Train From Marietta (5 page)

Tate could hear the pride in both of their voices when they talked about Emily. It was hard for all of them to deal with the little girl’s handicap.

“I wish I could find someone to make her some shoes so she would have an easier time walking.” Tate put out his cigarette and threw it out into the yard. “I’m sorry she hit you, Yelena. I want you to tell me if she does it again.”

“It just a little hit, señor.”

“A little hit’s still a hit, and she shouldn’t have done it.”

“It not her fault her little leg so short, señor.”

Tate sighed. “I know. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just hard to know what to do. If I had the money, I’d take her north to a clinic. Maybe they’d have an idea of how to help her.”

“If we get the spotted stallion, we have the money,” Jorge said.

“Even if we did manage to get him, it’d take time to get enough foals from him to sell.”

“We get the foals if the mares follow him in. If he mount half of them, we have ten, twenty foals. We get the stallion, we have money.”

“Maybe,” Tate answered. He stood. “I’m turning in. I need a good night’s sleep.”

He lay in his bed wide awake. He was still bothered that Emily had hit Yelena. He remembered the times that Hazel had been peeved at him for something or other, and the first thing she’d try to do was slap him. She’d tried it often but had only succeeded the first time. He’d been ready after that. Emily wasn’t going to grow up and get into the habit of hitting when she wasn’t pleased about something. She wasn’t going to grow up to be like her mother. He’d never spanked Emily, but if he heard of her doing it again, he would be tempted.

Finally, after much tossing and turning, Tate fell asleep.

Chapter 4

J
OHN TYLER SAT BEHIND THE DESK IN HIS OFFICE
on the sixth floor of the Tyler building in a state of near panic. His shoulders slumped; he buried his face in his hands.

“Oh God, oh God, Kate, what have they done to you?” he muttered.

He stared down at the sheet of paper lying on his desk and read again the printed words.

We have your daughter Katherine. If you want to see her again, get $100,000 ready in small bills. We will be in touch again. Tell anyone and she dies.

The note had been in the morning’s mail and had been postmarked from one of the central post offices right there in New York City. There were no distinguishing marks on the envelope or the note itself; it was written on a tablet that could be bought at any five-and-dime.

His eyes focused on the words “Tell anyone and she dies.”

John’s right hand reached out and lifted the silver picture frame sitting on his desk. His wet eyes looked upon the smiling portrait of Kate he had made shortly after she’d graduated from nursing school.
Lord, she looks so much like her mother it’s eerie.

What to do? What to do?
The thoughts careened around inside his head. He was used to making decisions over large financial matters, but never in a million years could he have imagined that he would have to make a decision like this.

Before she left on her cross-country trip, he made Kate promise to wire him at certain points along the way. She’d thought that he was being overprotective, but he insisted on it. She sent a message to him when her ship docked in New Orleans and wired him from scheduled stops on the train route. She was to telegraph him from Marathon, but no message had come. At first, he thought that she’d simply forgotten. Nevertheless, he had worried, and now the ransom note had arrived.

Kate was the brightest light in his whole life. He’d been deeply disappointed to discover after he had married Lila that she was so enamored with society life and fancy clubs. Socializing meant more to her than the family. As sorry as he was to admit it, Susie, his other daughter, was a carbon copy of her mother. The two of them talked about nothing but shopping and dances! Kate was different; she was more like him. She had ambition. She had dreams, and she worked hard to fulfill them. She’d been at the top of her class in nursing school and had worked at the municipal clinic helping the poor. Lila had never approved of Kate’s becoming a nurse. She didn’t think it a suitable profession for a respectable young lady of the upper class. John couldn’t have been prouder of his elder daughter, and now this!

Whom can I turn to? I have to do something!

The more that he thought about it, the more John realized that there was only one person that he could rely upon—his partner, William Jacobs. If he couldn’t trust him, he couldn’t trust anyone. He got to his feet, snatched the note off his desk, and walked down the short hallway to William’s office. Pausing for a moment outside the door to calm himself, he knocked and entered.

There were no papers strewn about; no clothing hung from the coatrack, and no cigar burned in the ashtray. Then he remembered that William had mentioned that he was taking his nephew, Edwin, out to Pittsburgh to review one of the company’s smelting plants. He wouldn’t be back until the next day.

John trudged back to his office and sank into his chair. He spread the note back out on the table and stared at the message. He put his face in his hands.

What can I do?

After all of the employees had left the office for the day, John turned the lights off and headed for the door. He put on his hat and walked out of the building. The June air was warm after a light summer drizzle had washed away the harsher smells of the city. John drew in a deep breath. His walk was brisk; he’d spent all day deciding on his plan of action, and he wanted to do it before he changed his mind. Passing a bakery, he caught sight of his reflection in the storefront window. His thick gray hair, bushy mustache, and stomach paunch all showed him to be a man who had left his younger days behind.

He passed a newsstand. The owner shouted out to him to buy the evening edition, but he pressed on. It was hard to believe that the city could still be normal when his world had been turned upside down. He wove his way past an elderly man hailing a cab as he engaged in a shouting match with the driver of a brand-new Ford car that blocked the curb.

Three blocks farther down the street, John entered a doorway and stepped into the dim light of his favorite restaurant. A squat, balding man wearing a vested suit stood just inside the foyer. He smiled as John entered.

“Mr. Tyler, you’re early tonight. Would you like your usual table?”

“I’m not here for dinner, Tony,” John said. “I need to ask a favor.”

“Anything, Mr. Tyler. You know that.”

“I need to make a long-distance telephone call, and I want to be sure that absolutely no one knows about it.”

“Certainly, sir. Come back to my office. I’ll make sure you’re not interrupted.” Tony led the way down the hallway to a door at the rear of the restaurant. “Come, come.”

John entered the tiny office, removed his hat, and sat down behind the desk. “Thank you, Tony. I appreciate this.” The restaurant owner shut the door behind him.

John took out the ransom note and spread it on the desk. He took the telephone receiver from its cradle, held it to his ear, and dialed the operator. “Operator, I would like you to ring the Texas Rangers headquarters in Waco, Texas.”

John waited nervously for an answer. Sweat began to bead on his brow. Finally, after giving the name of the officer he needed, John took a deep breath and waited.

“Holmgaard,” a man said in a thick Texas drawl.

“Hello, Lyle. This is John Tyler in New York.”

“John! What a surprise. I haven’t heard from you for a good long while.”

“Too long. I think the last time was back in ’31 when one of our shipments got derailed down near Houston.”

The two men talked for a couple of minutes about times past before the Texas Ranger said, “Now, John, I like chat-tin’ about the good ole days as much as the next fellow, but something tells me that isn’t the reason for your call.”

“Ever the Ranger.”

“It’s been too long for me to be anything else.”

John took a deep breath and looked down at the ransom note. “Lyle, I desperately need your help. My daughter has been kidnapped, and the bastards say they’ll kill her if it gets out that I’ve gone to the authorities.”

“I don’t know if I can do you much good down here if your daughter was kidnapped up there in New York.”

“She was taken in Texas, Lyle. I think she was kidnapped from the train.”

For the next twenty minutes, John told the lawman about Kate taking the boat to New Orleans and the train across southern Texas on her way to California. He told Lyle that she had sent him a message when she arrived in New Orleans and another from Marietta, Texas. She was to send another from Marathon, but it didn’t come.

“And when did you get the note?” Lyle asked.

“The ransom note came this morning, mailed from right here in New York City. It demanded one hundred thousand dollars, or Kate would be killed. It also warned that she’d meet the same fate if I contacted anyone.”

“Damn kidnappin’. It’s a shame what some folks’ll do for money. Give me a description of her, John.”

“Kate is twenty-five years old, a tall girl, with long blond hair and blue eyes. I know most fathers would say this, but I think she’s a beautiful girl.” The emotion of the day had begun to wear John down. “I don’t know what else to tell you, Lyle.”

“That’s enough for now, John. I’ll check into this and get back to you.”

“No, no … don’t call me. I’ll call you about this time tomorrow. I can’t take the chance of someone knowing that we’ve been in touch. I don’t know who’d want to do this to Kate, but I’m not going to take any chances.”

The two men said their good-byes and hung up.

John sat in the silence of the restaurant office and collected his thoughts. What he had done tonight was risky. If the kidnappers knew he’d contacted a law officer, it was possible that they would follow through with their threat to kill Kate. Regardless, he’d finally decided that he had to give Kate a chance.

Feeling the first stirrings of hope since he’d received the note, John took out his wallet and laid a one-hundred-dollar bill on the desk. He grabbed up his hat and left the office.

Tony was waiting just outside the door.

“No one can know about this, Tony. It’s a matter of life and death.”

“You can trust me, Mr. Tyler. No one will know.”

“I knew I could count on you,” John said, putting a hand on the other man’s shoulder. Without another word, he left the restaurant.

John decided to walk the rest of the way to his home. At this late hour, it would have been more sensible to hail a cab, but he needed the time alone to organize his thoughts. For the first several blocks, he walked with his head down, the weight of Kate’s circumstances bearing down on him. He’d done all that he could to give her a fighting chance. But if need be, he would give his whole fortune to get her back.

He turned through the gate and walked up the curving drive to the house he had bought when he married Lila. The three-story brownstone stood in one of the exclusive streets of the city. It had more rooms than they would ever need. Betsy, Kate’s mother, would have scorned such opulence. When they were first married, they’d had only enough money to afford a one-room apartment in Pittsburgh. But, by God, they had been happy!

Malcolm, the butler that Lila had insisted they hire, had the door open by the time he reached it. John had always wondered if the man could see through the heavy oak door.

“Good evening, Mr. Tyler. Mrs. Tyler is in the library.”

“Thank you, Malcolm.” John handed him his hat and walked into the large foyer, his heels clicking on the marble floor. He pushed open the double doors of the library and went in. Lila and Susie stood in the center of the room. Susie giggled. Both of the women were dressed in evening gowns, and each held a glass of red wine.

“You’re early,” Lila said with a smile. Even though she was nearly ten years younger than her husband, age lines had begun to show around the corners of her mouth. Alabaster skin, high cheekbones, long dark hair worn in a bun at the back of her neck, and green eyes, all combined to make her a very beautiful woman.

“I left the office early … long day,” he murmured.

“You remembered that we’re going to the Kleins’ tonight. They are having a reception for Senator Forrest. Everyone’s going to be there.”

“I’m not going, Lila,” John said as he plopped down onto the sofa.

“But, Daddy! You have to go,” Susie said, planting a kiss on her father’s forehead. It was easy to see that Susie was her mother’s daughter. They could pass easily for sisters. They had the same elegant bearing and charming mannerisms. He often wondered if there was anything of himself inside his younger daughter.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I think I’ll pass.”

“I, for one, wouldn’t miss it for the world!” Susie said. “Margaret told me that Kenneth Caldwell III is back from a semester studying in Oxford and is full of all kinds of interesting stories. If I don’t hurry, someone else will catch his eye!” and with that, she gathered up a beaded purse and a fox stole.

“What about Edwin?” John asked. “Won’t he be upset to hear that you were flirting with another man?”

“He’s in Pittsburgh. It’s not my fault he left me all alone!” she flung over her shoulder. The doors swung shut behind her with a bang.

“Are you sure you won’t come to the party?” Lila asked gently.

“I told you I wasn’t going when you asked me the first time. Forrest is a self-serving egotist and a poor excuse for a senator, to my way of thinking. He’ll not get another dollar from me.”

“I’ve already promised a hundred dollars, John.”

“Then pay it out of your allowance. I didn’t promise it.”

“Why are you so irritable tonight? Did something happen at the office today?”

John stood up from the sofa and walked across the library to a small cabinet against the far wall. He pulled out a glass and filled half of it with Scotch. He wasn’t much of a drinker—his wife and daughter drank more—but he needed something tonight.

“I’ve got a lot on my mind, Lila.”

“What is it, dear?”