A Deadly Shaker Spring (8 page)

Hugo slumped against the back of the chair. “Of course, we don't hide how we live. Anyone who wanted to could find out.”

“Yea, but this writer also knows about how we lived in the past, when we had more Believers. Five or six to a retiring room—we haven't slept like that for at least fifteen years, have we?”

“More like twenty,” Hugo said.

The outside door clicked open and shut as the last resident of the Trustees' building left after a quick breakfast of fresh-baked bread and preserves. Probably heading to the fields to help with spring plowing and planting. Hugo frowned at the paper in front of him.

“Apostates,” he said.

“Yea, those who have left the faith,” Rose agreed. “Or someone who knows them well enough to have learned a great deal about us. Angry, spiteful apostates, not just folks who came to us as children for schooling.”

Though she didn't say so, Rose thought of Richard Worthington. Could he have begun a campaign to destroy them? If he had, though, why tip his hand by visiting with such obvious animosity, then turn coy and print an anonymous diatribe against them? A direct, out-in-the-open grab for power seemed more his style. Still, he could be involved.

“Hugo, can you think of anyone—especially anyone who left the Society fifteen or more years ago—who might do something like this? Anyone with
newspaper experience, perhaps? Someone who hated us dreadfully?”

A shadow passed over Hugo's face. Rose became aware of the silence.

“There was one,” Hugo said. “My memory isn't what it was. I don't recall his name, but he signed the covenant. He worked awhile for the
Cincinnati Enquirer
after he left us, or so I heard.”

“When was this?”

“Must have been twenty, twenty-five years ago now. Yea, it would have been at least twenty-five because it was before I stopped traveling so much to gather souls and took over the Carpenters' Shop. So I didn't really know him, you see. I knew little about what went on then; I was away so much of the time. But Samuel would know about him. They were friends, good friends, as I remember.” Hugo pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and began to clean his spectacles. “But you'd best ask Samuel about all that.”

“M
IND TELLING ME WHERE YA GOT THE MONEY FOR
this?” The beefy clerk behind the counter at Languor Liquors kept a firm grip on the neck of the bottle of Jack Daniels.

Caleb Cox shifted from one foot to the other and winced at the pain behind his eyes as he stared at the bottle. His threadbare jacket hung on his bony shoulders, and he was uncomfortably aware that neither he nor the jacket had bathed recently.

Caleb's confidence was low, but his need was great. He ran his tongue over his cracked lips. He couldn't figure out if he had to answer the guy's question to get his hands on that whiskey. He'd seen the clerk dozens of times, hell, maybe hundreds, he had better things to do than keep count. Did that give the guy the right to ask a question like that? It should be enough that he could pay for it, never mind how he got the money. None of the guy's business.

Did they know each other outside of this podunk little liquor store? Caleb's eyes drifted to the man's face. A closed, stern face. Nope, not a drinking buddy. Caleb didn't always remember his drinking buddies, but he was sure he wouldn't drink with someone so suspicious.

“I sold you a lot of bottles, Caleb,” the clerk said, “but never nothing like this. This here's our best whiskey. Not many folks buy it excepting maybe Mr. Worthington, and he can afford it. So what I'm wondering is, how come you can afford it all of a sudden?”

Caleb breathed in deep and let the air whistle out through the gap where he'd lost a front tooth in a barroom brawl. Or maybe it was back in the war he'd lost that tooth. Yeah, that sounded better, lost his tooth in the Big One.

The clerk's eyes narrowed. It was no use. Caleb knew he'd have to concentrate, come up with some explanation for how he had this money in his hand, enough to buy really good whiskey for a change, stuff that maybe wouldn't rot his stomach out so fast. Truth was, he wasn't sure himself why he was buying Jack Daniels instead of his usual cheap brand. He'd just felt different ever since that day he'd met Sarah in town, while she was shopping for fabric. He'd told her how he'd been a Shaker, too. They'd got to talking. Something about Sarah made him want the best for a change. Prove he was worth her, maybe.

“Won it in a poker game,” Caleb said, grinning with pride at his quickness of mind. Not so boozed up as everybody thought, was he? Could still think on his feet when he had to. And he had to get that bottle.

“You telling me you stayed sober long enough to win that much off somebody? You telling me somebody with that kind of money would even play poker with the likes of you?”

Caleb sagged. Two questions this time, and they were getting harder.

“Well, yeah, that's what I'm sayin',” he finally managed, not sure which question he might be answering, if either.

The clerk eyed him a few more moments, then shrugged. Caleb relaxed, knowing he'd won. It was closing time, and the man was tired.

“Hell, it don't make me no never mind,” the clerk said. “Money's money.” He slipped the bills out of Caleb's shaking hand and replaced them with the whiskey bottle.

Caleb clutched the bottle by the neck and headed for the door before the clerk could hand him his change.

“Keep it,” Caleb tossed over his shoulder as he pulled the shop's screen door carefully toward him to demonstrate his dignity and stone-cold sobriety. The effect was spoiled somewhat when he let go of the door too soon and it whacked him on the rear. Caleb didn't mind too much. He had himself a bottle of real Jack Daniels, and he'd earned it. He was helping Sarah, too. It all made him feel good, like he really deserved a reward.

Caleb sat cross-legged on his army cot, winded from climbing the three floors to his boardinghouse room. Despite the whiskey bottle in his hand, his buoyant mood was fading. There was a time, before Sarah came into his life, when he'd have had that bottle half drunk by now. He took a swig, let it trickle down his throat, savored the burning sensation. He felt it reach his stomach and explode through his veins. Best stuff he'd ever tasted. He raised the bottle to his lips again, hesitated, and lowered it slowly.
Sarah. He would see her today, and he'd made her a solemn promise to cut back on the booze. She'd said her uncle had been a boozer, and it made her sad to watch.

Caleb leaned across the cot and plunked the bottle on the upended orange crate that served as his nightstand. Trouble was, life drunk was plain easier for Caleb. His nightmares struck as the alcohol wore off—the shelling that still blasted his brain every night, though the war had been over for nearly twenty years. Then there was his wasted life, filled only with empty bottles. Sarah was the only happiness he'd known in the past twenty years. Too bad she was a Shaker, but he'd change all that. He'd get her away from that place. He couldn't remember why exactly, but he knew it was their fault his life had gone so bad. Yeah, he'd save Sarah from those people, and then they'd be together, and he wouldn't have nightmares or need to drink anymore.

Content again, Caleb grabbed the bottle and took another swallow. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. He settled on the cot with his thin legs crossed underneath him. He was to deliver the page to Sarah when he saw her next. He knew it was a page torn from a journal, and it held information Sarah wanted, stuff about her mother and who her father was. He knew, too, how she'd react—excited and scared at the same time. Steadying the whiskey bottle against his thigh, he unfolded the paper and read it through. It began in the middle of a sentence.

R
OSE WAS STILL LEARNING TO BE A SPIRITUAL
leader for her people, but she knew that her way was not Wilhelm's, nor was it Agatha's. Wilhelm was a visionary, whose eyes saw only what had once been. He was a powerful force, though, as she'd found out more than once. Agatha was contemplative, closely linked to the realm of spirit, increasingly so as she grew older and more feeble.

Though drawn to spiritual concerns, Rose's practical nature fit perfectly with the world of business: herb sales, real estate purchases, new economic ventures. Once the nation's economy improved, and their own debts lightened, she hoped to dabble again in investments to provide monetary security for the Society. For now, she kept in daily contact with her people, eating with them when she could avoid Wilhelm's demands that she eat at the Ministry House, helping with the ironing on hot afternoons, watching for signs of unhappiness. She prayed, of course, and derived great comfort from that. But if she saw a problem, she wanted to solve it.

Now she had several problems. She extracted a sheet of paper and a pen from her desk drawer and
began a list. A familiar relief settled in as she organized her thoughts and plans on paper. Under “episodes,” she listed:

Rose leaned against her chair back and studied the list. All the incidents had occurred in the space of a week, most within the last few days. Seen individually, they were disturbing, though surely no worse than Believers had experienced since Mother Ann suffered at the hands of an angry mob. Taken together, a pattern formed. The episodes had grown increasingly threatening, beginning with an ordinary theft and proceeding, so far, to attacks on Believers and children and a call for the eradication of the Society. What would be next?

Hugo had suggested she ask Samuel for his memories of apostates, but he was busy planting and would probably remain in the fields until late in the day. She would try to catch him after worship the next morning.

In the meantime, Wilhelm's accusation that she was not watching over Sister Sarah Baker stung, and she could not put it out of her mind. It was time to have
a chat with Sarah, who was recovering well from her injury and had insisted on going back to work in the sewing room.

The Sisters' Shop was a two-story white clapboard building set back from the path that cut through the village center. The shop ran so smoothly that Rose rarely visited, but she always enjoyed doing so. Though not herself skilled in the weaving arts, Rose loved to watch the patterns take shape on the looms. She paused on the first floor to chat with the sisters who were dyeing woolen yarns to earthy golds and browns, then made her way to the second floor sewing room. The plain wooden staircase was well swept and dusted, she was pleased to see.

As she approached the top of the stairs, she heard a subdued voice, undoubtedly Sarah's. The words were unclear, but the voice that responded to them was unmistakable. Rose recognized the familiar grating tone of Sister Elsa Pike. She had momentarily forgotten that she had reassigned Elsa to the sewing room.