Weak Flesh (10 page)

"The fucking thing'll be dead before the fire gets roaring," Butler answered. "If not, just toss it on in there. We got no time for niceties, Sergeant. This is a fucking war against filthy heathens!"

#

"What's wrong with you, Marshal?" Carver asked, leaning forward and frowning into Tucker's face.

Gage realized several moments had passed since Mrs. Carver had left the room. "What? Oh, nothing."

He cleared his throat on a cough before speaking. "I have to broach a rather uncomfortable topic, Mr. Carver. I will need your complete cooperation."

A wash of mild panic crept over Carver's visage as he held his hand over his chest. "What do you mean? What topic?"

Gage looked down at his large hands resting lightly on his knees and wished to God he hadn't listened to Bea's words earlier even though Bea Miller seemed to have her fingers on the pulse of the community and she wasn't a woman for light gossip.

Was the talk malicious chatter or grounded in fact? And who would know to speak of such goings on?

The message left beneath his door, however, was another matter. He could not ignore that.

Talking to a man about his relationship with his daughter was a delicate issue, and Gage must ask the correct questions. He knew many men ignored their female offspring or at best patronized them. But Carver had four daughters, and by
most
accounts he was affectionate and close to all of them.

He was particularly fond of Nell, his eldest. Perhaps too fond? Too loving?

"I've had a complaint and have no choice but to follow up on the allegations."

The wording was a bit strong, but Gage wanted to see the man's reaction. If this current missive was another nasty joke like the first note about Nell's disappearance, then he expected Carver to react, act confused, perhaps hurt.

"Allegations? What the hell are you talking about, Marshal?"

Gage examined the man carefully. To no end, he'd looked to Carver with suspicion when Nell first disappeared. With this new information he needed to be blunt.

"Someone approached me suggesting that you and your daughter Nell were engaged in – in unseemly conduct." Not exactly true, but close enough.

Carver blanched, his mouth worked soundlessly, and his eyes widened in shock or fear. But something in the abject grief on his face bore the unmistakable shade of truth.

The truth or something close to it, Gage thought.

He'd wager that Carver had feelings toward his daughter that skirted propriety, something more than the natural affection of a parent for his child. But whether or not the man had acted on those feelings, or if it had anything to do with Nell's death, Gage couldn't say.

A single strangled word came from Carver's throat. "God!" He sank to the chair and clutched his chest again. "God," he repeated. "Dear God."

Carver seemed incapable of saying anything more, and Gage waited an uncomfortably long minute for him to regain his composure.

"Tell me what happened between you and Nell," Gage prompted gently.

#

Meghan dismissed her students later than usual on this, the last school day of the old year. She lingered behind in the classroom, washing down the chalk board and straightening the reading books. Then she sat down at her battered teacher's desk and stared across the room to the back where the stove's hot belly gleamed round and black.

Dipping into her skirt pocket, she retrieved Nell's dance card. Wrapped in a lace-edged handkerchief for protection, the card was a pretty sky blue, with raised black lettering, dusty pink roses, and green curling vines. It came from Colonel and Mrs. Roger Atherton's soiree spring before last.

She carefully unfolded the card and laid it flat on her desk. She remembered the event well because she'd recently returned from school, her teaching credential in hand, eager to start her very first teaching assignment.

Nell had expressed no desire to go to college, preferring to enjoy the bevy of young men who paid court to her. She'd been dying to go to the soiree, and though Meg had wanted to stay at home with her father, preparing her lessons, she reluctantly gave in to Nell's pretty begging.

Nell had been so young then. Was she involved in romantic secrets even then while Meg hardly knew what was going on in her best friend's mind? The thought grieved her. How well had she really known her friend?

Meghan examined the words Nell had penciled in her girlish hand. True to her nature, she'd used first names and initials rather than full names for all but one of them.

Several of these letters Meghan could assign to local men who regularly attended such functions – Afton H. was Afton Hansen. Gary Atterberry and Charles Acton also were on the list.

Except for Charles, they'd all returned from their first or second or third years at prestigious colleges up north. Charles attended a less expensive school as his father was a mere fisherman, trolling the waters of the river and shrimping in season.

The fourth name on the list Meg didn't recognize, and it was the only name fully written out, as if the person were a stranger –
Ned Osborne.

Charles again in the fifth slot. Nell liked him primarily because he wasn't part of Tuscarora's upper-crust society. At the time Meg had admired Nell's lack of social barriers, but now she wondered sadly if her friend hadn't simply wanted to flirt with what seemed a reckless adventure.

Next on the list was Michael H. which Meg now realized was the drunken Mr. Hayes. Meg hadn't even remembered seeing the medical student from Chapel Hill for whom Nell saved a dance.

The seventh and last name on the dance card was the mysterious Ned Osborne again. Who was this man Nell had reserved two dances for, but hadn't mentioned to her best friend? And why couldn't Meg remember Nell dancing with a man unknown to her?

She thought for a moment, tapping her forefinger against her lips. They'd gone together to the dance, her father driving them in his carriage, for he hadn't yet purchased the roundabout.

The Carvers hadn't attended that particular occasion, but Meghan didn't recall why. Had the parents been otherwise occupied? Perhaps.

When Nell had jumped into the carriage, she'd been flushed and distracted, but when Meg had asked her about her parents, she'd brushed off the question, or at least Meg had no memory of the reply. Perhaps her mother could recall what had brought that blush to her daughter's cheeks.

During the evening, she and Nell had been separated almost immediately and hardly spoke to each other afterward. Meg remembered hovering on the sidelines, conversing with Mrs. Jolly.

That evening had been one of the woman's rare nights out. She seldom went anywhere except for church activities, and Meg recalled being surprised that the Reverend had relaxed enough to attend a function that included dancing, of all activities.

Meghan rose and walked to the coat rack at the back of the classroom, trying to visualize the dances she'd seen Nell engaged in – nearly every single one. But although she could picture Afton, Gary, and Charles, Michael Hayes' figure was fuzzy in her mind and she could not put a face at all to the mysterious Ned Osborne.

The lack of memory tugged at the edges of her mind, tantalizing her. She turned the dance card over and over in her fingers. The greater mystery was why Nell had taken the trouble to stitch the card inside a seat cushion in her bedroom.

Why bother hiding such an innocuous item? What about it was Nell afraid of? Or what secret might it reveal? And who might her friend be afraid would find it?

Her thoughts went to Susan, Nell's younger sister. Three years Meg's junior, the girl had never been fast friends with Meg, and Nell had often ignored her sister, shutting her out of private conversations and silly girlish games.

A moment of embarrassment came over Meg. They'd truly been unkind to Susan, who'd meant only to enjoy the company of her older sister and her friend.

Would Susan know anything about the dance card? Being too young to attend, she'd stayed home that night, but Nell might've shared something with her. Less likely that Nell confided in Margaret and Jane, ages thirteen and eleven, and she hadn't confided in Meghan.

In fact, Meg now recalled, Nell had been unusually quiet and remote on the way home. That sick feeling of having somehow failed her friend ran through her again.

#

So pale and clammy-looking was Mr. Carver that Gage feared he'd have a heart attack. But finally the older man spoke, his voice low and rasping as if hampered by a serious illness of the throat or chest.

"I – I didn't lay a hand on her," Carver faltered at last. "I swear to God I – I just looked."

His eyes dug into Gage's stare with agonizing grief. "That's all, nothing more. On my mother's grave I never touched the girl."

Carver removed his handkerchief and swiped at the sheen of sweat that dotted his face. His color was high and his hands trembled like an old man with palsy.

Gage froze with shock. Jesus, was the man confessing? If so, to what?
Incest? Murder? Or both?
Tread carefully, he warned himself. Carver was a respectable community member. Don't jump to conclusions.

"What do you mean exactly?" he asked cautiously.

Carver dropped his head into his hands, shaking it as if to deny the voice that'd given utterance to the ugly perversion of a man looking intimately upon his own daughter.

"What do you mean when you say you
looked
at Nell?" Gage persisted. "How did this happen? When?"

Carver lifted his head, his eyes darting toward the parlor doors which stood slightly ajar. He jumped up and pushed them shut. Did that mean Mrs. Carver had no idea about whatever had happened between her daughter and her husband?

Jesus Christ!

Carver turned back to Gage, his eyes wide and frantic with fear or grief or guilt. He leaned heavily against the doors. "Once, it only happened once."

"When?" Gage repeated.

"Several summers ago."

"Explain to me exactly what happened."

Carver swiped again at the moisture on his forehead and ran his fingers over his mouth. "I – I'd just gotten the new bath for the water closet and – and Nell loved the bath tub. She'd drawn the water herself because Bessie had gone home by then and Mabel and the girls were at a music recital."

Now that he'd begun, Carver seemed unable to stop the spew of obscene words that erupted from his mouth. "She'd been upstairs a long time. I – I wondered if something had happened to her. If the tub was slippery or – or she'd fallen."

He looked to Gage as if for confirmation that he'd merely been engaging in fatherly concern for a much-loved daughter. Gage forced his expression to remain impassive, to show no judgment.

"The bathroom door was ajar," Carver continued, "and I just wanted to peek in – to – to be sure she was all right."

Gage clenched his jaw. "And what happened?"

"She stood up then and reached for a towel." Carver closed his eyes as if remembering every detail. "God, she was so lovely, so young and fresh."

He opened his eyes and glared at Gage, sensing the Marshal's censure. "You don't understand, man. You aren't married, don't have children. You can't know what – what impulses overcome a man of my age whose wife is no longer interested – "

He broke off and threw himself into the chair. He stared at his hands dangling between his legs as if his whole world had come crashing down on him. Perhaps it had.

"You can't possibly know," he repeated in hushed tones.

After a moment Carver seemed to recover and leaned forward, his face gone red and hard as he raised his fist to shake it at Gage. "I'm not an evil man." His voice pitched a notch higher in volume. "She was my daughter. I loved her."

His voice trailed off. "I'm not a bad man."

Chapter 12

Gage had slept restlessly, thinking that the further he continued in the case, the more suspects leapt to the forefront. The investigation was like the gnarly roots of an old oak that had to be hacked down one by one without damaging the tree itself.

Before he had a chance to write up his notes the next day, Bailey arrived at the Station House. The clatter of her heels on the stairs was unmistakable. She gamboled up them like some kind of tomboy, her heels clicking noisily on the stairs. As she swept by the empty jail cells, she paused and peered in.

Through the wide glass window that separated his office from the front area of the Station House, Gage watched her frown and hurry past Sergeant Henderson, then rap sharply on his closed office door.

"Miss Bailey, wait." Henderson's deep voice boomed through the walls. "You can't see the Marshal without an appointment."

Bailey rolled her eyes and blew a strand of black coal off her forehead. "Oscar Henderson, how long have you known me?"

Henderson suppressed a smile. "Too long by far. You'd think I'd be tired of your wild shenanigans by now."

A smile of satisfaction crossed Bailey's face. "Then you should know that I'm helping Tucker Gage on his latest case and I'm quite sure he's expecting me."

Without another word she twisted the door knob. Gage shook his head at the nonplussed look on Henderson's face. The man wasn't alone in having no idea how to handle Meghan Bailey. Gage wasn't sure many people did.

He stood and prepared for the onslaught.

She merely examined him thoughtfully.

"What now, Bailey?" He gestured her impatiently towards the chair opposite his desk. "Did you find any more clues up in Nell's bedroom?" His tone was mocking, but he wouldn't underestimate her sharp mind.

"Like I told you yesterday, I did find something, as a matter of fact," she said, sinking into the chair.

"I seriously debated whether or not to share my findings with you, but ... " She pulled a piece of paper from her purse, "I decided withholding information would be childish and irresponsible. So here."

"What's that?" Gage reached for the paper she'd tossed on his desk. He quickly recognized what it was, however, and thought maybe this time Bailey really had lost her senses.