The Reckoning (24 page)

And then three shots from Reed's pistol, slow, aimed, no hurry…
crack…crack…crack
…insurance shots into Maris Yarvik's skull.

Silence. Wind in the trees.

Nick, spitting blood, looked up at the lamplight in the branches, the Spanish moss drifting in the night wind…someone running. Now Reed was there, floating above him, his face white and shocked, his lips moving. Nick couldn't hear him…

Then Reed was away and he was looking up at the trees and the Spanish moss and the patches of night sky showing through the branches…
this fucking town
, he was thinking…
I really hate this fucking town…Kate…I really do…eight years of combat…not a fucking paper cut…I come to Niceville…and I get my ticket punched…it's fucking embarrassing…Kate…maybe she'd come…maybe Reed had gone to get her…he'd like to see her again…

Kate…

Kate…

…and then he was gone.

As Danziger came up the steps, the front door opened, and the lady standing in the open doorway was truly worth the bus ride. She was some way past her middle years, but well-shaped, on the lean side, full-breasted, good hips, sensual- and strong-looking, her home fires still burning, her green eyes bright against the rough tan of her skin, long shiny black hair pulled back.

No makeup at all and she showed signs of a life lived mainly out-of-doors, but she was, in the warm light of the veranda lantern, perfectly beautiful, in an unadorned and countrified way. Her expression was thoughtful and remote, as if she hadn't quite decided what to do with him yet.

She smiled as he came up to the door, showing strong white teeth, slightly uneven, with a gap between the two front ones, full lips and a handsome but hard-cut face, an uncompromising careworn face that had seen hard times and beaten them.

She wore a simple cotton dress in a flower print, green leaves and white flowers on vines—jasmine? It buttoned down the front, an old-fashioned cut, falling well below the knee, thin green leather pumps with ankle straps.

She looked like the forties, Danziger thought, thinking of calendar art that he had seen in garages and poolrooms out west, or old sepia photographs of prairie women in the thirties.

“Miz Ruelle?”

“Yes, and you must be Mr. Danziger,” she said in a throaty tenor voice with a lot of Old Virginia in it.

Danziger stopped in front of her and she looked up at him and offered her hand.

“Welcome to the Ruelle Plantation, Mister Danziger. Albert Lee told me you might be coming.” She stepped back and held the door wide for him as he came across the threshold, smelling pine smoke from a fire, saddle soap, and from the kitchen behind the parlor, the scent of cowboy coffee.

Danziger paused in the doorway, taking the house in while Miz Ruelle closed the front door. It looked as if nothing had been done to it since the Depression. The front hall was bare boards, oak, worn but well cared for, covered with an oval hooked rug, and off to the side, by a broad wooden staircase that led up to a landing, an antique wardrobe, open, with field coats and boots and scarves hanging on plain brass hooks. Beyond the front hall was the main room, a huge parlor that ran the width of the house, full of windows, lit from two overhead bulbs, clear glass, large and old-fashioned, hanging from thin black wires, the bulbs pulsing in time to the sound of the generator in one of the outbuildings. What looked like a kitchen through a double door on the far wall.

Although sparsely furnished, it was a pleasing homespun room, furnished with bare wood chairs, oval hooked rugs here and there in rust and green and gold, one large brown leather couch set in front of a big stone fireplace, a pine wood fire blazing in the hearth, a few framed photos, sepia-tinted portraits carefully laid out on the mantel.

There was a four-slot gun rack above the fireplace, with two Winchesters, one carbine, and a long rifle with a tubular brass scope, both rifles browned, with octagonal barrels, he noticed.

Antiques, but in mint condition. Under that one old Springfield, a cap-and-ball gun, resting on the bars. And on the top a long angular and mean-looking weapon that Danziger recognized as a BAR, a Browning Automatic Rifle, a .30-06 full-auto monster that hadn't been used in the field for decades.

Miz Ruelle led him on into the parlor, asked him to take a seat on the couch, stood before him, gave him a formal smile. “I have a cold collation laid out in the kitchen, just some boiled eggs and corn bread and a jeroboam of chilled sillery, but perhaps you'd like something stronger to drink. The Blue Bird is a bumpy old machine, and it's all gravel road this side of the Belfair Saddlery, isn't it?”

“A drink would be very welcome,” said Danziger.

She nodded, went to a sideboard, opened the cupboard, and considered the interior.

“My husband liked his bourbon, Mr. Danziger. We have Southern Dew or Old Charter. Would either please you? I may also have some lime cordial.”

“Old Charter would be great,” said Danziger, thinking that the last time he'd seen a bottle of Old Charter or Southern Dew was at an estate sale in Baton Rouge.

She came back with two crystal tumblers, each with about three fingers of straight-up bourbon in it, handed one to Danziger, and sat down on a hardwood chair beside the fire. It was burning low and cast a warm glow over the right side of her face and put yellow sparks deep in her green eyes.

Danziger lifted his tumbler, said, “Your good health, Miz Ruelle.” She raised hers and said, “May we drink down all unkindness,” and they sipped quietly for a moment.

Miz Ruelle set her glass down on a side table, crossed her legs at the ankle, folded her hands in her lap, and said, “Mr. Danziger—”

“I wonder, ma'am, if you would call me Charlie?”

“If it would please you, I will call you Charlie. You may call me Glynis.” She seemed to note his reaction. “My name is familiar to you?”

“Yes, it is, ma'am,” he said with a tight throat. He took a sip of bourbon to ease it.

“Please, Charlie. It's Glynis. May I ask in what connection? I imagine Albert Lee has talked about our plantation?”

“He has, Glynis. But I know you in another way as well.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, I do. I saw a mirror once, an antique mirror in a golden frame. There was a card on the back of the mirror, with a signature. The name was Glynis Ruelle.”

She looked at him for a time.

“I know the mirror, Charlie. Its twin is on the wall in my sister Clara's quarters, the Jasmine Rooms, on the second floor. They've been in my family for generations. They came from Paris—an unhappy time for my family. It was the Revolution there, and many of our people went under the guillotine. How odd that you should know of them. There was more on the card than just my signature. Can you tell me what else was on that card?”

“ ‘With Long Regard,' ” he said.

“Yes,” she said, looking pleased. “The mirror you describe was given as a gift to a young lady named Delia Cotton, on the occasion of her tenth birthday, at a family reunion in Savannah, a long while ago. The Niceville Families Reunion. It was held at John Mullryne's plantation there. Perhaps you know Mr. Mullryne? The mirror was part of a set, as I have said. The other one is upstairs. They were made in London, England, by an Italian artisan—I used to know his name, perhaps I can look it up—and they were brought to Anjou, which is in France, around 1750, by a distant relative of mine, Thierry Sébastien Mercier. Delia so loved the mirrors. Was it in her house that you saw it?”

Danziger didn't have the heart to tell her it was in a pawnshop called Uncle Moochie's on North Gwinnett Street in downtown Niceville. “No, actually, it's now with a lady named Kate Kavanaugh.”

“Kate? A Walker, wasn't she? One of Lenore's daughters. Do you know Lenore?”

“No, I'm afraid I don't.”
Other than watching her die in my arms after her truck rolled over the I-
50
twelve years ago.

“She stayed with us for a while, but now she's gone up to Sallytown, to live with relatives up there. I was sorry to hear that her husband is dead? Dillon Walker?”

“Well, he disappeared, they're saying. He was up at VMI at the time. Last spring. Hasn't been seen since.”

Glynis took that in, and Danziger had the idea that she had chosen to say nothing on that subject. She asked about Kate. “Are you a friend of her daughter?”

“Yes,” he said after a pause. “I know the family well.”

“Kate's a lovely young girl. Married now, I believe. Someone from away, a man named Nick?”

“Yes. From California. Los Angeles.”

“Oh, dear. Not an actor, I hope?”

“No. Nick was a soldier. Now he's a detective.”

She looked disappointed. “Not a Pinkerton man, surely?”

“No ma'am. Not a Pinkerton man.”

“Good. They are a bad lot, every one of them. Albert Lee tells me you were a police officer yourself?”

“Yes, I was.”

“No longer?”

“No. Retired.”

“He also tells me you are familiar with livestock, with horses?”

“I am. My family had a ranch out in Montana.”

“You mean the Territories?”

“No, the state, Glynis.”

“Of course. They joined the Union just before the war. I keep forgetting.”

She paused here, looked into the fire, took a sip, sighed, and came back to him, it seemed to Danziger from some distance.

“Well, it's late, and tomorrow we have the Harvest. We should go and have some of that collation before the sillery gets warm. I approve of you, Charlie Danziger. Would you consider taking work here?”

“Certainly. I'd be delighted.”

“We can't pay much. It would be room and board and a few dollars a week?”

“Fine with me. You want me to go out, see to the horses tonight?”

“No. I've changed the straw, cleaned their harnesses, and set out their mash. We have only six, five of them Clydes, one of them a colt. We keep them for the plow and the wagons. I have a Hanoverian mare for riding—her name is Virago—and Jupiter is more or less a pet. You've met him?”

“Oh yes. Hell of—a magnificent animal.”

“He is.”

“And the generator? Do you leave it running?”

A troubled look flashed across her face. “Generally no. But for this night, I think we'll leave it on. For the lights.”

She stood up, and so did Danziger.

“May I ask you a question, Charlie.”

“Surely can.”

“Would you be a gunhand, at all?”

“A gunhand? Yes, I guess you could say that. Do you
need
a gunhand, Glynis?”

She looked a little sad.

“I hope not. It depends on the Harvest.”

“Albert Lee says you had a gunhand here a while back. A Merle Zane.”

“Yes. Did you know him?”

“Well, in a way.”

“Was he a friend?”

“More of a business partner, I'd say.”

“You thought well of him?”

“We sorta parted on bad terms.”

“A business disagreement?”

“Yes, but I respected him up to the end.”

“I see. I am grieved to tell you that Merle was killed last spring. I was sorry to lose him.”

“I guess you were. Am I here to replace him?”

She considered him. “We'll see. Let us go and have some sillery.”

Danziger, who had no idea what the hell
sillery
was, followed her out to the kitchen, where he was pleased to find out that
sillery
was champagne.

And they had a pleasant hour together, sitting on lyre-back chairs around the bare-board trestle table, passing the plates back and forth, savoring the champagne, smelling the sweet grass and the hay, hearing the wind in the pines.

It was a still and silent night, oddly so for the country. The cicadas were quiet, and the frogs and nightjars, even the owls. Jupiter, wherever he was, wasn't making a sound.

They shared Danziger's cigarettes and talked of horses and stock and crops and the weather until the kitchen clock began to chime midnight.

Glynis cocked her head, listening to its soft musical chime. She sat back in her chair and looked at Danziger for a while. Danziger looked back, feeling a strong carnal tug as he considered her.

Somewhere in the house a radio was playing, a Big Band tune, maybe Vaughn Monroe, the one about racing with the moon. There was no other sound in the house, and although Glynis had mentioned her sister Clara and the Jasmine Rooms, Danziger was pretty sure they were alone this evening.

The people from the Blue Bird bus were somewhere else on the plantation. Earlier in the evening he had heard the sound of a choir singing far in the distance, faint across the fields, “Shall We Gather at the River” and, later, “Bringing in the Sheaves.”

But now there was only the sound of the outer silence all around, and the darkness pressing up against the window glass, the yellow flicker of a few yard lights out by the barn, and inside the house Glenn Miller's band, playing “In the Mood.”

“You're wondering about the people from the bus,” said Glynis.

Danziger was getting used to her ability to track a man's thoughts. He hoped she wasn't tracking all of his right now, since he was acutely aware of what she was wearing and what she wasn't wearing. He shifted in his chair—he had to—and leaned forward to put his cigarette out.

“Yes, tell the truth, I was. I spoke with a lady on the bus. She invited me to a fellowship meeting. I think I heard them singing a while ago.”

“Yes. They stay in the Annex, down by Little Cut Creek. They seem to prefer it down there.”

“The lady mentioned the Harvest.”

“I suppose you are curious about it?”

“I am. Very. I get the idea it's not about bringing in the sheaves, is it?”

She smiled, but sadness seemed to rise up in her. “No. It's not at all like a hymn. I think I have to prepare you for what may be a difficult afternoon. Have you ever heard of a place called Candleford House?”

“Yes, I have. It's a deserted sanatorium in Gracie, I think. Grim old pile, boarded up and fenced in. Had an ugly reputation.”

“Yes. Hard-earned and terrible. It was actually a kind of hell house, a brutal prison where quack doctors and outright charlatans, aided by sadistic guards and so-called nurses, tormented thousands of supposed mental patients over a hundred years. They used shock therapy, cocaine, opium, solitary confinement, starvation, beatings, every kind of horror. Rape was common, a public entertainment for the staff and the guards. Unmanageable patients or people whose families could no longer afford the fees were routinely suffocated, their bodies burned in a crematorium in the basement. The state finally closed it down, but not before my sister Clara was imprisoned there by the man whose family money sustained Candleford House. She was wrested free of him and now she lives with us here, but she is terribly shattered and I keep her sheltered from most people. As I may have said, she lives in the Jasmine Rooms upstairs.”