Frail Blood (21 page)

She banged her cup down on the wooden table. "Are you
suggesting that you no longer believe in Alma's innocence?"

Malachi paused, his sandwich halfway to his mouth, and
stared at her. "What makes you think I
ever
believed Alma was
innocent?"

"But surely, with this new evidence ... "

He scoffed and pushed his plate away. "What new
evidence, Emma? Nothing we've discovered exonerates Alma in any way." He
softened his voice. "I'm sorry, but early next week I must give my closing
remarks."

"But everything has changed!" Emma suddenly
understood that for Malachi nothing was different.

"Not at all, but even if it had, I will not veer from
the defense I originally intended to use."

"That Alma is guilty, but should be exonerated because
she is weak, helpless, and inferior?" Emma asked mulishly.

Malachi nodded, only the mere tightening of his jaw
betraying his reaction to the barbed scorn in her voice. "That has never
changed. It is her only hope of acquittal."

Determined not to resurrect the old argument, she ploughed
on. "Then we must discover who really killed Joseph Machado."

"And where do you propose we start?" He spoke with
the studied patience of an adult indulging a child.

"With Mrs. Henderson, the midwife Thomas spoke of,"
she replied immediately. "She is someone who will know if there are dark
secrets in the Machado household, something 'strange,' as you say."

She felt the stiltedness in her voice and face, but she
could not help hating the way he must defend Alma, destroying her spirit in
order to save her life.

Malachi stood and rounded the end of the table where she sat
opposite him. "I'm sorry, Emma. I wish there was another way."

She merely nodded. On this point she suspected they would
never agree, but she was more determined than ever to discover the true culprit
in this murderous affair.

"See if you can learn anything from Mrs. Henderson,"
he said at last. "I will ask Nathan Butler to question the Machado women
again. If one of them is lying, he will discover to what end, and if their
lying means anything. It may signify nothing, you know."

She propped her chin on her hand. "Yes."

"There may be a perfectly innocent reason why one of
the women lied, if indeed she did, that has nothing at all to do with Joseph's
murder."

"I know," she murmured, although she didn't really.
In her heart she believed Alma heard someone walking around upstairs the night
Joseph died, and that person came down the stairs after hearing the shot and
seized the opportunity to kill him for her own nefarious purposes.

Chapter 22

"O most pernicious woman! O villain, villain,
smiling, damnèd villain!" –
Hamlet

Monday came far too early for Emma. She lay in her own bed,
thinking of the events of the weekend and the direction of Alma Bentley's case.
A second later she groaned and rolled over in bed to cover her eyes as Sarah
briskly and somewhat annoyingly jerked the curtains apart to allow the sharp
morning light to pierce her pleasant reverie.

"I've brought you some juice, Miss Emma." Sarah
approached the bed and Emma opened one eye to see her cook bearing a tray with
a tall glass of hideous red fluid.

Emma sat up and fluffed her pillows before reaching for the
drink. She sniffed and then wrinkled her nose. "Good God, what is it?"

"Cranberry juice. Drink up."

"You well know that I hate the damned vile-tasting
stuff!"

"Quit profaning, Miss Emma."

"Please bring me a glass of orange juice instead."

Sarah set the tray down on the nightstand and turned away,
picking up clothes and straightening the items on the dresser. When she spoke,
her voice brooked no argument. "Many a bride's come home from a honeymoon
with an infection. The cranberry juice will stave it off. Drink it."

"Brides? Infection? What has that to do with me?"

"I may be old, Miss Emma, but I'm not stupid. You've
spent the weekend behaving like a bride. Even if you are not one," she
added grimly. "If you play at house, you must expect the consequences."

"Ah, so this is about Mr. Rivers."

"No, it is about
you.
And your conduct. And
owning up to your responsibilities." Sarah sat at the edge of the bed and
gave her charge a mournful look. "I didn't raise you to behave so
wantonly."

"You didn't raise me at all!" Emma tossed back. "And
Mr. Rivers and I have behaved with the utmost propriety." That, at least,
was true of this weekend. "I'm sorry if I've upset you, Sarah. But life is
not what it was when you were a girl."

The woman was far more than her cook and she had reared Emma.
She hated to disappoint the person who'd been much more a mother to her than
her own.

Sarah softened a bit and patted Emma on the knee. "Drink
the cranberry juice," she instructed. "That one thing hasn't changed."

#

Mrs. Henderson, the aging nurse, lived alone in a small
cottage at the edge of town. A chatty woman who seemed eager for company, she
readily welcomed her unexpected visitor.

After settling Emma down in her cramped sitting room and
preparing a tray of tea and biscuits, Elizabeth Henderson got a devilish glint
in her eye as she tried to recall the gossip surrounding the Machado family.

"Let's see, m'dear," the older woman said,
munching on one of the large sweet biscuits. "I believe the older boy –
well, he's not a boy any more, is he now? – Aaron was his name, yes, well,
Aaron left about ten or twelve years ago."

"How old was he then?"

"Hmmm, a young man, maybe twenty-one or so. The girl
Phoebe was about four or five years younger. Now that girl, she was a handful!"

"Really? How do you mean?"

"Always giving Mr. and Mrs. Machado some kind of grief.
She ran off once when she was younger, about eleven as I remember, said she
wanted to join the circus of all things." The woman took a great gulp of
her tea and added another lump of sweetener.

"And smoking! Phoebe took up smoking those filthy
cigarettes like some kind of loose woman. Mrs. Machado almost had a stroke!"
She shifted her weight in the brightly-colored chair and sighed. "Such a
shame too, Phoebe was a sweet little thing when she was little. I delivered
her, you know."

"Why do you suppose she changed so?"

"Oh, law, I don't know." Mrs. Henderson heaved her
considerable bulk up from the arm chair and reached for another biscuit. "She
was a wonderful girl until she reached thirteen. Then everything went to hell
in a hand basket, if you'll pardon the expression."

Emma was glad for the woman's frankness. Information was
remarkably easy to pry from her. "Do you suppose something happened at
home to make Phoebe turn so wild?"

"Well, you know, at the time, I thought there was
something fiercely wrong in that family. Mrs. Machado was always sick, lying
abed most of the day with her headaches and her spells. Mr. Machado watching
over his fruit farms and the like, always off somewhere."

The woman furrowed her bushy white brows and lowered her
voice conspiratorially. "The children left alone in that big house. No one
watched over Aaron and Phoebe. They sort of fended for themselves as far as I
could tell."

"What about Joseph?"

"Humph. The Missus got that one on one of the Mister's
trips home, if you get my meaning. But that was much later. Joe, Jr., was
nearly twenty years younger than Aaron. A change of life baby, you know?"

Emma thought she did know. Aaron and Phoebe left to
themselves with little or no parental supervision. What mischief might they
have gotten themselves into while their mother lay sick in bed and their father
absented himself whenever possible? Surely that was an unhealthy environment to
grow up in.

"Who took care of the baby, then?"

"Why, I suspect Phoebe did. Mrs. Machado wasn't good
for much by that time, her nerves and all. Phoebe would've been, hmmmm, let's
see, about fourteen or so when Joe was born, able to do plenty for her mum. And
she always liked to play the lady of the house, she did."

"The lady of the house?"

Mrs. Henderson waved a hand of dismissal. "Oh, fanciful
stuff, that was. She'd put on her mum's old clothes and shoes and play dress
up, walking around with the babe on her hip like it was her own." She
laughed mirthlessly. "Acted like she'd given birth to Joe herself!"

Emma's neck prickled with a strange sensation, but she
placed a bright smile on her lips. "What nonsense! You delivered Joseph
yourself didn't you?"

"Well, that's the strange thing," the older woman
said, a puzzled look on her wrinkly face. "They waited too late to fetch
me. The babe was all birthed and cleaned up by the time I got to the house."

She paused in the consumption of her next biscuit and
shrugged as if the habits of the gentry were beyond her. "Missus was abed,
but looking quite well rested, while Aaron, bless his heart, was holding the
babe, all swaddled up and sweet as candy."

"Where was Phoebe?"

"Well, now, I never thought to ask them. Just checked
the babe out to be sure the cord was tied proper and all."

"What about Mrs. Machado? Did you attend to her also?"

"Humph, that one was quite prickly. Wouldn't even let
me examine her, said the doctor would see to her."

A few moments later, Emma made her good-byes to Mrs.
Henderson. The elderly midwife had given her quite a bit of food for thought,
but none of the information was exactly evidence, was it? However, it was
enough to foster a dark suspicion of the perverse activities that might've gone
on in the Machado household.

She shivered and wrapped her jacket tighter. There might
have been strange, even unnatural, behavior going on twenty years ago, but was
it anything to incite a recent murder?

#

Emma arrived at
The Gazette
shortly before noon to
find Stephen and Thomas already working hard on the next edition. Her uncle
informed her that Malachi had spent the entire morning in court, only to have
Judge Underwood adjourn for the day. He failed to remark on the court events
except to say that closing remarks would begin on the morrow.

Emma knew that tomorrow the prosecution would present the
salient points of their case first, then the defense, and then the prosecution
would be given a final chance to address the jury. She surmised that Malachi
was hard at work in his law office preparing his remarks. Although eager to
tell him her discoveries about the Machado family, she would not interrupt him
now.

Would he agree with her suspicions or believe she was being
fanciful?

She also wished to speak with her uncle about the charges her
parents had made against him, but she remained silent. If they were not true,
she shouldn't want to embarrass him, and if they were, he'd tell her of his own
accord. She thought of the ugly turn of events her parents expected to occur
today and wondered what nefarious plans Charles Fulton had in store for Malachi
and how it affected her family.

She'd just decided to abandon working in the back office and
talk to Uncle Stephen when the bell over the door jangled, signaling a visitor.

She hurried to the front. Thomas had the machinery running
and her uncle stood beside the elderly man, both in their shirt sleeves,
pondering over the clattering noise emanating from the press.

"What is that ungodly racket?" Malachi asked Emma
as he shut the door behind him and glanced to where she stood behind the wide
counter.

She laughed. "The press has gone off kilter and
apparently the men are playing at engineering."

Malachi's lopsided grin set a small tingle starting in her
belly. He looked devilishly handsome today, his head hatless yet again, his
navy jacket brushed, the white shirt crisp above the lapels.

"Is there anything I can help with, Mr. Knight?"
Malachi shouted, looking in her uncle's direction. "I'm clever with my
hands, I'm told."

He flashed a wicked grin Emma's way.

Stephen waved him off without looking up from the machinery
cogs. "No, you and Emma get on with the trial business. Thomas and I are
quite able to bumble along by ourselves."

In the back room, Malachi threw himself into the guest chair
while Emma perched behind the desk, her back straight and proper, but her eyes
straying now and again to the open archway where she could just see the corner
of Thomas' suspended gray workpants and the back of her uncle's faded blond
hair.

"I have bad news, Emma," Malachi said, fidgeting
with his neck cloth and twisting his neck as if his collar were too small. "Charles
Fulton called a rebuttal witness today."

"What? But I thought the prosecution had rested its
case!"

"As did I, but apparently they sneaked this one by the
judge. The witness's testimony was designed to discredit a member of the
community and by extension me as his friend and Alma's defense attorney."

He looked fierce with anger, to be sure, but with another
emotion she hadn't seen in him before. Was it revenge? It looked awfully like
he wanted to carve someone's pound of flesh from his chest.

"What discredit? Who?" But even as the words
escaped her lips, she slid her eyes from Malachi to the men in the other room
and knew immediately this was what her parents had warned her of.

"You can't mean Uncle Stephen," she whispered. Her
heart twisted at the thought of her beloved uncle's name being bandied about so
maliciously.

"Apparently, someone – a young gentleman – has admitted
to being ... friends with Stephen." He paused and looked into her eyes,
his own bright blue with emotion. "I'm so sorry, Emma."

"It is Uncle Stephen for whom you should feel sorrow,"
she snapped realizing even as her harsh tone registered in her ears that she
was taking out her grief on the messenger. She shook her head angrily and
swiped at the tears in her eyes.

"He does not deserve this," she muttered. "He
is the kindest man I know."

"Did no one know of his ... preferences?"

"Not until my parents warned me that the trial would
take an ugly turn today."

"What?"

"Yes, before I ... before this weekend they tried to
persuade me to sever my relationship with you and warned that Uncle Stephen
would put the family name in an unsavory light." She rose and walked to
the open door to the alley, chewing on her thumb as she gazed out onto the
narrow, graveled path. "God, I should have warned him."

"Warned who of what?" Stephen's voice sounded
behind her.

She jerked around at the same moment that Malachi rose and
turned toward the older man who stood in the archway. He looked from one of
them to the other. "Ah, I see, so it's come out in the trial then? I
suspected I should have attended court this morning."

"No, Stephen, it was best you were not there,"
Malachi said. "I'm sorry, sir. The trial should have nothing to do with
your personal life."

"You knew?" Emma asked.

Her uncle nodded and rolled down his shirt sleeves. "Charles
Fulton has used every nefarious trick at hand to win this case." He
reached for his jacket hanging on a hook beside the door. "Including my
personal ... habits. Well, I wouldn't worry. My private behavior should not
affect Alma Bentley's innocence or guilt."

"No sir," Malachi answered. "In fact, Judge
Underwood quashed the witness examination the moment he realized where the
questioning was going."

Stephen smiled wanly as he shot his cuffs. "With strong
disapprobation, I hope."

"A five hundred dollar fine and threat of jail." Malachi
smiled grimly. "Not nearly enough."

"It's a large sum." Stephen raised his brows in
amusement. "Fulton will not like losing so much money."

"But the damage was done." Malachi shook his head.
"The information had already been spoken even though the judge instructed
the jurors to ignore the entire line of questioning."

"Not to Alma, I hope."

"No ... but unfortunately, your secret is out."

Stephen shook his head sadly. "It doesn't matter. Fulton
is a mean, spiteful little man and his acrimony was bound to spill onto one of
us." He sighed and bussed Emma's cheek. "I shall return quite soon to
San Francisco where my friends and patrons do not concern themselves with the
nature of my personal life."

Emma put her arms around her uncle and hugged him tightly. "I
am sorry, Uncle Stephen."