Chapter 10
ALMOST AS soon as Alex and Rick stepped inside Watson Manor, a servant standing as stiff and straight as his pressed suit handed Rick a telegram.
Rick glanced at Alex, read the note, and pursed his lips. “I need you to send a reply,” he said to the servant.
“Yes, sir.”
Alex clenched her teeth and turned away from Rick. She headed to the stairway. She knew that expression. Rick’s telegram had to be news from one of his partners about that treasure they were hunting. Which meant Rick would be leaving soon. Of course.
“Alex, wait,” Rick said.
She hurried up the stairs. “I’ll meet you in Uncle Henry’s bedchamber,” she called over her shoulder.
But she didn’t go straight to Uncle Henry’s room. She stopped at hers and carefully folded, refolded, and finally laid a blanket in the corner rocking chair. “Take a nice nap,” she said to Ivy as she set her on top of it. “The windows are locked, and I’ll close the door behind me when I leave. No one will bother you.”
Ivy sunk into the blanket’s softness as if she knew Alex now knew she was well. And what makes her fur glow.
Alex set her hat on top of the bureau. She folded her arms across her chest and paced between the wardrobe where Alistair stood in the middle of his jar on top of it and the bed. Someone—the maid?—had tucked the blankets so tightly beneath the mattress, Alex could have played marbles on it. The way she and Rick had done on their first bed soon after they’d married. They’d laughed, bargained, captured each other’s favorite marbles, but in the end, he’d won the game, and gloating over his prowess, had gone off with his business partners to explore the canyon a few miles from their home. He and his partners had heard a bank robber had hidden his loot there.
She’d laughed about it then—called him a ‘little boy’ when he hadn’t returned until the next morning—because they were friends, and friends let friends live their own lives. But friends also did not leave when tough times came. Like Mary’s death. And now he was about to leave her again even though he’d said he’d help her find Mary’s killer.
She ran her hands up and down the lengths of her arms. At least she hadn’t let herself fully trust what he’d said. She would not be hurt this time. Please, God.
She sniffed, stood taller, smoothed her hair back from her face, and stepped into the hall. She closed the door firmly behind her.
“I’m glad to see I didn’t miss you,” Rick said.
He leaned against the wall directly across the hall from her room. Had he waited for her?
Alex glanced at her uncle’s bedchamber door at the end of the hall.
Rick looked down at her empty arms then back into her face. His eyes narrowed. “Where’s Ivy? Everything all right?”
“It will be.” Alex, clenching her jaw, marched toward her uncle’s door and knocked.
Rick followed her.
“Come in,” Uncle Henry called from inside.
Alex clasped the doorknob, but despite still telling herself that nothing was wrong, that it didn’t matter that Rick would soon leave her to handle things alone again, her fingers trembled.
Rick wrapped his right hand around hers. The trembling stopped. “Don’t worry about Louis,” he said. “He’ll be fine.”
Alex bit her lower lip. Did Rick know how close he was to her? That if she edged a mere few inches to the right, she’d be within the crook of his arm? “That’s easy enough for you to say, I suppose, since you won’t have to worry about any of this for much longer.”
“What makes you say that?”
She bit her tongue, shook her head. “Nothing.” She turned the knob, but his grip stopped her.
“Tell me, Alex.”
She looked up at him over her shoulder. Their bodies were so close she could feel his breath on her cheek. “The telegram the servant gave you when we arrived.”
He didn’t ask her what she meant, and she didn’t offer an explanation, but at last he said, “You’re wrong.”
“It was from one of your partners, wasn’t it?”
Rick didn’t move—not his gaze, not his hand, not his body. Nor did he deny her accusation. “I didn’t know I was so obvious.”
“Come in, Alexandra,” her uncle called again.
She moistened her lips. “Uncle Henry’s waiting for us.”
Rick’s eyes wavered, but at last he released her hand, and she stiffened her spine. My arms do not ache. I do not miss—Ivy.
They entered the room.
“The two of you look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” Uncle Henry said.
“Almost,” Rick said.
Alex walked toward her uncle’s bed. On the way back from the Godfrey’s house, she’d silently rehearsed what she should say, but still the information felt uncomfortable on her lips. She, Rick, and Captain Sutter had chosen the right course, hadn’t they? “Just as you believed, we found what might be preternatural evidence that Mr. Godfrey was murdered—poisoned. But there is nothing in it that connects his death to Aunt Pauline’s death.”
“Further scrutiny—”
“No, Uncle. In fact, circumstances are such that Captain Sutter, Rick, and I believe we should stop our investigation immediately and keep what we’ve learned to ourselves.”
His eyes widened. He glanced from one to the other of them. “Explain.”
Alex tugged the lacy hem of her sleeve’s cuff. Rick stepped in behind her and briefly squeezed her shoulder. It was a simple touch, not at all filled with his overpowering comfort, but it gave her the determination she needed to recount the vile tale.
When she reached the end of it, she inhaled as if she’d dropped a great weight. “I’m sorry, Uncle. I know it’s not the answer you’d wanted, but it does provide some closure.”
Uncle Henry steepled his fingertips. “It does not.”
She pulled her gaze away from him and paced to the window. “In any case, Rick and I have fulfilled the purpose for which you brought us here, and we respectfully request your blessing to leave Watson Manor after—” She focused on the tall, black wrought iron fence that divided the Watson’s property from its neighbor. Its individual spires pointed to the heavens.
“You can say it, Alex,” Uncle Henry said. “After I die.”
Alex’s skin tightened around her eyes. She turned back to him, watched him, pressed her lips into a straight line. She would not let emotion overpower her. Not here in front of these men.
“At any rate,” he said, “I’m not certain Rick agrees with you about fulfilling your purpose here and leaving Watson Manor.”
Alex looked at Rick. He gazed steadily back at her, his hazel eyes unblinking beneath his thick eyelashes. Instant heat rushed through her skin, and she folded her arms in front of her. She looked back to her uncle. It was a good thing she and Rick would soon part ways. She hadn’t known it, but she apparently had feelings for him. Specifically him. Not just friendly feelings, and not just because he was a man and she was a woman, nor even because he was her wedded husband. She had feelings for him. And he would leave.
“This is a terrible business for the boy,” Uncle Henry continued, “and if Sutter’s fine with keeping Louis out of it, so am I. But just because Louis, if he is guilty, is too young to have killed Pauline, that doesn’t mean your investigation is complete. The similarities between Mr. Godfrey’s death and Pauline’s may not prove that the same person killed them, but they do strengthen my conviction that my wife was indeed murdered. I still need you to find out who did it.”
“You’ve always believed she was murdered, Uncle, and you had the evidence when it was fresh. There’s nothing more for us to investigate.”
“I won’t believe that.”
“You must. Rick and I have been through your files. We’ve examined Pauline’s room. Maybe, if you had asked me to help you when the murder had happened, I might have sensed something, but all preternatural evidence, if there was any, dissipated years ago. It’s over. Please let
it rest.”
Uncle Henry’s facial muscles tightened. “Have you let Mary’s death rest?”
“Mary’s death is not like Pauline’s. I don’t have to prove my daughter was murdered. I only have to find the one who did it.”
“And I still need to find the one who killed my wife.”
“Maybe you already did,” Rick said. “Maybe it was that Mr. Clemens, the man who died.”
“Then prove it!” Uncle Henry said. “Prove it wasn’t me!”
“You?” Alex and Rick said at the same time.
“What do you mean?” Alex added.
Uncle Henry’s gaze fixed on something at the foot of his bed before lifting back to them. He motioned to a black box on top of the fireplace mantle. “There’s another file in there. Sutter copied it out for me. Apparently, I was once their strongest suspect. The police could never prove someone murdered Pauline, much less that I had committed the crime, but still some believed—still do believe—I killed her.”
Rick retrieved the file from the box and handed it to Alex.
Alex opened it. She scanned the words, forced herself not to gape. How could anyone have written, much less believed, such terrible things about her uncle?
“Please clear my name before I die,” Uncle Henry said.
Alex ran her hand through the side of her hair. The file contained little more than snippets of police interviews with Uncle Henry full of terrible accusations. “Nothing in this file proves you had anything to do with Aunt Pauline’s death, and no one who knows you will believe otherwise.”
He stared at her, and though he said nothing, images of Mary’s and Aunt Pauline’s faces filled the air between them. Both victims deserved justice. So did she and her uncle. And Rick.
“Why don’t we think about it for a while?” Rick said to Alex. “I’m sure your uncle needs to rest.”
“Yes,” Uncle Henry said. “Leave me for now. But please don’t wait too long.”
Alex sighed.
“It’s been a difficult day for all of us.” Rick moved in behind her and clasped her upper arms. He turned her so she faced the door. “Come, Alex. I daresay you need food. You didn’t come down for breakfast this morning, and it’s now nearly dinnertime.”
“I haven’t felt hungry,” she said.
His grasp tightened briefly before he released her. “That may be, but your body needs sustenance.”
He moved ahead of her and opened the door.
“I’ll be waiting for your answer,” Uncle Henry said.
Alex frowned. There was no point in it, but how could she refuse him? “I’ll do what I can, Uncle.”
Rick did a slow double take. He pressed his free hand against his pocket where he’d put his telegram.
Alex’s stomach knotted. Rick’s movement was simple, small, inconsequential. There was absolutely no reason it should bother her, no reason she should care that he would soon leave again. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself and Uncle Henry’s final request on my own.
“Would you please bring Pauline’s file to me?” Uncle Henry asked.
“Yes,” Alex said.
“Let me do it,” Rick said. “I’m on my way out anyway, and you look like you’ll faint if you don’t get some food in you.”
Alex turned away from him. Lack of food was not her problem. But then, perhaps it was better to let him think that was the problem. To let him step out of her life now, while she still had family she could trust around her. It would make his final departure easier to accept. Wouldn’t it?
“Very well,” she said.
***