A Deadly Shaker Spring (17 page)

“Mr. Cox, I'm afraid I must be blunt. How well do you know Sister Sarah Baker?”

Caleb wilted onto the cot and grabbed the nearly
empty Jack Darnels. He took a long swallow. “Jus' what she told you,” he mumbled, staring at the bottle. “Whatever she told you.”

“What did she tell me, Mr. Cox?”

Caleb directed his bloodshot stare in Rose's direction. “Am I supposed to know that?” He looked again at the bottle as if it were involved in the conversation. “How'm I supposed to know that?” he asked with more certainty.

“Mr. Cox, if you and Sarah are both telling the truth, your stories will be the same, will they not? Just tell me the truth.”

“Tryin' to confuse me.”

“If you would put away the bottle, you would not be so easily confused. How much of that have you drunk?”

Belligerence seeped into Caleb's drunken stare. For the first time since meeting him, Rose felt a spark of fear. What did she really know of him?

“None of your business,” Caleb said. “Just need a sip now and then.” He squinted at the low level of whiskey left in the bottle, and his face fell as if his mother had abandoned him.

“Don't put as much in a bottle as they used to,” he said. His eyelids dropped in a lazy blink. Rose suspected he wouldn't be conscious much longer.

“Never drink when I'm with Sarah. No ma'am, not around Sarah.” Caleb sniffed, and his lower lip quivered.

“Nay, of course you wouldn't drink around Sarah,” Rose said, hoping to keep him on track. “Because you don't want to hurt her in any way, do you?”

“No, ma'am. No, sirree. Never hurt Sarah.” He took an awkward swig from the bottle.

“Because you care for her, don't you? You love her.”

Sudden tears spilled down his cheeks and dropped off his stubbly chin. “Sarah, she's an angel. A pure angel. In my whole life, no one ever understood me like her.” He upturned the whiskey bottle and gulped until he'd drained it.

Rose knew her time was short now. “Mr. Cox, Sarah and I need your help.”

Caleb narrowed his eyes at her and swayed sideways. “Wha—? Sarah needs me?”

“Yea, Sarah and all her Shaker sisters and brothers. We need you to tell us what you know about the apostates, the other people like you who have left our faith and are living here in Languor. We have reason to believe that some of them are trying to hurt us, maybe even to hurt Sarah. Please, if you know what is—”

Rose barely had time to plunge sideways and curl up in a ball on the floor as Caleb, with a sudden surge of energy, waved his empty Jack Daniels bottle and flung it against the wall in back of where she had been standing. The bottle smashed on impact with the wood doorframe, and knife-sharp shards flew back into the room. Rose felt slight pricks as a few pierced the sleeves of her cotton dress.

“Shakers! Them damn Shakers, it's all their fault!” Caleb shouted.

The room reeked of whiskey, and no doubt her clothing would, too, but right now Rose was more concerned with learning what she could from Caleb, then getting as far away from him as possible. Cautiously,
she straightened. Caleb was struggling to open the fresh bottle of Jack Daniels.

“Just tell me one thing, Mr. Cox, and then I'll be glad to leave you alone.” She edged backward toward the door. Caleb stopped his fumbling and frowned at her.

“Tell me why you are angry with the Shakers.”

“Ruined my life,” he mumbled. “Damn Shakers ruined my life.”

“But how? How did we Believers ruin your life?”

“Just did, that's all. Always keeping after me, like I couldn't do a damn thing right. Now ruining Sarah's life. My sweet Sarah.” Again instant tears appeared and tumbled downward. “Keeping her a prisoner so's we can't be together. But I'm gettin' her away from them. I got a way to do it.” He glared at Rose. “I got a way, and I got friends.” He got the bottle open and took another long gulp. Pale golden liquid dribbled from the corners of his mouth. His eyelids shut, and he fell backward on the cot, the nearly full bottle pouring whiskey on his stomach and down onto the blanket.

Rose pried the bottle from his hand and placed it on the orange cart. She hated to leave it for him to drink again when he awakened, but she would never be able to explain walking out of the house with an open bottle of Jack Daniels. She must leave Caleb to wrestle his demons without her interference.

She turned to leave. As she passed the table, she saw a pile of papers. The top sheet appeared to be a notice of some sort, and the typeface looked familiar. She picked it up. It read:

Rose now recognized both the writing style and the typeface. The author of this notice was the creator of the
Languor County Watcher
. She folded the paper and stuffed it in her pocket. She riffled through the pages to see if they were all the same. Wedged underneath the bottom page was a smaller, yellowed piece of paper, handwritten, with one ragged edge, as if it had been ripped from a pamphlet or book of some sort. She skimmed through it.

Rose pushed the small paper back under the leaflets. No matter how drunk Caleb might be now, he would surely miss that intriguing page. Never mind, she would remember those words. Clearly they came from an old Shaker journal. Was this why Samuel's journals were stolen—because they pointed to Faithfull's murderer? Rose was unable to tell if this was Samuel's handwriting, but the anguished and literate style could easily have been his.

Caleb groaned and began to cough. Rose left the room as quickly as she could without crunching on broken glass.

“Rose! How lovely to see you, but what on earth have you been into?” Gennie Malone's expression was caught between shock and amusement. “There aren't enough flowers in the whole store to cover that . . . fragrance.”

Rose had grown accustomed to the whiskey smell embedded in her clothing and was no longer aware of it. “I'll tell you the whole sad story soon enough,” she said. “But let me look at you first.” She hugged Gennie and then held her at arm's length. Gennie was
eighteen now, and developing an air of confidence and serenity, despite her concern for Rose. Her auburn hair was fashionably bobbed and a riot of curls.

“Come along to the back room,” Gennie said. “Customers can shout if they need me.”

She led the way through a curtained doorway to a littered workroom. Rose paused to breathe in the heavy sweetness of fresh flowers. She saw white roses scattered on the table, but their delicate fragrance was overwhelmed by the heady perfume of a vase of white lilies. Everywhere she looked, she saw white flowers.

“Gennie, don't you use colors anymore?”

Gennie laughed, a throatier sound than the giggle Rose remembered and missed. “Of course we do. But these flowers are for a wedding.”

“Ah, of course.” Rose reached out and brushed her finger along a rose petal. She knew all about weddings in the world, had almost had one herself at eighteen. But it was a long time since she had thought about that.

“Let me show you my herb project,” Gennie said, taking Rose's arm, “and then I want to hear why your dress smells like a distillery.” She led the way to a sunny window. A long table held rows of small pots, each containing a lanky herb plant reaching toward the light. Many of the plants were in bloom, with long sprigs of tiny flowers—lavender, pale purple oregano, and faint blue rosemary.

“These are the seedlings we ordered from North Homage months ago. I know they look a bit scraggly just now,” Gennie said. “But I'm trying to get people used to the idea of herb flowers in bouquets. They are healthful, inexpensive, and not nearly so likely to
make people sneeze in the middle of a wedding ceremony.” She gently fluffed the rosemary stems to release their pine-like fragrance. “I know that you would never use flowers for such a frivolous purpose, but you must admit, it makes business sense.”

“Indeed it does,” Rose said, regretting, as she often had, that Gennie would not be following her as North Homage's trustee. “And you would be surprised—from what I'm hearing of other Shaker villages, if it weren't for Wilhelm, we would all be hanging pictures on our walls and gathering bouquets for our rooms. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad for us, after all. God created such beauty. Perhaps He means for us to enjoy it.”

“I won't tell Wilhelm you said that.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, tell me your story.”

Without comment, Rose drew the lurid announcement from her pocket and handed it to Gennie, who read it through with a deepening frown.

“Where did you come by this? I haven't seen it.”

“I suspect it was written by a group of apostates, and they must be limiting their efforts to people they identify as unfriendly to North Homage.” She told Gennie about her encounter with Caleb Cox.

“Rose, I grew up under your wing, and I know you. You are planning to attend this . . . this meeting, aren't you? You mustn't, truly.”

“Gennie, dear, I must find out everything I can about these threats to our survival. Who else can—or will?”

“Please talk to Grady first—please.”

Rose winced as Gennie clutched her arms where
the shards of broken whiskey-bottle glass had pricked her.

“What is wrong? Have you been injured?” Gennie put her hands on her hips and frowned at Rose, who felt the sternness, despite her five-inch height advantage. “Rose, I insist you talk to Grady.”

A bell tinkled in the outer room. “Oh, that's a customer. Look, Grady is expecting me to call about now, so I know he's in his office.” She picked up the telephone receiver and spoke to the operator. “Here, he's coming on the line. Tell him what you've told me.” She handed the phone to Rose and slid between the curtains to the salesroom.

“Tell me the address slowly,” Grady said, after Rose had repeated her story to him. “And, for heaven's sake, Rose, don't go there alone. Just stay home. I'll take care of this.”

“Will Sheriff Brock let you?”

“Harry's gone up to Ohio to fish with a buddy.”

“This seems an odd time to leave, while we're in the midst of these frightening incidents.”

“Between you and me, I think that's why he left. He's used to the sheriff's job being easy, like it usually is around here. He just doesn't want to deal with y'all anymore.”

Grady's candor intrigued Rose. She wondered how long it would be before he tried to unseat Harry Brock as county sheriff. Not long, she hoped.

“Anyway, you stay put, Rose, do you hear me? You're not listening, I can tell. Look, I'll get to that meeting myself, God willin' and the crick don't rise, and I'll find out what's going on.”

T
HE LITTLE-USED STAIRCASE TO THE TOP FLOOR OF
the Trustees' building creaked as if it objected to unexpected feet upon it. The sisters and brethren were all at the midday meal, or Rose hoped they were. But just in case one had stayed behind, she climbed the steps on the balls of her feet to keep her heels from clanking against the wood. She wasn't doing something wrong, she told herself, only difficult to explain.

She reached a large attic room warmly lit in the center by a skylight. With its usual economy, the Society hadn't bothered to run electricity to this floor. It was so rarely used anymore.

An entire wall was lined with built-in drawers and closets, each with a number plate just above the handle. Until the last decade, inhabitants of the Trustees' Office had stored their off-season clothing in this attic. Now, since only a few sisters lived in the building, they simply used empty rooms for storage. The attic held only clothing of the world worn by Believers when they first arrived in North Homage.