Fox River (9 page)

How could she refuse to listen?

“I don’t think you’ll find it
that
painful, Julia,” Maisy said dryly. “You should see the look on your face. I swear.”

“Okay, maybe you’re right. I’d like to do something for you if I can, in return for everything you’ve done. But do you want me to give my opinion? Because that might be tough on both of us.”

“Not really. Mostly I need a captive audience. Come here and get under the covers. It’s cold, and you’re not wearing enough.” Maisy stood, and the mattress lifted.

“When did you want to start?” Julia pulled the covers back and got under them. She felt the way she had as a little girl, waiting for her mother to tuck her in. Only she was a mother now and her own daughter was sleeping upstairs.

“Right now suits me.”

Julia’s heart sank. The day had been long and difficult, and she’d hoped for a reprieve. “A bedtime story?”

“It’s the quiet time of day. And maybe it will help you fall asleep.”

Julia struggled to keep her voice light. “Maybe I’ll fall asleep while you’re reading. What will that tell you?”

“That you’re tired. Only that you’re tired.”

“What kind of novel is it?”

“A romance, I think. At least that’s how it seems to be shaping up. When it comes right down to it, though, that’s what I like to read. I need a happy ending.”

“You’ll guarantee one?”

Maisy paused. “Can’t. These characters have a mind of their own. It’s going like gangbusters.”

Julia was afraid to think what that said about quality. Maisy’s pottery had always gone like gangbusters, too. “You used to read to me when I was little. Every night. It was one of the things I loved best about my childhood.”

“I used to tell you to settle back and let the story take over. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“Julia, settle back tonight and let the story take over. Forget everything else that happened. There’ll be plenty of time to remember it all again in the morning.”

“You have the book?”

“The first chapter’s right here.” The rustle of pages followed her words. Julia heard a chair scraping the floor, then the creak of a cane seat as Maisy lowered herself into it.

“Does Jake know about this?”

“Your stepfather doesn’t ask questions. He knows he’ll hear all the details eventually. More than he usually wants to know.”

Julia settled back. Maisy had a soothing, melodious voice, and she was capable of putting a great deal of drama into whatever she read. She would do her best to make the book entertaining for Julia.

“Go ahead and close your eyes,” Maisy said.

“Not that it makes much difference.” But Julia did.

The sedate flow of Maisy’s words began to wash over her.

M
y father had great hopes for me. I was to marry into New York society and advance the status of our family. My brothers, George and Henry, were, by my father’s high standards, without significant potential. Lumpish and plain-spoken, they would do well enough managing the import and mercantile company that had brought our family to the brink of a better life. But I, Louisa, with my golden curls, my sea-green eyes, the anticipated extension of my considerable childish charm, was to carry all of us over the threshold.

My father died before he could see his plan to fruition, but my mother, lumpish and plain-spoken herself, made my father’s mission her own. When she saw that my brothers could indeed manage the family’s affairs, she focused her attention on me. Even though I was not yet ten, I was to be a memorial to my father’s dreams.

Despite the fact that we—like our three-story brownstone—stood on the fringes of Fifth Avenue society, I was schooled by its finest masters. By the time I was eighteen and Cousin Annabelle Jones invited me to summer at her family estate in Middleburg, Virginia, my posture was perfection, my voice as musical as a canary’s warblings. The fashionable girls’ school I attended had only taught me the rudiments of history, geography and literature, but I could dance until dawn and ride with a proper seat. I had learned the fine art of flirtation and the more advanced art of conversation. I was ready, it seemed, to polish stepping-stones for generations of Schumachers still to come.

If I could not marry a man with a European title, as Astor, Guggenheim and Vanderbilt daughters had done, I could, at the very least, marry one who set us squarely in the middle of the Social Register.

I hesitate to say it now, but from the beginning I cooperated with all plans for our future. Not because I was spineless or without any thoughts on the subject. Born just after the turn of the century, I was the product of a new era, a willful child, high-spirited and fully capable of demanding my way when it suited me. But I was always certain a life of ease, a life of acceptance by people I admired, suited me best. When the Great War ended, I knew I had come into my own.

As I grew, I was seldom in my mother’s presence without an etiquette tutor or a dressmaker in attendance. Mama filled her days overseeing my education or making overtures to women who thought her beneath them. Now, when I think of her, I see unsmiling lips and hazel eyes darting from face to face in a crowded room, searching for the next person who might advance her cause.

I remember little about the days just before I traveled to Virginia. My mother cried. I do remember that. She was plain-spoken, perhaps, but also, at heart, a sentimental woman. On my last evening at home, as I was preparing for bed, she told me that marriage was never quite what it seemed. Men did not marry for friendship but because they wanted their needs attended to. Once I was safely wed, I should use the skills we’d so carefully nurtured to better the life of my husband, but never to set myself above him.

I was to fade carefully into the background, making certain that my husband shone brightest in every setting. I was, in short, to become a more accomplished version of my mother.

I am certain I loved Mama. As colorless, as remote as she seemed, sometimes I glimpsed the woman beneath. I remember a cool hand on my feverish forehead, secret cups of hot chocolate when I’d undergone a disappointment, the flash of pride in her smile when I bested my brothers at some childish endeavor.

I am certain I loved her, but at that moment I couldn’t remember why. I was stunned she understood so little about me.

Annabelle Jones, a distant cousin on Mama’s side, was from a family several generations more advanced in society than our own. Her paternal grandfather, a Union officer from a New York family, had survived the War Between the States at a desk in New Orleans, where he busied himself performing clandestine favors for local businessmen. With an eye for the main chance, Colonel Jones had endeavored to make the wartime lives of those prominent New Orleanians as comfortable as possible. The fact that this sometimes involved smuggling and outright theft hadn’t troubled him.

After Appomattox the colonel had gone on to use his connections to establish himself as a cotton exporter and, later, as an officer of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Now, despite their Yankee origins, the greater Jones family moved among the cream of Louisiana society, as well as that of other Southern cities. Josiah Jones, the Colonel’s youngest son and Annie’s father, had settled in Virginia to indulge his love of country life and horses.

Annie was a grave disappointment to her family. Vivacious and intelligent, she was also, sadly, not a pretty woman. She was as tall as a man, with broad shoulders and hands, and a lack of physical grace that arose from trying to fit herself into a world made for smaller women. Annie’s face was long, and her lovely brown eyes were shaded by unfeminine black eyebrows. I’d seen first-hand the effect she had on eligible men. Each suitor carefully weighed the humiliation of being married to a homely woman against the enticement of her name and influence. As of yet, no one had found the latter to be enticing enough.

Annie was my closest friend. Never, and I can say this without reservation, did I love her because of the benefits our friendship might hold. Certainly I was young and self-centered, but never calculating. I loved Annie for her wit, her insights, her deeply rooted loyalty. I sensed, even as a child, that Annie would never hurt me.

On the morning that Annie and her parents ended their visit to New York and came to take me and my considerable wardrobe to the train station, I said goodbye to the stuffy, cheerless home of my childhood. My mother remained in the doorway as we pulled away from the curb in an autotaxi. She didn’t wave, but she held a handkerchief to her lips, as if to block some latent protest. My last memory was of her tiny, dark-clad figure leaning against a pillar, the heavily draped windows of our house like eyelids squeezed tightly shut.

“You won’t be sorry you came,” Annie promised, taking my gloved hand in her own, as if she was afraid I already might be homesick. “We’ll have such fun, Weezy. I promise we will.”

“You’ll have to stop calling me Weezy,” I told her. “Or I won’t have any fun at all.”

Annie had a wonderful, unfettered laugh, a laugh that frightened men as much as her extraordinary height and masculine shoulders. I smiled at the sound of it and clasped her hand harder. I was absolutely certain that the best part of my life was about to unfold.

I remember, oh, I remember so very well, that ecstatic conviction that everything I’d ever dreamed of was finally within my reach.

A
n unfamiliar guard came for Christian just after breakfast. He had already eaten the requisite ounces of scrambled eggs and grits and a biscuit that was harder than Milk Bones. His second cup of coffee had been stronger than dishwater, and for once, more palatable. He hoped this was an omen for the day ahead.

“Carver…” The guard, a thin, furtive-looking man, jerked his head toward the door. “Warden wants to see you.”

Since Peter and Mel’s visit yesterday, Christian had thought of little besides the possibility of acquittal. Now, to his chagrin, his heart jumped in his chest, and not because the coffee had more than a wisp of caffeine in it.

He buttoned his work shirt as he walked half a step in front of the guard through the maze of corridors and checkpoints, making sure not to crowd the man or make him nervous. Prison life was a compromise between pride and common sense. A man gave up the parts of himself that didn’t really matter and held on to everything else he could. Long ago Christian had given up trying to prove his manhood with the guards.

Last night he’d dreamed he was mounted on a massive white stallion that lifted him over the prison walls like Pegasus floating on air currents.

The warden’s office was large and comfortable, a vivid contrast to the rest of the prison. One wall was lined with diplomas and books on psychology, law and enlightened penal systems. Christian and the guard waited in the doorway to be recognized.

At last the warden, an overweight man in his fifties, nodded to the guard. “You go on. I’ll call somebody to take him back once we’re finished here. Mr. Carver, come have a seat.”

Christian was neither fooled nor encouraged by the warden’s pleasant tone. His dealings with Warden Phil Sampsen had been mercifully brief and for the most part cordial. As long as the Pets and Prisoners program garnered positive publicity for Ludwell, Christian had little to fear. But the warden was a capricious as well as political man, filled with petty dislikes and an overblown sense of his own importance. He believed himself to be particularly insightful about the motivations of the men at Ludwell. He relished playing God with their lives and did so with alarming frequency.

“You had time for breakfast?” The warden was paging through a document on his desk and didn’t look up as Christian took a seat.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Good.” The warden flipped another page.

Christian knew better than to ask why he’d been summoned. He would find out when it suited the warden.

The warden scanned and flipped in silence. Christian was careful not to fidget. Finally the warden looked up, removing wire-rimmed reading glasses and setting them beside the pile of papers. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, which, like everything about him, was a little too large, a little too prominent.

“I know what’s going on with your case, Carver. I was just looking over your file.”

Christian assumed Sampsen was talking about Karl Zandoff’s confession. He wondered if the jewelry had been found. He tried not to show his impatience. “Yes, sir.”

“Looks to me like you’ve enjoyed the full benefits of the law, young man. Would you say so?”

Christian would not say so. Had he enjoyed the full benefits of the law, he wouldn’t have been brought to trial. By now he would be married to Julia Ashbourne, perhaps even be a father. Together he and Julia would be breeding and raising the best damned hunters in America.

The warden filled the silence. “Maybe you don’t think so.”

“I’ve had a good attorney. I’ve had help on the outside.”

“That would be Peter Claymore, of Claymore Park?”

Christian nodded.

“And Karl Zandoff? Have you had help from him?”

For a moment Christian didn’t know what to say. The warden’s question seemed to have come entirely out of left field. “I don’t know Zandoff, sir. I don’t know anything more about him than what I’ve read in the newspapers.”

“Well, he claims he worked in Virginia about the time Miss Sutherland was murdered. Claims he worked right down the road from her house. As I recall, you worked down the road, too, didn’t you?”

Christian phrased his answer carefully. “I grew up at Claymore Park. We get a lot of drifters in the horse business. Most jobs don’t pay that well. Men leave after a few months and move on.”

“He claims he was working construction. You had construction going on at Claymore Park about then?”

“Peter Claymore’s stables are the finest in Virginia. He’s always improving on perfection.”

“Then maybe Zandoff was one of the men working for Claymore.”

“Men come and go in construction, too. If he was there, I don’t remember him.”

“Now, I’m just wondering, son, if that’s really true.” The warden made a tent with stubby, nicotine-stained fingers. “I’m wondering if there’s something you’ve been wanting to get off your chest all these years.”

Christian didn’t think the warden was fishing for a critique of prison policy. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”

“Your family life wasn’t exactly the best, was it now?”

Christian wondered about the file on the desk in front of the warden. He kept to the basics. “My mother died when I was six. My father died when I was twelve. Peter Claymore took me in after that.”

“He’s been like a father to you? Would you say?”

“He’s been kinder than he needed to be.”

“It says here your daddy burned down Claymore’s stable.”

“That was the conclusion after the investigation.”

“He had a little drinking problem?”

“The report said my father set the stable on fire with a cigarette. They think he’d passed out.”

“Not much of a role model, son. A drinking man with so little regard for the property of others.”

Christian couldn’t let that pass. “He knew every horse in that stable. He’d raised half of them and trained most of the rest. He talked to those horses. They were never property in his mind. They meant everything to him.”

“So you’re saying he didn’t do it, is that it?”

“I’m saying he didn’t do it out of a disregard for Mr. Claymore or the horses in that stable. But he did have a problem, and in the end, I guess it got the better of him.”

“You guess?”

Christian rephrased. “In the end it got the better of him.”

“See, I’m wondering here if I’m seeing a pattern. A man denies too much, I start to worry.”

“And since I’ve said from the start that I didn’t kill Fidelity Sutherland, you’re wondering if this is all part of the same thing.”

“You got it.”

“I was twelve when my father died. He was a good man with a bad illness. The fire started in the tack room where he’d fallen asleep, and he was a chain smoker with poor judgment when he was drinking. There’s not much to dispute.”

“And Miss Sutherland?”

“The afternoon she died I was looking for her. I found her necklace on the stairs. I went up to her room—”

“You felt you had that right, huh? Just to go into her room like that?”

At the time anger had given him that right. “Fidelity and I were old friends. When I was searching for her, I thought it was odd that her necklace was just lying on the steps. I was certain she was home, so I picked up the necklace and went upstairs to find her. She was lying in a pool of blood.”

“And when the law found
you,
you had her necklace in one hand and the knife that killed her in the other.”

“I found the knife on the floor beside her. I picked it up. I guess I hadn’t seen enough bad movies to know better.”

“Says here it was your knife.”

“Mine was the only one unaccounted for. Mr. Claymore had half a dozen made as Christmas presents that year, with Claymore Park’s logo on the handle. They were special knives, with blades for trimming and picking hoofs, a thinning comb and a leather awl.”

“And at least one sharp cutting blade.”

Christian saw no need to answer that.

The warden looked up from the file. “You had a good lawyer, and the jury still voted to convict you. They thought you were guilty, son. So do I.”

“Most of the world agrees with you, Warden.”

“And how many of them are going to agree when Zandoff’s confession makes the headlines?”

Again Christian wondered if the jewelry had been found. “I don’t know what you mean.”

The warden rested his chin on his fingertips. “I’m talking about people not trusting you, Christian.”

Christian knew Sampsen had dropped the “Mr. Carver” on purpose. The warden had progressed to the point in the conversation when he wanted Christian to believe the two of them had overcome some hurdle, that they had become friends.

“May I speak frankly, sir?”

“You know that’s what I want.”

“Trust seems a poor second to freedom.”

“Well, I guess I can understand that.” The warden sat back in his chair. “There’s not a man at Ludwell who’d want to stay, if he didn’t have to. None except some old lifers, who’d be scared to go anywhere else. But it’s like this. Some of my men, the best of the bunch, have thought about what they did to get in here and come to terms with it. I’ve had men confess to me, like I was their priest, men who screamed and yelled they were innocent right up until they walked through these doors.”

Christian wondered what the warden had done to these so-called men. “I guess they needed to get it off their chests.”

“I respect them for it, too. A man who can confess his sins is a man on his way to cleaning up his life.”

Christian could almost hear the strains of “Rock of Ages” in the background. “If the cops find Fidelity’s jewelry buried where Zandoff says he buried it, why would anyone continue to suspect me?”

“Because you were right there, Johnny on the spot with the murder weapon. You had the girl’s blood on your hands, and you had the motive. Maybe you and Zandoff did it together.”

Christian sat back. That scenario was so far-fetched, he wondered why the warden was bothering. But he supposed it was a taste of what he would face if he was released from prison. For all he’d done and all he’d confessed, Karl Zandoff was still a mystery man. He would leave more questions than answers after his execution. One of those questions would be the circumstances behind Fidelity’s death.

The warden must have read something in his expression. “Me, I’m wondering why this Zandoff never went back and dug up the jewelry himself. Supposed to be some valuable pieces.”

“Fidelity’s jewelry was unique, very individual. It would have been impossible to sell off without detection.”

“Report says you killed her because you were furious with her. There was talk maybe you were in love with her and she wasn’t interested.”

“I didn’t kill Fidelity, and I was in love with her best friend. If I ever met Zandoff, ever even glimpsed the man, I don’t remember him.” There was nothing else to say.

“Well, I’m powerfully disappointed in you, son. I thought maybe, just maybe, we might take care of this right here and now. You see, you might get out for a while, but I’m betting you’ll be back before long. That little girl’s parents are important people. You don’t think they’re going to sit back and let you walk the streets of their town, knowing you might still be guilty. Me, I think it would be better to get it all out in the open now. Let Zandoff take credit for his share and you take credit for yours. You might get your sentence reduced. You could finish it with your head held high.”

Christian couldn’t keep the sarcasm from his voice. “Let’s see. Sentence reduced. Total freedom. Which has the most appeal?”

Warden Sampsen shook his head. “You’ve got a good record here. You’ve done good work with our guide dog program. I’m giving you the chance to do the right thing.”

“Warden, the right thing is to let me out of here.”

The warden picked up the report and thumped the edges against his desk to straighten them. Then he turned the stack and closed the folder over it. “I’ll give you some friendly advice, Mr. Carver. If some scumsucker in our legal system decides to let you out of here, don’t ever go back to Ridge’s Race. I’m already getting calls. Nobody wants you there. At best, you’re a reminder of something they’d rather forget. Go somewhere—anywhere—else. The farther away the better. But just so you know, you’ll never be able to go far enough. Because if the law finds a reason to catch back up with you, we will.”

Sampsen looked up and smiled. “We surely will.”