A Deadly Shaker Spring (16 page)

That evening she was to dine with Elder Wilhelm in the Ministry. When she'd left Samuel's room, after finding his journals missing, she had fully intended to use her own authority to insist the police investigate Samuel's death as a murder. Now she found herself in a dilemma. As Doc Irwin had pointed out, Sheriff Brock was no friend to the Shakers. If Samuel had indeed been murdered, Brock would not be inclined to look beyond the boundaries of North Homage for his killer. He could be more of a hindrance than a help in finding the truth. She could not imagine convincing him to consider any links between Samuel's death and the recent attacks on the Society, let alone incidents that happened decades ago.

Wilhelm, on the other hand, was convinced that whenever anything went wrong, the world was at fault. If she convinced him that Samuel was murdered,
he would use the information as an opportunity to grandstand against the world. Rather than seek the killer through conventional means, he would shout the evils of the world from the Meetinghouse floor. She wouldn't put it past him to go out among the world's people and fault them to their faces. In the end, he might tighten the bonds among Believers, but at the expense of peace with their neighbors.

Rose suspected what Wilhelm would refuse to consider—that Samuel was probably killed because he knew something damaging. The killer might know that Samuel was a devoted journal-keeper. It would be like Samuel, who could not bring himself to confess in person, to write his sins as a way of salving his guilt. Suppose those sins, if they came to light, could damage another person—or persons?

Who else but a Shaker, one of their own, would even know where Samuel's room was located, let alone be able to sneak into it and remove his journals? Was there any other possibility?

An apostate. An apostate might have known Samuel well enough to be aware of his journals, but could he convince Samuel to meet in the kitchen, kill him, find his room, remove all the many journal volumes, and escape without being seen? Surely not. If an apostate was involved, and Rose believed it probable, it looked as if a Believer might be assisting him.

The name she had resisted thinking forced itself into her mind. Sister Sarah Baker. She had caught Sarah meeting with Caleb Cox, an apostate. Perhaps it was a coincidence. Perhaps Caleb was just a sad drunk for whom Sarah felt pity, not a dangerous man with a secret. Rose hoped so, but would not count on
hope alone. Certainly Agatha, in her journal, had noted Caleb's unpredictability—assuming that C.C. meant Caleb Cox.

Rose placed a call to the Ministry House and left a message for Wilhelm with the kitchen sister. She would be unable to be there for the evening meal because neglected trustee's work called her to town. She said nothing about trying to meet with him later. She would put that off as long as possible.

In the Trustees' Office kitchen, Rose greeted the two young kitchen sisters and brewed herself a pot of rose hip and lemon balm tea. She carried a tea tray upstairs to one of the unoccupied retiring rooms on the second floor. Years earlier she had converted the room to storage for years of trustees' records that were cluttering her office downstairs. Trustees were generally meticulous about record keeping when it came to the Society's finances, businesses, and real estate. If anyone had recorded with whom Samuel traveled and worked, besides Samuel himself, it would have been a trustee.

The room had a musty, closed-in smell. Rose slid aside the plain white curtain and cracked open the window. Dust motes swirled in the sunlight. She'd ask one of the sisters to clean soon. They were always short-handed these days, and the room was often forgotten. Hugo had built the tall, simple bookcases that lined one entire wall. Otherwise, the room held only a small writing desk and a ladder-back chair. The strip of pegs lining the remaining three walls was empty. Even the broom had been pressed into service elsewhere.

She ran her fingers along the filmy spines of her
predecessors' journals until she came to 1910. Though she had started with Agatha's 1908 journal, she had found nothing pertinent until 1910, so this seemed a good choice. She also pulled 1911 and 1912, settled at the desk, and opened the first volume. She crinkled her nose at the fetid odor of mildew, the legacy of decades of steamy Kentucky summers, and pulled her sweet-smelling tea closer.

Sister Fiona had written the volume. Rose had worked beside Fee until her death several years earlier, when the Society decided that one trustee was enough for the shrinking community. Fee was a small, bright Irishwoman, with quick eyes that missed little. Ever frugal, her longhand was tiny, and she crammed as many words as she could onto each page.

Rose had drunk half a pot of cooling tea and squinted at the difficult writing for nearly an hour before she began to find what she sought. Thank goodness Fiona had not felt compelled to identify people only by their initials, as Agatha had.

Rose rubbed her eyes. She poured another cup of tea, now cold, and opened Fee's 1911 journal. This time she skimmed through the early section to the spring, when Fee returned to the issue of Samuel and his traveling companion.

Rose read through to the end of the volume, her eyes blurring from the cramped handwriting. Nothing struck her until the last page.

Klaus? Was he perhaps the companion of Samuel's that Hugo had mentioned? The one who left to work on the
Cincinnati Enquirer!

Samuel, Klaus, Caleb, Evangeline, and Faithfull. Rose tucked the third volume, for 1912, under her arm, picked up her tea tray, and hurried down to the kitchen. She might just have time to track down the full names of all these Believers and still make it into Languor before everyone in town had settled down to the evening meal.

To become a part of the Society, each Believer signed the covenant, a document outlining the religious beliefs and communal rules of the Society. Each village had its own copy, sometimes altered slightly. North Homage kept its covenant safe in the small library of the Ministry House, where few visited. Visiting was not forbidden to Believers, only unnecessary. Most were far too busy with their daily tasks to take time for spiritual reading and contemplation. They relied on their Ministry to provide them with spiritual insight and direction.

Wilhelm himself spent little time reading spiritual literature. His beliefs never wavered, and he preferred work and action to contemplation. Rose entered the library confident she would not encounter him there, nor elsewhere in the Ministry House. At this time of day, he would be in the fields, planting with the rest of the brethren and many of the sisters. But just to be private, she closed the door and left the curtains drawn.

The covenant and the signatures of those who had signed it since North Homage opened in 1817 were
kept in a small drawer in a maple desk. Rose extracted the document, as well as a pen and paper, and settled at the desk. She began at the signatures for 1910 and worked backward, hoping that the Believers she sought had all joined the Shakers at North Homage. If they had joined at another Shaker village and simply moved here, their signatures might be missing.

This time her aching eyes had to contend with a variety of handwriting styles, ranging from Xs, followed by an elder or eldress's printing of the name, to fancy curlycues. With only nine years to examine, though, the task didn't take long. She found all the names except Samuel, who, she knew, had come to North Homage in 1904, as Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, declined. The apostates' names were Caleb Cox, Klaus Holker, Evangeline Frankell, and Faithfull Worthington. She folded her list and stuffed it in the pocket of her work dress.

The afternoon was well advanced by the time Rose drove the Society's black Plymouth the eight miles to Languor. She wanted to have her long-delayed chat with Mr. Caleb Cox. She didn't know where he lived, and had no wish to ask and call attention to herself. If Caleb didn't live on the streets, which was possible, he would most likely live in the town's one boardinghouse, located on the east side of town, close to the perimeter and away from the wealthier homes.

She drove quickly through the poor outskirts of town, where the still shiny automobile attracted curious stares from thin, dirty children and their equally thin, weary parents. Arriving in another section of town, less ramshackle but still seedy, she parked under
the arching branches of an elm tree and rang the boardinghouse doorbell.

“I have an appointment to meet with Mr. Caleb Cox,” she said in her deepest, most commanding voice, as if she already knew he lived there.

The matronly, middle-aged woman who answered the bell looked her up and down as if she didn't allow Rose's sort to cross her threshold. The warm spring weather had convinced Rose to leave her distinctive blue wool Dorothy cloak in her retiring room, but she knew she stood out in her long, loose cotton work dress with the white lawn kerchief crisscrossed over her bodice. As always, she wore her woven palm sugar-scoop bonnet over the white cap that covered her hair.

Rose swallowed her self-consciousness and repeated her request. The woman blinked slowly and drew back into the dark entryway. Rose stepped inside. She noticed the smell first, a dankness from years of too much sweat and too little air, overlaid by the sharp odor of ammonia. She followed the woman through a long corridor lit by a dingy chandelier in which only a few bulbs still shone. The peeling wallpaper was a rich burgundy with a raised design that, Rose suddenly realized, represented naked young men and women gamboling through hills and valleys. Rose did not shock easily, but she felt her cheeks grow warm and shifted her eyes to the staircase. Now she remembered. This building had been a bordello until around 1914, when its customers went off to war. The new owners had never bothered to redecorate.

The silent woman led Rose up the ornately carved staircase, which was lovely but in need of a good
sanding and staining. They reached a room on the third floor. She knocked loudly.

“Caleb. Company,” she said, and left without another glance at Rose. After several moments of scraping sounds, Caleb Cox opened the door and squinted at her with red-rimmed, unfocused eyes. Slowly he took in her garb. As comprehension dawned, he straightened his hunched back and his eyes widened.

“Eldreth, ma'am,” he slurred. His pretension of sobriety was further doomed as soon as he opened his mouth and released waves of whiskey fumes.

“I wish to speak with you briefly, Mr. Cox. May I come in?”

“Uh, sure.”

Caleb tottered backward and allowed Rose to enter. She cleared the doorway and put some distance between herself and Caleb, both for propriety and to avoid his sour breath. She glanced around her. No brothel furniture had found its way into the small room. Dim light from one small, grimy window revealed an army cot covered with a rumpled, moth-eaten wool blanket; a rickety wood chair over which was tossed the patched jacket he had been wearing when he met Sarah; and a scratched pine table with a broken leg supported by a scrap of wood. An upturned orange crate next to the cot held two bottles of Jack Daniels, one nearly empty.

Rose remained standing. With luck, this visit would be over quickly. She longed to return to the clean, bright rooms of North Homage.