The Bad Luck Wedding Cake (17 page)

“What is it?” she asked.

“Trouble,” he replied, his voice hoarse.

Crinkling the sheet into a ball, he drew back his arm and flung the paper at the trash can sitting in one corner. Then he slumped down onto the window seat and buried his face in his hands. “Serious trouble this time, I’m afraid. Thirty dollars, these letters, and three girls with more guts than good sense. I wonder how long this has been going on?”

“What have they done?” When Tye finally met her gaze, Claire swallowed a gasp. She’d never seen such fear on a man’s face.

“I think I just found Pandora’s box, Claire.” He nodded toward the trash can. “By the looks of it, the girls have taken the lid off. That was a letter to Trace, one of a pile from a Pandora that goes by the name of West. Beatrice West. She’s wicked and evil.” In a hollow voice he added, “And I’m afraid she has my Blessings.

Bad luck always comes in threes
.

CHAPTER 10

TYE’S HEART POUNDED LIKE a locomotive’s pistons. He propped his elbows on his knees and let his head hang low. The letter had been an explosive charge that blew his past right into his present.

“Who is Beatrice West?”

Old pain and new fear combined to loosen his tongue and allow one of the skeletons to tumble from the McBride family closet. “The Blessings’ grandmother. Their blood grandmother.”

“Your mother?”

“No. Constance’s mother. It looks like she wrote to my brother and an attorney forwarded the letters. Constance left them property. I guess Trace was forced to deal in some way.”

“And Constance is…?”

Tye shuddered as the scene flashed before his eyes.
Trace and Constance struggling. The sound of the shot. The dazed look on Trace’s face as he stared at the blood soaking his hands. The hatred blazing in his eyes when he turned and looked at Tye
.

“Was,” he croaked. “Constance was the girls’ mother. She’s dead.”

Claire nodded. “I knew your brother had been a widower before he remarried. But the only grandmother I’ve ever heard the girls refer to was Jenny’s mother. Isn’t she traveling in Europe at the moment?”

“Yeah. That’s Monique. The girls have never met Beatrice.”

“So the letters are from the girls’ grandmother? She lives far away?”

He shook his head. “New Orleans. The girls must have stumbled across them somehow. I’ll bet Trace had them locked in his safe and they found them there. We know they have the combination, and Trace would never have mentioned Beatrice to the Blessings himself.”

“Why not?”

He didn’t have the time or the inclination to explain the entire story. One couldn’t summarize extortion, adultery, kidnapping, and betrayal in a few sentences. “I guess bad blood between the families is the simplest way to explain.”

She gestured toward the letter. “So why is that trouble? Does she threaten the children somehow?”

Almost against his will, Tye smoothed out the paper and scanned the page. His anxiety rose another notch when he reread one particular sentence. “She wants to see them.” Looking up, he shot a worried look toward Claire and voiced the fear ricocheting around his head like a bullet. “God, Claire. You don’t think they’ve run off to New Orleans to visit her.”

Claire’s reaction wasn’t at all what he had hoped to see. She winced as she reached into one of the vanity’s drawers and removed a scrap of newspaper. “I found this. It’s a train schedule, Tye. But there are many reasons Emma might have a train schedule.”

“And I don’t like any of them.” His heart sank to somewhere around his knees as he stood and headed for the door. “I’ll check with the ticket agent and see if they bought fares. Of course, it’s more likely they hopped a boxcar. They’ve done that before.”

“But thirty dollars…” Claire said, following behind him.

“Could be spending money. It’s a nice round amount. Not much, but to those three, ten dollars apiece probably sounds like a fortune.”

They didn’t speak as they made their way into town, then caught the trolley for the ride down Main to the railroad depot. Once they took their seats, Claire reached over and clasped his hand in silent comfort. He accepted it gratefully.

Tye was no stranger to fear. Over the course of more than three decades of life he’d learned its different flavors, had thought he’d tasted them all. But the black metallic taste coating his mouth right then was nauseatingly new to him. Fear for the children. Fear of failing the children. Fear of hurting his brother again.

Please, God, let them be all right
.

Claire said, “I traveled by myself on the train from Galveston here to Fort Worth, of course. I was pleasantly surprised how polite my fellow passengers were. I visited with a pair of the nicest elderly women between Houston and Dallas. When they saw I was alone they basically took me under their wings.”

He squeezed her hand to let her know he recognized her effort, but at the moment he couldn’t push any words past the lump blocking his throat.

At the depot he tracked down the ticket agent, who told them he had not seen the McBride Menaces around the station in ages, and especially not this morning before the departure of the day’s first train. Tye checked with the porters, the drivers of carriages for hire, and even the laundress who kept a heated kettle opposite the train yard for travelers’ convenience.

No one had seen his nieces.

“As much as I hate to, I guess I should telegraph the Wests,” Tye told Claire. “Just in case the Blessings stowed away.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “While you’re doing that, I’ll stop by The Confectionary and ask my menfolk to help search. If the McBride girls are still in Fort Worth, the Donovan boys will find them.”

“You sound so confident.”

“I am confident. After all, my family found me, didn’t they?”

***

A WARM prairie wind swept over and around the wagon as Katrina said to Emma, “Do you think he’s dead?”

Emma eyed the man slumped across the buckboard’s seat and shook her head. “I don’t think so. Every once in a while I think I see his chest move.”

“He sure stinks enough to be dead,” Maribeth observed, inching her way toward the back of the wagon— not an easy feat considering she was bound hands and ankles by a sturdy rope.

Katrina lifted her hands, tied at the wrists, to scratch her nose. “It’s the whiskey. Papa used to smell like that sometimes when he came home from the End of the Line.”

Maribeth replied, “Except when Papa smelled that way it was because someone had poured whiskey on his clothes, not down his throat.”

The three of them shared a knowing look. Emma and her sisters had all been happy that fall when their father had sold his lucrative saloon and returned to the more respectable profession of architecture. Not that they cared about respectability, they simply liked having him home at night.

Emma dropped her head back to rest it against the rough wagon slats and noted a movement in the sky. A big black buzzard circled lazily above them.

“I’m scared, Emmie,” Katrina said in a little voice.

“I know. But we’ll be all right, you’ll see. Uncle Tye will come save us.”

“Yeah,” Maribeth glumly interjected. “He’ll come save us, and then he’ll kill us for doing what we did. Of course, we might starve to death before he finds us. Em, your stomach is growling louder than mine.”

Katrina swelled up in a pout. “I’m hungry, too. And tired. We didn’t sleep very long, did we sisters? And you know what? Even if Uncle Tye is really mad when he finds us I hope he hurries. I need to pee bad.”

As Emma reached over and gave Katrina’s knee a comforting pat, she spied a second and then a third bird joining the first. She wished her sisters wouldn’t talk about hunger when buzzards circled above.

She wasn’t as confident in their situation as she had let on. Big Jack Bailey had made all kinds of ugly threats as he’d driven the buckboard out onto the night-black prairie before passing out in a drunken stupor. Emma prayed it had been the whiskey talking, that he wouldn’t try to carry out his wicked promises upon awakening. But the bad blood that existed between Big Jack and the McBride family made her worry it might be more than just talk.

The trouble had started the year before, back before Mama married Papa. Big Jack had hired Mama to design the most beautiful wedding dress ever created for his daughters to wear at their upcoming weddings. He was a superstitious fool, and when his daughters all suffered accidents after having worn the gown Mama had sewn, he blamed the dress. Then, when his son died while seeking revenge against Mama, Big Jack went crazy. He’d kidnapped Mama and Uncle Tye—thinking he was Papa because the twins look so much alike—and when Uncle Tye was protecting Mama, Big Jack shot him in the shoulder. But everything turned out all right when Mama outsmarted Big Jack by threatening to put a curse on his family. Because of The Bad Luck Wedding Dress, Big Jack had believed her.

Now it looked as if he’d changed his mind.

“Emmie, I need out of this wagon.” A tear rolled down Katrina’s cheek. “I’m about to wet my bloomers. And the sun’s gonna burn us to crispy critters if we stay here like this all day. We should have worn our bonnets.”

Sarcasm riddled Maribeth’s voice as she said, “Well, we were fools not to guess we’d be kidnapped and stranded Lord-only-knows-where on the prairie. We should have known to bring our bonnets with us when we snuck out of Willow Hill at midnight.”

Emma eyed Big Jack, then the buzzards, then the sun, and finally her sisters. “Set your legs over here, Kat.

Now that the sun is up enough for me to see what I’m doing, I’ll try to pick apart the knot. Mari, why don’t you work on yours, too.”

“I already have been trying,” Maribeth protested. “I’m tied up tighter than a fat lady’s corset.”

So was Emma. In fact, the rope around her wrists was so tight her hands had gone numb, and that made the work on her sister’s ropes all the more difficult. She plucked and pulled until her fingers screamed with pain, but finally the knot gave and Katrina’s rope fell free.

The youngest girl flexed her fingers and cried, “Yeow! It feels like I’ve got a hundred needles stuck in me.”

Necessity made her ignore the pain as blood rushed back into her hands. With ankles still bound, and at Emma’s direction, she hopped to the front of the wagon, bent over Big Jack’s motionless body, and removed the gleaming Bowie knife from its sheath.

“Now, be careful,” Emma said as Kat started slicing at the rope around her ankles. “Don’t cut yourself.”

“I won’t.”

She didn’t. Ten minutes later, the three girls stood a short distance away from the wagon, their wrists and ankles sore, their mouths thirsty, and their stomachs growling. But at least their bladders felt better.

Maribeth set down the shotgun she’d confiscated from Big Jack and raised her arms above her head for a good long stretch. “What do you think, Em? Should we roll Big Jack out of the wagon and drive it back to town?”

Emma pointed the Colt revolver she’d taken from the captor’s holster toward the circling buzzards. “I’d say yes if we had any clue what direction to go. The horse wandered for who knows how many hours without someone at the reins.”

“Are we lost?” Katrina asked around the thumb stuck in her mouth.

“Well…” Emma said. “Once the clouds covered up the stars I lost all track of the direction we traveled.”

“Then we’re as lost as an outhouse in fog,” Maribeth observed, studying the countryside as she turned in a slow circle. “If we go the wrong way, we could be lost on the prairie for days. Even weeks!” She looked at Emma. “What do you think, Emma? What do we do next? Have you come up with a plan?”

“I have a plan,” Katrina said, perking up. She pointed toward the bottle peeking out of the top of Maribeth’s dress pocket. “We can dose him up with love potion. If he is in love with us, he’ll do whatever we want. We’ll make him take us home. What do you think, Em?”

Emma nibbled at her lower lip and considered her youngest sister’s suggestion. Slowly she shook her head. “I don’t know, Kat. It’s a good idea, but I’m a bit concerned at the idea of Big Jack Bailey being in love with us. What if he wanted to marry us?”

“Yuck,” Kat said, shuddering. “Never mind. I don’t like that plan after all. Do you have another one in mind?”

Emma nodded slowly. “It’s not much of one, I’m afraid, and a lot depends on Big Jack’s mood once he wakes up. But it’s the best I can do at the moment.”

Once she explained, her sisters pitched in and followed her directions. The hardest part proved to be rolling Big Jack from the wagon seat down into the back of the buckboard. “Talk about dead weight,” Maribeth muttered.

Emma took the reins and ordered the grazing horse forward toward the tree line Maribeth had pointed out along the western horizon. Sine enough, they found a stream. Once the girls and the horse had drunk their fill of the sweet, refreshing water, Emma retrieved the wool blanket from the back of the buckboard and dipped it in the stream.

The wet blanket did the trick. Moments later Big Jack Bailey came awake spouting a rousing stream of curses.

Emma and Mari knelt on the buckboard’s seat facing the back of the wagon, their guns aimed at the rancher. Katrina knelt beside them, gripping the handle of the knife.

Bailey groaned and tried to sit up. He couldn’t. “Son of a bitch! I’m all tied up!”

“Yep.” Maribeth pointed the Colt at his chest. “You’re tied up, and you’re gonna stay that way until you direct us back to town. Our knots are real good, too. Better than yours. Papa taught us. You’ll be wasting your time if you try to work them loose.”

“You!” He gasped. “The three of you! The McBride Menaces.” Lying on his stomach, the rancher moaned pitiably against the bed of the wagon. “Oh, no. Not you. I thought last night was all a dream, a nightmare.”

“It was a nightmare,” Maribeth snapped. “Our nightmare. You kidnapped us, Mr. Big Jack, and you got us lost. That was not a smart thing to do. Now you have to tell us how to get home.”

“Kidnapped? Oh Lord, the curse!” The big man actually blubbered. “Listen to me, girls. I didn’t mean to. It was all an accident. I never intended to have anything to do with your family again.”

At his reaction, Emma relaxed a little bit. “Then why did you do it?”

“I don’t know! I don’t remember.” Bailey lifted his head, and his wild eyes met her gaze. “Wait a minute. Yes, I do. I remember now. I looked at the moon through the bushes. That’s what did it I drank a little too much down at the Snake Pit and I was walking it oft when I slipped and fell. There it was—the moon shining through the holly. That’s what brought on the bad luck.”

“Bad luck?” Maribeth frowned in confusion.

“Getting tangled up with the likes of the McBride Menaces,” he moaned. “I no sooner climbed to my feet than the three of you appeared.”

Emma’s mouth dropped open as she eyed Big Jack incredulously. He was well known for being the most superstitious person in a superstitious town, but moon shining through holly bringing bad luck? How ridiculous!