Necessary Evil (25 page)

“I haven’t seen
him,” she said. “Something wrong?”

I’d already
decided not to tell her about the new onslaught of holes and she seemed
satisfied with my explanation: “I gave him the letter last night and I was just
curious if he found anything, that’s all.”

“Ooh!” she said,
perking up. “Now things will
really
start happening.”

As I made my
coffee, the back door opened and to my surprise, Randall came in, flushed,
sweaty, dust-stained, and glowing with the after-effects of a good workout. He
nodded to us.

“Fine morning for
a ride,” he said, wiping his forehead breathlessly.

“Did the bike work
well for you?” Aunt Susanna asked. “It’s been such a long time since anyone
rode it.”

“Oh, it worked
like a dream,” he said, and looked at me as he continued. “I covered more than
half of the trails this morning alone.”

Aunt Susanna was
every bit as pleased as I was flabbergasted, and when he left to clean up, I
asked her about the bicycle.

“He asked if we
had one,” she explained with a shrug. “He said he needed to get some exercise in
the mornings if he was going to maintain his health while writing this book. I
remembered Michael’s and thought it might as well not go to waste. I must say,
though, I didn’t take him for a bicyclist.”

“I don’t think he
is,” I said.

I kissed her
goodbye as I left. As I turned on my car, my cell phone vibrated with a text.
It was from Randall.

Covered the other
end of the trails. No holes today. Together, we can cover them all each day and
keep track of our rival’s progress.

Together. My
partner and me. An enormous, crushing weight rolled off my shoulders.

Together.

My reply was
pathetically brief:
Thank you.

It was all I could
think to say.

From Alexander Chase to his mother, circa
1862

Dearest Mother,

We wait for our marching orders and the
dreary weather continues. I can hardly write for fear that the rain will dampen
the paper and render it too soft for my pen. It seems the only soft thing in
this harsh world. I do not mean to be morbid, but I look around at this sea of
men and realize that I am the oldest among them, and this saddens me. I have
had experiences, I have made my mistakes, and lived a life that was less than
what it could have been. For me to offer my life in the service of this nation
seems only a fitting end to my story.

Do not take this to mean that I am ready
to die, for I am not. I have plans, some of which you know, others which must
remain with me for the
present, that
render life too
sweet to consider its termination. But if it is my lot to fall on the fields of
battle, they can at least say that I have had my time and used it. You cannot
say the same of James or Timothy – they have hardly started to shave.

The promise of the nation is marching off
to battle, not in some foreign country, not against a hostile alien, but
against our own kind, men whose ancestors threw off the shackles of white
slavery and joined us in the common cause.

Now we are fighting each other. We are a
divided nation, with half determined to permanently sever the bonds that tether
us, and the other half trying to maintain them. But, how much more divided will
we be once the blood of our sons stains the grassy knolls? When we leave behind
a generation of widows and orphans? When we have churned up the ground, burnt
the towns, and ravaged each other’s fields? We say that we are fighting to free
the slaves and to save the union. The one we may, indeed, achieve - indeed, I
hope and pray that we might, that some good may come out of this war. But
union, true brotherhood, is not to be bought, even at so dear a price.

I fear for my fellow soldiers, these boys
with whom I work and train. I fear for myself and for those I hold dearest. I
fear for those who live in the towns we have yet to invade, Americans in all
but proclamation.

But when by myself, I fear most of all for
our union. Others fought dearly for its creation – we fight equally against its
destruction, but in fighting, are we not just digging a deeper crevasse to
separate ourselves….?

We worked out a schedule. I would run one
end of the trails, Gregory would take the other; if either of us found a hole,
we
would text the other to see the location before we filled
it.

The second part was his idea, because he
was convinced that he could learn something about the diggers from the
placement of their digs. That sounded plausible to me, and I was put out when
he seemed surprised that I wanted to be called to view the holes he found.

“What’s wrong?” I demanded.

He shrugged. “It just doesn’t seem
necessary. I mean, you’re not really an expert…”

“I’ve been tripping over these stupid
things for three years straight. If that doesn’t make me an expert, I don’t
know what does.”

Randall conceded the point and for the
next few days, I ran and he biked the trails in the morning, often meeting in
the middle and walking back together before working our several jobs during the
day. He was still redrafting the project that he referred to as “that blasted
book” and it was impacting what time he could spend researching, something that
he lamented to me more than once as we filled holes together.

“Never collaborate, Warwick,” he told me
once after a particularly grueling conference with his editor and co-writer.
“It’ll be the death of you.”

“Aren’t
we
collaborating?” I asked
innocently.

“No. We’re partners. That’s different.”

I didn’t ask how, and he offered no
explanation.

Joe texted from the west coast and I
continued to ask him about the weather, driving the conversation as far away
from the holes as I could. I managed this with varying degrees of success when
we were just texting; but it was harder when he called, because I hated lying
to him. Fortunately, these calls were infrequent and short: he was extremely
busy and recognized that I had things to do.

“I do miss you, Maddie,” he said one
afternoon. “You just can’t get good lobster out here.”

“You are
such
a poser,” I laughed,
“pretending that you like me just to have an excuse to go out for lobster.”

“Maddie,” he said, his voice husky. “I
don’t have to pretend.”

I felt at times as though I was having an
illicit relationship. I couldn’t talk about it with Aunt Susanna, Lindsay was
more like my little sister than a close friend - and obviously I couldn’t speak
to Gregory about it. In fact, if Joe called when Randall was within earshot, I
let the call go to voicemail rather than risk him overhearing. It was a
reaction I had with him alone.

Gregory would have had no reason to link
us together, except for the photo of us at the Dig’s End party ten years ago in
the office. He was studying it once when I came in to the office to get some
papers. I was in such a hurry that I didn’t notice his interest until he asked,
“You know Joseph Tremonti?”

Startled, I looked up and met his gaze,
but the sun glinting on his glasses veiled his expression.

“He taught a summer class on the farm when
I was in high school,” I said, then turned to my papers as though there was
some urgent business with them. “Why, do you know him?”

“Oh, yes,” he said quietly. “I know
Tremonti.”

I wouldn’t take the bait. I left him in
contemplation, scooting out of the room and counting myself lucky to escape a
more intense interrogation.

Still, I wondered. The academic world was
small enough that the two men knowing each other wasn’t that much of a surprise.
But the way Greg spoke made me wonder if they didn’t have a history together.

If they do, it’s probably best Gregory
doesn’t know about my relationship with Joe. Nor Joe my relationship with
Gregory.

Every morning, Gregory started on one end
of the trails, and I on the other, but we always ended up walking back
together. And since people can’t just walk each morning without making some
conversation, we began to learn something about each other. I talked about the
farm, my office job, my aunt, my uncle, and even a little bit about my personal
family history. Gregory talked to me about his students, his job, his ‘pet’
research projects, and what drew him to history in the first place.

“Just knowing the names and the dates
never seemed to be enough,” he told me. “These were
people,
not
statistics. They deserve to have their whole story told.”

I couldn’t help but agree.

He told me he was contacting other people
to research aspects of the Chase/McInnis case, including that friend in the Charleston
area who was employed in parks and recreation. One morning, as we walked back
to the house after successfully filling another hole, he told me his friend was
now looking into the official investigation of the McInnis robbery and lawsuit
in the local records.

“The robbery report was filed
three
weeks
after the event,” he said. “
Three
weeks, Madeleine! Simply ridiculous.
There is something wrong there, so I’m having Charlie look into it.”

“What do you think he’ll find?” I asked.

“Not ‘he’,” he corrected. “‘She’. Charlene
Schaeffer.”

“Old girlfriend?”

He grinned at me. “Jealous, Warwick?”

I punched his shoulder. “Shut up. What do
you expect her to find?”

“I don’t know. But if there’s anything,
Charlie will find it. She’s like a bloodhound once she’s caught the scent. For
instance, she’s already found out why McInnis’ list-making spinster daughter
wasn’t present at the lawsuit after the war.”

It had never occurred to me to ask that
question. Of course, if Mary Anna McInnis was concerned enough about the
household goods to write a painstaking inventory, it would follow that she
would be the first to report the crime, then follow up with the lawsuit.

I felt rather foolish as I asked, “What
happened to her?”

“She died,” he said matter-of-factly. “She
went to live out the war with relatives in the country and caught a fever. She
never saw the end of the war, nor the beginning of the lawsuit.”

“How sad,” I murmured. “And she was the
one who filed the robbery report?”

“No. That was done by her father.
According to what Charlie’s been able to find out, Mary Anna left to live in
the country about a week before, but that date is suspect.”

I barely heard Greg’s reply. I was
thinking about Mary Anna and her careful inventory, and wondering if she’d left
a diary. What did she think of the war? Was she a segregationist, like her
father? Or did she harbor feelings of a different nature, nurtured and hidden
from the bombastic man she lived with, like Alexander’s mother? Would we ever
know?

Given the length of time and the
scattering of the McInnis fortune, it seemed unlikely to me that we’d ever know
more about Mary Anna McInnis than we did now, and that was a pity. I would have
liked to have known what she thought of the robbery, and the dangerous man from
New Hampshire who had spirited it away. Probably the prevailing image of her, a
snobby, cold woman obsessed with her wealth, was close to the truth. But what
if it wasn’t?

It was an idle thought, but one that
stayed with me until we reached the house – where another idea occurred to me.

As Gregory leaned the bicycle against the
porch and turned to brushing the mud from his shoes, I asked, “Gregory, could
she have taken the goods with her?”

He looked up at me, startled, a lock of
thick, dark hair falling across his face. “Pardon?”

“Mary Anna. Could she have taken the goods
with her? To the farm? I mean, as you said, there was a significant delay in
the report of the theft and she was awfully careful with everything. Couldn’t
she have taken them with her to protect until the end of the war?”

Shaking his head, he knocked the last of
the mud from his shoes. “It’s possible, I guess, but extremely unlikely. She
would have known her father filed the report. Surely she would have told him
what she did and cleared everything up.”

“Unless she was stealing it from him,” I
said.

He stopped and stared at me for a long
moment, blinking. “Why would she do that?”

“I don’t know,” I said, unable to shake
the thought of Mary Chase, living in constant longing for books in the dark New
England forests. “Perhaps… she was trying to escape.”

He opened his mouth to protest, closed it,
then said, “All right. I’ll suggest it to Charlie. If she did steal the stuff,
she would probably have brought it with her to her relatives. I doubt there’s
any trace left, but I’ll ask her to poke around. Some of the family still lives
on the farm. They might know something.”

“The McInnis family still exists down
there?”

“This would be Mary Anna’s mother’s
family, the Carvers.” He held the screen door open for me, and commented as
Trusty and I passed through, “It’s not a bad thought, Madeleine, but I don’t
like the idea. I still think the letter, the last letter, holds the key.”

He hadn’t made much progress in decoding
the letter. He spent hours pouring over it, studying various Civil War era
codes. He even went so far as to check out every Edgar Allen Poe book in the
local library, using Aunt Susanna’s card. But he found nothing. If there was a
code, he couldn’t see it. And while this frustrated him, it did not deter him:
the more he looked at the letter, the more he was convinced that there was a
clue within it.

“What makes you so certain?” Darlene asked
him one night when we were all sitting around the dinner table.

Aunt Susanna and Lindsay had worked
together to cook dinner – a spicy gazpacho and hot tamales - in celebration of
the upcoming riding camp. They insisted that not only Jacob stay for dinner,
but that Gregory come out of his office and join us as well.

“Celebrations aren’t any fun unless they
are shared,” Aunt Susanna said when he protested. “Anyway, you’ll work better
on a full stomach.”

He surprised me by acquiescing gracefully,
and it was a bright, interesting conversation. Darlene was her usual, witty
self, and Aunt Susanna was livelier than I’d seen her in months. She and
Lindsay had been working on the new lessons plans and she grew more and more
enthusiastic about the work.

“I can’t believe it starts next week,” she
kept saying. “I just can’t wait.”

It was then that Lindsay asked about the
investigation, questioning until Gregory and I explained about the
investigation in Charleston - and Greg’s insistence that the treasure was here,
and the clue was in the letter.

“Why do you think that?” Darlene asked,
leaning forward gracefully. Her eyes were shining, almost the same sapphire
blue as the pendant she wore around her neck. The necklace caught the light and
I was startled, a sharp memory piercing my mind.

For a moment, I thought she was wearing
her daughter, Allison’s necklace, a distinctive Native American piece that
she’d never been seen without. This one was similar, with the same leather
cording; but as it quivered against Darlene’s neck, I saw at once that it
couldn’t be the same necklace. For one thing, that necklace was reported
missing - along with Allison - and was used in the descriptions issued to find
her. And for another, Darlene’s stone was cut in a smooth oval. Allison’s had
been square.

No one noticed my reverie, because they
were too interested in Greg’s discourse about the letter. It was the usual one
about his gut feeling and the careful lettering, and so on; but even as he
explained, I could see the enthusiasm waning from his audience. Finally, when
Lindsay and Jacob exchanged significant looks, Gregory jumped up from his
chair.

“It’s easier to understand if I show you
something.” He waved a hand over the table. “Clear this and make sure it’s
clean. I’ll be right back.”

We had finished eating anyway, so no one
protested. Aunt Susanna started the coffeemaker and took Trusty outside,
Lindsay and Jacob cleared the table, and Darlene and I took care of the dishes.
The increasingly giggly teenagers made their way back and forth, jostling each
other until I finally had to issue a warning in order to save the dishes they
carried. As they made their way back to the table, quieter but undaunted,
Darlene turned to me with a dish towel in hand. Her smile was wide across her
expressive face, but the ever-present sadness kept her eyes hollow with loneliness.

“I think that’s what I miss most of all,”
she said. “The noise.”

She didn’t need to explain that she was
talking about Allison. I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded, murmured
something about being sorry, and handed her another dish to dry. I wondered how
long it took before the sting of a loss like hers faded.

As though she heard my thoughts, Darlene
leaned against the counter next to me and responded.

“It’s moments like these that you miss the
most,” she said, watching the two kids wipe down the table. They were talking
in hushed, shy undertones, and it didn’t take much imagination to see what was
happening there. “The little, everyday things. Like eating together, driving
her to school, sitting in the living room and picking on the show we’re
watching. I miss making her dinner, squabbling with her about the calories, and
I even miss the mess she used to leave in the bathroom. I still find myself
grabbing her favorite kind of ice cream when I’m in the grocery store. It’s
been ten years and I still can’t adjust to the idea that she isn’t coming
home.”