Death of a Winter Shaker (8 page)

“He had been with us in North Homage for about two weeks before his death. Did he come directly to us, then?” Rose asked. Grady looked interested.

“I see what you're getting at. Nope, don't see how
anybody in town could have got to know him, leastways not enough to want him dead. He went into town maybe once or twice, and maybe he did meet a girl, but it didn't amount to much.” Seth shot a quick glance at a frowning Grady. “Then he just stayed the one night out at the farm, but Pappy couldn't stand him, and he couldn't stand Pappy, and he figured the Shakers would be a good place to find girls.” This time his eyes flicked over Gennie.

Rose stiffened. “So your father didn't care for him. What about your brother?”

“My pappy wouldn't kill nobody, and neither would my little brother. They got no reason to kill Johann, hardly knew him.” Seth paused over one potato, feeling for soft spots. “Nope, it was one of y'all done it.”

Rose counted three deep breaths, her teeth grinding. Sudden distraction came in the form of the sloppily painted sign nailed to the side of Seth's stall. The name astonished her.

“Seth, you're working for Peleg Webster, as well?”

“Yeah?”

“But isn't your father feuding with him?”

“Yup.” Seth grinned. “I'm the reason for the feud. The deputy here has just been trying to get me to see if I can stop it, but, well, I don't see why I should.”

He swung his full crate onto his hip and heaved it on the back of his wagon. He glanced back at Rose. “Looks like you and me are going to be neighbors for a long time to come.”

“Is there somewhere we could speak with you? In private?” Rose asked, when Seth had strolled away to chat with another stall owner.

Grady glanced over his shoulder at the park bench, where the blond girl named Emily still sat. Her Coca-Cola bottle, now empty, balanced on the seat next to her. She watched them with a bored air, her arms
folded. One slender leg was crossed over the other and swung rhythmically back and forth, making the red silk of her dress shimmer.

“Let's walk over yonder,” he said.

They walked through the market stalls and toward the old kiosk, past a small garden with weeds and one bent, yellow chrysanthemum, seeking the low autumn sun through a thick canopy of trees. Rose shivered inside her heavy cloak. They found an isolated spot under a large sugar maple with glowing red-orange leaves.

“Grady,” she said, “it's no use pretending that we won't be blamed for Johann's death. You heard Seth just now. The townspeople will assume it was one of us who killed him.”

“Are you so sure they aren't right?” Grady asked.

“Nay, I'm not sure,” Rose said slowly. “But I am certain that we can't let things rest as they are. Believe me, the anger will grow. We must know who killed Johann and why. If it was a Believer, then so be it. We abhor violence, you should know that. We will not even fight in a war. For the sake of our community, if we have a murderer in our midst, we must find him out.”

“Or her.”

“Yea, or her,” Rose said, frowning. “So you must see that we are on the same side, you and I. We can help one another.”

Grady paused. “I'll tell you this much,” he said finally. “Johann had been dead for several days before Gennie found him. He was stabbed through the heart and then buried, likely nearby. Then we figure he was dug up, fresh clothes put on him, and he was moved to the Herb House.”

“I guessed as much,” Rose said, “after seeing how dirty he was underneath those clean clothes.”

“The sheriff thinks Johann never came back to town after going to you all at North Homage,” Grady said.

“Can you be certain of that?”

“Well, nobody remembers seeing him after that.”

“How hard have you looked? What about that girl Seth says Johann met? Have you located her?”

Grady stared at a point just beyond his toes. “Turned out to be nothing. Anyway, as for the bouquet, the sheriff thinks a Shaker might have done that.”

“Why?”

Grady ran a finger inside his shirt collar as if it were too tight. “He thought it could be—well, some ritual or other.”

An angry red flush spread across the fair skin of Rose's face. “A
ritual,
” she said in a voice that made both Gennie and Grady step back a pace. “And did he specify what kind of ritual? Never mind, I can guess. Shall we say a ‘satanic' ritual? Perhaps he thinks that we routinely murder people, bury them, then dig them up for unspeakable rites.”

“Now, Rose, this wasn't my idea. I'm not even sure the sheriff really believes it. And it isn't as bad as it sounds. He just thought that maybe one of you found the body and that there's something you all do to purify, I mean, to chase out evil spirits. Or something,” Grady finished lamely.

“Grady O'Neal, you knew that rock was meant for us, didn't you!” Gennie stormed. “That's why that boy called us witches. It isn't only the sheriff who thinks we're evil, everyone in town does. You do, too!”

“No, Gennie, I do not think that of you.” This time he took her hands in his and held her eyes. A warmth that was no longer anger shot through her body. She did not pull back.

“Grady,” Rose said sharply.

Grady dropped Gennie's hands but neither stepped away nor shifted his gaze.

“All right, Rose,” he said. “I guess we are on the same side. I'll try to keep the sheriff's mind open. But I
warn you, if a Shaker is involved, don't try to keep it from us.”

Rose began to protest that she would never do such a thing, but her words vanished in earsplitting clanging. They spun around to see Languor's ill-equipped fire brigade clamoring past them on the road that Rose and Gennie had traveled from North Homage.

They hurried back toward the market square. Seth leaned against his stall, hands in his pockets, and lazily watched their approach.

“If I was you, Rose,” he said, “I'd get back home. There's a rumor going around that the whole place is burning to the ground.”

R
OSE AND
G
ENNIE
FOLLOWED
G
RADY'S CAR, BOUNCING
at a full fifty miles an hour over the rutted dirt road they had traveled earlier. This time, ragged children and their parents lined the street and stared, but the presence of police discouraged a repeat of the rock-tossing incident.

At first, Rose could see only a billowing cloud of black-gray smoke roll across the sky over North Homage. As they neared the outskirts, the smoke appeared to erupt from a dense, black funnel spiraling upward from the far end of the village.

“Oh, Rose, it's the Herb House,” Gennie cried.

“We don't know that yet.”

The cars sped right down the unpaved central pathway toward the east end of town. When the path ended just before the wheatfields, they jumped out. Motioning Gennie to stay by the car, Rose stumbled her way through the clumps and ruts of the harvested fields toward the smoke. The blue triangular kerchief that crisscrossed the bodice of her dress worked loose and flopped inside her cape. Her heavy, sugar-scoop bonnet fell back on her neck, and tufts of red hair popped out from under her cotton cap. Panting and disheveled, she reached a group of Believers and police watching the fire brigade. No one chided her for her condition. All eyes were hypnotized by the soaring,
spitting flames. It quickly became apparent that the Herb House was unharmed. But a roaring blaze engulfed the barn, which lay just beyond the Herb House.

A familiar odor permeated the air. Rose recognized it from her many visits with the world's people and, more recently, from her encounter with the Camel-smoking police officer. Inside the barn, clumps of curing tobacco leaves had hung from the rafters. The Society's entire tobacco crop smoldered like an enormous cigarette.

Sheriff Brock lounged against an oak tree and surveyed the fire brigade's futile efforts to save the structure. Grady spoke with him briefly and, flipping open his notebook, headed toward a group of onlookers. Seeing Rose approach, Brock strolled back to meet her.

“Did someone set this fire on purpose?” she demanded.

“Looks like it. We already found a couple empty cans of gasoline thrown a few hundred yards away from the barn.”

“Now will you believe me that we are in danger?”

Brock lifted his cap, smoothed back his thinning, gray hair, and replaced the cap. “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe a Shaker set this fire.”

“What?
That's ludicrous. What possible reason could a Believer have for destroying our barn and our entire tobacco crop?”

“I can think of two reasons right offhand,” Brock said with a smug nod. “First, look at where that barn is—or was, I should say. Yup, real handy to the Herb House. One idea is that the killer hid something in there, something he couldn't figure out any other way to get rid of. Maybe it was just easier to burn the barn and the evidence than to sneak it out and find another place for it.”

The heavy tobacco odor hung on Rose's cloak and stung her eyes. Thick plumes of smoke spiraled into the sky. A sudden crack, and two adjoining wooden
walls crumbled into a pile of sparks and cinders. Without their support, the roof caved downward. The falling roof tiles exploded in all directions as they crashed on the ground. The ravenous flames had finally devoured most of their fuel, and they began to subside.

“The way I see it,” Brock continued, unmoved by the destruction, “this killer is a real fanatic. He—or she—kills a man who's chasing after Shaker girls, tries to do some strange ritual or other—”

“Sheriff—”

“And maybe a twisted mind like his figured it was justice to burn down the barn while he was trying to hide evidence, what with the barn being full of tobacco and all.” Brock squinted in the haze. “Don't it ever seem odd to you that y'all refuse to smoke, but you sell tobacco to the rest of us? A crazy Shaker might just want to put a stop to that, too. That's the way I see it.”

Rose turned on her heel and joined the other Believers, who mourned in silence. She was aware, now more than ever, that she'd receive no help from the sheriff, and probably little from Grady. She was on her own.

Gennie dragged her tired legs up the girls' staircase of the Children's Dwelling House, where she lived, stumbling twice over her long skirts. The second time she caught herself with one hand and sat down sharply on a step. Twelve-hour days in the herb fields never made her as tired as she was at that moment. She kicked at the hem of her skirt, still caught on the toe of her shoe, and sighed as she heard the stitching rip.
Elder Wilhelm makes us wear these stupid old dresses,
she thought.
He should have to mend them.

Gennie heard a door close and children's laughter. She heaved herself up and finished her climb. A crack of light under her retiring room door told her that her roommate, Molly Ferguson, was inside. Gennie was surprised. Molly usually stayed away from the room as late as possible, just to feel some freedom. Often she
sat in a rocking chair by a hallway window, watching the grounds, until a sister chased her to bed. With all the excitement this afternoon, she'd have guessed that Molly would be rambling around the village, taking advantage of the lack of supervision.

Gennie knocked lightly and pushed open the door. The room held four beds, all perched on wheels to ease cleaning. No one had slept in two of them for three years, but they remained, waiting for the orphans who rarely came anymore now that there were orphanages to care for them.

Every night, Molly and Gennie pushed their beds to opposite ends of the room, creating an illusion of privacy. They rolled the beds together again each morning, in case a sister walked in during the day and frowned on this yearning. Though she would never tell Rose, Gennie was glad that North Homage had declined in membership from two hundred Believers to thirty. It gave her the chance to be alone now and then.

Molly's narrow bed already hugged the wall. Her roommate sat on her coverlet, her slim legs tucked under her white nightdress. Long, thick hair obscured her face, hair as dark as the cast-iron stove in the center of the room. Without answering Gennie's “Good evening,” Molly smoothed a comb through her hair, starting at the nape of her neck and gliding over her head.

Gennie pulled her own bed to the opposite wall, undressed quickly near the stove, and shivered into her nightdress. She had worn the same winter gown for three years. She loved to take it out of storage each fall and feel it pull tighter across her breasts. Something else she couldn't tell Rose. She wriggled under her covers and propped herself on one elbow to watch Molly's bedtime ritual.

Despite her roommate's odd, often distant personality, Gennie felt a kinship with Molly. Both had been placed with the Shakers by a widowed parent who died
soon afterward. Gennie had tried to forgive her own father, a dour lawyer who had drawn his strength from her vibrant mother. When she died, so did his will to be a father to Gennie. The Depression's arrival had finally crushed him.

Molly's father had been a construction laborer, whose answer to the Depression was to drink himself to death, forcing Molly and her mother into the streets. Gennie knew little of what happened during that period of Molly's life.

With a flick of her head, Molly tossed her silky hair, and it settled around her shoulders like a soft, dark cloud. She looked at Gennie with half-closed, sulky eyes.

“Ain't you even going to comb that mop?” Molly asked. Her coarse speech was jarring compared with her luxurious looks.

“Nay, what's the use? My hair will never look like yours, even if I comb it all night.”

“You got curl. Anyway, you can hide it forever when you become a good little Shaker.”

Ignoring the jab, Gennie asked, “Molly, have you ever been in love?”