Weak Flesh (8 page)

Finally she'd worked an opening large enough to fit her hand inside, cupping it to create as small a mass as possible. Thank goodness for her small hands!

She poked and probed, her anxiety mounting as she discovered ... nothing. She removed her hand and pressed around the edges of the outside fabric, then re-inserted her hand and searched again.

At last she thought she felt the sharp edge of something. Paper? Yes, a stiff corner of thick paper, small and flat, no larger than four or five inches square! Bumps and ridges decorated the edges and top.

Grasping the corner between her first two fingers, she finally got purchase and dragged the item from the belly of the batting. It was too large to fit through the opening she'd made, but bent in half and cupped in the palm of her hand, it slid right out.

She stared at the object in her hand and recognized it immediately. A dance card! Nell had hidden a dance card deep in the cushion of a chair in her bedroom. Surely her intent was to keep this apparently innocuous item a secret from her parents, her sister, and even Meg herself.

But why? What meaning could an old dance card possibly have?

The heavy tread of footsteps on the uncarpeted wooden stairs reminded her that most of the guests had left. If Mr. Carver were returning to his daughter's room, he likely wouldn't tolerate her still being there. Smothering her inclination to hide in the closet, she ducked instead behind the bedroom door.

The thud of steps faltered at the entrance to the room while Meghan held her breath. Then the slightly ajar door was pulled shut with a finality that seemed both sad and ominous to Meghan's ears.

#

James Wade slouched at a table in a dark corner of Dudley's Tavern, nursing a whiskey and wondering how to get himself out of the shitty mess he was in. And all the while he couldn't purge images of Nell's heaving breasts and his hand around her neck. Of seeing consciousness ebb from those lively blue eyes while his cock jabbed against her stomach.

He noticed the slight trembling of his hands as he reached for the glass and took another swig. What the fuck had he done?

When the Marshal had hauled his ass into the Station House and thrown all sorts of suggestions and accusations at him, he hadn't been worried.
Not at first.

Sure, he seen Nellie the night she disappeared. Hell, most every night she could sneak out, but he sure wasn't the only one she kept company with.

Lots of fellows had a crush on Nellie Carver. She liked making easy promises to all kinda men. Plenty of them could've had it in for her, tired of her teasing and flirting, promising favors she had no intention of giving.

Jim knew how quickly Nell made a man's blood boil. She'd done it to him and probably the others. Whatever games he and Nell had played together, she liked them as much as him. She might've played those same games with other fellows.

He wasn't the only one who could've become mad at her and, in a moment of fury and passion, bashed her head in. Or put his hand around her pretty throat – so weak and vulnerable – and squeezed the life out of her.

Nah, he wasn't really worried. He'd been sweet-talking women from babies to grannies as long as he could remember, and he'd always gotten whatever he wanted. He told himself this situation wasn't much different.

What Marshal Tucker Gage saw as cockiness was just self-confidence, and that same trait would protect him now if it came to a criminal charge.
Wouldn't it?

Jim realized he'd made a big mistake lying to Tucker Gage at the beginning. The Marshal had a way of catching people in lies, twisting their words round and round like a tangled thread.

And now Gage was suspicious of him.

Chapter 9

Michael Hayes had sobered up by the time Gage returned to the Station House after a quick change of clothing.

Locked into the largest of the jail cells, Hayes lay on his back on a wooden cot, his long legs dangling over the end, one arm flung over his eyes. The smell of carbolic from Pruitt's scrubbing lingered in the air, replacing the sour stench of retching.

Pruitt looked up from the booking desk where he labored over a hand-written report. His knuckles were still red from his tussle with the carbolic.

"Next time use washing soda," Gage suggested. "Easier on the hands."

"Yes sir. Our visitor is wide awake for questioning," Pruitt said unnecessarily, nodding toward the cell where Hayes had turned his head their way at the sound of voices.

Gage ignored both of them and walked into his office, sat down, and leaned back in his chair, his head resting against the back. He needed a moment to formulate his questions for Michael Hayes.

If the lad's actions at the Carver house indicated anything, Hayes grieved heavily for Nell Carver. Yet another of Nell Carver's many boyfriends? Gage closed his eyes and thought for several minutes before pushing away from the desk and strolling into the reception room.

"Has he sent for anyone?" Gage asked Pruitt.

"No sir, he's not said a word."

Gage grunted and walked to the cell where Hayes now sat up, staring out at the stripped trees through the tiny barred window. Gage ran his fingers along the bars and Hayes swung his eyes toward him. A gray so pale they were nearly colorless suggested an eerie vagueness. A shock of brown hair fell over a high forehead and his jaw showed stubbles of reddish beard.

"Do you want to speak with anyone, Mr. Hayes? A lawyer perhaps?"

"No," Hayes mumbled, standing and shuffling toward the cell door like an old man instead of the twenty-some odd years Gage guessed him to be. "Do I need one? Are you charging me with a crime?"

"A public disturbance might be a good place to start, but no, not yet." Gage unlocked the cell, beckoning for Hayes to step out. A faint sour odor clung to his rumpled clothing.

Gage ushered him into his office and had him sit opposite the desk in the ladder-back chair. "I don't think the Carvers are going to press charges, Mr. Hayes. They understand that you're upset over what happened to Nell."

Gage lowered his eyes to stare at the lad's long, slender fingers twined together in his lap. A surgeon's hands, he thought, or a musician's. "But I do have some questions to ask about your relationship with Miss Carver."

When he looked up, those strange, colorless eyes were brimmed with tears. Gage had never seen a man weep, had never cried himself – even when the Chippewa woman and her baby died. The sight of Hayes' tears stirred and confused him at the same time.

"My patrolman tells me you're a medical student."

"Yes." Hayes dragged a handkerchief from his pants pocket and blew his nose. "At Chapel Hill."

"The University of North Carolina?"

"They have a very fine medical school." Hayes gave a shadow of a smile and added, "And Dr. Harris' free clinic provides practice for those of us ... less financially endowed."

"Your parents?"

"Gone. Both of them."

"How did you come to know Nell Carver?" Gage asked. "I don't imagine you run in the same social circles?"

He asked although he knew that wouldn't have mattered to Nell. After all, she'd been going out with Jim Wade, a far less likely candidate than Hayes for a romantic entanglement.

Gage considered that matrimony didn't appear to be Ellen Carver's main concern. She'd evidently been intent on having fun with as many different men as possible. Bailey wouldn't have approved of her behavior, he mused, wondering at the uniqueness of friendship.

He cleared his throat and asked the first question he'd formulated earlier. "What was the nature of your relationship with Miss Carver?"

Even as he spoke the words he knew the answer. Gage read the grief and affection in the man's demeanor and believed Nell's disappearance and death deeply upset the young medical student.

"We were in love," Hayes whispered. "We were going to be married."

Jim Wade thought Nell loved him. Michael Hayes thought the same thing. What was the truth?

The more Gage knew, the more he believed Nell Carver cared for no one but herself, and the more it looked like one of her suitors might have something to do with her death.

"When was the last time you saw her?"

Hayes hesitated a moment before admitting, "The weekend before she disappeared. We met at the gazebo on the Narrows."

Another Narrows trysting place? Gage didn't know whether to believe him or not. Hayes could've seen Nell on the very night she disappeared for all the proof he had. "Why didn't you call for her at her home?"

Hayes shifted his eyes from left to right as if contemplating how to answer. "Mr. Carver doesn't care for me," he said at last. "He thinks I'm not good enough for Nell."

"Did he tell you so?"

"Not in so many words, not to my face." Hayes wrinkled his nose in a decidedly feminine movement. "But Nell told me. That's the reason we always met away from her house."

Gage rested his chin on his knuckles and stared thoughtfully at Hayes. Either of Nell's beaus could've gotten jealous or tired of her leading them on, snapped in a fit of quick temper, and hurt her.

He opened his mouth to ask another question when he saw Pruitt trying to get his attention through the glass pane on the opposite wall that looked out into the main reception room. He frowned and ignored him. Pruitt knew better than to interrupt an interrogation.

"This, ah, understanding you had with Miss Carver," Gage asked, thinking of the ruby ring he and Bailey had just discovered. "Did you seal your ... relationship?"

"Good God, no! I respected Ellen too much to, uh, to become intimate before marriage."

"I don't mean that," Gage prodded.

Hayes looked confused.

"Did you exchange a declaration of vows, for example? Or a token of your affection?"

"No," Hayes said quickly, but his pale gray eyes slid away from Gage's direct gaze.

Was Hayes hiding something?

A soft rap sounded on the office door and Gage glanced up to see Pruitt waving frantically.

"Now tell me, Mr. Hayes," Gage continued, leaning across the desk with dead seriousness. "Where were you on the night of November 20? Where were you the night Nell Carver disappeared?"

Hayes' mouth gaped open like a fish with a hook caught in its mouth and worked his lips furiously. "I – I was at school, studying for exams."

"And can someone verify that?"

Hayes looked out the window at the bare winter scene on the street below as if he'd just realized something important. "No," he said slowly, "everyone had gone for the holiday. I was alone in the dormitory."

"That doesn't bode very well, now does it, Mr. Hayes?"

At that moment Will burst into the office fidgeting like a small boy about to soil himself. "Sorry, Marshal, sorry to interrupt, but it's important."

Gage glowered and motioned another patrolman to escort Hayes to the release area. "See that Mr. Hayes has transportation back to his dormitory." He turned to the young medical student. "Stay close by. I will want to speak with you again."

Stepping into the outer office with Pruitt at his heels, Gage stopped short at the sight of the giant oak of a man on the other side of the barrier. Two enormous blood hounds leashed at his side danced eagerly around the small space.

Good God!

"It's some fellow from up north, name of Tracker Thompson." Pruitt used a stage whisper as if the man mere feet from them could not hear. "He's come at Mr. Carver's request to hunt for clues in the case."

Lord, not another one, Gage thought. Several weeks after Nell's disappearance trackers had set their dogs loose along the river after allowing them to sniff an article of clothing that belonged to the missing woman. They had discovered nothing.

Gage ran his palms down either side of his face, feeling a pounding headache coming on. All his investigation needed right now was more civilian interference!

Tracker Thompson towered over Gage as few men did. A barrel of a man, wide of girth and several inches taller even than Gage's six-foot-two frame, he looked more like an ancient giant oak than a person.

His brows and hair were a shock of carroty bushiness so garish they seemed painted onto his broad freckled face. His pale green eyes gave a vague, distracted look belied by the alertness of his huge body.

Thompson's reputation had spread even to Gage's small corner of the South. His fees were exorbitant. Gage wondered where Harold Carver had gotten the money and the prestige to attract this man's interest.

The two bloodhounds, ninety or a hundred pounds each if they were an ounce, jittered restlessly on either side of Thompson as he sank onto the wooden chair in Gage's office, threatening to shatter it like Goldilocks on Baby Bear's seat.

"I've come to help you out, Marshal," he said without preamble. "Sent down by Judge Carver up in New York."

Ah, that explained it. Harold Carver had an older brother who was a judge of some notoriety and no little influence in upstate New York. "We're grateful for any help we can get," he said cautiously.

"I'll set my dogs at the river after they've gotten a whiff of something belonging to the girl," Thompson explained. "You've heard of me and my dogs, of course."

He paused, an expression of jovial modesty on his broad face. "We get good results. Wherever that gal's been, my bloods'll find her trail and lead you to her killer."

Gage didn't expect much from Thompson or his bloodhounds since the river had long ago washed away any evidence, but he nodded judiciously. He wasn't so territorial that he'd refuse any assistance, however suspect.

He'd known some Indian trackers during his military stint and the best ones were pretty damned accurate. With the body now found, he didn't see the point of Thompson's service, but he'd allow anything that might lead to answers about what really happened to Nell Carver.

"Let's go then," Gage said. "The sooner you start the better."

Thompson looked surprised. "You don't consider it interfering?"

"Hell, no." Gage smiled gamely. "If you can help, that's not interference, now is it?"