Death of a Dyer (8 page)

“Yes. I need to stop in Dugard and talk to a few people anyway. Besides,” he said, looking for the bright side, “Potter already knows you as my housekeeper.” Lydia’s mouth twitched down unhappily. Rees did not know how to correct his thoughtless comment without making it worse. “I’ll speak to David,” he said, rising to his feet.

“Speak to me about what?” David came out of the mudroom. Lydia uttered a squeak of dismay. Mud from the yard coated his boots and smelled strongly of cow.

“Finding a girl to help Lydia Jane. What are you doing in the house so early?”

“Most of the lads helping me have to be home in time to finish their own milking,” David said with a twist of his lips.

He looked at Lydia uncertainly. She nodded. “I’ll put on my boots.” And when Rees stared at her in surprise, she added, “I’m not too fine a lady to milk. And David needs the help.”

And how clever of Lydia to offer it, Rees thought. Working with David would go a long way toward overcoming his reservations about her place in their lives. “I’ll help, too,” Rees said, wondering what would happen if she returned to Zion. Would David feel abandoned all over again? Or would he be glad? Rees wished he’d considered David’s reactions when he’d invited Lydia to Dugard, but it was too late now.

“Thank you,” David said in surprise. “We’ll finish all the more quickly.”

Lydia disappeared into the mudroom to slip on her clogs. Abandoning his stew, Rees followed them out of the house and to the barns. Although David and Lydia did not speak, their silence was one of joined purpose. Rees didn’t like it. He wanted them to be friendly, yes, but not enjoy a relationship of their own. What if he didn’t wed Lydia? Or worse, what if he did? When he started traveling, it would be like leaving Dolly behind all over again.

*   *   *

Rees rose before dawn on Saturday, but David was awake before him. He’d already packed a large basket filled with jugs of honey and several crates of eggs into the wagon. He was standing by the wagon holding a table, Dolly’s table, when his father joined him in the yard. Rees looked at the table and the rough chair that accompanied it. “Mother’s table…” David said. “I wasn’t sure.…”

Rees nodded. He remembered building them for Dolly to display the cheeses, as well as the milk and butter she sold. Although most of the farms hereabouts kept cattle, Dolly had treated her cows almost like pets, and in response they had given such sweet creamy milk, Dolly’s cheese and butter had been famous. Rees remembered teasing her that she loved her herd more than she did him.

“I don’t think your mother would mind,” Rees said.

“She really is gone,” David said, his eyes glistening with tears.

Rees put his arm around his son’s shoulder. David knew his mother had passed away. But at the sight of her table and her chair, he felt the cutting pain of her loss, fresh and immediate, all over again. “Not completely,” Rees said. “Not as long as we remember her.”

“And now Miss Lydia…”

Rees struggled to think of something comforting to say that would not be disloyal to either woman. “No one will ever replace your mother,” he said. “Ever. But she would not want either of us to live in misery. You know that. She would want us to be happy.…” As he spoke, he realized that although he had intended to comfort David, he was also comforting himself.

David pondered his father’s words for a moment and then heaved a sigh. “She wouldn’t mind if Miss Lydia used her table and chair, would she?”

“No,” Rees said.

David nodded and picked up the table.

“Breakfast,” Lydia announced from the porch. “Just oatmeal and coffee, I’m afraid.”

David gave the rough wood a curious little pat before positioning it in the wagon. Rees placed the chair in after it and clapped a hand on David’s shoulder. “She would be proud of you,” he said as they walked to the house.

They set out for town as soon as breakfast was done and dawn edged the horizon with pink. A cavalcade of wagons already lumbered toward town, and by sunrise when Rees reached Dugard’s outskirts, the congestion was too great to allow entrance onto Market Street. Rees turned Bessie and joined a line of wagons going around to the east and entering town by way of Water Street. Rees pulled into the yard by Isaac’s smithy and jumped out. David grabbed the table and set off at a run for the space his mother had long ago claimed as her own. Rees followed with the chair and the basket of honey.

By the time he found David, he’d erected the table and stood at guard. “I’ll get the eggs and Lydia,” said his son, and hared off again. Rees deposited the basket of honey and set up the chair. Then he stood awkwardly by the table, certain that the farmers and their wives were staring at him. But when he looked around, everyone seemed busy and he caught no stray glances.

When he finally saw David and Lydia approaching, Rees stood aside. Although Lydia cast him a quick glance, she did not speak. As she and David spread out the jugs of honey and a crate of eggs, Rees began walking away from them, toward the Contented Rooster.

It was once a dark and dirty tavern on the shores of Dugard Pond, but Jack and Susannah Anderson had transformed it into an airy and popular coffeehouse. Today, market day, the line stretched out the door and to the lane in front.

“Rees!” The shout spun the weaver around. Samuel Prentiss, Rees’s brother-in-law, pushed his way through the crowds toward him. “I thought you might be here, selling the harvest your sister and I produced with our toil.”

“There isn’t enough of it to sell,” Rees said. “I may have to purchase hay and corn for the winter.”

“You stole that farm from us, and now my children will starve.” Sam thrust his face belligerently into Rees’s.

“I took back what was mine,” Rees said, stepping back from Sam’s pungent breath. “And you and Caro could have remained, managing the farm and living on the harvests as well as on the money I gave you from my weaving, if only you hadn’t pushed David out. He is heir to that farm, not a servant.”

“He’s a spoiled brat. And that farm belonged to Caro’s parents as well as yours,” Sam said. “She has as much right to it as you do.”

“Except that Dolly and I paid some to my parents for it,” Rees retorted. “And I was left it in my father’s will when he passed on. Caro’s portion bought you a small holding; what happened to that?” An ugly flush rose into Sam’s cheeks and drained away leaving his face dead white.

Rees, who remembered Sam’s temper from his boyhood, adjusted his stance, just in case Sam rushed him. But Prentiss looked at the excited and attentive crowd and instead whirled around and fled. In the space of a few heartbeats, he disappeared into the throng.

If Sam was here, then probably Caroline was, too. Rees looked around for her but didn’t see her. For the first time, he wondered what her life was like with Sam Prentiss. Consciously relaxing his fists, Rees started walking again to the Rooster. But his racing pulse did not slow for several minutes, and by then he had joined the queue into the coffeehouse.

“What was all the shouting about?” asked the sunburned fellow ahead of him. “I couldn’t see anything.”

“Oh, just an argument,” Rees said with a shrug. He hadn’t expected his first meeting with Caroline and her husband to go well, but Sam’s violent belligerence surprised him.

The farmer in front of the first fellow turned around. Although in homespun, the linsey-woolsey had been dyed a dark blue. “Will?” Rees looked at the man without recognition. “Adam Barlow.” Rees stared in amazement. This grizzled fellow with the paunch was the elfin Adam? “I heard you were back. Are you planning to settle down on the farm now?”

“For a little while,” Rees said. “Nice to see you again.”

As the line moved inside, other men recognized him and he developed a rhythm. “Yes, I’m back for a little while. I still weave. No, I don’t plan to sell the farm; my son is managing it right now.”

He was relieved when, on some unseen signal, everyone else cleared out. He found a table and sat down. Jack Jr., as lanky and towheaded as his father had been at that age, brought him a slice of Sally Lunn bread. “Coffee?”

“Please.”

“I’ll tell my parents you’re here.”

A few minutes later, Susannah hurried out. Her curly hair sprang out from under her cap in tight ringlets. “Willie,” she cried, scurrying across the floor. “How nice to see you again.” Rising to his feet, Rees gestured her to a seat at the table. Dimpling up at him, she sat down, saying, “Are your ears burning? Everyone is talking about you. You’re studying Nate’s death, I hear.” Rees stared at her in consternation. She smiled mockingly. “This is a small town, remember? Not much goes on that we don’t hear about.”

Rees offered her a sickly smile and replied with as much gallantry as he could muster. “I knew I should apply to you and Jack for answers.”

As he spoke, Jack came out of the back, his belly straining against his apron. An old schoolmate, although a few years older, the lanky boy Rees once knew had matured into a balding, self-confident businessman. “Do you and Suze have a few moments to speak to me?”

“Of course. None of us wants a killer running loose.”

Rees eyed his old friend with interest. “You didn’t like Nate, if I recall,”

“You recall correctly,” Jack said with a nod. “He exhibited a sweeter side to you. But you didn’t live in town, and you missed a lot of school. You never saw him bully the smaller boys.”

Rees said nothing. He
had
seen that side. He recalled many a fistfight with Nate, who would fling himself upon Rees in a sudden frenzy. But even as a boy, Rees had been taller and stronger than most, and Nate always lost to him. “Did he bully his family?” he asked, although he recalled no bruises or marks upon Molly or the children.

“I don’t know.” Jack looked at his wife. “Do the women talk?”

Rees smiled at Susannah, who was frowning at her husband. “I hope so,” he said. Female observation and discussion had helped him in the past more times than he could count.

“With maturity came a certain steadiness,” she said. “He was almost too benign. Many of us thought Richard could use a firmer hand.”

“Who would want to murder him?”

“Other than Richard?” Susannah asked with a smile.

“No one,” said Jack. “Everyone. He was tough in business but reclusive. Even I, who grew up with him, always felt I didn’t know him well.” Susannah nodded.

“And Richard?” Rees said. “What do you think of him?”

Jack and Susannah exchanged a long look. “I wouldn’t want to accuse him of murdering his father,” Jack finally admitted.

His wife nodded in agreement. “But he was a bully, too,” Susannah said. “Jack Jr. used to come home covered with bruises.”

“Like father, like son,” Jack murmured.

“I’m looking for the boy now,” Rees said. “I want to talk to him before the constable jails him.”

Both Jack and Susannah shook their heads. “We haven’t seen him,” Jack said.

“I thought he might be with Augustus,” Rees said.

“You know about Augie?” Susannah said in surprise.

“I know a little. He’s Rachel’s boy and grew up with Richard. ‘Closer than brothers,’ that’s what I was told.”

“Augie
is
a nice boy,” Susannah said. “He attended school for a little while. Jack Jr. liked him.”

Jack frowned darkly. “Until some of our more enlightened men wanted him removed,” he said. “They didn’t want their children attending school with a ‘darky.’”

“It was sad. Augie really had more potential as a scholar than Richard,” Susannah agreed.

“But Nate apprenticed him to Isaacs,” Jack said, jerking his head toward the street outside.

Susannah leaned forward. “He might know where Richard hides,” she agreed. “Augie is probably Richard’s only true friend.” Rees looked at her, catching something in her voice. They’d come through the grades together, and in some ways he knew her better than he knew either of his sisters. She was keeping something back.

“What else?” he asked.

“Tell him,” said Jack.

“Well, it is commonly believed the two boys are not just as close as brothers but
are
brothers. Sons of Nate, you know.” Rees thought of Rachel and nodded. Of course the boys were brothers. “Nate never denied it,” Susannah said. “You must have noticed Molly’s antipathy toward Rachel.”

Rees nodded. “Molly makes no effort to hide it.” And Suze didn’t disguise her dislike of Molly. “How old is Augustus? Is he the same age as Richard?”

“No. Augie is the older, by a few years.” She paused and then went on in a rush. “Rachel delivered Augie not quite eight months after Nate purchased her.”

“Rachel didn’t say,” Rees said.

“Of course not,” Susannah said tartly. “You’re a man; a white man. You need a woman’s touch in a matter of such delicacy. And it won’t be me,” she said, seeing the question forming on his lips.

They sat in silence. Rees pondered his next line of inquiry. “Where would Richard go for refuge? Does he have any friends besides Augie?”

“Well,” Susannah said after a moment’s thought, “Richard is courting Elizabeth Carleton. James’s daughter,” she added for Rees’s benefit.

“He’s married?” Rees asked in surprise, recalling the doughy boy he’d known.

“Yes. He brought a wife home from London. Charlotte is a daughter of minor nobility and is said to want titles for her daughters.” Susannah pursed her lips in disapproval. “We Colonials aren’t well bred, you know.”

“Not Richard, then,” Rees said.

“Huh. Nate fancied himself local aristocracy,” Jack said, “and I expect Richard imbibed that arrogance with his morning cider.”

Rees considered that. “I didn’t even know James had come home from London,” he said. He clearly remembered the circumstances surrounding Carleton’s move to London, since he’d caused it. At eleven, James had been an insufferable little prig and a Tory while Rees was already a staunch patriot. He had thrashed James into swearing fealty to the Continental Congress. Henry Carleton, nicknamed King because of his arrogant manner, promptly sent servants after Rees to administer a severe beating. He wouldn’t yield even then, bloodying a few noses with his own flying fists. His defiance won him the status of hero, and the other children took revenge upon James in a myriad of petty ways. King Carleton sent his son to England to complete his schooling, and Rees hadn’t seen him since.