Unbury Carol(75)

“I do.”

“And?”

“And…and I will.”

“That’s good. That’ll do just fine. Now let me see inside the coach.”

Dwight froze.

The command. So sudden.

Opal waited.

“You want to see inside the coach? This coach?”

Opal looked to the black wood of the black door.

“That very.”

“Of course.”

Dwight headed for the coach. His heart beat heavy and he wondered if Opal might not hear it. At the door, he placed his hand upon the handle and faced Opal once more.

“You’ll excuse me, but nothing makes me sadder than looking upon the very bench I once shared with Carol.”

He opened the door.

Opal looked inside.

It was a fine two-bencher, the seats facing each other, adorned with identical purple cushions.

“Thank you, Mister Evers.”

“Surely you weren’t expecting to find—”

“I wasn’t expecting to find anything. I apologize for the intrusion.”

Dwight shut the door.

In that moment, he looked like a grieving man to Opal.

“Is that all, Sheriff?”

“Thank you. That’s it. Please understand that as sheriff—”

“No need to explain yourself. I understand. What with the Illness so close.”

Opal nodded. Then he left Dwight alone with the coach.

He mounted his horse and headed south along the Trail to Harrows. Things still bothered him. Greatly. Heading into the meeting with Dwight, he had no real intention of going so hard at him. But between Manders’s uncertainty, Farrah’s testimony, and the perfect series of answers Mister Evers gave him, his instincts told him not to hold back. The thing a man like Dwight Evers didn’t know was that men who told the truth had holes in their stories. More so than the liars. There were holes in reality, Opal mused, but none in a good cover story. Carol Evers was set to be buried tomorrow morning. Whether or not Dwight produced the doctor, he’d have Manders and Norm give her a closer look. It’d be a good thing to have her body on hand.

Dwight just didn’t seem…angry enough for having been questioned.

As Opal rode out of sight, Dwight waited. Then he waited some more. Then he opened the door to the coach once again.

The stranger in his bedroom this morning had been right. The shroud who woke him had helped.

Hide your lady.

Opal had been in the cellar, Dwight had no doubt.

Reaching into the coach, he removed the angled mirror that hid Carol’s sleeping body. Dwight smiled. To think that Opal must have assumed there were two benches. Two pillows.

Seeing his wife upon the floor was a particular delight for Dwight. So moneyed in life, so poor in death.

He placed the mirror back where it was, where Opal had been fooled by it, and closed the coach door. He climbed back up to the driver’s box and snapped the reins hard. The cardinals took flight, perhaps aware that a man had escaped a hanging, perhaps simply searching the field for mice.

The lawman needed more…the doctor…proof. There wouldn’t be time to produce Alexander Wolfe before the burial. That was okay. For now. But Dwight would have to think of something soon.

Riding again, Dwight thought of Opal. The clever sheriff who was only a few feet from the body he longed to examine.

“I thank you for not waking,” Dwight called over his shoulder. “Would’ve been very bad for me.”

What had Farrah told Opal? What did she know?

Anger wrangled his heart but there was patience in there, too.

After all, things were falling into place.

He had help, though he didn’t want to think too hard on who it was that was helping him.

The shifting faces. The voice like a casket creaking closed.

Carol would be in the ground tomorrow morning.

Hell’s heaven, Dwight was close.





Albert’s Port was a midsized Trail-town that was 93 percent surrounded by the Ossiwak River. People who lived close called the river the O not only for the first letter of its name but because of the nearly complete circle it made. For this, the only entrance into Albert’s Port was over a lengthy wooden bridge. From there, a passer-through took Manage Street straight to another, wider, bridge at the north side of town. As Moxie rode Old Girl into Albert’s Port, her hooves clacked loud against the boards and the sun was lowering, purple in the sky once again, the day’s bookends, and the outlaw was required to introduce himself to a lawman stationed on the town side of the bridge.

“James Moxie,” he said, patting Old Girl gently on the back.

The officer spat on the ground.

“I may do my living here in the middle of nowhere, sir, but that don’t make me lost.”

“Officer?”

“You arnt James Moxie any more than I am.”

“Am I not?”

“You don’t look like him.”

“Have you ever seen him?”

“No, sir. I sure haven’t. But he don’t look like you.”

Moxie stared cold into the lawman’s eyes. Such a small obstacle, it seemed to Moxie, this man, taking up so little of the space between himself and Carol.

“What if I told you my name was John?” Moxie said.