Death of a Winter Shaker (9 page)

She began to regret her question as those black eyes laughed at her.

“Did you go and fall in love with a good little Shaker boy?”

“Nay, be serious, Molly. Have you?”

Molly pulled her lustrous hair over one shoulder and absently braided and unbraided it. “Sure, lots of times,” she said with a shrug. “'Course, it never lasted more'n a few hours.”

“Oh, honestly, Gen,” Molly said, laughing when she saw Gennie's confused frown, “you're such a baby. You don't know nothin'.” She sighed. “Heck, I started falling in love when I was fourteen. Learned by watchin' my ma. Me and Ma had to live on the streets after Pa died. At first, we had to knock on back doors and
beg for food.” Molly's eyes grew even darker at the remembered humiliation. “But then we figured out a better way to get money.”

“What was that?”

“Ma would leave me settin' on a park bench,” Molly said. “Then she'd go up to some man if he was alone. They'd talk a spell, and then sometimes they'd go off together. See, Ma knew where there was this old, abandoned truck down under a bridge nearby. It was real private. So they'd, you know, fall in love real quick, and she would get some money from the man, and we could rent a room for the night.”

Gennie hesitated. She didn't dare ask for too much clarification. Molly would just laugh at her again.

“So,” she ventured, “how did you—I mean, when did you fall in love?”

“Fourteen, like I said. I'm tall, so I looked a lot older. And one day, while Ma was off with a man, another one came up to me. He even had a hotel room and everything. He was rich! And I already knew enough to ask for money.”

Molly scooted across her bed until her back was against the wall. She straightened her legs and stretched.

“Fallin' in love is easy,” she said. “You just gotta know to ask for something back.” She pulled her knees up under her chin. “'Course, my ma figured out pretty fast what I was doing and brought me here. Begged the Shakers to raise me right. Then she went off and died. She should have kept me with her, I could've taken care of her,” she said, her voice softer.

Molly flopped over on her stomach. “I'm tired of talking,” she said, with a return to her normal hard-edged tone.

“All right, then. Sleep tight.” Gennie slipped between her sheets and turned to face the wall. Even under her coverlet, though, she shivered. “I'm going to stoke up the stove a bit,” she said, flipping over just in
time to see her roommate pull a small object from beneath her thin mattress. Molly slipped her feet under her covers and began to file her nails.

“Molly Ferguson, where did you get that nail file!” Gennie flung off her covers and dashed across the room. “Let me see that,” she said, settling on the foot of Molly's bed. “It has mother-of-pearl on the handle. Is it real?”

Molly smiled and nodded. “I got more,” she said.

“What? Show me.”

Molly considered Gennie for a moment, as though weighing the delight of boasting against the danger of betrayal. Then she reached under her mattress again and came up with two more objects, one shiny and one red. She held them in her curled hand, ready to snatch them back. Gennie leaned over and drew in her breath sharply.

“Is that nail polish? Red nail polish?”

Molly nodded.

“What's the other?”

“Lipstick, silly.” Molly popped off the lid and rolled up a mound of bright red. “It's called Ruby.”

Gennie thought of Emily, the girl in the red silk dress, the one who must be Grady's girl. Her lips and nails had matched her dress. Molly always did this to her, always brought her near a world that seemed exotic and alluring, just out of reach yet right here in her own room.

“How did you get these? I could never manage it, even if I tried.”

“I don't reckon you'd try, would you?” Molly carefully rolled down the lipstick and pushed on the lid.

“I might so,” Gennie said, knowing it was a lie. Molly did that to her, too. “Aren't you afraid someone will find them?”

“Who'd find them? We change our own sheets. Nobody's found them yet.”

“How did you get all this stuff?”

Molly shrugged. “Someone gave 'em to me.”

“Who?”

“None of your business.”

“How long have you had them?”

“Near two weeks, and not a peep from anybody. I ain't scared.” But she shoved all three items deeply into their hiding place.

A chill skittered down Gennie's spine. Two weeks was just about when Johann Fredericks had arrived in North Homage. Could he have given them to Molly? How well had Molly gotten to know Johann?

Molly straightened again and looked at Gennie's face.

“You better not be thinking about telling, or I'll straighten your hair for you,” she said, her dark eyes fierce.

Gennie's sense of foreboding deepened, but not because of Molly's threat. Was there more to Molly's secret than lipstick, nail polish, and a nail file?

“Molly, tell me truly, who gave you those things?”

“Like I said, none of your business, good little Shaker girl.” Molly's smile was smug.

Gennie slipped back into her own bed and turned her face to the wall.
The trouble is, Molly's right,
she thought. She wouldn't try to get lipstick or nail polish, and she wouldn't know anyone who could get them for her. She brooded that maybe she was destined to be a Shaker sister. If she could be like Rose, of course, it wouldn't be so bad. Rose always knew what to do and what to say. She did easily everything that was so difficult for Gennie. Maybe if she worked very, very hard, she could be like that someday? Nay, that was impossible, of course. Everything that Rose said and did grew out of her love for the Society, her complete devotion to its beliefs. Deep in her heart, Gennie felt little of that in herself.

She closed her eyes and conjured the image of her mother's face—not as she was during the last few
weeks of her life, losing weight, losing strength, but the laughing mother with auburn curls, like Gennie's, but piled whimsically on her head. Did she always laugh? Gennie neither remembered nor cared. All she remembered was the laughter. But for some reason it brought tears to her eyes. She reached under her pillow for her handkerchief, trying not to sniffle.

Molly heard, though.

“Gen? You all right?”

Gennie opened her eyes to darkness.

“I didn't mean to make you cry,” Molly said softly.

Gennie heard Molly's bed squeak as she sat up.

“I'll tell you a secret,” Molly whispered, “but you gotta promise not to tell, cross your heart and hope to die.”

Gennie's eyes had adjusted to the dark, and she saw Molly swing her legs over the side of her bed.

“What is it?” Gennie asked brusquely, uncertain whether Molly meant to be kind or to ridicule her again.

“First, promise.”

“All right, I promise.”

Molly hesitated a moment, then left her bed for Gennie's. Gennie sat up and pulled her knees under her chin, squinting to see Molly's face in the dark.

“I wore the lipstick outside,” Molly whispered, leaning forward.

“I don't believe you. You'd have been caught. No Shaker girl could wear red lipstick in broad daylight and not be seen by a dozen sisters.”

“Maybe it wasn't daylight.”

Gennie could hear the smirk in her voice.

“Nay, you couldn't have gone out at night. I'd have heard you.”

“You? Once you're asleep, you wouldn't hear a freight train if it ran over your bed.”

Molly was right, she did sleep soundly.

Molly reached across the dark and grabbed Gennie's
hands. “Promise again you won't tell nobody.” As Molly drew close, a sweet scent brushed the air.

Has someone given her perfume, as well?
Gennie wondered. But it could just be the lavender rinse used in the laundry. Gennie said simply, “Yea, I promise.”

Molly released Gennie's hands and clasped her arms around her legs. Both girls shivered with the chill air and the excitement of secrets about to be shared.

“I wore the lipstick for a man,” Molly whispered, “and the nail polish, too.” She giggled like the young girl she still was. “He liked them, too. He said I was beautiful. He said he would kiss the lipstick off my lips. He did, too, he kissed me and kissed me.”

Now that she had begun to reveal her secret, the words tumbled out. Gennie kept very still.

“He did other things, too, after a while.” She giggled again. “We went into the Water House ‘cause it was too cold outside. It was cold in the Water House, too. That was the only part I didn't like. He spread my cloak on that dirty old floor, and then he touched me a lot, all over. And then . . . well, you know.” Molly laughed knowingly. When she spoke again, her voice was thoughtful. “Mama said it wasn't fun, just something a woman's gotta put up with to get a roof over her head. But that time I liked it.”

Gennie was glad for the darkness. Her cheeks felt hot with the humiliation of ignorance. She did not know what Molly had done with this nameless man. No one, not even Rose, had told her just what a man and a woman did together, except that it was sinful and best not contemplated.

“Who did you meet? Not one of the brethren, surely.”

Molly whooped at the thought, and the sound seemed to fill the large room. “Can you imagine me and old Brother Hugo in the Water House?”

“Shush,” Gennie whispered urgently. “You'll have Sister Charlotte here checking on us.”

Molly kept giggling, but more quietly. At the sound of a door closing nearby, she rushed to her own bed. Both girls lay still, listening for footsteps and a chiding voice, but none came.

“You know,” Molly whispered, “right after I got dumped here, I asked Charity if she thought my ma was right—you know, about it not being any fun with men.” Molly laughed softly. “She turned red as my lipstick and said it was an awful sin and don't even think about it. But I know she thought about it as much as me.” Molly's bed creaked as she settled under the covers.

“How do you know?” Gennie asked.

“Because she wanted him, too.” Molly's voice was fading. “But I got him first.”

Gennie's mind flipped back to the Union Meeting the previous Thursday, the one she had described to Sheriff Brock and Grady O'Neal. Charity and Johann exchanging a forbidden special look, Charity blushing . . . Gennie lay very still, her inner confusion forgotten, her fears confirmed. The man Molly had met was Johann Fredericks, and Gennie had just promised not ever to tell.

T
HE FIRST SHAFTS OF GOLDEN DAWN WARMED HER
oak desk as Rose chewed the tip of her pen. For a moment, she could not bear to reread her work, a summary of what she had learned from the previous late-afternoon and evening's questioning of fifteen of North Homage's thirty Believers about Johann Fredericks and about the fire which had destroyed their barn. No one offered information about the fire, but several had a great deal to say about Johann and who he'd had dealings with.

She had arisen at 4:00, an hour early for a Saturday, and padded in slippered feet downstairs to her office to complete her task. Rather than add scarce wood to the stove, merely for her own comfort, she had wrapped herself in her thick wool cloak and kept her chilled feet under its long folds. She longed for a steaming pot of rose hip and lemon balm tea, but she hadn't wanted to clatter crockery in the kitchen at such an early hour.

Rose yawned and stretched her arms, then shivered as the cloak slid from her lap. She replaced it quickly. Her eyes fell on the sheet of paper before her, but still she resisted reading it. A glance around the dimly lit room filled her with sadness and rare loneliness. A hundred years ago, the Trustees' Office, the building in which Rose lived and worked, would have been filled with people. She would have been one of four trustees,
two men and two women, who met daily with the world's folk in this very room.

Though small by Shaker standards, the building contained retiring rooms for fifty Believers, sisters housed on the west side, brethren on the east, each with their own staircase. The staircases had a simple elegance, though they were not as exquisite as the curved ones Rose had seen as a child on a visit to the Trustees' Office in the Pleasant Hill Shaker village, before it closed in 1910.

Now Rose shared the building with only two others, young novitiates who had not yet signed the covenant to become full members of the Society. They were good girls, eager and hardworking, but they couldn't fill the large house with the bustle and cheerful noise of fifty Believers.

Since Sister Fiona's death last spring, Rose was the last remaining trustee, working alone to direct the business affairs of North Homage. She reached out and smoothed her hand across Fee's half of the double desk, then drew back into the warmth of her cape. The pigeonholes still held Fee's old accounts books and postal supplies, as though she would pop in at any moment to fill out invoices for herb orders.

What would Fee have to say about her list of potential Shaker murderers? Something plainspoken, no doubt, she thought, smiling. Fee's parents had brought her from Ireland almost directly to North Homage when she was a small child. Some of Fee's first memories had been of the Civil War, when both Union and Confederate soldiers marched through North Homage demanding food and horses. Rose remembered the stories as though Fee sat beside her now telling them, her small body ramrod-straight and her eyes bright.

“They were starving, the poor lads,” Fee had reminisced more than once, “and we fed them good Shaker
meals, with cheese, applesauce, brown bread and butter, lemon pie, even roasted chickens if we had them. We went without to feed them. But when they wanted our brethren to come and fight, we stood firm. We Shakers do not fight. We do not kill. Even when our neighbors stole our horses to punish us for not fighting, we showed them no anger in return. Remember that, Rose, take no revenge on those who would be your enemies.” Then with a wink, “Not so easy for an Irish lass, is it?”