgment.

But the sly looks and covert comments would finally reach his wife's attention. "There he is, he's the one who had sexual congress with his own daughter."

Not his real daughter, he wanted to shout. Damned fools, so bound by the rules and the law. Using words like "sexual congress" because they wouldn't just say he fucked her senseless.

God, but it was good, he thought as he felt the thrill of remembered pleasure.

Mildred's death had been a blessing, one he hadn't even had to act upon. His wife had always been frail. It was God's will, he decided. He'd been free, then, more completely than the slaves at the end of the War, more sublimely than an iniquitous man who'd found God.

With the considerable money willed to him at his wife's death, Sharpe had gone to Virginia City, Nevada, – though of course, he hadn't been Sharpe by then. He'd invested in land for silver speculation. The Sutro Drainage Tunnel in the Comstock Lode facilitated the extraction of the ore and the former Aaron Sharpe became even more wealthy.

He was twenty-five the year he'd first killed a man in Virginia City.       

Although it was a peak year in mining and, yes, he'd made an obscene amount of money in the Comstock Lode, what he remembered most was the sound of the pick sinking into the skull of the old miner. The jarring of the blow from his fists clear up to his elbows. He buried the man deep in the Sutro Tunnel and doubted that anyone had ever found the body.

Thus he'd been reborn yet again.

Chapter 14

"My God," Meghan said, snatching the scrap of paper from Gage's knee.

His muscles tensed beneath the brush of her hand. "What?"

The odd symbols and drawings written on the paper were in a painstaking hand. Nell's? Yet the markings had a shocking familiarity that jiggled Gage's memory.

He stood up, his leg twitching at a sharp pain above the knee. Easing himself into the wingchair, he stretched the limb out in front of him, twisting the ankle round in a circle. "Don't tell me you recognize that mumbo-jumbo."

Her mouth drooped, not quite a pout, but enchantingly feminine. "It's not mumbo-jumbo. It's a code that Nell and I used when we were children, playing pirates or some such."

Gage caught Dr. Bailey's eye over Meghan's dark, messy curls and exchanged a knowing smile. She'd always loved acting out the pretend adventures usually reserved for boys. Probably why she'd always gotten into one scrape or another.

"Can you interpret it?" Gage asked.

Bailey furrowed her brow and bit her lower lip. "Hmmm, maybe. It looks like Nell has modified the code."

Her father smiled indulgently as Gage laughed aloud.

"What?" she exclaimed, looking from one of them to the other. "What's so funny?"

"Apparently Nell didn't trust you, Bailey," Gage said. "She manipulated the code so that even you – who created it – wouldn't recognize what it means."

Bailey sputtered, an indignant look on her face, as she flounced toward the sofa, clutching the note in her fingers. "Well, we'll just see about that. I taught Nellie the damned code and I can damn well figure out how she's altered it."

A mildly shocked look flashed over Dr. Bailey's face at the profanity.

Gage simply gave thanks that she was on his side.

#

The eighteen-year-old Tucker Gage stood rigidly on the rear car of the train, watching the small crowd that gathered on the platform to wave him off on his way to New York.

His mother dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief, but his father stood erect and sturdy, both hands clasped on the pearl handle of his walking stick. He stared at his only son with pitiless gray marbles, eyes that Tucker saw every morning when he looked into the glass at himself.

Finally, Tucker thought, lifting his hand in farewell to his mother, he'd done something to make his father proud. Not affectionate, of course. That was too much to hope for.

But surely proud.

Then the train rounded a curve and the little tableau on the railway platform disappeared from his sight. Even with his mother's sadness and his father's inherent censure, a thrill of excitement ran through Tucker.

West Point Academy! Tucker Gage would finally make his mark on the world.

He wended his way to the main car, stowed his bag, and found an empty seat by the window where he leaned back and watched the passing landscape until he nodded off. Hunger awoke him some time later and he remembered the lunch their maid Sarah had packed for him.

He retrieved his bag and pulled out the brown-wrapped package. Folding open the edges, he saw a sandwich – ham, his favorite, made on the thick slices of bread from Sarah's oven – and strawberries, still in season.

When he picked up the sandwich, a small folded piece of paper dropped onto his trouser leg. Curious, he picked it up and turned it over in his hand. A final message from his mother? He rather thought so, for she'd heartily opposed his going off to West Point as his father and grandfather had done before him.

He carefully opened the note.

#

"Gage!" Bailey exclaimed. "Pay attention. It's another clue. How fortunate we are that Nell was so clever!"

She slapped his thigh, leaving a warm spot where her fingers touched him. He shook his head and felt a brief moment of vertigo.

Bailey dragged a small table beside her father, and Gage crouched near her on the carpet. She smoothed the paper out. The symbols and crude line drawings jumbled together on the page, filling every space.

What the hell? Gage thought as his mind left the moment.

#

Tucker opened the folded edges of the paper. Colored pencil drawings – a human eye, large and dark, with long thick black lashes, followed by a valentine, a huge red heart, laced with white ruffles, and finally, a – a sheep?

The figures were remarkably well drawn, shaded and colored meticulously as if a budding artist had taken great care to create them. But somehow Tucker had the impression they were a child's drawings.