Chapter 45
I peek out the east door, and cool air sweeps all around me. To my relief, no lawman stands guard. In the distance people are still bunched on the sea path, necks craned toward the Hure. I hurry toward Nowhere Road, hoping Nash is keeping the sheriff engaged. Weeping cedars paw at me as I pass.
The zigzag road is the closest path up Chapel Hill but exposes me to lawmen, or anyone who happens to glance up. Five hundred feet farther, the Slide shortcut waits—longer to reach, but it will vault me up the hill in half the time.
I make for the Slide. A few faces turn my way. I wave. Nothing to see here. Enjoy the show.
A horse approaches bearing a familiar, solid figure—Red. “Ahoy, Lucy,” he calls, taking in my flustered, hatless appearance. “Everything all right?”
Perhaps I should tell him where I am going. Someone who is on my side should know.
He draws closer, and I notice him squeezing his knee. Got a bullet in there… only notice it when I’m doing the polka.
My mother shot Simon Says in the leg.
Red’s square face crinkles at my hesitation.
Am I grasping at shadows? Surely there are many good middle-aged men with old injuries.
But I saw him talking to Mr. Tavernish privately at the Gatheround.
Maybe they’d known each other. Red certainly has the build of a lead chop.
Perhaps he worked at Tavernish Lime before coming to Nowhere.
And why had Mr. Sanders demoted Red from his position as head Rifle? Had Mr. Sanders begun to suspect Red in the murder of his best friend?
“Er, I think Koa is looking for you.”
“Oh?” Red’s gaze leans on mine. “I just saw him.”
“Really?” I squeak, swaying a little.
Pull yourself together. If he is the killer, you cannot let on that you suspect him. The act is not yet over. You are an heiress. Behave like one.
I draw myself up and say in an imperious tone, “Please check again.”
Red blinks, his sunburned skin going even darker. “Very well, miss.” He sets off.
When I am satisfied no one is watching, I slip into the darkened corridor, my mind buzzing with sickening possibilities.
“Red” could be one of the many nicknames Mr. Sanders gave his employees, this one perhaps referring to the man’s hair.
If so, is his real name Simon Sayes, also known as Simon Says?
If Red killed my father, then he definitely had the means and motive to kill Mr. Sanders.
A chill presses into my damp skin. Conifer arms grab at my pleats. I step around the now-dried rut where the go-wagon veered off the path. My breathing comes faster, and the sweet scent of decaying wood fills my head.
But Koa trusts Red. When Red was head Rifle, he was one of Mr. Sanders’s key advisors. Even so, I check behind me, relieved when I don’t see him following me up the Slide.
Cresting the top, I catch my breath. No one is around, and Red has not taken the zigzag path on his mount.
What if the priest isn’t here? I didn’t see him at the derby, and he wouldn’t be a-visiting today.
Perhaps he is tending his quiet congregation of bones in the cemetery garden on the other side of the chapel.
The fountain beckons me across the courtyard with its familiar gurgles. Another sound, a slow thud, makes it to my ear.
The sight of the priest not wearing his ministry coat but a work shirt and trousers slows my tracks.
He is filling the hole where the rare seaside juniper used to stand, his green wheelbarrow full of lime next to him.
The ropy muscles of his lean back bunch and flex with every dig and pull of his spade.
On the other side of the hole, three new rosebushes have been placed in the shade of the chapel wall, ready for planting.
Noticing my approach, he straightens, though his saturno hat casts over him an eternal shadow. “Lucy. I thought you’d be watching your derby.”
“It’s hard to watch the derby when the sheriff suspects me of murder.”
His face falls, as if his beard has gotten too heavy. “I am sorry—”
My boots sink into the crumbly edge of the hole, and I quickly step back onto firmer ground.
“Oops, be careful,” he says.
The hole yawns six feet deep and is wide enough to swallow me in one bite.
“You gave up my confession,” I say, refusing to be distracted.
“It was necessary to prevent further harm to others.”
“So… you believe I killed Mr. Sanders?” Despite my determination to remain composed, hot tears threaten to spill out.
He plants the spade and murmurs, “Only God knows, and only God can judge.”
His false humility makes my insides boil, a stewpot in which one too many things have been thrown.
Breathing through my nose, I summon some poise.
Like Eva, I must keep my bow tied tight.
Haven’t I learned a little about how business is done over the past few weeks? I must be nimble. One step ahead.
“I know the answer to Mr. Sanders’s riddle about his treasure,” I say.
“Oh?” He shakes his shoe of dirt.
It is the last dollar I have to bid on information that may or may not lead anywhere. But I have nothing to lose now. How much does the priest want to know the answer? I recite the riddle:
View the place from Consternation
At the highest elevation
Home to buried golden treasure
Rotting to its perfect measure.
“Well, what is the answer?” he asks, no longer shifting. He is perfectly still.
“I will tell you, but first I want to know what you and Mr. Tavernish really talked about. And be honest. He already told me.”
Of course, Mr. Tavernish hasn’t told me anything. But perhaps my lie will provide extra incentive for the priest not to lie.
His eyes flick to my bandaged hand. “Then why do you need an answer from me?”
“I want to hear it from you. If it does not match what Mr. Tavernish said, I will not tell you the answer to the riddle.”
“Well, you certainly have always been an inquisitive young lady.” Lips pursed, he stares down into the ditch, hiding his expression, though his hesitation speaks volumes.
He really does care to know where Mr. Sanders found his treasure.
But why? Is he simply curious? Or does the priest care more for worldly goods than a man of God should?
Covetousness was the root sin that tripped me.
He meets my gaze again, eyes serene. “Mr. Tavernish recognized me from my days as a young man. But as I told you, God had great plans for me, plans to comfort a flock terrorized by demons in the sea. The pews are filled like never before.”
Shouts reach my ear from somewhere below the hill. My stomach loops, thinking about Jeddah lost at sea. His enraged voice roars in my head. Let ’em be scared. Let ’em think a monster’s coming for them.
My gaze is drawn up to the bell tower, then swings back to the priest, finally seeing clearly. “Jeddah always did what you told him.”
“He’s a troubled young man, but I hope I’ve given him some direction.”
I cough in disbelief. “By killing seals.”
The priest exploited Jeddah’s anger at the people who laughed at his father.
“All for good purpose.” The man flashes his magnetic smile. I’m caught by the contrast of the straight teeth on top and the crooked ones on bottom.
His real name was Simon Sayes, but everyone called him Simon Says, like the game, because you did what he asked. He was very charismatic.
Success is the sum of details.
“Simon Says.” The words drop out of me, and the priest’s pupils sharpen in acknowledgment.
I break into a cold sweat, as if the waters of the sound are being poured through me. Theory B. Mr. Sanders and your father were killed by the same person, Eva says reasonably.
Perhaps Simon’s face was clean-shaven back then. Perhaps he’d had the thick build of a lead chopper. Mr. Sanders may not have recognized him from eighteen years earlier. May not have even known him.
But Mr. Tavernish had.
Somewhere in my mind, the telephone rings. An Italian clerk from the Diocese of Seattle called for Mr. Sanders with an urgent message. Father Pinnyhorne claimed the call must have concerned a new curate, but a curate had not been sent.
I am on the verge of discovering an important truth about your father’s death, Mr. Sanders had told me.
“Mr. Sanders was looking into your background,” I croak, my mouth suddenly dry as old wood. “You killed him because he was getting close to discovering who you really were.”
Why on earth would Simon Says have come back here?
A grim smile works at his mouth. “Thanks to your confession, I knew he was close. The diocese is supposed to protect our former identities, but even they can be bought.”
My gaze travels past the hole to the snowball roses at the far end of the cemetery. I dug the trench for those blooms.
A trench big enough to bury a body.
Repulsive images fill my head. But how did the priest manage to haul a bleeding carcass up here?
Simon leans his shovel against his wheelbarrow with its single wheel, and my mind begins to reel.
I thought a go-wagon had carved the rut I nearly tripped over on my journey down the Slide.
But a go-wagon would’ve made two parallel tracks.
I stumble back, but Simon is quicker, snatching my left wrist. He yanks me toward him so violently that I fall, pulling him down, and he half slides into the pit. Instinct takes over, and I lash out with my foot, connecting with his head. With a grunt, he grabs his ear and slides farther in.
A searing pain in my left ankle consumes me. I must have twisted it when I fell. Even so, I half limp, half crawl across the cemetery, desperate to reach the courtyard to the zigzag path. Pine needles stab my palms. My knees scrape against gravel.
Another cheer goes up from far away, and a whimper escapes my lips. There is no one to hear me, no one to help. I wish I’d told Red where I was going. Simon Says will bury me in that pit, like he buried Mr. Sanders in the hole I dug. No one will ever know I came to Chapel Hill.
“Lucy,” his voice crows after me, cold as a north wind, “Simon Says come back!”
Terror streaks through me at the childish command turned nightmare. A devil has been living among us: not one with a scaly body, but one whose handsome reflection all this time hid a vicious killer. Someone from whom even the wild things are not safe.
No longer wearing his hat, Simon grunts as he tries to free himself from the pit. Reaching the paved courtyard, I glance behind me. Arms outstretched and eyes bulging with hate, he struggles to pull himself out.
Don’t look. Keep going.
My breath sounds raggedy in my ear, and my left ankle feels like it is on fire. I round the front of the church, where the clock bell tower reads a quarter till noon. The zigzag path looks miles away.
Simon bellows in a voice that could call the spirits from their graves, and suddenly his yells sound closer. He’s freed himself of the pit! By the time they come looking for me, he will have caught and buried me. The sheriff will think I ran, maybe headed north.
The brass bell taunts me, silent and almost bored.
It is set to go off at the noon and six o’clock hours, but it can also be operated manually.
Which means I can change time. Find that space between truth and fiction and coax belief.
I crawl through the open doors, the hard floor punishing my knees.
My panicked mews echo off the high ceilings, the erect pews.
On the left, a rope is tied in a figure eight around a metal cleat. Using the walls to push myself up, I awkwardly grab the rope. I cannot fumble now.
Unwind, unwind!
Simon fills the doorway, blocking out the light. He lunges for me.
But I have the rope.
And as he yanks me away, the rope pulls the pivoting beam, and the bell’s voice rings out loud and clear.
One last cry for me.