Tamera Alexander - [Timber Ridge Reflections 01] (19 page)

“It just seems like he should know about it.”

“And he will, come mornin’, ma’am. We tell him soon as he gets into town.”

Snowflakes drifted down, and from the saloon two streets over, piano music traveled the chilled night air. She searched the boardwalk in both directions. Deserted. “How does a corpse just up and disappear? Tell me that.”

“It don’t—leastwise not by hisself.” Josiah turned and walked to where he’d tethered Moonshine.

Elizabeth didn’t move. “And we’re certain he was dead, right?”

Josiah gave her a look that said she’d asked a needless question. It was a look she was becoming accustomed to seeing from him. “Yes, ma’am,
we’s
certain.”

A thumbnail moon shone over the highest peaks, offering little in the way of illumination. Timber Ridge was advanced enough to have invested in coal-burning street lamps, but apparently not advanced enough to have round-the-clock law enforcement.

“Answer me this, ma’am. What you plannin’ on sayin’ to the sheriff when he asks you why we was up there to Mr. Coulter’s place?”

“I’ll tell him we were up there taking pictures.”

“And what you got a picture of while you’s up there, Miz Westbrook?”

Elizabeth smiled at his imitation of Sheriff McPherson, though she wasn’t about to answer the question with the truth.

“A dead body, you say, ma’am. Well, now, ain’t that interestin’. Why’s a good woman like you takin’ pictures of a dead man? And one you don’t even know.”

“All right, Josiah, your point is made. But I insist on telling the sheriff about what we found.”

“I’s all for that, ma’am. I just sayin’ that we don’t need to break our necks to tell him ’bout something that can wait ’til mornin’. More than likely, some animal got him, drug him off into the brush.”

“I don’t remember seeing any drag marks through the dirt.” Not that she’d looked specifically. Some observant journalist she was turning out to be.

“We got bears that could pick a man clean up off the ground and carry him for miles. So that don’t mean nothin’. ”

Shivering at the thought, she stepped down from the boardwalk and walked beside him down the dimly lit street back to the boardinghouse.

Josiah made three trips up and down the stairs carrying her equipment back to her room, then said good night. Elizabeth closed the door and locked it tight, resisting the urge to crawl straight into bed. Instead, she spent the next half hour making a print from each of the two developed glass plates in her pack. Holding the photograph of the body brought the realness of it back again, and she imagined that same trail now, cloaked in the dark of night and covered in snow, erasing all traces of whatever had happened there. Not that they’d detected any.

Her thoughts drifted across Coulter’s property line, to Daniel Ranslett’s land. Or rightly, to Daniel Ranslett. She had a feeling that no matter what amount Chilton Enterprises offered him, he wouldn’t sell his land.

She arched her shoulders and rubbed her lower back, rolling her neck from side to side. In the end, getting the landowner to sell wasn’t her problem. She was just supposed to give Goldberg the names, which she would provide in a letter to him tonight.

Her gaze was drawn again to
the
photograph, and the confrontation Josiah had described played again in her mind. She sat down at the desk and pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and dipped her quill, then wrote the story as she remembered him telling it. She included a summary at the end about how a person reaped what they sowed and then finished with a mention of Josiah Birch, a man of courage and valor in the Colorado Rockies. Thinking that a good title, she added it at the top.

She scanned the four written pages. Not her best, but it was good. It would grab readers’ attention too, especially the men, which is what Mr. Goldberg wanted. She signed her pen name at the bottom—E.G. Brenton—wishing she were signing her real name instead. In time . . .

After changing into her nightgown, she crawled into bed and blew out the chipped oil lamp on her nightstand. The sheets were cool against her bare legs and brought a chill. Shivering, she pulled down her gown from where it bunched around her hips, then reached for the blanket and tucked it snug beneath her chin.

It wasn’t until minutes later, when she’d finally gotten warm, that she thought of Josiah. She rose on one elbow. Her gaze swung to the window. She’d never asked him where he lived or where he stayed at night. She pushed back the covers and padded across the bare floor to the window to see if it was still snowing. A deeper chill worked its way up her legs.

Hugging her midsection, she moved the curtain to one side and peered through a dirt-streaked pane. Pale moonlight mingled with the snow to outline the buildings and homes in burnished silver shadows. Her window overlooked the town, and the view was as she’d expected—desolate, ghostly white. Ranslett had described a similar scene so beautifully the other day, when everything was covered in frost and snow. Warmth from her breath fogged the glass pane, and her concern deepened as she imagined Josiah out there somewhere in the night.

She hoped he was someplace warm and dry. She’d paid him two weeks’ salary in advance, so he wasn’t without funds, which made her wonder again about his shoes.

Icy cold slipped through unseen cracks in the walls and floorboards, hastening her longing for her bed. As she turned to go she saw something move in the street down below. In the shadows.

She leaned close to the window, squinting. Waiting . . .

Perhaps she’d only imagin—

No, there it was again. Someone standing just inside the alleyway, on the opposite side of the street. Flakes of snow smudged the opposite side of the pane, and she tried to rub away the condensation with the ball of her fist.

Someone stepped from the shadows—a man, if the long duster and Stetson were any indication. He looked up one side of the street and down the other. Then just stood there.

She watched, curious. Why would someone be standing outside on a—

She pushed back from the window, heart in her throat. Whoever was down there had looked straight up at her window.

She consciously unclenched her jaw, waiting. The curtain swayed, betraying her presence, before falling back into place. There was no way he could see into a third-story room, but still she felt exposed.

She stared at the window, her mind racing. It was dark outside. The likelihood he’d seen her was slim. She could hardly see through the dirty panes herself. Still, she felt as though she’d been caught spying.

Seconds ticked past and she couldn’t help herself. She moved closer again and leaned to one side. Careful not to disturb the draperies this time, she peered through a narrow slit in the fabric and watched the alleyway below, searching the shadows as best she could.

No one. Whoever had been there was gone.

Feeling suddenly brave in her sheltered tower, she nudged the curtain aside, and for the briefest second she expected to see the man standing below again, staring up at her like some seedy villain in a stagecoach novel. A shiver skittered up and down her arms, and she nearly laughed out loud at her own silliness.

She tried to see if she could make out the sheriff ’s office, but she couldn’t. She could, however, see Mattie’s Porch, the restaurant where she’d eaten yesterday—and that’s when she spotted him again. Or she thought it was him.

A ways down the street, in a wagon, his shoulders hunched forward.

She pressed closer to the window. There was something in the wagon bed. A bundle of some sort . . . She couldn’t make it out.

Her breath fogged the window again, and she impatiently swiped at the patch of moisture. She barely made out the outline of the wagon before the snow and the night swallowed it whole.

18

M
orning couldn’t come soon enough. Images of the stranger below Elizabeth’s window last night kept blurring with those of the missing body and made for outlandish dreams, keeping sleep at a distance.

Eager to speak with Sheriff McPherson, she threw back the covers and shuffled from bed. Intermittent sips of tea sated her appetite as she hurried through her routine, and she was surprised when she went to pour another cup only to find the teapot bone dry. She must have been drinking more than she’d thought. No matter, she breathed in and out. Her lungs were clear and she felt surprisingly refreshed. If the sheriff wasn’t an early riser, she was going to beat him to his office.

Some faithful soul had swept the boardwalks clear of last night’s snow, but the frozen planks were still slick in spots. Her heeled boots didn’t offer the best traction, so she stepped down to the street cautiously, gripping the railing, careful to hold on to the envelope she was mailing to Goldberg. Her breath shown in crisp puffs, and though the mud beneath her boots was frozen, she could well imagine what a horrendous mess it would be when the temperatures warmed.

The stage was pulling up in front of the store when she rounded the corner. Her timing could not have been better. She raced inside the store and paid the clerk at the mail counter, then handed the coachman her envelope. It felt good knowing that
the
photograph—as she’d come to think of it—along with the one of the meadow, and another article were out of her hands and on their way to Washington.

The townspeople of Timber Ridge were out early this morning. Especially the male population. At the far end of the street, a crowd of men gathered outside a building. Their murmured conversation drifted toward her, and several of them were shaking their heads. Her curiosity piqued, she decided to take that street to the sheriff ’s office in hopes of learning what the gathering was about.

She spotted Josiah standing on the outskirts. He saw her at the same time and met her halfway.

He looked tired, as though he hadn’t slept well. “Mornin’, Miz Westbrook. Word is, they come upon a body, ma’am. Only—” He glanced around, his deep voice anxious. “They come upon it somewhere here in town.”

“Is it the same man?”

“I ain’t seen him. Undertaker done had him inside when I got here.”

“Have they given his name?”

“No, ma’am. But you and me got no idea what that man’s name was anyhow.”

She nodded, thinking. “Have you spoken to the sheriff yet?”

Josiah gave her a look. “Like I’s just gonna walk right up to him and tell him I found me a dead white man?”

She took issue with his tone. “I was just asking if you had spoken with him yet, Josiah.”

He gave a sharp sigh. “You a smart lady, ma’am, but you got a lot to learn ’bout how things work out here. Man like me don’t bring up findin’ no dead bodies to white men.” He glanced around again and lowered his voice. “ ’Specially when it’s one of their own. I be findin’ a noose round my neck real quick-like.”

Her thoughts jumped to what McPherson had told her happened in town years earlier, and it gave credence to Josiah’s concern. “We found the body together. I’ll speak on your behalf, if need be. I’ll be your witness should any questions arise.”

“I don’t mean no disrespect, Miz Westbrook, but that gives me little means of comfort, ma’am. Not when you seen what I seen. I laid awake last night thinkin’ on it. We got to tell him, I know that. It’s the right thing to do, but it bein’ the right thing don’t mean I got to like doin’ it.”

She couldn’t argue that point, and didn’t try. He was right. Josiah had witnessed things, experienced things, that she’d only read about in her support of the abolitionist movement. As she’d been reading about it, he’d been living it.

“You’re right, Josiah, of course. I’ll tell him, and I’ll be very careful in how I reveal the information to him.”

Sheriff McPherson stepped from the building onto the boardwalk and the crowd’s murmur fell away. She moved closer in order to hear. Josiah hung back a ways, then eventually followed. Behind the sheriff came another man, shorter and hunched. Whether by time or by nature wasn’t certain, and he shuffled along more than walked.

McPherson stood at the edge of the boardwalk. “I appreciate your patience as we’ve begun investigating a discovery that was made early this morning.”

The hunched man stepped forward and whispered something in the sheriff ’s ear.

McPherson nodded. “As most of you probably know by now, a body was found at daybreak this morning. It’s that of Travis Coulter.”

The reaction from the crowd was subdued. Elizabeth sensed Josiah’s shudder beside her and felt one pass through her too. But just because it was the same man they’d gone to see yesterday didn’t mean it was the same body, and it didn’t implicate Josiah in any way.

But the coincidence
was
unnerving. . . .

“After Mr. Carnes’s initial examination of the body”—Sheriff McPherson gestured to the hunched man beside him—“he’s placing Coulter’s time of death within the last twenty-four hours. We’ve already sent a telegram to Denver asking for record of next of kin. If any of you know whether Coulter had any living relatives, I’d appreciate you getting with us on that.” More questions were volleyed, and he raised his hands, waiting for silence. “Coulter’s body was found behind the saloon.”

A man close to Elizabeth laughed. “That ain’t surprising, now, is it?”

“Mr. Carnes needs more time to examine the body before ruling on the cause of death, so we’ll release that information when we have it. There’ll be an investigation and I fully expect everyone in town to allow that investigation to be conducted without any outside interference. If anyone does choose to interfere—”

He scanned the faces as though trying to memorize them, and as Elizabeth watched him, the image of six crosses, arranged in a semicircle, from largest to smallest, rose in her mind. McPherson had to be thinking of that incident right now. How could he not? Surely others in this crowd had been in Timber Ridge long enough to recall it too.

“—then that person will be obstructing justice, and they’ll be dealt with in the strictest sense of the law. If you know anything about what might have happened to Coulter, whether you think it’s significant or not, I ask you to come and speak with me now. Thank you.” He stepped from the boardwalk and was immediately engulfed by the crowd.