True to the Law (7 page)

Her eyes were a shade of green that he did not believe existed in any other form in nature and therefore defied his ability to describe them. Warmer and a shade lighter than emerald, brighter than the green underside of an orchid leaf, they absorbed and reflected light in a way that softened the color in one moment and then brought it brilliantly into sharp relief in the next.

Cobb reined in that thought, his mouth twisting with wry humor. He had been interviewing witnesses and suspects for years and never once gave this much consideration to identifying the color of a pair of eyes. Neither, he reflected, had he surrendered so much control of an interview, and when he had asked Miss Morrow if he might join her for dinner, interviewing her had been the purpose of his request.

Or he had fooled himself into believing that was his motive. He could admit that he had not put up much of a fight. The only details on a personal note that she shared with him were her former connection to Charlotte Mackey and the fact that her father was a minister, both pieces of information that Cobb already knew. She, on the other hand, learned one fact—that he was not a dedicated gambler—and chased it with the single-mindedness of a greyhound after a rabbit.

Cobb still wondered why he told her about Hempstead, Indiana. He had had sense enough to keep his answers close to the truth so he would not trip over himself, but his intention had been to offer only broad strokes. He
had
worked in banks, stockyards, and hospitals, also for the railroad and twice for city hall. In every instance he had been employed as an investigator, first with the powerful Pinkerton Detective Agency behind him, and later on his own. He had never been marshal for one day in Hempstead, let alone six weeks, but it had taken him that long to establish the connection between the molestation, rape, and on two occasions, murder, of seven young women in rural Indiana towns and run the itinerant preacher and his son responsible for the acts to ground.

What happened after that turned out to be a lesson to him, not his finest hour.

He studied his sketch again. Owing to his critical judgment, he decided that he had placed her eyes rather more closely together than they actually were. Neither was her nose as pinched as he’d been led to believe. Mackey had nothing at all to say about her neck, and Cobb’s sketch only suggested the line so that her head would not appear to float on the paper. He picked up the pen and extended that line so the long stem of her neck became the graceful curve of her shoulder. He made small changes to her eyes and nose, put in shading to hint at the luster of her hair, and added the faint indentation to her chin. He widened her mouth, lifted the corners slightly to intimate a smile, and then considered the problem of that maddening dimple. Without it, the sketch looked incomplete, but if he rendered it wrong, the sketch would never satisfy him.

He flicked the nib of the pen over the paper, making a comma just to the left of her lips. The effect was to immediately deepen her smile.

Cobb returned her greeting with an ironic half smile of his own. “There’s still the matter of you being a thief, Miss Morrow. I haven’t forgotten that.”

The problem was that he didn’t believe it with the same conviction his employer seemed to.

Sliding the sketch out of his way, Cobb slanted the writing paper on the desk and dipped his pen in the inkwell. He planned to keep his correspondence brief.

He had considered telling Mackey that he had discovered Miss Morrow’s whereabouts before he left for Bitter Springs but decided in the end to exercise more caution. Clients did not always act in their own best interests, and Mackey might have done something to send Miss Morrow packing. At the very least, Mackey would press for details, and Cobb was not prepared to give him Miss Morrow’s connection to Mrs. Kellen Coltrane.

It turned out that Mrs. Coltrane, once he was finally able to speak with her and present himself as a candidate for the teaching position, had been both apologetic and helpful. She informed him that she had hired someone months earlier and regretted that Bitter Springs was too small to support or have need of a second teacher, especially since his letter of interest was as impressive as the woman who accepted the position.

“Miss Morrow does not have your experience minding a school,” Mrs. Coltrane had informed him, “but I have assured myself her education and temperament make her admirably suited.”

She had questioned Cobb as to why he had not made his application earlier, and he told her the truth: He had not seen the advertisement when it first appeared and learned about it from an acquaintance. She was impressed that he continued to pursue the opportunity even after he discovered that she was gone from the Palmer House. Without prompting, she offered the information that her husband’s work required extensive travel, although she never mentioned what manner of business occupied him. Cobb had to learn that for himself.

By the time Cobb left the interview at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, he possessed enough information about Mrs. Coltrane, Bitter Springs, and the teacher who had taken the position to whet his appetite, not satisfy it. Rather than telling Mackey anything definitive, he only revealed that he had several promising leads. The lawyer was not impressed, but he still advanced Cobb money for his expenses. Watching Mackey write the draft, Cobb could not help but think there was something desperate in the act. There was no shaking the notion that Andrew Mackey had something to fear from Gertrude Morrow. Spending time with her this evening had not made Cobb change his mind.

Cobb’s hand moved swiftly across the page, leaving a scrawl of letters behind that bore only a passing resemblance to the careful script he had practiced as a youth. In two sentences, he explained the situation to his employer. He added a third, this time to say that he would remain in Bitter Springs and wait for further instructions. Cobb could envision Mackey changing his mind when he learned how far he would have to travel to meet Miss Morrow. It was possible he would want Cobb to escort her back to Chicago. That would effectively end his assignment, because regardless of the payment due him, he already determined he wouldn’t perform that task.

Cobb waited for the ink to dry before he folded the letter. His employer would be unhappy that Cobb had not sent word by telegram, but if Mackey thought about it, he would realize that any message, even a cryptic one, could not be kept confidential from the person who operated the telegraph, and if the lawyer had any appreciation for the breadth of gossip that passed for conversation in Bitter Springs, he would be downright grateful for Cobb’s discretion, even if that message came by way of the most circuitous route possible.

Cobb slipped the letter under his vest. It was still a question in his mind if he would allow Finn to send the letter for him. The boy wanted to run an errand in the worst way, but Cobb wondered if he shouldn’t think of something with a less problematic outcome if Finn should fail.

Cobb stepped away from the desk. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of the sketch he had pushed aside. There was no need to carry the sketch when he had Miss Morrow in his sights, but he found himself picking it up and slipping it back into the inside pocket of his vest anyway.

* * *

When Tru led her students in prayer the following morning, she heard Finn Collins’s voice rise above the others. It seemed he also put considerably more feeling into the effort than was his usual recitation; however, neither his volume nor his vehemence saved him from being summoned to her desk to read his apology to Priscilla Taylor and the class. She kept one eye on Rabbit and his friends to make sure they didn’t snigger and with the other took note of Priscilla to be certain she didn’t gloat. Her watchfulness was rewarded because neither of those things occurred.

Properly chastened, if not sincerely sorry, Finn returned to his seat and folded his hands on his desk. He also put his feet flat on the floor. Tru was trying to guess how long he could possibly maintain that pose when she noticed he was eyeing the smudged slates around him as if anticipating the end of the day when he would be cleaning them. She wondered if perhaps she shouldn’t read the class something from
Tom Sawyer
very soon; the chapter where Tom slyly engages Ben in whitewashing the fence seemed particularly apropos of Finn’s situation. Even if Finn did not grasp the implication, it would be a balm on her conscience.

Tru raised the map at the front of the classroom to reveal the multiplication and division problems she had put on the blackboard before the students arrived. The older children groaned, recognizing it as work for them. Her younger pupils dutifully took out their
McGuffey’s First Eclectic Reader
when she asked and turned to Lesson Thirty, in which Kate and Nell fashioned a boat for their dolls out of a tub and set it loose on the pond. There was slate work that followed, and while they were engaged in that, Tru checked the work of the older students.

“You have a head for numbers, Mr. Fox,” she said, lightly laying her hand on Robby’s shoulder. “Better than I recollect from yesterday.” She felt his uneasy shrug. “But I wonder if it’s not your neighbor’s work I should be praising.”

Rabbit’s head swiveled around and up. “It’s not his fault, Miss Morrow. I told him he could copy from my slate. I don’t mind.”

“I mind, Cabot.”

“It’s Rabbit, Miss Morrow. Really. I hardly recognize the other.”

“You mean your Christian name.”

“The way I figure it, the Christian thing to do would have been for my parents to name me William or Robert or even Jefferson, like my pap. Cabot Theodore just about guarantees a boy’s going to have his head pushed in a trough at least once before he turns seven.”

“I hadn’t considered that. How many times has it happened to you?”

“Never. I’m called Rabbit on account of I’m fast as one, not because it rhymes with ‘Cabot.’”

“Or ‘Blabbit,’” Finn said. “But you do that, too.” His comment, made in an aside to his neighbor loudly enough to be heard by the class, earned him some titters from his friends and a silent rebuke from his teacher. He ducked his head and reapplied himself to his slate.

“Very well,” Tru said, “but Cabot is a name rich with history.”

Rabbit looked doubtful.

“It’s all right, Rabbit. Some other time. For now, I want you and Robby to work independently.” She addressed her other students. “That’s intended for all of you unless I indicate otherwise.” She lightly squeezed Robby Fox’s shoulder. “Try the first problem again, Robby. I want to watch.”

And so it went. Tru nudged and encouraged, scolded and praised. She taught each subject using methods she had studied at Chicago’s Normal School in Junction Grove, but the manner she adopted with her students was not always embraced by her own teachers. It was not that she did not appreciate the need for order, obedience, and discipline in her classroom, but that she had an equal appreciation for the need for free thinking, for learning through one’s own experience, and for feeding the mind, body, and soul of a child.

It was just that sort of free thinking that kept her from getting a position after graduation. In interview after interview, she was turned away for being, well, not quite right. She considered being less than frank when asked about her views, but she was never quite able to articulate what every superintendent and principal wanted to hear.

She never doubted that her father understood her disappointment, but as much as he professed to want her to succeed, she also knew he was content with the situation as it was. Keeping her close was reason enough to pray for her failure.

Tru tried not to judge him harshly for that, and she did not regret a single day that she spent caring for him before he died. Looking back, she was not even sure that she had been prepared to forgo her responsibilities with his ministry to take a position that would demand equal time. When he fell ill, it seemed that all the right choices had been made, and now that she had the position in Bitter Springs, it was easier to make peace with them.

She still missed him though. At times, desperately.

“Miss Morrow?”

Tru brought herself to the present. She blinked in quick succession to stay the wash of tears before turning away from the map. She rested the tip of her pointer on the edge of her desk. “Yes, Priscilla? What is it?”

“My mother said I should ask to be excused early today.”

“How early?”

“One hour before the usual.”

Tru checked the watch she wore on a black grosgrain fob above her heart. The watch was hers, but the ribbon fob had belonged to her father. She would have to replace it someday—it was fraying at the edges—but not just yet.

“You are already twenty minutes late.”

Priscilla sighed and closed her book. “I hoped it was more.”

Tru could sympathize with the girl’s reluctance. It was true that Priscilla sometimes tripped over her own feet because she had her nose so high in the air, but she was an earnest student and genuinely enjoyed attending school. The Taylors took in laundry and operated a bathhouse, and for whatever reason, Tuesdays were busier than other days of the week. If Priscilla was going to ask to be excused before the rest of the class, it was going to happen on a Tuesday.

“Would you like to take a book with you, Priscilla?” she asked.

Priscilla’s eyes widened. “Could I? I’d be ever so careful with it.”

“I wouldn’t have offered if I thought otherwise.” Tru went to the bookcase and ran her finger along the middle shelf. She passed over the moralizing works of Edward Lear’s
A Book of Nonsense
and John Ruskin’s
The King of the Golden River
and chose instead
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
.