Mining for Justice Read online

  What was your life here like? Chloe asked the woman silently. Did you ever stop missing the old country? Or had life in Cornwall been so hard that you wanted to leave?

  Eight

  december 1833

  “Try to keep up, Loveday,” Mary called. “You’ll stay warmer if you walk faster.” They were heading home from the mine with Andrew and Jory. The December night was bitter, and the wind howling across the moorland fierce. Mary was eager to get home to their stone cottage and start a fire.

  “I’m too tired to walk faster,” Loveday whimpered. “Truly, Mary.”

  Andrew crouched. “Here, Love. I’ll carry you on my shoulders for a spell.”

  “You’re wisht too,” Mary told her older brother, but with a grateful glance. He did look exhausted from the day’s labor. At least Loveday, now nine years old, was still puny for her age.

  They started off again. To hearten them all, Mary began to sing her favorite hymn. “Away with our fears! The Godhead appears, in Christ reconciled, the Father of mercies in Jesus the Child … ” Jory joined in, then the others, and they made their way home.

  Mary built up a fire of fragrant dried gorse in the hearth. “Rest while I fix supper, Loveday,” she suggested. Loveday crawled onto the bed, tugged the blankets around her, and was soon asleep.

  Jory and Andrew pulled stools close to the fire. Mary chopped potatoes into a kettle of water. She wished fiercely for some flour, and a pinch of saffron, so she could make buns. Instead, at the last minute, she slipped a few dried pilchard into the pot. She’d been saving the fish for Christmas, but … she’d think about a Christmas treat later.

  The boys stared silently at the flames until the fire popped and sparked. Andrew started, added two pieces of peat, and rubbed his palms on his trousers. “Don’t know if you’ve heard,” he said in a low voice. “Some of the boys are talking about immigrating.”

  “Aye?” Mary shivered, as if the flames had grown cold. “Andrew, you’re not … you wouldn’t.”

  “There are better opportunities in other places. Australia, maybe. Or America.”

  “No,” Mary said.

  He frowned at her. “You could at least think about it.”

  “I don’t want you to leave.” She tried to keep her voice steady, but she was cold and tired and hungry and, now, afraid. Afraid she couldn’t manage if Andrew left. Jory was sixteen, almost a man now. But what about Loveday? Loveday was Mary’s responsibility.

  “I wouldn’t leave you to fend for yourselves,” Andrew said defensively. “If I go, we all go.”

  “But to leave this place … ” Mary thought of her mother teaching her how to make pasties and star-gazy pie, and Elizabeth reciting Bible verses before Sunday School, and the tobacco smell of her father’s pipe. She thought of the way dew glowed on the grasses when the sun rose over the moors, and walking to church on hoarfrost mornings, and the harsh call of rooks in the trees.

  Their father had been dead for almost five years. “Father, tell the captain you need to work on the surface,” Andrew had urged, as the dizziness became more frequent. “You shouldn’t be climbing the ladders.”

  “I won’t be here for much longer, son,” Father had said gently. “Working on the surface would mean a cut in pay. I need to do the best I can for you children, while I can.” And he had done just that, until the day he fell to his death. Had a dizzy spell come upon him? Or had he been just too weary, too lonely for his wife? Mary didn’t know.

  Andrew rubbed his filthy hands over his face. “I thought to pick up a bit of money on the boats when the mine was closed, but since the pilchard didn’t run last year, no one was hiring. What would you have me do, Mary?”

  “I don’t know.” Mary fanned her hands closer to the flames. The mine had been closed for two weeks after some equipment broke, costing them dearly in wages. Local crop failures had driven up prices. Their own soil was too rocky to plant a cash crop.

  “I’d consider immigrating,” Jory told Andrew. “If it meant good digging.” Andrew dreamed of better prospects. Jory just liked mine work.

  “We are not immigrating!” Mary snapped. Their parents and Elizabeth were dead. She had nothing left but memories, and the memories were here in Cornwall.

  “Mary,” Jory began, “you should—”

  Andrew stopped him with a waved hand. “Let her be,” Andrew advised softly. “Mary knows her own mind.”

  “Loveday Pascoe!” The words drifting from the dressing floor were faint but clear against the dull staccato of cobbing hammers striking rock.

  Not again, Mary moaned silently.

  “Penhallow’s hollering at your sister again,” the girl next to Mary said sympathetically. “She’s not the worker you are.”

  “She does her best.” Mary flicked waste from the fist-sized rocks she’d reduced to gravel. She beat the next rocks with more vigor than absolutely necessary.

  Two of the older girls trudged up carrying a handbarrow between them. They dumped the load of ore in front of the cobbers. Then one of them put her end of the barrow down and rubbed her back.

  “Beatrice,” Mary called, “would you like to trade for a while? I’ll handle the barrow and you take my hammer.”

  “Thank you,” Beatrice said gratefully. “Even a short rest would help.”

  Mary and her partner made two more trips to supply the cobbers. Then the other girl said, “We should take a load of ore to the dressing floor. The pickers are likely running low.”

  Staying clear of the men dumping heavy ore buckets on the pile, they shoveled a load onto their barrow and delivered it to the pickers. “Give me a moment,” Mary said and sidled close to Loveday. Loveday didn’t stop working but she glanced up, all hollow cheeks and big tear-stained eyes. She was shivering, and Mary rubbed the girl’s arms briskly. “I heard Penhallow scolding,” she whispered. “What happened?”

  “I took a bite of my hoggan,” Loveday told her. “I was that hungry! But he saw me, and yelled.”

  One day, Mary thought, I will come to Wheal Blackstone in a coach, and I will take beautiful teacups from my basket and make Penhallow serve tea to me and all the bal maidens. And I will tell him that if he doesn’t treat them better I shall have him arrested.

  “She’s been fearful cold all morning, Mary,” the girl sitting next to Loveday said, her hands flying as she picked waste stone from the ore. “I tried to huddle close but I have to get my own work done.”

  “I know, Daisy.” Daisy was a big girl, and kind-hearted. Mary was grateful that she tried to look out for Loveday.

  Mary looked over her shoulders. No sign of Penhallow. “Loveday, go stand in the boiler house for a few minutes to get warm. Don’t let Penhallow see you.”

  “Thank you, Mary,” Loveday breathed gratefully. Then she scurried away.

  “Mary,” her barrow partner said impatiently, “Penhallow’s going to come down on us if we don’t get back to work.”

  “I know.” Mary rewound her woolen scarf around her neck and picked up her two handles.

  They were shoveling rocks onto their barrow at the ore pile when the afternoon exploded. The impact knocked Mary from her feet, roared in her ears, sent reverberations shuddering through the air. And, when she made sense of it, shattered her heart like a stone.

  Nine

  Roel­ke drove back to Eagle wondering what mistakes he was making, what he didn’t know. Wondering if he should have walked into that insurance office and had a talk with Dan Raymo. Wondering what Chloe was doing at Pendarvis, and how a body had come to be buried in what became the Bolitho family home. By the time he reached the village he was not in a good mood. He’d brought a lunch from home but didn’t feel like chatting with Marie, so he decided to eat at Sasso’s.

  The popular tavern was a village institution. When Roel­ke arrived he nodded toward the regulars at the bar, friendly but disin
terested, and headed toward an empty table in the corner. After ordering a burger and fries, he saw someone approaching in his peripheral vision. Damn, he thought, hoping it wasn’t a half-drunk citizen bent on complaining about a speeding ticket or some other police atrocity.

  The other man pulled out a chair. “Mind if I join you?”

  “Oh—hey, Adam. Of course not.”

  “You looked lost in thought.”

  “Just trying to avoid anyone I might have arrested recently. You working on a job in Eagle?”

  “Building a deck. Not my favorite kind of work, but it pays the bills.” Adam swirled ice cubes in the glass of tea he’d brought with him. “Roel­ke, I’m glad I saw you. I was hoping we could talk.”

  That doesn’t sound good, Roel­ke thought.

  “What’s going on with Libby?”

  Roel­ke wished he’d opted for small talk with Marie. “Didn’t she call you?”

  “She did, yeah. Last night. All she’d say was that she couldn’t see me anymore. I was so frustrated by the conversation that I drove over to her house.” Adam leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “She still didn’t say much. ‘You’re a great guy but it just isn’t going to work out, blah blah blah.’”

  Dammit, Roel­ke thought.

  “I’d like to know what changed her mind,” Adam said. “We were getting along great. Then all of a sudden—bang, we’re done.”

  Roel­ke didn’t know why Libby hadn’t explained what was going on. Pride, maybe? Didn’t want to admit that she’d married an asshole? But Adam was indeed a good guy, and a friend. He deserved the truth.

  The waitress brought their food, and Roel­ke unfolded his napkin. “Has Libby ever mentioned her ex?”

  “No.”

  “Dan Raymo is a real SOB. He works in Jefferson but lives in Palmyra, and the divorce was so ugly that I left the Milwaukee PD and moved out here. Most of the time Raymo ignores his kids. It’s been particularly hard on Justin.”

  Adam’s eyes had narrowed. “I will never understand men—parents—who don’t make their children top priority.”

  “Yeah,” Roel­ke said grimly. “Anyway, Raymo showed up at that T-ball game you went to, and saw you with Libby and Justin. He said something to Libby that she took as a veiled threat, and—”

  “What did he say?” Adam demanded.

  “Just that he’d seen you all together. Libby said it wasn’t the words, but the way he said them that made her uneasy. So she decided that she can’t see you—can’t see anyone—until the kids are older.”

  “That’s crazy! She can’t let him dictate her life.”

  “I agree. I tried talking to her, but she wouldn’t budge.”

  Adam looked away, face hard, hands clenched into fists. “I want to talk to this guy.”

  “No.” Roel­ke leaned across the table. “Believe me, there’s nothing I’d rather do. And if he didn’t promise to back off, beat some sense into him. But—”

  “It isn’t right,” Adam insisted. “So let’s go.”

  “But,” Roel­ke said, “that is not the way to handle this. Libby thinks he’ll calm down again, and I have to respect her wishes.”

  “And what if he doesn’t calm down?”

  “Then he’ll eventually cross the line, and the Palmyra cops will handle it.”

  Adam shook his head.

  “Stay away from Raymo, Adam. You have to. We both have to.”

  Adam looked stunned. “Libby’s your cousin! How can you just sit there and do nothing?”

  Roel­ke was starting to realize that maybe he shouldn’t have shared this information with Adam. “Because I respect Libby’s ability to make decisions for herself and her children. And because I’m a police officer.”

  “But—”

  “We have to trust the Palmyra cops to deal with Raymo if he goes too far. The fact that Libby is family doesn’t change that.”

  Adam looked out the window again. His burger was getting cold on the plate.

  Roel­ke didn’t feel like finishing his lunch either. He’d confided in Adam in hopes of smoothing things over. Now he was pretty sure he’d made things worse.

  At lunchtime Chloe dashed to the library to check out the Mineral Point archives. Upstairs she introduced herself to the friendly archivist, a woman with long gray hair captured in a green barrette, and reading glasses with bright blue frames. Her face was lined, as if she spent a lot of time in the sun, but it was an interesting face. Best of all, she exuded an air of calm knowledge. Her plastic nametag said Midge.

  Chloe wanted to be low-key. “Are you by chance familiar with any old stories about someone disappearing?”

  “Is this about the bones Adam Bolitho found in his family cottage?” Midge asked.

  So much for being low-key. “Um … ” Chloe hesitated, remembering Tamsin’s distress about gossip.

  Midge smiled. “It’s a small town. Everyone will know before the next edition of the newspaper carries the story.”

  “It is about the remains Adam found,” Chloe admitted. “I’m a friend of the family, just trying to help out.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know of any stories that would explain that.” Midge shook her head. “Poor Tamsin. She must be beside herself.”

  “Kinda,” Chloe admitted. “The cottage had been empty for five or six years when Tamsin and her husband bought it in 1936, so I thought I’d look at newspaper accounts from the early ’30s.”

  Midge produced the appropriate reel of microfilm. Chloe settled at the reader and made herself dizzy scanning the headlines as quickly as possible. She got through 1930 and part of 1931 before she had to quit.

  “Any luck?” Midge asked.

  “No, but I’m out of time. Thanks for your help. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  Chloe jogged back to Pendarvis, and the sense of accomplishment that gave her—it was at least half a mile—ameliorated the sting of failure. She hadn’t really expected to find, in forty minutes, anything concrete about someone disappearing under suspicious circumstances. Research didn’t work that way. Still, quick results would have come in handy.

  When she got back to the office, Claudia was waiting for her in the entry room. “Let’s get out of here before the phone rings. I want to show you our collections storage.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Chloe dropped her totebag on the counter, grabbed her notebook, and headed back out the door.

  They went to Trelawny House, last in the row on Shake Rag Street. “This was where Bob and Edgar lived for thirty-seven years,” Claudia said as she opened the door. “We show it as it looked about 1940.”

  Chloe wanted to peer into the sitting room, but Claudia was already starting up the stairs. “Most of the objects that aren’t on display in one of the historic houses are up here, which is off-limits to visitors,” she said over her shoulder. “It’s not ideal.”

  “No,” Chloe conceded as they reached the second floor. A winding, crabbed corridor led from bedroom to bedroom to bathroom. Artifacts were everywhere—on shelves, on the beds, even in the bathtub.

  “This is what I inherited,” Claudia said bleakly. “Almost three thousand objects.”

  “Honestly, my collections storage space at Old World isn’t much better,” Chloe said.

  For a moment they regarded the cramped space in silence. “Philosophical question,” Claudia finally said. “Should the historical society accept buildings or artifacts without ideal storage or enough funds for preservation if it means they get saved? Or should the society turn down whatever can’t be protected according to modern museum standards?”

  Questions like that made Chloe’s head hurt. Her heart too. Finally she said, “I know it cost a lot of money to move all of the buildings to Old World Wisconsin and restore them. But the thought of letting them be destroyed … I can’t accept that. We have
to save as much as we can, and then do our best.”

  “Most of our collections were acquired by Edgar and Bob,” Claudia said. “The guy who ran the town dump called them whenever somebody tossed out something old, and they’d go get it. The collections needs here are overwhelming, but I’m enormously grateful that Bob and Edgar saved as much as they did.”

  “What kind of records came with their collection?”

  “Not what we’d wish. Bob and Edgar were antiques dealers and collectors. They bought and accepted what they liked. The year before my position got funded, curators from HQ cataloged the collection, creating an inventory and assigning object numbers. I keep photocopies in binders down in my office.” Claudia lifted her hands, dropped them again.

  “Do you happen to know if there’s any information about that woman’s portrait on display in Pendarvis House?”

  “None, I’m afraid. We don’t even know if the woman was Cornish.”

  Bummer, Chloe thought. “I’m still interested in sticking tommies too.”

  “Ask Loren or Gerald,” Claudia suggested. “They know a lot more about tools than I do. Maybe we’ll stumble over some packed away up here. Otherwise, you can check the inventory records.”

  “Will do.”

  Claudia blew out a long breath. “Anyway, this space is not climate-controlled. I want to create proper storage in one of Bob and Edgar’s guest cabins. But it would only hold a fraction of our collection. I don’t know where to even begin.”

  Chloe considered the jammed space with hands on hips. “Then we better get busy. We’ll do a sort of triage to determine which objects are most vulnerable, or significant, and therefore top priority for a move.”

  Claudia looked glum. “Are we wasting our time?”

  “You never know when funds might appear,” Chloe reminded her friend. “Perhaps from a private donor. Or you may see a grant prospect with a tight deadline. Getting a general plan organized now means you can jump when the opportunity presents itself.”