Mining for Justice Page 30

  “I’ve come for my boy.” He scanned the cottage. “I know he’s here, woman.”

  “Get out!” Panic was rising inside. Oh, Ezekiel, Mary moaned silently. He had nowhere to hide.

  Peavey shoved past her and looked quickly under the bed. Then he grabbed her wrist in a manacle grip and dragged her, stumbling, to the root cellar. He smelled of stale sweat and cheap tobacco. After a hard look he jerked Mary toward the narrow set of steps leading to the second story.

  Mary fought like a wildcat to break his grip. “Get out! You have no right—”

  He backhanded her across the face. Her head jerked with an explosion of shock and pain, and she stumbled against the wall. Before she could recover she heard feet pounding down the stairs. “No,” she begged.

  Ezekiel shot from the staircase with a sticking tommy clenched in one hand. “Leave Miss Mary be!” Arm raised, he charged at the man who, by Southern law, owned him.

  Surprised, Peavey lost his footing and fell to the floor. Ezekiel stabbed at him viciously. The sharp iron tore through the shoulder of Peavey’s coat, drawing blood. Peavey grunted a blasphemous oath and kicked the boy aside. The candleholder slid across the floor, out of reach.

  Mary stumbled forward, shielding Ezekiel as Peavey staggered to his feet and whipped a knife from a sheath on his belt. He explored the shoulder wound with his free hand, and glared when his fingers came away covered with blood. His eyes narrowed. “Boy, you just made your last mistake.”

  Mary heard Ezekiel’s rapid breaths behind her and tried frantically to think. What could she do to distract Peavey? To give Ezekiel one last slim chance at escape?

  The slaver stood between them and the door, knees slightly bent in anticipation. With no great haste he turned the knife this way and that, admiring its blade in the firelight. “You all think you’re so-o clever,” he drawled, pointing toward Mary and Ezekiel. “Once I have my boy back, woman, I’m setting the sheriff on you.”

  I can’t go to jail, Mary thought numbly. What would Ida and Will do?

  “And hoo-ee, have I got plans for you, boy.” Peavey flexed his fingers on the knife’s bone handle, as if searching for the best possible grip. “You know what happens to slaves who run away? And assault their master? You’re going to die, boy, but it’s not going to happen quick. First I’m going to … ”

  Mary stopped listening. Her brain cleared. Her loneliness for Ruan, her grief for Jory, even her fear of this vile man—all disappeared as terror gave way to rage and purpose. Jory wasn’t coming home to fight Peavey off. Ruan wasn’t stepping in. When the workday ended Andrew would hurry straight home to his wife and infant son. It’s up to you, Mary told herself.

  But how? Her own sharp meat knife was tucked away in the corner cupboard. The sticking tommy was out of reach. Peavey would be on her in a second if she lunged for either. She didn’t have a weapon.

  … No, wait. She did.

  A shudder of revulsion rippled over her skin, but she clenched her teeth against it. She had to try. One of her favorite Bible verses, from the fourth chapter of Esther, came to mind.

  The rattle of a handcart with a squealing wheel sounded from the street, and with it Jago Green’s shout: “Wood for sale! Wood for sale!”

  Peavey glanced toward the door.

  Perhaps this is the moment for which you have been created.

  Mary snatched her old cobbing hammer from the mantel and was swinging even as the slaver turned back. She landed her blow on the side of Peavey’s head. His skull was much easier to crush than stone. The bone made a different sound too—brittle.

  Peavey gave one surprised croak before dropping the knife and crumpling to the floor. He twitched. His last breath rattled hoarsely in the room. Then he was still and quiet, his eyes staring vacantly.

  Blood thrummed in Mary’s veins. The hammer clanged to the floor. She had just killed a man. She looked at the hand that had held the hammer, and hardly recognized it.

  Her stomach roiled, and she fought the urge to be sick. She stumbled back to her chair and closed her eyes.

  “You all right, Miss Mary?”

  Her eyes snapped open. This child needed her. She got to her feet with an effort. “Ezekiel. Go upstairs.”

  He stood staring at the body. “Peavey come for me.”

  She crossed the floor and wrapped him into a tight hug. “He—he did. And you were very brave, Ezekiel.” Instead of cowering, Ezekiel had run to protect her.

  For a moment he clung to her. Then he pulled away and crouched by the body. Mary reached for him, but realized that he needed to see this. Needed to know to his marrow that Peavey was dead. “You don’t have to worry about Peavey anymore, Ezekiel.”

  Finally Ezekiel nodded and looked back at her. “What you goin’ to do with him?”

  “I—I don’t know. I’ll fetch Andrew—”

  “No.” Ezekiel spoke in a tone she’d never heard before. It was a man’s tone, coming from a child who’d never had a childhood. “Nobody but you and me, Miss Mary. The more people know, the harder a secret is to keep.”

  Mary understood that she was learning more about Ezekiel, about what he and his kin had endured at the hands of men like Parnell Peavey, than he’d ever choose to tell. She also realized the truth in his words.

  “Can’t leave him where somebody might find him,” Ezekiel mused.

  Mary licked her lips. “Maybe … maybe the root cellar?”

  “It’s the only place,” the boy agreed. “I best start digging a hole.” He glanced over his shoulder. “It be all right with you if I use Mr. Jory’s shovel?”

  She felt hysteria rising inside, and fought it down. “Of course. I—I’ll help you.”

  “There’s no need, Miss Mary. When I want to, I can dig real good.”

  That brought hot tears to her eyes. But Mary couldn’t leave this to him. Together they dragged Peavey’s body into the root cellar. Ezekiel began digging the grave, and Mary scrubbed the floor and hearthstones.

  By candlelight, Mary and Ezekiel finished the grave. She scratched the earth with the sticking tommy, and Ezekiel shoveled. Finally Mary straightened. “I think that’s deep enough.” She tossed the sticking tommy into the grave. She was ready to throw the cobbing hammer after it when Ezekiel shook his head. “Best put it back on the mantel, Miss Mary. Otherwise folks’ll ask why it’s gone.”

  Mary scrubbed the hammer and returned it to its place. She and Ezekiel rolled Peavey’s body into the grave. Then Ezekiel began to shovel back the dirt.

  Mary started shoving soil into the grave with her hands, but stopped as a wave of horrified despair crashed over her. I’ll never be able to erase this night, she thought. I’m a different person than I was this morning.

  She pitched to her feet, went to the main room, and plucked a china cup from the mantel. Back in the cellar, she hurled it into the grave. When it broke, she started to cry.

  She was not, and would never be, a decent woman. Mrs. Bunney had been right all along.

  Thirty-Five

  When Lowena had finished her tale, Chloe leaned back in her chair in shocked silence. An elementary school had been named after Parnell Peavey. How much had Evelyn known?

  As for Mary Pascoe, wow. She was a much more complex woman than the one celebrated in her obituary. Given the skeleton’s crushed skull, everyone had been inclined to believe the killer was male. Shame on me for underestimating a capable woman, she thought. She didn’t know if she’d have found the strength and courage to do what Mary had done.

  She didn’t even know if Mary had done the right thing.

  Somewhere down the hall a visiting child squealed, “Hi, Granddad!” Lowena wearily leaned her head against the chair.

  Chloe stirred. “I’ll let you rest, Lowena.”

  “Thank you, child.” The old woman reached out and clasped Chloe’s hand in hers.
“I’ve carried that story for over seventy years. You can do with it what you wish.”

  Lovely, Chloe thought weakly. Just lovely.

  After leaving the nursing home, Chloe walked darkened streets to Chy Looan and sat on the front step. She understood why Lowena had kept the story secret. Mary Pascoe had given her a home when she had nowhere else to go. Mary Pascoe had also been revered for her good works—especially her care of needy children.

  Chloe rested her elbows on her knees, and her chin in her hands. What was she supposed to do with this information?

  She could let the whole thing go. The skeleton could remain unidentified. Mary Pascoe’s legacy could remain untarnished.

  Or, Chloe thought, I can tell the Bolithos and the police what I’ve learned. What Evelyn’s ancestor Parnell Peavey had done; what Mary Pascoe had done.

  Indecision pushed her to her feet. She stepped inside the empty cottage, lit only by the faint glow from a nearby streetlamp. “Mary,” she whispered, “I don’t know what to do.” She tried to be receptive.

  And—there it was, the same sense of contentment that she’d felt before.

  Chloe walked to the root cellar door. The air felt damper and cooler against her face. The windowless room was black as a lead mine. She retrieved her little penlight, glad she’d already installed new batteries, and scanned the room. Adam had smoothed loose earth back into the empty grave.

  Chloe took a deep breath and stepped inside the cellar. Ugliness hit her again like a physical blow. She heard the faint scrape of young Ezekiel’s shovel. She sensed Mary’s horror as she dragged Parnell Peavey’s body across the floor to his grave.

  But Chloe clenched her fists and held her ground. There was something beneath the bad stuff too. She felt a sense of … of strength in the dank room.

  Mary never moved away from Chy Looan, Chloe thought. She raised children here. Coming to fetch potatoes or cabbage, she walked over Peavey’s grave a thousand times. She must have found some kind of peace about what happened.

  Chloe had her answer.

  After another restless night, Chloe slipped from Tamsin’s apartment before dawn and walked back to the old city cemetery. Something still bothered her about Yvonne Miller’s death. Miller’s journal might hold answers, but it was in police custody. Chloe only had two possible unexplored clues. Miller had been studying the root cellar at Polperro House, and she’d made a rubbing of an old tombstone.

  In the cool pale light spreading softly over the hill, Chloe made her way to that grave. It was weathered and blotched with lichen, impossible to decipher. She’d borrowed a small bag of flour and a pastry brush from Tamsin’s kitchen. Now she knelt and lightly tossed flour at the rough stone. Then, ever so gently, she brushed it from the surface. Traces of flour remained in the chiseled inscription. She deciphered the name: Ezekiel Miller.

  “Oh my God,” Chloe whispered. Ezekiel Miller. Yvonne Miller.

  She sat back on her heels. She’d never know for certain, but she suspected that Dr. Yvonne Miller was a descendant of a man who had been enslaved. Sure, Miller was an extremely common name … but something had compelled Yvonne to study that gravestone with such intense interest. Something had fueled bitter resentment toward the prominent white men who were still so often simply hailed as heroes—Parnell Peavey in particular. Something had driven her to the root cellar at Pendarvis, even though she’d expressed no interest in analyzing domestic history or territorial food storage. Maybe she’d wanted to spend time there simply to help her imagine one of her ancestor’s most desperate moments.

  Chloe remembered feeling lofty because she was after the stories of people like Mary Pascoe—illiterate working-class people historians often overlooked. But Miller had evidently been after the stories of the most vulnerable, the least likely to leave records behind.

  Maybe, like the woman who’d killed her, Yvonne Miller had only wanted to protect her ancestor’s legacy.

  Later that morning, after breakfast, Tamsin hugged Chloe goodbye. “I’m grateful for all you did for us, Chloe.”

  Chloe had told Tamsin, Adam, and Investigator Higgins everything she’d learned. “Lowena had promised Mary never to share the secret,” Chloe stressed, in the face of Tamsin’s shock and hurt feelings. “But she didn’t want to die with the story untold. I’m a historian, and a friend of yours … sort of a neutral party.”

  Now Tamsin added, “I’ve been thinking about what you learned about my rocking chair.”

  “God bless tenacious archivists,” Chloe said. The records showing that Theophilus George did indeed sell a Boston rocker to Mary Pascoe hadn’t even been cataloged yet, but Midge had ferreted them out.

  “I can picture Mary rocking small children, just as I did so many times.” Tamsin studied her chair. “I’ve decided to donate it to Pendarvis.”

  “Claudia will be delighted.” Chloe beamed, and gently sat in the rocker one more time. I’m sitting where Mary did, she thought. So often a search for the people who made or owned an artifact reached a dead-end, which was extremely frustrating. It was a joy to know that something of Mary’s had survived, and could be used to tell a broader story about Mineral Point.

  “Maybe it will help visitors understand that Mineral Point was not a frontier town for long.” Tamsin lifted her chin with pride. “My Cornish ancestors saw to that.”

  Chloe and Adam left with a Tupperware container filled with currant-studded saffron buns. As Adam drove up Shake Rag Street Chloe felt compelled to help herself, strictly in homage to the Cornish immigrants who’d once labored along this ravine. “Ooh, yummy.”

  Adam threw her a rueful glance. “Are you sorry you came?”

  Chloe considered. “Well, it certainly wasn’t the week I’d expected. But Pendarvis is a treasure, and Mineral Point has fascinating stories to tell. I’m glad I had a chance to learn about a few of them.”

  “Good.” Adam flicked on his turn signal. “I hope you’ll come back and see the cottage as the restoration progresses. Oh, by the way—I finally remembered to ask Grandma for the translation of Chy Looan.”

  Chloe licked a crumb from one finger. “What does it mean?”

  Adam smiled. “It means ‘Happy House.’”

  That afternoon Roel­ke parked several blocks away from Mickey’s Tavern, on the outskirts of Palmyra, and strolled toward the bar. He was off-duty, wearing a jacket over a pullover and jeans.

  Raymo’s so-called hunting club is meeting at Mickey’s Tavern on Sunday afternoon, Roel­ke’s friend Blakely had said. I’ve nailed Raymo for drunk driving a couple of times after one of these gatherings … If he’s inebriated, I can search the car.

  The parking lot was full, mostly with old beaters and pickups. Dan Raymo had parked his black Firebird near the Dumpster behind the squat brick building. No windows overlooked this alley.

  Roel­ke walked between vehicles to the Pontiac, squatted beside the driver’s side, and tried the door. It opened. Raymo hadn’t even locked the car. Idiot.

  After a quick glance over his shoulder, Roel­ke reached into one jacket pocket. He withdrew a plastic bag holding a dozen smaller bags of crack cocaine. He had stolen them before inventorying the official haul from his big drug bust, which was now in the evidence locker at the Eagle PD. He’d packaged the crack in a different brand of bags, taking care to leave no fingerprints.

  Now he quickly tucked that bag under the driver’s seat, with just a corner peeking out the back. He shut the car door, rose, and walked away.

  No one yelled after him. No one had seen a thing. He’d anticipated trembling, or nausea, or a dozen other physical manifestations, but he felt steady. Calm, even. What should have been the hardest thing he’d ever done had been ridiculously easy.

  He remembered again how glib he’d been that day with Adam: We have to trust the Palmyra cops to deal with Raymo if he goes too far. The fact that Libby is family d
oesn’t change that. But when children were involved, that belief was nothing but—Roel­ke barked a bitter laugh—a cop-out.

  Still, once back in his truck, he decided not to go home—where Chloe was babysitting Deirdre—right away. He and Chloe had once promised to never keep secrets from the other. He’d meant it at the time. Believed it was possible. But he was about to break that promise. He couldn’t hide his gunshot wound, but what he’d just done would die with him.

  He had a little paperwork to finish at the PD. I’ll take care of that before going home, Roel­ke thought. He wanted to see how this new him would feel walking back into the police station.

  When Roel­ke arrived, his key still turned in the front door lock. It felt no different to walk into the crowded main room. The only surprise was seeing Chief Naborski’s door open. Chief rarely came in on Sundays.

  Roel­ke paused in the doorway. “Afternoon, Chief.”

  “Ah, Officer McKenna.” The older man looked up from his desk. “I wasn’t expecting you, but I’m glad you’re here. Come in.” He gestured toward a chair.

  Roel­ke felt a tightening in his gut as he sat. “Yessir?”

  “I got a call last night,” Naborski said. “The police committee has made their decision.”

  “Oh?”

  “They decided that Officer Deardorff is the best candidate for advanced training.”

  “I see.” Roel­ke could think of nothing else to say.

  “That’s all.”

  “Yessir.” He stood and left the office.

  In the outer room he settled at the officers’ desk, opened the necessary file, and stared blindly at the contents. Why had the committee chosen Skeet? They know, he thought. Which was of course ridiculous, since the decision was made yesterday. So … what had happened? Had they decided that after successfully orchestrating the huge drug bust, Roel­ke was less in need of specialized training than Skeet? Had Ralph Petty, Chloe’s deranged boss, influenced the decision? Had Chief Naborski read Roel­ke’s intent regarding Dan Raymo in his eyes?