Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Violet’s throat was dry by the time she’d told Bonnie everything that had happened.
She left out the lie she’d told Edwin to begin with, that Josiah had asked her to marry him.
She didn’t know Bonnie that well. Besides, everyone in Silver Falls knew what Bonnie did behind closed doors.
Archies’ wife or not, the woman earned her money on her back.
She didn’t know her, or trust her, with the complete truth, so she told her what she needed to know and nothing more.
“What will you do now?” Bonnie asked.
Violet blew out a breath and gathered her hair, twisting it into a coil before throwing it over her shoulder. “I don’t know. Find the woman who claimed she heard Josiah say he’d kill Edwin, I suppose.”
“And if you can’t find her?”
She shrugged. She wasn’t sure what to do, truth be told. She still wasn’t convinced Edwin was dead. They hadn’t let her see him and until she did, she wouldn’t believe he was gone.
She looked toward the door to the doctor's private residence. “Do you suppose they’ll bring Edwin here?”
“I don’t know.”
She was on her feet before they could speculate any further and knocked on the door to the doctor’s private residence. She could hear movement moments later, then the doctor opened the door.
“Is everything all right?” he asked, looking over her shoulder to where Archie lay.
“Archie is fine,” she said, answering his question. “I just wanted to know when someone in town dies, do they bring the body to you?”
He shook his head. “Not unless they’re still breathing. If they’re already dead, they’d take them over to Burt Saunders, the undertaker. He’s one street over and at the end of the road.”
She didn’t wait for another word and turned on her heel, heading out the door before really knowing what she was going to do when she reached the undertaker.
He wasn’t hard to find. Coffins were lined up against the building at the end of the road, just like the doctor had said, and wooden planks were sitting nearby, hammered into crosses, some carved with small saying and just waiting for names and dates.
There wasn’t anyone inside the building when she stepped inside, but she could hear someone humming from somewhere deeper in the building. “Hello?” she said, shutting the door behind her.
The humming stopped, footsteps echoing in the silence before a man with greasy, dirty blonde hair stepped from the room directly in front of her.
“Afternoon,” he said.
He wore an apron over his clothes, splotches of red covering the gray fabric. She didn’t even want to speculate what it was. The stench in the building told her without asking.
She cleared her throat and gave him a tight smile. “Have they brought Edwin Wright’s body to you yet?”
He lifted an eyebrow and tilted his head a fraction. “They have.”
She blew out the breath she’d been holding. “I’d like to see him.”
His eyebrows rose. His mouth opened as if to say something, but she cut him off before he could. “I know he’s not pretty to look at, but I won’t believe he’s dead if I don’t see it for myself.”
“Are you his kin?”
She could lie. Probably should, but lying was what got her into this mess to begin with. “No. I’m not, but my husband has been accused of murdering him and I want to see for myself that he is indeed dead.”
He studied her a moment before shrugging his shoulders. “Fine by me, but I’m warning you, it’s not something a lady should be seeing.”
“I understand.”
He led her to the room he’d come from and she stopped by the door. A body lay on a tall work table and it took every ounce of courage she had to take a step closer.
She baby-stepped it across the room, her gaze scanning the body before she got the courage to look up at his face.
And instantly wished she hadn’t.
Her stomach revolted the moment she saw what remained of Edwin’s face. Whoever shot him had put a bullet in his temple and it had exited through the side of his cheek.
There wasn’t much there to look at and as her stomach kept rolling, all she could think was, it wasn’t him.
The undertaker opened a door on the other side of the table and she wasted no time running to it. She’d barely cleared the stoop when the contents of her stomach came back up.
When her heaving stopped, she sucked in deep breaths and accepted the cup of water the undertaker handed her before rinsing her mouth.
Her eyes were watering when she stepped back into the building and looked at the body. She avoided the face this time and focused on the rest of him.
She noticed then that his clothes were tight. She knew a body started to bloat after death, but she didn’t know it happened so soon and said as much to the undertaker.
“It usually takes a while. Heat plays a role in it, though.” He tugged on the jacket Edwin was wearing. It wouldn’t even close in the front.
To her, the suit looked ill-fitting. As if it were too small. She stepped closer and paid more attention to the body. The fingernails were bitten off clean to the quick, and there was dirt crusted around the nail beds. Edwin was always meticulously groomed, with filed nails, and never dirty.
The fingers were also fat, but that could have been from swelling, but she didn’t think so. He also looked shorter than Edwin, his pant legs sagging at the bottom. Bloating wouldn’t have made him shrink in height. That was impossible.
She shook her head while looking at him. “That’s not him.”
The undertaker tilted his head again. “Looks like him.”
She huffed out a short laugh. “How can you tell? Half his face is missing.”
He shrugged. “The men who brought him in said he was found in the mercantile, behind the counter.” He turned to a table nearby and shuffled through a few times.
“These are the things he had on him. Someone recognized the pocket watch. Said it belonged to Edwin’s pa before he died.
I have no other reason to believe it’s not him. ”
Violet glanced at the watch. She recognized it, too. She’d seen him look at it in Silver Falls but just because this man had a watch similar to Edwin’s didn’t mean it was him.
She glanced at the mangled face of the man on the table again before looking away. That wasn’t Edwin, and she had to prove it. “How long before you close up his coffin?”
“Not long, why?”
“Because that’s not Edwin Wright, and I have to prove it.”
“Well, I suggest you hurry doing it. He’ll start to smell before too long and I’d rather not start collecting flies if I don’t have to.”
She had to find that preacher. As far as she knew, he was Edwin’s only friend in this town, so he was her only chance to prove the man on the undertaker's table wasn’t Edwin.
Violet stopped near the hotel and stared down the street.
She could see nearly everything from here.
The doctor's office, Edwin’s mercantile, the jail, and further down the road, the saloon.
She could also see the whores on the small balcony on the second floor, some of them hanging over the rail talking to the men on the street.
Did Edwin visit them? Did the preacher?
Only one way to find out.
She started that way but adjusted course and headed to the doctor's office first. Walking into a saloon wasn’t something women did. Some establishments even forbid it, so she needed another way in.
She told Bonnie what she was doing on their way down the street. Bonnie listened and nodded and fluffed her breasts, making them nearly hang out of her dress, but it worked. Stepping into the saloon, the bartender barely even glanced their way.
They headed upstairs. Bonnie seemed to know where she was going and followed close behind her. When they found the girls not working, it was obvious Bonnie did know some of them.
They were led into a room at the end of the hall. There wasn’t a bed, only a large round table with chairs sitting around it. Several chests and dressers lined the walls with frilly, lacy things hanging out of every drawer.
“So,” a tall brunette with graying hair said. “What can we do for you?”
Bonnie gave her a nod of her head. Violet gripped the back of one of the chairs and said, “Do any of you know Edwin Wright? The mercantile owner?”
The girls glanced at one another before turning their gazes back to her.
“You his girlfriend or something?” one of the girls asked.
“No. He’s dead, and my husband has been accused of killing him, and I have to prove he didn’t.”
The chatter exploded at the news Edwin was dead. Seemed as if all of them knew him.
“Good riddance,” one of the girls said. “He was a cruel bastard on a good day.”
“Yeah,” another said. “When you find out who offed him, bring him by. I’ll give him a blow job as payment for ridding us all of him.”
The laughter that followed that statement was loud. Violet didn’t know what a “blow job” was, but made a mental note to ask Bonnie later.
Apparently, Edwin took pleasure in sadistic acts. He liked to tie girls up and spank them hard enough to bruise. He’d been known to bind and gag them, and leave his mark on as many of them as he could. When his bondage play got too rough, most of them refused his money, which only angered him more.
Violet had to sit down as she listened to them talk. She had a hard time believing they were talking about Edwin Wright. He seemed so—boring. To hear them talk, he was a borderline sadistic monster, and she hated to admit, it was probably for the best the man was gone.
When the tales were all told, the room grew silent. She looked up then and realized they were all looking at her. “What?”
“Did we scare you?”
She blushed when they all laughed. “I’m newly married. I’d say I’m shocked more than anything. I didn’t realize couples did such—things.”
“Oh, honey, stick around. We’ll teach you how to please that new husband of yours in no time.”