Power in the Blood (98 page)

The summons to Leo’s office was delivered by Jenks. When Rowland arrived he found Leo pacing the floor in his customary circles, his lengthening brow creased by concern. Rowland took a chair without waiting for an invitation, so firm was the bond between them now.

“On my desk,” said Leo, without ceasing to pace. “A letter from her.”

“Her?”

“Zoe. Read it aloud, please.”

Rowland picked up the sheet. “‘Dear Leo, unless you can explain to me by return mail the significance of the green book and your attempt to cheat me of what is rightfully mine, there will be legal repercussions such as you have never known. I mean what I say. Explain yourself with speed and honesty. Regards, Zoe.’”

Leo flung himself into his overstuffed chair and spun it to the left and right in consternation. “How does she know …?” he asked himself. “How could she possibly be aware …?”

“Of what? Green book? What might that be?”

“It isn’t a book, it’s a file, a perfectly ordinary folder, which happens to be green.”

“And the perfectly ordinary folder contains?”

“The agreement I made with her. The papers she signed.”

“Nothing else?”

“The report prepared by my attorney on the exact nature of Zoe’s legal ownership of Brannan Mining. The file is rather thick, which makes it resemble a book, I suppose, but how in hell’s name can she possibly know about it? Someone is spying for her, Rowland, and I want to find out who it is before she’s given more shells to fire against me, by God!”

“This is dangerous ground the lady has stepped upon. Her knowledge must be scant, or she would state what she knows, rather than challenging you to provide it. Whatever clues her spy is feeding her, they can only be scraps, Leo, cryptic bits and pieces.”

“Even so, I want it stopped!”

“Of course. You regard your attorney as being above suspicion?”

“Absolutely. He candidly admits that his role in the deception of Zoe is a criminal offense. He’s the last person who would betray me.”

“And his staff?”

“My own people, but unknown to me personally.”

“And there is where you’ll find your spy, I don’t doubt.”

“Find him for me, Rowland, and when you have him, don’t let the fellow know we’re onto him. I wish to anticipate every move in Zoe’s game.”

“Leo, the game should never have begun. Zoe should have taken her million and retired to a life of ease. The fact that she has not, and chooses instead to provoke you with threats, suggests to me that the game must be ended immediately. You know the stakes, Leo.”

“I do, and am determined to win any battle she cares to mount against me.”

“Leo, there is no time here for open warfare. Zoe has elected to burrow back into your life by subterfuge. You must stop her by different means. I can arrange it, without further effort on your part. You understand, of course, that we are discussing the endgame.”

“The endgame.”

“One move, out of the blue, and it will be over and done with. Finished.”

“I understand you.”

“Then shall I proceed?”

“Immediately. Find the one responsible for telling her about the green file. I won’t have traitors in my business.”

“And the endgame?”

Leo spun his chair around to face the window. Rowland studied the back of his head; Leo was becoming very bald there. The silence between them lengthened.

Eventually Leo said, “I suppose you must proceed.”

Rowland left the room, quietly closing the door.

She was proud of herself for demanding an answer from Leo. It would be interesting to see if he responded with protestations of innocence, or threats and bluster. He was a weak man in many ways, and would very likely try the first means before the second. In either case, Zoe would resist his efforts to silence or placate her. It was not so much the money at stake (she assumed that was the only commodity he could cheat her of) as the principle of justice. Zoe did not know yet how strong were her grounds for accusing him, since her correspondent had failed to provide specific information. In the beginning, at least, it would be a game of bluff. She felt confident of out-bluffing Leo, a man with so little strength of character he had allowed his life to be diverted by nothing more than a pretty face and a shapely pair of arms. He was despicable, really, and it would be a fine thing to bring him down several pegs.

She told Omie nothing of these developments, but of course Omie was aware, in her own sly fashion, of the tension emanating from her mother, and its familiar source.

“You hate Papa very much now, don’t you?”

“Stop calling him Papa. He was no more your papa than the other one. Both have betrayed us. Call him Leo if you must mention him at all.”

“You hate Leo more now than you did before.”

“And if I do, I have my reasons. Please keep your nose out of my thoughts, or I shall become angry with you.”

“You already are,” grumbled Omie. “You’re angry with everyone about everything. You’re all black and swirly inside.”

“Then don’t look, do you hear me?”

“Yes.” Omie pouted, and went away to throw twigs at squirrels, her most recent pastime. The squirrels would become most agitated when the twigs hit them without visible means of movement, and Omie took a grumpy delight in watching them scramble frantically about in the cottonwood tree, trying to see what it was that threw twigs at them with such malicious accuracy.

Zoe called every other day at the post office to see if any further mail from her informant had arrived. It had been twelve days since she sent her ultimatum to Leo, but he had not responded so far. Zoe often pictured two envelopes waiting for her in the general delivery pigeonhole behind the postmaster’s counter—one from Leo and one from her informant—but came away each time with nothing more than a cheery greeting from the man who had set her quest in motion by taking the trouble to hand-deliver a letter.

As the days passed, frustrating Zoe with their mild weather and uneventful hours, she began losing interest in the matter, surprising herself by the lack of concern she now felt. She became convinced her gradual dismissal of the indefinable outrage committed against her by Leo was of no real consequence; again, she told herself that discovering the man was a cheat was in itself not such a great surprise, and if he had stolen from her a fortune of some kind, what did it matter: she had more than enough for herself and Omie; demanding more from him might be tantamount to lowering herself into the same moral quagmire he obviously inhabited. Revenge was not a notion that Zoe, a gentle woman by inclination, could goad herself with indefinitely. Perhaps it was just as well, she told herself, that no letters arrived to stir up her feelings all over again. It was time to think instead of a permanent home somewhere, a place in which to begin anew with the one person in all the world Zoe knew she could trust.

Her trip to the post office had become routine, a pleasant walk of a half hour or so from the house on the edge of town to the main street, either by way of a narrow foot trail alongside a creek, or by the more direct route of a road leading across a small bridge to another, wider road that aimed itself at Durango’s heart. Zoe found she enjoyed the leisurely, secluded stroll along the creek more and more, and decided that whatever shape her new life took, it would include the simple enjoyment of long walks. She had learned to ignore the occasional glances at her missing arm, but Omie, during the earliest walks into town with her mother, had learned to hate the stares directed at her birthmark. She refused to accompany Zoe now, and was not ordered to. Zoe would help her become strong later on, when their current life in limbo was ended, their new life together begun.

Entering the post office, she smiled at the postmaster.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Beasely.”

“Oh, Mrs. Dugan. I wasn’t expecting you till tomorrow.”

“The day is too fine to waste indoors.”

“Yes, ma’am, and I’d be out there myself if I could. Got a letter for you, Mrs. Dugan.”

“You have?”

“Only thing is, it isn’t here anymore.”

“Not here? I don’t understand.”

“Well, the lady took it with her. Said she was looking for you, so I gave her the address and letter both, to save you the walk tomorrow, you see.”

“What lady, Mr. Beasely?”

“Well, now, she said she was a friend of yours as had been sending you letters, only you never wrote back, some story like that. Nice lady, seems like. You didn’t see her on the road?”

“I came into town by the foot path. She didn’t give you her name?”

“No, ma’am, and I couldn’t exactly ask her for it, not and be polite too.”

“No, of course not. Thank you, Mr. Beasely.”

Zoe turned toward the door.

“Like as not she’ll be out there waiting when you get back, Mrs. Dugan.”

“Yes, I’m sure. Good day.”

Zoe found herself hurrying on the homeward walk. Could it be her mysterious letter-writer? But why would she say to Mr. Beasely that Zoe had not written back, when there had never been any return address? Perhaps that had been to allay his interest. Zoe had never thought the information might be from a woman; the handwriting was distinctly unfeminine, for one thing, and she could imagine no way in which a woman might gain access to Leo’s secrets, unless that woman was his mistress, and the letters certainly had not come from Imogen Starr. Zoe’s feet flew along the path by the creek. She wanted, with the anxious anticipation of a child nearing a Christmas tree, to see who her visitor was.

From a distance of several hundred yards she could make out the woman’s surrey by the yard gate, and the woman herself, wearing a brown dress, on the front porch with Omie. Approaching, she saw the name of a Durango livery stable on the surrey’s side; her guest had come by train, then hired a vehicle to reach her; that would be the expected thing if she had come from Glory Hole. Hurrying across the yard to the porch, Zoe realized something was very wrong with the picture she saw there. The woman, young and pretty, was pressed against the clapboard walls of the house, as if backing away from a ferocious dog, but the only figure facing her was Omie, and now that she was closer still, Zoe saw that her daughter’s face was a mask of intense concentration, the lips pressed into a line, her eyes narrowed to slits.

“Good afternoon,” Zoe said, breathless and a little confused. “I came back as fast as I could.… Omie, is something wrong?”

“Make her stop!” hissed the woman, speaking with apparent difficulty. The color in her cheeks was heightened, and her eyes bulged slightly as they glared in Omie’s direction. “Make her stop it!”

“Stop what? Omie, are you doing something you oughtn’t to?”

“Mama, it’s a man,” intoned Omie, her voice low, depleted by the effort required to keep their visitor pinned against the wall with her invisible arms.

“A man? What on earth do you mean? Stop it this instant.” To the woman she said, “I’m so sorry, Miss. Are you from Glory Hole? Omie, I said stop it!”

“It’s a man, Mama … and there’s a knife under her dress she keeps thinking about. He wants to kill us, Mama.”

“What nonsense … Miss? Are you who I believe you to be?”

“Make her stop!” the young woman said again, her voice deepened this time by the extra force Omie was exerting out of sheer frustration at Zoe’s unwillingness to believe what she was told.

“Mama, it’s a man with a knife under his dress, it really is. Look and see!”

“This is so silly, Omie.… Stop it this instant!”

Omie grew white in the face, and the young woman’s skirts flew up around her head, petticoats and all, and there, strapped to her lacy bloomers, was a long leather sheath with a slender haft protruding from it.

“Oh …,” said Zoe. The sight before her was too fantastic for immediate assimilation. This was not her informant after all, but someone bent on doing harm to herself and Omie.

“Who are you! Who sent you here! How dare you …!”

Omie let the skirts fall, but made a further point by skewing the wig on Tatum’s head sideways, giving him a faintly ridiculous look. Zoe was aghast at the deception. Only one person could want her silenced. “Did my husband send you? Did he?”

Tatum was frightened by the invisible force exerted against him by the girl. His waist was in the grip of what felt like enormous hands, and he was at a loss to extricate himself. He wanted only to peel his body from the wall and kill the woman he had been sent to kill. There had been no instructions regarding the girl, but Tatum wanted to kill her also, because she had humiliated him and because he was afraid of whatever power she was employing against him. He had tried a half-dozen times since setting foot onto the porch to be free of the hands he could not see. There had not even been enough time to cajole the girl into allowing him inside to wait for her mother; barely had their eyes met than she slammed him against the wall, then kept him there for at least twenty minutes until the woman returned. He had no idea how to proceed; no one had warned him of Omie’s gifts, and he was vulnerable now to her whims.

“Keep him there,” Zoe ordered, and went inside. She reappeared moments later with a Smith & Wesson bought in Georgetown when she and Omie had disembarked from the
Tiger Shark.
The pistol was intended to protect them both from harm at the hands of people made afraid and vengeful by Omie’s unusual abilities, and the time for its first use had arrived. Omie was weakening; Zoe could tell by the sweat beginning to darken the armpits of her dress. “I have him now,” she said, aiming the pistol at Tatum’s chest. Omie sank onto the porch step and breathed heavily.

This new arrangement encouraged Tatum; the girl was obviously weakened by excessive use of the hypnotism or whatever it had been she used against him, and the mother did not have the look of someone prepared to pull a trigger. The impossible hands were gone from his waist. The first thing he did, giving himself time to think of a stratagem for escape, was slowly to lift his hands and adjust his wig and little flowered hat. “Is she all right?” he asked, moderating his voice to express sympathy.

“Who has sent you here? Answer me!”