Night Winds (39 page)

He wondered grimly whose empty office it was that this man meant to splatter with his brain
. When Phillip looked up into the man’s face, silhouetted by the wall lantern in the hall behind him, he saw no features, just the dim shape of a killer.

“I want you to see me,” the man said, turning
. “I reckon you don’t even remember who I am.”

Phillip stared at him until he recognized the fighter’s build, the red-bronze, hardened features.

“I remember you,” he said. “Sal Madsen. You’re the first man I dismissed. You threatened a man I’d hired with a six-inch blade.”

“You’ll be glad to hear I quit the knives
. I’ve switched to guns these days. And that weren’t no
man
I said I’d carve up. It was just some nigger out to steal a white man’s job.”

“You
had
a good job.”

“Until you took it
. Now I reckon I’ll take somethin’ a sight more valuable from you.” He cocked the Colt and leveled it at Phillip’s forehead. Yet he hesitated, then grinned, clearly relishing his moment of revenge. “You wanta beg now, I might listen.”

This was it then, Phillip realized
. His whole life was about to be summed up in an expanding puddle of brains and blood and bone. From his knees, these last two years seemed a profound waste, a foolish monument to his own stubbornness and pride. Why couldn’t he have told Shae she was right? Why couldn’t he admit that bowing to his father’s blackmail had been a miserable mistake?

I’m sorry, Shae
, he thought, and he despaired with the knowledge of how she would have filled the emptiness inside him with color and with light.

His head drooped in preparation for what he knew must come next
. Until he heard the creek of the door hinge.

Behind him, the door swung further open, and Phillip caught sight of Justine raising her cane high above her
.
Oh, God, no!
he thought. Please don’t let her see this! Don’t let him hurt her too!

Madsen must have seen the horror in his eyes, for he whirled, lifting the gun to fire at the intruder.

Phillip launched himself at Madsen’s legs at the same instant Justine’s cane crashed against his head. Somehow, the dockworker squeezed off a shot as he fell, and Phillip heard a heavy thud out in the hall.

“Justine!” he shouted
. Rolling Madsen over, he straddled the man’s chest and hammered at his face. Bone crunched and blood spurted from Sal’s collapsing teeth and nose. Still, Phillip continued pounding long past the point of subduing his attacker. Though the repeated impact split his knuckles, he wanted nothing more than to beat the man to death.

“Stop it, Phillip
! Stop!”

Justine’s cries registered at last, and sanity began to filter through his brain
. She was sitting on the hallway floor, reaching for her cane.

Two doctors raced toward them down the hall
. One was Hiram Tuttle.

“Are you hurt, Justine?” Phillip climbed off of the unconscious man and kicked away the Colt revolver.

“I
hit
him! I was so afraid, but I hit him anyway.” She smiled through her tears,
smiled
, in spite of the bleeding man still in the doorway. Crawling on her knees, she threw herself into her brother’s arms and squeezed him tightly.

“He didn’t hit you, did he?” Phillip asked.

He felt her head shake in answer. “I lost my balance when I struck him with my cane. Oh, Phillip . . . I was so frightened. I thought he’d kill you before I could catch up.”

Phillip handed her the cane and helped her up just as the others reached them
. Both doctors shouted questions, which they steadfastly ignored.

In a moment, their attention turned to the man lying on the floor.

“He’s still breathing!” Tuttle said.

The second man, Donald Graham, knelt beside Hiram and Madsen and peered into the latter’s ruined face.

“What in God’s name have you done here?” he asked Phillip. “He’ll need months of care!”

Helping his sister down the hall, Phillip called over his shoulder, “Just send the bill to his employer, Ethan Lowell.”

What Shae would have given for a lantern, instead of the dim illumination of a waning moon
. But perhaps poor light worked in some odd way to her advantage, for if she could truly see the danger, she wasn’t certain she could mount these steps again.

Go on
, she told herself. After all, earlier today, these same steps had borne not only Harry’s weight and hers, but that of Delilah. Surely, they would hold her alone this time.

The house creaked in the warm breeze, and each stair seemed to groan
. Still, Shae ascended quickly, afraid as much of the collapse of courage as the house.

Carefully avoiding the gaping crack in the hall floor, she stepped inside her room
. Though the hurricane and Delilah had scattered the contents, one thing remained intact, her wardrobe.

The hinges squealed as she pulled the door open and dug into the back
. The clothes inside weren’t even damp, she realized. She should take something practical from here, but for the moment she was interested only in one thing.

Before her father and Alberta disposed of Mother’s clothes, Shae had placed a single dress far to the back
. A lovely green Winterhalter gown, the same that Glennis had been wearing in her portrait. The very same that Shae would put on now, to try to learn, at long, long last, the truth.

*

After Justine bandaged Phillip’s knuckles, he hurried back toward Tuttle’s office. With all that had happened, he felt desperate to see Shae, to set things rights with her once more.

Kneeling on that hard floor, with a gun pointed at his forehead, he’d been so certain everything was ove
r
and so filled with regret. Because he knew that Shae had been right, right about them both. Why in God’s name had he clung so stubbornly to a promise he kne
w
everyone who truly understood him kne
w
had been so very wrong?

There were some oaths which must be broken, and the promise his father had forced from him was one
. But there were others that remained sacred, such as the one he’d made to Mr. Sayres. He decided to accept Augustus Lowell’s offer on two conditions. First, the black men who had proven themselves loyal workers must be allowed to keep their jobs. And in the future, more men like them should be given opportunities. Somehow he felt certain Ethan’s father would agree.

Phillip smiled, eager to tell Shae what he’d decided
. Except, when he opened the door to Tuttle’s office, he found it empty.

Shae hadn’t waited for him after all.

*

The neckline was far lower than any Shae was used to wearing, and her petticoats less full than the fashions Glennis had worn years before
. Yet the dress did fit her, and despite the poor light, Shae realized it molded to the curves of her upper body far more beautifully than any dress she’d worn before.

In near-darkness, she brushed out her tangled hair and thought about the things she’d said to Phillip
. She’d been right to call herself obsessed, and she wondered if this masquerade were evidence that she’d progressed beyond that point to some form of madness.

As she stood here in her mother’s dress, she remembered how she’d railed against comparisons to her late mother, how she’d struggled to separate herself from Mother’s crimes
. But with the cloud of the woman’s disappearance looming over her, she’d never quite succeeded, had she? And she never would, until she knew the truth at last. Tonight, with this one desperate act, she might tread on the very hem of insanity, but she did not mean to slip into that gown.

No, not that
. Instead, she meant to heal herself, to at last find the answer to her questions so she might attempt to mend her relationship with Phillip. So she might attempt to cut a new life from a bolt of cloth unblemished by her past.

She found the clothing she now wore far less practical than the knickerbockers she’d abandoned. She snagged the skirt and tore it climbing off the leaning porch.

In contrast with her earlier passage toward Commerce Street, this time Shae kept to the darkest shadows. Now and again, sounds broke through the eerie silence: the barking of a dog, the distant, heartfelt weeping of a woman, and worst, the desperate crying out of names. Lost souls, she thought, not unlike her mother’s. Lost souls whose final stories never would be known.

*

Phillip caught a bare flash of white petticoats amid a swirl of skirt. He strained his eyes in a futile attempt to recognize a woman hurrying down the dark street. He remembered the unlikely outfit Shae had worn at the infirmary. No petticoats with that. Had she gone somewhere to change her clothing? That idea, strange as it might be, seemed more likely than another woman of Shae’s size and shape wandering the streets this time of night.

What in God’s name was she doing
? Even as he asked himself the question, Phillip knew. She’d been so shocked by the realization that her aunt had known about her mother’s death that she must be going to confront the woman. But why and where would she stop first to change into a dress?

He pushed aside the question and hurried to try to catch up with the woman he’d been trailing
. He might have broke into a run, but his head throbbed so horribly that with each step, he felt as if he’d vomit. He hoped that Madsen suffered plenty for the injury he’d caused tonight.

Despite his nausea, he picked up his pace at the sight of the woman cutting between buildings to the alleyway in back of S. Rowan Jewelers.

*

No light shone from the windows of the jewelry store
. Shae rounded the building to face the back door. Still no lamp’s glow; Aunt Alberta must have gone to sleep inside.

Shae wondered what sort of nightmares troubled the old woman’s rest
. Doubt and pity reared up as she lifted a chunk of fallen brick and mortar from the collapsed wall of the neighboring dry goods store. She’d picked the largest piece that she could heft. Could she really do this to her aunt, she wondered, to the woman who’d help raise her?

I wished you’d drowned instead
. I wish that you were dead just like your mother.

Those words, as much as Shae’s arms, launched the heavy missile
. It crashed through the window of the back door; inside she heard a woman’s shriek.

A lamp within was turned up, and she soon saw Alberta barrel toward the door
. As she’d threatened earlier, she held King’s old Springfield rifle, which he’d had since the war. But when she saw Shae, standing in a silvery patch of moonlight, her jaw gaped and the muzzle barely drooped.

*

Before Phillip reached the corner, he heard the crash of breaking glass. He rushed forward to see what in God’s name Shae was doing.

The sight that greeted him took his breath away.

*

Alberta surged forward
. “Oh, Lord, not again!”

Shae could hear her own pulse roaring in her ears, her breath rasping as, with the greatest effort, she managed one step forward
. Dear God, she hadn’t counted on that gun!

“I tell you every time, I didn’t mean it, Glennis
! Why can’t you believe me and go back?” Alberta’s shrill voice quavered.

When Shae said nothing, the older woman continued, but her voice reversed itself from fear to rage, as if she’d turned her feelings inside out
. “It was your own fault, you cheating harlot! Your own fault, not mine!”

Not hers
?
What on earth did Aunt Alberta mean, Shae wondered. Hadn’t her fathe
r
?

Shae began to tremble, just as if the night had gone from mild September to February in an instant
. “Not King?” She couldn’t help but ask.

*

Phillip’s lungs ached with his held breath. Slowly, he forced himself to exhale. He had to breathe so he might think.

Unarmed as he was, there was no question of stopping Alberta before the woman managed to kill Shae
. But surely, he could not just watch while this played out, an eerie echo of his own near-execution less than an hour before.

Miserably, he looked around for anything he might use and listened carefully for a chance that might not come.

*

“Kin
g
King loved you!” Alberta shouted. “He moved from Philadelphia to stop your scandalous affairs, forbade you to leave the house, then finally turned a blind eye when even that did not suffice! He gave you everythin
g
everything he had for you and your sin-spawned daughter! And still you meant to leave him. Still, I caught you slinking toward those stairs, a carpetbag of the jewelry he’d made in your filthy hands! And then you told me you were taking Mary with you, too. You didn’t even care what that would do to my poor brother!”

Alberta strode closer, raised the muzzle of the rifle to point it into Shae’s face
. Leaned the stock upon her shoulder as if she knew just what to do.

Shae froze, all too aware of her miscalculation
. She had gone too far to stop this masquerade. Yet despite her terror, she longed for understanding. If she could only have a few more moments. She had all the pieces now.

“I almost wished I’d never done it, never pulled that trigger and watched you tumble down those stairs,” Alberta told her
. “Your death destroyed King, as much as if I had shot him instead of you. He couldn’t bear to see me pay for the fruits of your adultery, so he and Lucius did everything they could to hide what happened. But you
knew
it wouldn’t matter, didn’t you? You knew how the fool loved you. You knew how everything that happened would turn King’s heart to stone!”

“
You
killed her . . . ” Shae hissed. Dear God. She wanted to weep forever at the sad tale of Glennis’s betrayal and Alberta’s jealousy for an Irish housemaid who her brother adored despite her sins.

“And I’m not sorry
! Not even though you come each time I close my eyes!” Alberta shouted. “Because at least tonight I have that same gun. Tonight I have a chance to stop you one more time. . . forever.”

She dropped the muzzle once more and shoved it forward until Shae felt the cool, round opening press against the exposed flesh near the top of her left breast.

“At least tonight,” the old woman told her, “I’ll have the pleasure of seeing again that despite all other evidence, you really had a heart.”

Her finger curled around the trigger, and Shae bit back a scream
. She couldn’t die, not now. She had to go find Phillip, to let him know she didn’t care how stubbornly he clung to the promise he had made his father. She understood it now. Hadn’t she done the same thing for her mother even though she’d known that it was wrong? She might not change Phillip, but she wanted him. She saw that clearly now. Why hadn’t she told him? Why had she ignored his plea to build a future instead of chasing uselessly after the past? Dear God, she’d been such a fool! If she couldn’t stop Alberta, everything would end here. She would never have a chance to make things right with Phillip.

“You can’t!” she told her aunt
. “Don’t you understand what’s happened? I’m all that you have left! I’m Mary Shae, your niece. I’m King’s daughter, Mary Shae!”

“Look over here, you vicious bitch!”

Phillip’s angry shout startled Shae so badly that she shrieked. Alberta’s head jerked sharply toward the strange voice, and Shae lurched to her right, away from the pressure of the rifle’s muzzle.

She saw it swing toward Phillip and grabbed the barrel with both hands
. Her injured right throbbed as she wrestled with Alberta for the weapon. She couldn’t seem to get her aunt’s hand off the trigger.

“No!” her aunt screamed
. “Give me that, Mary Shae!”

Shae kicked the older woman’s knee
. As Alberta howled, Shae tore the weapon from the older woman’s hands and swung the butt to strike her head.

Alberta fell onto her buttocks and pressed her hand to the right side of her head
. Dark blood dripped between her fingers.

Phillip rushed to join Shae and gently took the rifle from her hands
. She hoped she’d never have to touch the thing again.

Alberta glared up at Shae
. “Oh, dear God! I thought you were a nightmare. Just another nightmare.”

Shae turned to look at Phillip, to gaze into his face
. She laid her palm upon his shoulder.

“This isn’t any nightmare,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears
. “It’s what I’ve been dreaming of.”

Phillip glanced at her briefly before turning his attention back to Alberta
. “Let’s get her inside. She needs attentio
n
and since I’m so recently back in practice, I’m not being too particular about my clientele.”

“Do you mea
n
?” Shae started.

“

I thought I was doing what was right. You made me see that even though I couldn’t save my father, I didn’t owe him my futur
e
or my happiness. Instead, I owe those to myself. To myself . . . to you, and to the life we’ll have together.”