Chapter 24 #2
“I do,” she said truthfully. Hal had been an impulsive hire to spite Pearson, but he turned out to be one of her best deputies. “What I need you to do is subtle, and there’s a lot he doesn’t understand about navigating the world.”
A good deputy. Not a subtle one.
“I’m listening,” Pierre said.
“The bottom left drawer of my desk has a false bottom. In it is a file. Every bribe the mayor offered me and anyone else that I could verify. Every blackmail attempt. Newspaper articles. Letters. An entire dossier.”
“The mayor left a paper trail?”
“No, he’s too clever for that. It’s hearsay and not admissible but a journalist won’t care. I need you to send it to this reporter in Founding.” She gave a name of a reporter she had previous dealings with and felt confident they could trust.
Pierre wrote down the name and address. “Why not the paper in town?”
“Too many ways for Mayor Kelley to persuade them not to publish.” Perhaps a license being revoked, taxes increased, or straightforward arson. “Keeping this story local is too risky.”
“What happens when it’s no longer local?”
She grinned. She’d been building that file since Kelley first took office and she realized exactly the extent of his corruption. “If the governor would only be moved to do the right thing to avoid a scandal, we’ll give him a scandal. This will ruin Kelley.”
Hal returned. “Broke a chair. Sorry about that.”
“One of my good chairs or one of the busted old chairs?” Nina asked.
“The folding kind.”
“That’s fine.” The wooden folding chairs were rickety and far too narrow in the seat. No one would mourn their loss.
When Hal took his seat, Pierre cleared his throat and said in the stiffest, most painfully forced manner, “Sheriff, I need you to take this seriously.”
How mortifying. The man was an excellent second-in-command but he was not an actor.
“You may think the mayor is a fool, but he has outmaneuvered you. This is serious. You were seen arguing with Major Pearson in the days before his disappearance.”
“We argued all the time—” She paused and corrected herself. “ Argue , because he is still alive.”
“You were seen fleeing town,” he said.
“Circumstantial. A judge will never allow it to go to trial without something substantial.”
The look again, like Pierre expected better of her.
“Fine. The judges are all corrupt and in the mayor’s pocket,” she said. “Is that all the evidence?”
“For now.”
“The brevity of the evidence is insulting,” she said.
“I’ve been gone for nearly three weeks and the mayor failed to manufacture anything more convincing?
He couldn’t find a dead vagrant and dress up the body in a uniform?
Disfigure the face so no one could make a positive identification?
No witnesses came forward to confess to seeing a murder that did not occur? ”
Was it too much to ask for some effort to be put into framing her for murder?
“I’m sure compelling new evidence will turn up,” Hal finally spoke, and he did not look pleased about it. The orc tusks twisted his lower lips and gave his appearance a menacing cast. Displeasure in addition to that was unnerving.
Nina leaned forward, her cuffed hands on the table.
“Here’s the thing: Anthony Pearson asked me to accompany him on a trip to his family home on the northern shore.
We took the train to Founding, then a riverboat called the Rita up the Wilde.
It sank from a boiler explosion. From there to Saltwick.
We were with his family for two days and then in the village for the rest of our stay.
I was ill, which I mentioned in the letter I sent to my family. ”
“Where is Major Pearson now?” Pierre asked.
She wished she knew. “We parted ways in Founding on the return trip. He was supposed to meet me at the train station but never arrived.”
“Why?”
“Why did he miss the train?”
Pierre sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose again. “Why did you split up in Founding?”
Ah. In her defense, the question was poorly worded. “He said he had to visit an old friend.”
“This friend’s name?”
She didn’t know. She had been so worried about his flimsy disguise that she never asked. “A general. I didn’t catch the name.”
He wrote down her response, somehow conveying his disappointment in her lack of curiosity. The situation was uncomfortably familiar and she missed Anthony.
“Can anyone corroborate this?” Pierre asked.
“My cousin, Mira. She was with us at Saltwick.”
“A cousin who is biased.”
“Then write to the housekeeper, Mrs. Marsh. The entire village saw Anthony hale and hearty.”
“Your animosity to the major is well known,” Pierre said.
She wasn’t sure where he was going but she didn’t like it. “Animosity is a strong word.”
“Dislike then.”
She said nothing, neither agreeing or disagreeing.
“Why would you agree to travel with a man you disliked?”
Explaining Anthony’s condition felt like a violation of his privacy, but his condition was obvious to anyone who saw him. She sighed. “The day that Ben Jollett died, the day everyone saw us argue, Anthony was bitten.”
This got a reaction from Pierre.
“He didn’t want anyone in the NPF to know, so he came to my house asking for help. My entire family saw him.”
“And help is a road trip?” Hal asked.
“He thought his family had a cure. It was desperate and I told him there was no cure.”
“But you went with him,” Pierre said.
“Of course I went with him,” she snapped. Her temper was wearing thin. “A newly transformed monster? Desperate to not be… how he was? I had holiday time thanks to the mayor, so I thought why not?”
“No one thought to inform anyone else of this trip?”
“Anthony left a note stating his intentions to visit his family while on medical leave.”
Pierre and Hal shared a look.
Interesting. They hadn’t known that.
“I suggest you find that note, if it hasn’t already been destroyed,” she said.
Pierre wrote furiously on his pad. “We’ll be checking your statement. In the meantime, you are also being charged with dereliction of duty.”
Yes. That charge had substance.
“I wrote to the station about my illness. I sent it to you, Chief Deputy,” she said.
Pierre frowned. “I never received a letter.”
Hal muttered something. She heard the distinct phrase dirty little ratbag .
“No one thought to check with my family? I wrote to them as well,” Nina said.
“I sent a deputy, but he claimed they had not heard from you.”
“No need to ask who you sent,” she replied.
Remi. The deputy wasn’t just in the mayor’s pocket. He was the mayor’s nephew. She never should have hired him.
“I’d like an attorney now,” she said.