Capacity for Murder (Professor Bradshaw Mysteries) (29 page)

Moss scrunched up his face, aware he’d given away too much by his choice of pronoun.

“You didn’t come by the main road.”

“Followed the new rail line, didn’t I? Just like she said. Just like the map shows.” He waved the crumpled paper.

Bradshaw held out his hand. “May I?” Moss handed it over. It was a map of the coast torn from a newspaper showing the future railroad line from Hoquiam to Moclips. It had been marked with a bold black pen showing a route that followed the railroad for a few miles before heading west into an area depicted as forest.

“Easy trek, she said. Like hell. Pert near killed myself.” He pulled a chair out from the table and sat heavily. “Not a solid, level piece of ground between here and the railroad. Trees growing outa trees like a crazy jumble. Worse than Alaska.”

“What are you to do now that you’re here?”

“Wait for her. She’ll be along soon.”

“How soon?”

“No idea.”

“And then what? When she gets here, what do you expect to happen?”

“I dunno! She just wants to get away from all the commotion.”

“Why didn’t you travel together?”

“Her place is surrounded, ain’t it? She’s got to sneak out. I still don’t know why you’re here. She send you here, too? By gum, you better not have any ideas about her.”

“No, she didn’t send me, and my ideas about her are not what you imagine. Come with me.”

He led Moss to the parlor and showed him the old photos of Ingrid. She was much younger in them, but they were unmistakably her with that square jaw and sultry eyes. He would have shown Moss the Bible, but Moss couldn’t read.

“So her pictures are here, so she lived here as a girl, so what?”

“Have you ever heard the name Vogler?”

Moss narrowed his eyes.

“Marion Vogler?”

“Yeah, so?”

“This is the Vogler farm. Mrs. Thompson grew up here. She lived here as Marion Vogler, but her legal name was Marion Ingrid Colby.”

Moss said again, “Yeah, so?”

“Did you know she was orphaned? Then sent here to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousin?”

“She don’t talk about her childhood.”

“I don’t blame her. It wasn’t very pleasant. Come on, I have more to show you.”

As they walked through the house and upstairs, Bradshaw told Moss all he’d learned about Marion Ingrid’s life. He need tell no lies or add embellishments. The simple truth painted the portrait of an unwanted and unloved child, raised by undemonstrative relatives, brutalized at a young age, who had turned to wealth in search of happiness, and who had learned from her experience with her cousin that she could attract a man, and that she could kill one.

In Ingrid’s chaotic bedroom, with its memorabilia that displayed her worship of wealth and possessions, Bradshaw read aloud from the letters from the men she’d lured to the farm.

Moss flushed, showing he recognized elements of his own relationship with Mrs. Thompson. He said, “Men give women stuff all the time. It’s what we do, ain’t it? Don’t mean nothing.”

“Doesn’t it? Don’t men give in hopes of winning a woman’s heart?”

“Ain’t no guarantee. You takes your chances.”

“How much have you given Ingrid?”

Moss locked his jaw.

“Wealth won’t make her happy. You know that. Better than anybody. She’ll never be happy. She’s chasing an empty dream.”

“Maybe she can learn from me.”

“How to be happy?”

Moss looked away and mumbled, “How to love.”

“Mr. Moss, I wish that were possible.”

“How you know it ain’t?”

“I’m no expert on the human mind or soul, but I do know that the ability to love and care for others is nurtured in childhood, as is the ability to know right from wrong, good from evil. Marion Colby was either born without a conscience or something went wrong within her as a child that turned her into the monster she is today. She is incapable of loving.”

“You ain’t got no right to call her a monster!”

“I wish that were true. Come with me.”

“What, again?”

“One last time.” Bradshaw brought him down to the cellar, but he wouldn’t budge near the open door to the handmade morgue.

“I can smell it, can’t I! There’s dead in there, now get me outa here!”

He clambered up the stairs, out the kitchen door, and into the yard, just as Bradshaw and Henry had done. He paced the yard, face between his hands.

“Was that the men? The ones she sent for?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“But you don’t know for sure?”

“What I know for sure is that there are four bodies buried in the cellar and this house belongs to Ingrid Thompson, who was raised as Marion Vogler, moved to Seattle as Ingrid Colby, and married Freddie Thompson, who is now dead. She was recognized by David Hollister, who is now dead. She flirted with Arnold Loomis, who is now dead.

“She didn’t shoot Loomis, that deputy did that.”

“That’s true, but I’m fairly certain he was running because of his relationship with Mrs. Thompson.”

Moss continued pacing, his fingers dug into his hair, mumbling, occasionally gagging. He spit a few times, then sat down in the dry grass.

Bradshaw brought him more water.

“She gave you no clue about what you were to do here?”

“Women are fickle. I don’t ask questions.”

“Mr. Moss, the Secret Service knows you were one of the miners Freddie Thompson cheated at the assay office. You are being investigated in connection with the theft.”

“Me? What fer?”

“You didn’t file a complaint. Instead, you befriended the Thompsons, or at least Mrs. Thompson. It appears now that you were either Mr. Thompson’s accomplice, or you are acting in that capacity for Mrs. Thompson.”

“I don’t know what in tarnation you mean by ca-pass-a-tea, Professor, but I wasn’t helping either one of them with stealing gold. I wasn’t hiding it for them either, if that’s your next question.”

“I know that now, Mr. Moss, and that’s what frightens me.”

“Why should it?”

“Because you’re her next victim.”

“Like hell, you say!”

“Mr. Moss, Ingrid Thompson does not keep men in her life for long. You were never to be a part of her future. You were to provide her with more wealth than she’s ever known before, once she got rid of Freddie. Then you would be cast aside. Or buried in the cellar.”

“Never!”

“It’s no accident she chose you. Who better to disguise her illicit wealth? Who would question a deposit of gold dust from the wife or
widow
of a known gold-millionaire?”

Zeb Moss cupped his hand over his mouth. His ruddy complexion had drained to paste.

Bradshaw asked, “You have something to tell me?”

Moss paced for a few minutes, tugging his hair. He finally sat on a stump, his hands on his knees, shaking his head.

Bradshaw waited.

“On the way home,” Moss began. He coughed and cleared his throat. “On the way home from the sanitarium, she said she couldn’t live in Seattle no more, not with everyone knowing her husband had been a thief. She asked would I take her away. I said it wouldn’t be proper, us not being wed, so she said for me to get a license quick as I could.”

“A marriage license? Did you?”

Moss was quiet so long, Bradshaw had to ask again.

“The train had a layover in Tacoma. I got off and went to the courthouse.”

“Weren’t you being escorted by one of Bell’s men?”

Moss looked smug. “Not me, just her. He didn’t look none too happy when I got up, but what could he do? He had orders to stick with her.”

“How did you acquire a license for Mrs. Thompson to marry? You couldn’t have had Mr. Thompson’s death certificate.”

Moss shifted his eyes away. “Didn’t need it. She told me to use her maiden name, Vogler, said it was legal and that nobody would ask questions.”

“She said to use the name Ingrid Vogler?”

He shook his head. “Marion. Like you said.”

“And did you get the license?”

“I got it. And got back on the train.”

“And now you’re meeting her here to run off together to get married?”

“Too late for that. We got married on the train.”

“You didn’t.”

“Thought that’d surprise you.”

“How did you manage it?”

“You won’t believe what money can buy, Professor. A special license and a J.P. willing to play along. Bought him a ticket and he boarded with me.”

J.P. Justice of the Peace.

“With Bell’s man as witness?”

“Nah, we waited until he was using the facilities three cars down. Got another passenger to witness. By the time Bell’s man got back, it was done, and we weren’t even sitting together. He was none the wiser.”

“So what’s the plan now?”

“She just wants out from that hotel where everyone’s watching her. We’re going off to start a new life somewhere. She ain’t under arrest or nothing. We can go.”

Moss’ tone had flipped from frightened to defensive. He seemed unable to grasp that the woman he’d fallen for, had married, was a murderess. He still thought of her as the woman he loved.

“Did she ask you to change your will?”

“Didn’t have one to change.” He crossed his arms and glared at Bradshaw. Then his eyes shifted away. “She wrote one out for me. When she sent Bell’s man for something from the dining car.”

“Don’t tell me you signed it.”

“I can sign my name. I’m stupid with books, but I can sign my name!”

“I’ll write you a new will. Now.”

Bradshaw marched Moss into the house and through to the parlor where they found writing paper, pen and ink, in a dusty roll top desk. He wrote out a simple will and handed the pen to Moss.

“I won’t do it, I tell ya!”

Bradshaw grabbed Moss’ arm and pulled him to the cellar door, flinging it open.

“Confound you, I ain’t dying today, what’s your rush? I got no intention of ever going near that woman again! I’ll get the marriage annulled. I’ll leave town. By God, she ain’t killing me.”

“All the same, you need a new will. Now.” He dragged Moss back into the parlor, and Moss frowned in concentration as he carefully signed his name. Then he threw down the pen, splattering ink on the will.

“Mr. Moss, I’m going to help you, but I need you to help me, too.”

“That don’t sound good.”

“My associate Henry Pratt will be here later today or tomorrow with Captain Bell. If Mrs. Thompson—Ingrid—what do you call her?”

“Dunno, ain’t called her nothing since Tacoma. Mrs. Thompson, I suppose. It’s what I’m used to. Don’t seem right to call her Mrs. Moss. That’s my mother’s name.”

“If Mrs. Thompson gets here before Bell, we’ll have to detain her.”

“What, tie her up?”

“If we have to, yes.”

Moss’ face reflected his repugnance at the idea. He shook his head.

“She’s clever, and she knows these woods. If she runs, she won’t be easy to find.”

“Well, mebbe them men all had it coming? The cousin attacked her, didn’t you say? And Freddie used to beat her, she told me that herself. Mebbe them others were cruel, too.”

“All of them? She hired four managers who just happened to be so cruel and abusive her only option was to kill them?”

“It could happen.”

“I know it’s hard for you to believe, Mr. Moss, but surely you understand that the need to kill six men is beyond bad luck.”

Chapter Thirty-eight

They waited upstairs in the house, watching out the windows for anyone approaching. It was a coin toss who would arrive first, Henry and Captain Bell, or Mrs. Thompson. If he left Seattle as soon as he received Henry’s wire, it would take Bell a minimum of nine hours to reach this house. Bradshaw checked his pocket watch. It was nearly five. Henry would have sent the wire about an hour ago.

When had Ingrid left the Lincoln Hotel? Yesterday? This morning? Or had she not yet escaped her watchers? It was likely to be a very long, sleepless night.

She wouldn’t find it easy to get out of the hotel and all the way to Hoquiam without being seen. As far as he knew, her picture hadn’t yet been published in the local newspapers with any of the articles about the theft and the gold hunt, but her description had—petite, square-jawed, sultry-eyed—and the hotel was surrounded by opportunists. The slightest hint of her leaving would have every train station, steamer dock, and livery stable swarmed.

Still, Bradshaw insisted they watch from upstairs in case Mrs. Thompson was as resourceful as she was evil.

Moss paced from room to room, window to window, his temperament vacillating between horror and disbelief. Bradshaw kept up a steady stream of conversation with the aim of getting Moss angry rather than afraid.