A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose #2)(56)

“You remember the girl who came to my kitchen?” He looked around before he said that. “Willa May?”

We nodded again.

“You haven’t seen the place yet, but there are a number of cabins behind the house. They used to be slave quarters. Now that—after the Civil War, the Ballards prettied them up and a lot of the people who work for them live in those cabins.”

I was not going to nod again. I just waited.

“Willa May decided to hide in one of them with an aunt, Juanita Poe, until she could arrange a way to get to her cousin’s.”

Juanita Poe had been the one who’d said she’d seen a trunk carried into the Ballard attic.

“Willa May said the Ballards wouldn’t notice one more black face among all the others, and I guess she was right. She went into the house today and called me from the Ballards’ kitchen telephone, which was pretty brave—or stupid—of her. She said people were dying out at the Ballard place. White people.”

My first thought was of Felix, who’d been planning to go there the last time we saw him. My second was of Harriet and Travis.

“Since they couldn’t get us, maybe they settled for someone else,” I said, trying to let Eli know what I meant without naming names.

Jerry Fielder said, “I wanted to make sure it wasn’t you two, and now that I know that, I feel better. But I thought maybe this was information you’d need to know.” He hesitated. I wondered if he were thinking of offering to go with us.

Instead he said, “I’ll draw you a map, if you want to go to see for yourselves.” He drew a piece of paper from his doctor bag and hastily sketched out a route to the Ballard house. Then he took off for his office.

“We’ve got to check on Travis and Harriet,” I said. “Maybe they’ve come back.”

Eli didn’t question that. “Where are they staying?”

I fished the name out of my memory. “The Livingston,” I told him.

We walked into the Livingston lobby a few minutes later. It was cool and dark. Overhead fans turned in slow circles. The lady behind the desk was smiling already, even when she saw what Eli was. “May I help you?” she said. Her blond-white hair was braided and formed into a little crown on her head, which was fascinating. I shook myself and got to business with an introduction. Her name was Mrs. Girtley.

“Ma’am, we understand some friends of ours have not turned up where they are supposed to be,” I said. Calm and reasonable. “Travis Seeley and Harriet Ritter. My husband and I are concerned about them, and we wonder if—with you present, of course—we might look at their room to see if we can find any clue as to where they might be?”

Mrs. Girtley’s lips pressed together as she thought this over. “With me present,” she said, nodding. “If Mr. Seeley and Miss Ritter hadn’t been so regular in their habits, I wouldn’t be too concerned. But their rooms were supposed to be vacated today. They told me yesterday they’d be leaving this morning. I just don’t believe it’s like them to vanish, especially not without their belongings.”

“We’d be much obliged,” Eli said, sounding as Dixie as he was ever going to sound.

We followed Mrs. Girtley down the ground-floor hall. First Mrs. Girtley unlocked Travis’s room, which was orderly. His suitcase was shut, his clothes still hung in the wardrobe, his shaving gear and toothbrush were in the bathroom.

“I’m going to open his suitcase,” Eli said to Mrs. Girtley.

“Oh, I’m sure it’s locked,” she said.

But I took a cue from Eli and began to ask Mrs. Girtley how long she had worked at the hotel and any other questions I could think of. Eli made some small hand gestures. When he pressed the release buttons the locks popped open.

“Oh, my goodness, he left it unlocked!” Mrs. Girtley said.

I knew for sure something bad had happened to Travis when I saw his guns lying on top of his clothes. From Eli’s sudden stillness, he’d reached the same conclusion.

Same thing in Harriet Ritter’s room. Her guns were in her suitcase too, and it was locked until Eli stepped close. And Harriet’s jewelry was in her suitcase. It was nice jewelry. Not showy, but not fake. Real gold, as far as I could tell.

“I should call the sheriff,” Mrs. Girtley said. She shook her head. “You’d think since they worked for Iron Hand they’d be able to take care of themselves, even Miss Ritter. But you don’t leave sidearms and jewelry behind.”

Any dragging our feet would make us look real suspicious. “You should do that,” I said. “This is a real mystery.”

And it was. But I kept on talking to Mrs. Girtley about how worried I was, to distract her while Eli got hair from Harriet’s brush, just as he’d done in Travis’s room. I had no idea what he meant to do with it, but he knew what he needed.

“I’ll go call the sheriff,” Mrs. Girtley said, with sudden decision. “You lock the door behind you, please.” I took the key from her, and as soon as she was out of sight I took Harriet’s guns. I checked them to make sure they were loaded—they were—and I tucked one into my purse, where it barely fit, and handed the other to Eli to tuck into the back of his pants, under his vest. I wanted to be armed right now. I couldn’t walk back to our hotel without something better than a knife.