The Stranger's Secrets (16 page)

Sarah compared the list with the hotel registry and found that fourteen of the men had checked in with wives. That left ten of them who could still be suspects.

Patrick was a sweet young man who was eager to help them solve the mystery. He was apparently an avid reader of mysteries and loved detective work.

She had more men than she needed, or knew what to do with. A first for the tough wench from the Spalding Plantation.

“Take a look at the list of ten men, Alfred. Do you recognize any of the names?” She peered at the list, hoping something would jump out at her.

“No, I’m afraid I don’t. Perhaps your husband and Mr. Torreno have eliminated more names from the list. We can then narrow down the pool of suspects.” Alfred stood and grinned down at her. “I don’t remember when I’ve had so much fun.”

Sarah had started out wanting to use the conductor for her own means, at any cost, in any way possible. Yet here he was, helping her save her neck and having fun at it. She felt a bit guilty, but Alfred was enjoying himself, a side effect she hadn’t expected.

Sarah realized she held herself above most people, or at least outside of the same existence as them. There was never a time when she allowed herself to step out of that odd relationship she had with the rest of the world.

She was startled to realize she’d done it countless times on this trip.

“Sarah?” Alfred held out his hand. “Are you all right?”

She thought about how to answer, how to explain to him that she’d been turned inside out, upside down, and backward by her grand adventure on a cross-country train. Instead, she chose the simple route, and a half-truth.

“Yes, I think so. Let’s go find Whitman.” She accepted his help to stand, then smiled at Patrick. “You’ve been amazingly helpful. I can’t thank you enough.”

The freckle-faced young man smiled back. “Happy to help, Miz Kendrick. I hope you find him.”

Together she and Alfred walked back to the lobby. Apparently just in time to prevent Whitman from pummeling Patrick’s grandfather. The old man was a curmudgeon, to be certain, and had taken some hearty convincing to allow them to compare their list to the hotel register.

In the end, he had insisted only Patrick view the register, while Sarah called the names out to him.

“What’s happening?” She hobbled as fast as she could toward them. “Are you all right?”

Whitman dropped his raised fist and stared at her. He blinked once and seemed to be unable to speak.

She touched his cheek. “Whit?”

He shook his head as if to clear it and stepped out of her reach. “Yes, I’m fine. Gunderson was just about to see the error of his ways when you arrived.” He scowled at the hotel owner. “You’re a lucky man.”

Sarah took Whit’s arm and led him away from the desk. “Are you trying to get put in jail for punching that old windbag? Believe me, he isn’t worth it.”

“What did you find out?” he asked through clenched teeth.

“We narrowed the list down to ten names. Let’s go sit down and eat and compare them.” She led him toward the dining room, Lorenzo and Alfred behind them.

Beneath her fingers, the muscles in his arm felt as tight as guitar strings. She’d never seen him so out of control, and it worried her although it shouldn’t. As she’d told him before, they were adults and made grown-up decisions, accepting the consequences as they came.

The consequence of falling in love with a Yankee, however, would cost her dearly.

Supper turned out to be a wonderful meatloaf with mashed potatoes and fried squash. The good Southern cooking was exactly what Sarah needed. It made her think of home, which led her to think of Lorenzo. He was a sad-faced young man across the table from her.

She refused to get pulled into his fantasy of making her his woman. There were several reasons why they couldn’t, not the least of which was a huge age difference and the fact she didn’t, and wouldn’t ever, love him.

Alfred took on the task of comparing the two lists, surprising Sarah. He was definitely a man who enjoyed food, yet he’d set aside his hunger to do work.

Sarah wondered if it was to help them or to satisfy his own curiosity. Either way, she was grateful. The nightmare of Mavis’s murder investigation was peppered with the bright lights of a few people in town who believed their innocence.

“How does it look, Bannon?” Whit speared a forkful of mashed potatoes and chewed without taking his gaze from Alfred’s bent form.

“So far, we’re down to six men, and I’m not quite finished.” He shot a small grin at Sarah. “I think we’ll be able to give Sheriff Miller a short list of suspects to interrogate.”

“Good.” Sarah didn’t add she thought the sheriff would need a short list. His investigative skills were obviously lacking.

“How are you eliminating the men from the list?” Whit kept chewing mechanically, not meeting Sarah’s gaze.

“Ones who are traveling with wives, or those who didn’t board the train until after the initial departure in Virginia, and any men under the age of thirty.” Alfred pushed the hair from his forehead. “I believe we now have four suspects on this list.”

Whit held out his hand and Alfred gave him the list. “Four? Really? That’s incredible.” For the first time that afternoon, Whit sounded almost normal.

“It’s good detective work,” Alfred preened.

“Thank you, Alfred.” Sarah was truly grateful for his help, and for Patrick’s and Lorenzo’s. Alfred and Patrick didn’t have any reason to assist them, but they did anyway.

Whit peered at the list as Alfred dug into his supper. Sarah wanted to snatch the paper out of her “husband’s” hand, but thought it better not to, considering his odd behavior.

She didn’t want to have to whack him with the cane to get the list either.

They ate in silence as Whitman apparently read the list about a hundred times. Sarah’s patience was beginning to wear thin when Sheriff Miller appeared at the table.

“Well, this is a cozy group.” He nodded at Alfred. “Bannon, I’m surprised to see you here with the Kendricks and, uh, this foreigner.”

“We’ve been investigating Miss Ledbetter’s murder.” Alfred apparently couldn’t keep his mouth shut about how excited he was to be a detective, at least for a day.

“That so? And how are you doing that?” Miller grabbed a chair from another table and sat down, straddling the seat and leaning on the back.

“Well, you see Mr. Torreno witnessed the man Mrs. Kendrick identified as Abernathy. We determined he had nefarious purposes for befriending Miss Ledbetter.” He pointed at the list in Whitman’s hands. “With the passenger manifest and the hotel register, we’ve narrowed down the suspects to four men.”

Miller’s face grew redder the longer Alfred spoke. While the conductor was excited to display his cranial power for the sheriff to see, the idea he’d been doing the sheriff’s job apparently hadn’t occurred to him.

“I suppose you’re going to explain how and why you decided to investigate a murder in my jurisdiction?” The handsome sheriff speared Alfred with his sharp gaze.

Alfred sputtered and looked at Sarah. “I was helping the investigation, not taking it over, Sam. The fact is, I believed Miss Sarah when she said she was innocent. I thought it was my duty as an employee of the railroad to ferret out the murderer.”

Sarah was proud of the portly conductor. He had stood up to a bully like Miller and spoke his piece.

“You believe she’s innocent? What about her Yankee soldier husband?”

Sarah’s blood froze in her veins. “What are you talking about, Sheriff? My husband is a banker from New York, not a soldier.”

Her heart pounded so hard, her ears hurt. Yet when her gaze met Whitman’s, it nearly stopped. In his green gaze, she saw the truth.

He
was
a Yankee soldier.

“W
hy, I don’t believe it.” Alfred Bannon looked as surprised as Lorenzo.

Sarah, however, looked as if Whitman had driven a knife in her heart. He had dreaded the day she would find out the secret he’d been hiding from her. Of course, she didn’t know the other half of that particularly nasty secret.

Her face drained of color, and her freckles stood out on the pasty white skin. Her eyes, however, were the worst part. Sarah was completely and utterly in shock. Her mouth opened and closed, but she didn’t speak. Then she looked away.

Whitman’s heart stopped beating for a moment as her emotions hit him square between the eyes. He tried to catch Sarah’s gaze, but after the initial look of shock and hurt, she didn’t look in his direction again.

“You married a Yankee soldier and it don’t bother you, a Southern gal such as yourself?” Miller peered at Sarah, earning a growl from Lorenzo.

“Do not be mean to Miss Sarah. She does not lie to you.” Lorenzo needed to work on his intimidation tactics.

“Look, all of you, my job is to find out who killed that poor woman out behind the hotel. I appreciate your help—well, actually no, I don’t—but that’s beside the point.” He pointed at Alfred. “You hand over that list and I’ll take it from here. I am an elected lawman.”

Sarah touched his arm. Her voice was hoarse and full of emotion. “Then find that man before he hurts someone else.”

Somehow she’d find the right thing to say to the prickly lawman.

He looked into her eyes and nodded. “I’m not sure how you do it, Miz Kendrick, but you have a way of making folks believe you.” He held up the paper. “I’ll track down these four and bring them to the jail. You all meet me there in an hour.”

Sarah rose with painful dignity and nodded to Alfred. “Mr. Torreno, please escort me to my room.”

Whit felt the impact of her request all the way to his heart. She’d asked Lorenzo, the boy puppy who’d followed her scent from Virginia, to help her. Not Whitman. Not her supposed husband.

It was like a knife, even if it didn’t have a physical shape. It sure as hell cut like one.

Miller speared him with one of his intimidating gazes. “If you promise to behave yourself, you can come with me.”

Whitman was surprised by the offer. “What about your deputy?”

“He’s taking care of a ruckus down at the Posy. He’ll be along in a while. Meantime, why don’t you use some of that bulk to find the man you say killed Miss Ledbetter.” The sheriff’s challenge was enough to make Whitman get to his feet, ready for battle.

If he could do nothing to heal the hurt he’d inflicted on Sarah, he could at least try to clear her name of the false murder charge. It wouldn’t even begin to undo the lies he’d told her to conceal his army background, but he would do what he could. No matter what or who stood in the way.

“Let’s go hunting.” His grin was positively feral.

Sarah held her back straight and her head high as she walked to the hotel room. Their room, the one that held the bed she’d shared with a Yankee soldier.

Her stomach twisted into a knot so tight, bile coated the back of her throat. Since Whit hadn’t denied the accusation, it meant the sheriff had been correct.

Whitman Kendrick was a Yankee soldier, the very epitome of all she hated.

The reason she was crippled.

The reason she could never escape her self-made prison.

The reason Sarah had grown into a bitter old spinster.

The reason her life had been ruined.

Lorenzo, bless his heart, held on to her arm as she stumbled near the end of the hallway. He’d been a steady presence in her life for seven years, since he was a scrawny teenager with a penchant for stealing.

Now she had to rely on him like an anchor in a sea of misery, confusion, and betrayal.

The more she thought about Whitman, the more she realized he had shown her the signs of his military background, but she’d refused to see it. Involuntarily or not.

His haircut was too short for the style of the day. The way he carried himself with that back ramrod straight and his shoulders squared spoke to training.

Hell, he probably was the right age to have fought in the Civil War.

That thought made the vomit rush up her throat, and she barely made it into the room before she dropped to her knees with a painful crash.

Tears mixed with regret as her heart broke into a thousand pieces on the floor of that hotel room.

Lorenzo was there to clean up her mess and comfort her as she cried for everything she’d lost, everything that had been taken from her, and everything she’d never have.

Sarah had finally allowed herself to grieve, and instead of grieving for the life she’d lost so long ago, she grieved for the life she couldn’t have with the man she loved.

The Yankee soldier who’d run away with her heart and left her with nothing but ashes.

Whitman stood next to the very sheriff who wanted to convict Sarah of murder as they tracked down the four men on the list. Three of them were found easily, in either the dining room or their hotel rooms, and none of them even resembled Abernathy.

The fourth name on that list, Ethan Rebay, had to be the man they sought. The problem was, they couldn’t find him.

After determining the man was not in the hotel, Miller suggested going back to the jail to meet everyone. It seemed the sheriff was beginning to believe someone else was responsible for Mavis’s death.

A blessing and a curse.

When the case was solved, Sarah would be absolved of the crime.

When the case was solved, she could ride away on the train and leave him forever.

Whitman needed to talk to her, desperately needed to talk to her, but he’d be lucky if she even acknowledged his presence again.

As much as his heart ached, his head told him it was for the best. Sarah was the wrong woman for him in many ways. He already had a fiancée waiting for him in Kansas City. His life was going to begin anew in San Francisco.

The best ending for all of them was to have Whitman and Sarah go their separate ways for good.

Too bad his heart howled against the possibility.

Whit was not the type of man to be led by his emotions, but Sarah had knocked him out of that box he’d lived in and trampled him in the dirt. Somewhere along the way he’d fallen in love with her.

The very rawness of his reaction to the thought confirmed what he suspected. He and Sarah were polar opposites, yet they’d found the other half of their souls within each other.

And Whitman’s past mixed with Sarah’s had ripped them apart, painfully and irrevocably.

Whit rubbed his eyes, wiping away the stinging from the dust on the street. After all, there was no way a tough old soldier would cry over a woman.

It took Sarah half an hour to get off the floor, and another fifteen minutes to stop crying. Lorenzo tried his best to comfort her, but if she was honest with herself, she didn’t need comforting.

She needed Whitman, but would never, ever have him.

He’d destroyed the trust and faith Sarah had in him by lying to her. There was no chance she’d forgive him for that.

Lorenzo handed her a cool cloth. “Wipe your eyes,
amore.
They are puffy.”

“You know, flattery is not your strong suit.” She pressed her face into the rag, grateful for its cold roughness. Her face felt hot and tight.

“I’m sorry. I’m only trying to help.” He squatted next to her, alternately wringing his hands and peering at her.

“I know,” she said through the cloth. “And I appreciate it, truly I do. You and I need to have a talk soon, about why and how you followed me, but for now, I just want to get through this evening.”

Silence met her words, and when she looked at him, he’d pulled a few feet away, sadness filling his brown eyes.

“You know, Lorenzo, I used to think that was cute. The puppy-dog expression you wore around me. No matter what I did, I couldn’t shake you. You were like a cocklebur on my back.” She grew stronger as she spoke, recognizing the poor boy was about to feel the full wrath of her emotional agony. “Now you show up after not staying behind like I told you to, and you give me that same stupid look.”

She tried to stand, but her legs had stiffened as she lay on the floor. Lorenzo helped her up without a word, further driving the nail of guilt into her heart.

“You are a good man, a young man who has no business being in love with a crippled mess like me. Find a young woman to marry and make babies with, but please, for God’s sake, don’t love me anymore.” She picked up her brush and tried to comb out the snarls. The action made her eyes tear up yet again.

“I can’t stop it,
amore
. You are my heart.” Lorenzo got down on one knee. “I would have married you, Sarah, if I had known you wanted a husband.”

She threw the brush at him, catching him in the forehead. “You stupid fool. I didn’t want a husband. I wanted a new beginning to my life, but it seems I can’t get away from my past, not from you and not from Yankee soldiers. I’m trapped, dammit. Do you hear me? I can’t get out of this dark hole.”

Sarah grabbed her cane and left the room, ignoring Lorenzo’s protest and the pain shooting down her leg. It was no worse than the sheer agony in her heart.

Whitman paced the jail, checking outside every two minutes to see if Sarah was coming. He should have been there to help her, or carry her if need be. Walking could be dangerous for a woman crippled by damaged legs.

He looked outside yet again when Miller yelled at him.

“Jesus Christ, man, are you that henpecked?! I know she’s a strong-willed woman, but hell, man, don’t you have a pair of balls?”

Whitman wanted to let out a laugh, but it stuck in his throat. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Sarah is crippled. A walk down the street isn’t easy for her. I’m worried, not henpecked.”

Miller snorted from behind his desk. “Coulda fooled me.”

“Now let’s not argue anymore, gentlemen,” Alfred piped up from his perch in the corner on a rather ancient-looking wingback chair. “We’re working together, remember?”

Whit ignored them, although what he wanted to do was knock the sheriff into next week. No one understood what he was going through except Sarah, and she wasn’t even speaking to him.

He’d made an enormous mess of things and damned if he had any idea how to fix it. Fixing things had become his habit. He fixed everything he laid his hands on, or at least he thought he did.

His mother’s stubborn refusal to speak to her family again hadn’t been fixed by moving her to a farm in Maryland. In fact, it had done nothing but cause the rift between them to grow wider.

Maybe Whitman’s skill at fixing things was limited to areas that didn’t involve women. God knew he needed help in that area.

The door to the jail opened and Lorenzo stood there, alone. He glanced around at the three men. “Where is Sarah?”

Whit’s heart dropped to his knees. “What do you mean, where’s Sarah? I left her in your care, Torreno.” He had the boy in his grasp in seconds. “If anything happened to her, I’m going to hold you personally responsible. Do you understand me?”

Miller appeared between them. “Now, Kendrick, don’t hurt the boy. He’s an innocent bystander.”

Innocent? Not hardly. The man had lived in Sarah’s boardinghouse. There was no way he was innocent.

Whitman let him down and stepped back a pace. “What happened?”

Lorenzo looked panicked. “She left the room five minutes before me. I-I was washing up, and when I left the room, she’d already gone.”

Whit didn’t believe for even a moment the boy had been washing up, but he did believe Sarah left five minutes earlier.

“Was she headed to the jail?”

“Yes, she was. Sarah is very angry and I tried to comfort her, but she does not want my comfort. She only wants you, you stupid Yankee bastard.” Lorenzo might not have been fully grown, but his punch packed a wallop.

Whitman fell to his knees, his ears ringing and the coppery taste of blood coating his tongue. Miller did his job and restrained the boy, although what they probably needed was to just get the fight over with.

Later that would happen, after they found Sarah.

Whitman spat out a mouthful of blood and rose to his feet. “You and I have some unfinished business, Lorenzo. Right now, we’re going to find Sarah. Then I’ll either beat the tar out of you or kill you. The choice depends on whether or not Sarah is unharmed.”

He nodded to the sheriff. “I’d say Abernathy, or Ethan Rebay, caught wind of our investigation and decided to take some leverage to ensure he could get out of town safely.”

Miller nodded tightly. “I’m guessing you’re right, Kendrick.”

“Ethan Rebay!” Alfred stood, snapping his fingers. “That’s it. Don’t you get it? Ethan Rebay is the letters of Abernathy mixed up.”

Whitman wanted to slap his own forehead. Of course it was. The man had left it right there for them to find and they’d missed it. Sarah might have to pay the price for their male stupidity. He made a promise to himself to never let her down again.

“Let’s go find her then, and Ethan Rebay will regret the day he touched my wife.”

Sarah should have expected the attack, but she was so involved in her self-pity, she wasn’t on alert. A pair of arms grabbed her from the alley next to the hotel.

The man was strong enough to steal the breath from her, but not her will to fight. She tried to bring the cane up and hit him, but he kicked it out of the way, leaving her without her weapon.

“Son of a bitch!” Sarah threw her head back to break his nose, but he was ready for that too, moving out of the way. The only thing she got from it was a sore neck and a bump on her head from slamming into his shoulder.

“You’d best stop fighting, Mrs. Kendrick, or should I say Miss Spalding?” he hissed in her ear. “I know your secret, you know. Mavis was a talkative woman and she loved to spread gossip.”

Without the protection of their fake marriage, both Sarah and Whitman were open for target practice by Sam Miller. She yanked at his arm.

“Let me go and we can talk.” She struggled to stay on her feet as he dragged her into the alley.