Frail Blood (25 page)

Emma shook her head.

"Aaron Machado did
not
have sexual intercourse
with his own sister, resulting in a pregnancy?"

Emma's cheeks flamed prettily as she shook her head again.

Releasing her hand, he rested both elbows on the table,
watching her with careful eyes. "I am sorry to be so blunt, but I must
know every detail of what Aaron told you."

She placed her fork on the table beside her plate and
clutched her fists in her lap.

"As she originally claimed, Mrs. Machado was the woman
who delivered a child that night?" he pressed.

Emma nodded.

"But Mr. Machado was not the father of that child?"

A look of revulsion darkened Emma's expression. "I was
wrong, Malachi. As unthinkable as the idea is, I thought that Aaron had seduced
his sister, but he was innocent of that crime."

"Such goings-on are horrific, but they occur more often
than we want to acknowledge." Malachi twisted his lips in disgust. "But
how can you be so sure of Aaron's innocence? His claim alone isn't sufficient
to clear him."

"I believe him." He could tell by the stubborn set
of her jaw that she wouldn't budge on that point.

"Then, what happened to persuade you?" Malachi
swung away from the chair where he sat and cleared their dishes from the table,
feeling his temper and impatience rise in equal proportion. "Is your
original theory pure bunk? Did Alma fire that second shot and murder Joseph in
actuality? Is she lying when she says she fired only once?"

"Don't raise your voice," she complained. "I'm
trying to understand this murky business. It is difficult for me to speak of
such – affairs."

He planted his fists firmly on his hips and glared across
the room. "Tell me this, Emma. If Machado, Sr., is not the father of Joseph,
Jr., then who in hell is? Was Mrs. Machado having an affair? Or do you propose
that she was the victim of an immaculate conception?"

"Hardly that, for it would imply that Mrs. Machado was
virginal." Her voice sounded as if she'd bitten into horseradish root. "I'm
saying that Mr. Machado was not the only male in that household."

A blade of shock riveted his body as he sank into the chair next
to her. "Are you contending that she – that Mrs. Machado actually – ?"

"Do you see? Even
you
cannot speak the words
aloud."

Her face looked so stricken that Malachi wrapped both arms
around her and whispered into her hair. "Mrs. Machado seduced her own son?"

Unthinkable.
A mother encouraging, even permitting,
sexual congress with her son? Malachi could not imagine a sin more heinous, nor
an act so wickedly despicable.

"That is what Aaron claims." Emma burrowed her
face into his shoulder so that he could hardly understand her muffled words. "If
you had seen his agony, you would not doubt him."

Malachi inhaled deeply, attempting to organize his jumbled
thoughts. "One time?" he asked hopefully.

She shook her head.

"When did the ... affair begin?"

"Aaron was thirteen."

Shock rippled through him again, but yes, Malachi could
imagine it. The powerful changes in a young boy's body, the wickedness of a
self-absorbed and selfish mother.

Emma and he sat locked together for long minutes until he
finally released her, holding her at arm's length. "As hideous as their
behavior is – and criminal – it is no evidence that someone other than Alma
Bentley murdered Joseph Machado. We have to allow that Alma could be lying to
us."

His own words were a knell clanging its death tones in his
mind. He wanted desperately to believe Alma's account, to believe the poor,
misguided girl was guiltless of actual murder.

"Unless ... " Emma rose to pace the length of the
kitchen. She bounced her fingertips together, for all the world, like the
lawyerly Portia making her case for the pound of flesh without a drop of blood.
"Unless Joseph knew about the relationship and threatened to tell the
authorities."

"What did Aaron say about that?"

"He claims no one has known all these years save him
and his mother. That he returned home to see his brother – son – God, how
terrifying – and make a full confession."

"There you have it, then. Aaron, brimming with guilt
all these years, confronts his mother – or his father and – "

Emma took up his line of thinking. "And threatened to
make the awful secret a public scandal."

"Then someone took advantage of Alma's attack on Joseph
to silence him permanently."

Emma stopped in the middle of the room and gazed at him with
wide, frightened eyes. "But who? Which one of the remaining Machados would
kill Joseph to keep the secret?"

God, Malachi thought, any one of them could be the culprit. The
father, enraged at the unnatural relationship of his wife and elder son. The
mother, terrified her perverted secret would be exposed. The daughter – could
the daughter have known the truth all these years? And how might that knowledge
have affected her?

There were plenty of suspects at the ready.

"What motivation would Phoebe have?" he asked.

Emma thought a moment, biting her lower lip. "Phoebe could've
been afraid the scandal would harm any marriage prospects she had," she
ventured.

"What prospects?" he scoffed. "As sorry as I
am to say the obvious, Phoebe Machado is an unattractive spinster unlikely ever
to receive an offer of marriage."

Emma crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed them as if
she were chilly. Her face showed her turmoil. "Is it conceivable, Malachi?
Are we really postulating that such degradation is possible?"

"You heard Aaron's story from his own lips. You
believed him."

She nodded even as uncertainty flitted across her face, the
same doubt he experienced.

What hellish secret were they about to unleash?

Chapter 26

“The evil that men do lives after them, the good is
oft interred with their bones” –
Julius Caesar

In the end, after much discussion in Sarah's kitchen, with
the woman hovering about like an annoying fly, Malachi and she decided their
limited time was best served by involving the Sheriff Nathan Butler, laying
Aaron Machado's claims before him, and having him investigate the Machado
family. Malachi would alert his friend the very next morning and convince him
to begin investigating Aaron.

"We'll set off tomorrow for Bakersfield if Nathan is
free."

"What should I do?" Emma asked.

"Nothing." Malachi's mouth had taken on the set
line Emma recognized when he expected no opposition from her. "You've
risked far too much already by confronting Aaron without knowing what he is
capable of."

"He was an innocent victim!"

"Perhaps, but you didn't know that when you gamboled
off to see him without telling anyone."

Emma bristled and drew herself up to her full height. "I
have never
gamboled
– not once in my entire life!"

"I forbid it." He growled, narrowed his eyes, and
gave a look that bespoke of dire consequences if she disobeyed him.

She fumed internally. How dare he order her about like a
common foot soldier? She hadn't allowed her parents to determine the course of
her life and she certainly would not allow Malachi Rivers to do so. Did he
think because he had bedded her she would tuck her tail between her legs and
whimper off like a cowering puppy?

But if anything, she'd learned from her parents that subtle
resistance was far more powerful than outright rebellion. She pouted and
grimaced, wheedled and whined – Malachi was far too clever to be taken in by false
sweetness from her – and thus convinced him that she'd, albeit reluctantly,
follow his advice. Bah, more like orders!

"It's much better this way, Emma," he whispered,
his concern almost convincing her to abandon her subterfuge. "I should be
quite grieved to lose you so soon after deflowering you."

Had he not jested, she might've given up on the
preposterously daring plan that had wormed its way into her brain. But the
levity with which he uttered those words –
I should be quite grieved to lose
you so soon after deflowering you
– strengthened her resolve to disobey.

Let Malachi and Sheriff Butler travel to Bakersfield to
ascertain for themselves what she was already convinced of – that Aaron Machado
was the dupe in this Old Testament tragedy – the sex reversal of the story of
Lot and his daughters.

Emma's time was far better spent in speaking to the women of
the Machado household. For she knew from having grown up with her mother that
the female was the more deadly of the species, and she was in no doubt that
either Phoebe or Mrs. Machado was the wicked specter in this ill-fated tale.

#

Prudent enough to wait until the men folk had taken off on
their journey of tilting at windmills, Emma began her own exploration the next
morning. Malachi had enjoined Sheriff Butler to send a wireless telegraph
message to the sheriff in Bakersfield. To Emma's delight he'd also persuaded
Stephen that the story might be a newsworthy one, so her uncle became the third
member of their adventure.

Good, no men about to influence or control her activities.

Now, however, as the early winter sun had faded to a purple
and pink dusk in the sky behind the ostentatiously palatial mansion belonging
to the Machado clan, Emma wondered if she'd been precipitous in encouraging
Stephen to go. She might've benefitted from his reassuring presence.

The gloom of the Machado domicile lay like Hawthorne's
seven-gabled house, all dark shadows and looming shades. For the first time she
realized how remote the place lay from any hub of activity, sitting as it did
like a bird of prey some ten miles east of Placer Hills.

She'd saddled and ridden Old Stripling from her home and now
hitched him to the post at the front of the outbuilding, a barn badly in need
of several coats of paint. Why had the Machados allowed their property to fall
into such ruin when they had the services of two strapping young men, aided by
a hefty fortune to hire any number of workers?

Emma shivered in the cooling air and drew her cloak more
closely around her.

Raising her hand to the door knocker, she hesitated a moment
before lifting the bizarre brass gargoyle and rapping it several times against
the base. Around her she encountered only barren silence, not the peaceful
quiet of the country woods where her own home lay, but the deafening and deadly
silence of expectation.

Like the awaiting of some imminent calamity.

Her breath sounded loud and labored to her ears, as if she'd
run a great distance – or fled from a grave disaster – and an eerie feeling of
danger rippled down her spine.

The thought crept into her mind that she ought to quit the
place, jump right back on Old Stripling and gallop as fast as the mare could
race to the safety of home. She shook her head. Foolish to succumb to nothing
more than overwrought nerves. She was skittish as a young filly. How Malachi
would tease her if he knew she'd run away from two harmless old women! She was
no frail flower to be crushed so easily.

Besides, she still carried Papa's Deringer in her handbag.

Emboldened by that thought, and having banged the hideous
knocker several more times, she abandoned her position on the front landing and
strolled around to the right of the mansion, the side that led away from the
barn and her grazing horse.

The posterior of the house was even less appealing than the
front. What had clearly been a verdant garden of roses lay as fallow and barren
as the Mojave Desert surrounding the elder Machado's small cottage three
hundred miles south of here. Perhaps such barrenness had been passed along in
the blood with the dark Portuguese floridness and fleshy body.

The ruination of gardens was something Emma deplored, the
neglect somehow more devastating than unwatered orchards or untended fields. The
roses had been allowed to flourish unchecked, their dead heads withered like
dried apples, their petals curled and brown at their base. All this potential
lusciousness shriveled and dying chilled Emma nearly as much as the thought of
the wickedness that had transpired within the walls of the mansion.

Where was everyone? The master of the house would likely
have returned to the tending of his crops, but surely Phoebe and her mother
would not have resumed their social activities so soon after Joseph's death.

And what of their servants? An estate this size must require
half a dozen men and women to keep it running smoothly.

But she could see such was not the intent of this house – to
run efficiently – and recalled the testimony of the housekeeper about the
paucity of servants in the Machado home.

Were there so few servants by design?

Emma did not doubt that what she did next constituted a
serious breach of ethics, propriety, and legality, but that damned curiosity of
hers must be satisfied. She strolled casually to the rear entrance. If anyone
came bounding from that direction, she would claim befuddled ignorance.

When the heavy back door gave way to her tugging, she swung
it wide open and placed her foot carefully on the single concrete step. Two
more steps led upwards to what was clearly a work or storage room off the
kitchen area. Even from the doorway she could glimpse a large coal stove and
pantry.

Hours later she would determine that her intense caution,
focused directly ahead of her, accounted for her lack of awareness from behind
her. Suddenly the air swooshed out of her body and she pitched forward, landing
on her hands and knees and feeling the great massive weight of someone's body
anchoring her to a grimy floor.

A pair of large, pasty hands clamped around her neck from
behind her, squeezing until the blackness of the store room dwindled to
pinpoints of light behind her bulging eyes. Then stygian darkness overtook her
brain.

#

The train ran faster than horses and with less damage to
horseflesh, so Malachi and his two companions battled the dust and nuisance of
The People's Railroad. They arrived in Bakersfield in the late afternoon. To
their surprise, Sheriff Wilfred Kern waited for them at the station platform. Several
horses were tethered to the post where he stood.

"Been a change in plans," Kern said after the
introductions were made.

"How so?" asked Malachi.

"Something's happened to Aaron Machado." While he
waited for their stunned expressions to abate, the sheriff unhitched the horses
and made them ready for travel. "We'd better take a ride out there so you
can see for yourselves."

A dozen questions flew through Malachi's mind, but
overriding them all and planting a fist of steel right in the vicinity of his
heart was the single perplexity of Emma's safety. He pushed the worry aside. At
this moment he knew she was tucked into the fierce arms of her loyal servants,
Sarah and Ralston. Exactly where he'd left her.

As they rode the several miles to the Machado place, a
single refrain ran through his mind. Thank God Emma didn't have to witness
whatever lay on the outskirts of this god-forsaken, arid land.

An aura of infertility hung about the land as if someone had
declared it too desiccated for life or optimism to flourish. Several of Kern's
men stood at attention outside the open doorway to the small house. Even from
the roadside Malachi could smell the rank, coppery stench of blood and offal.

Of violent death.

"Nobody's touched anything, Sheriff," a tall,
lanky deputy said. "We was waitin' for you."

Kern nodded and pushed the door open wider, indicating
Sheriff Butler, Malachi, and Stephen should advance before him.

The cottage interior was brightly lit, the front room facing
as it did the western sun. Nothing in the sitting room looked amiss and Malachi
glanced inquiringly at the Bakersfield sheriff who jerked his head to the right.
The four of them proceeded down a narrow hall and veered to the left into a utilitarian
kitchen fixed with an inside pump and a wood-burning stove.

Their eyes swung immediately to the carnage arranged like a
stone titan at the brightly-painted kitchen table. The man Malachi presumed was
Aaron Machado slumped onto the table, his back toward them, his face turned
their way. His right arm dangled from his side, but otherwise his body remained
seated in a grisly parody of a man laying his head atop a table to rest a
moment and subsequently falling asleep.

But of course, Aaron was not sleeping. The pool of blood
flooding the smooth tabletop, the bits of brain matter speckling his head, and
the firearm which lay neatly just beyond the reach of his right fingertips
testified to that stark fact.

The three of them froze like unwilling players in a macabre
tableau for several long moments, taking in the violent scene before them.

"Suicide?" Sheriff Butler finally asked, walking
carefully around the stiffening body.

"'Pears so," Kern replied around the sodden end of
a hand-rolled cigarette. "Can't figure out why, though? Any ideas about
that?"

Malachi felt Nathan Butler's eyes on him and guessed he
wondered why his good friend had dragged him down south on a dusty rail,
offering little conversation and less explanation. For that part, Malachi was
truly sorry. His mind had been wrapped up in his own dark thoughts, so fraught
with awful possibilities and wicked scenarios that he'd scarcely muttered a
word. Stephen, normally ebullient to a fault, had been equally silent.

"You knew the man better than us," Butler said at
last.

Kern lifted his shoulders in half-hearted disinterest. "Didn't
know the man all that well myself. Solitary sort of fellow who kept to himself
most of the time."

The cigarette dangled precariously as he studied Sheriff
Butler. "But you were sure het on having me be here when you visited
Machado. I figure you know something I don't."

Stephen Knight stepped up to the body and bent to peer at
the ghastly wound at his right temple, but otherwise remained silent. Malachi
wondered if he'd print an article about this sordid scene. He hoped not. The
prurient nature of the death of one brother and the suicide of another would
add further titillation to an already sensational trial. And do Alma no good.

Butler nodded toward Malachi. "Your show, buddy."

"Apparently Aaron Machado had a guilty secret which was
about to be revealed to the entire world," Malachi said, offering the
shortened version. Hell, for all he knew that was the
only
version.

"Ah, that would do it, then," Kern said.

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," Stephen said at
last, pointing to the dead man's head where the bullet hole looked far too
small for the profusion of blood that oozed onto the table and dripped onto the
floor.

"What?" Malachi asked, moving to stand behind
Stephen and peering over his shoulder as he bent to examine the neat circular
hole in Aaron's temple.

"Take a look, Sheriff Kern," Butler suggested,
apparently understanding Stephen's meaning right away.

"Well, shit," Kern muttered after a few minutes of
close scrutiny.

"What?" Malachi repeated.

"That's no self-inflicted wound," Kern said. "There's
no powder burns around the wound. Machado didn't pull the trigger."

"Unless his right arm's about five feet long, wouldn't
you say?" Stephen Knight asked.

"At least," Kern confirmed. "Goddamn. Looks
like we got a murder on our hands, gentlemen."

He turned steely eyes around the room to encompass the
innocuous-looking kitchen, past Stephen and Butler to land squarely on Malachi.