Under a Gilded Moon(18)

Jursey, who’d just rescued the cap from a few feet away, where it must have fallen from Tully’s head, shrank under the stares aimed at him now.

“This here,” Rema began, “was a gift from the nice—” She stopped.

Kerry hurried to stand by her brother. “The cap wasn’t originally his.”

Jursey raised a hand protectively to it. “Wasn’t the nice man from the train who done the attack.”

But the woman in mauve wasn’t finished. “Suspicious is what he was. The man in front of me observed as much while we were still on the train. ‘All their kind is’—that’s what he said. The kind that cause all the crime—that’s what he meant.”

They all turned to the woman, her voice climbing an octave, gathering speed.

“And he disembarked all in a hurry.”

Wolfe gave her his full attention. “Where’d this fellow go? What’d he look like?”

“Foreign type. Shifty. Slinking away as fast as he could.” She turned to the crowd for confirmation of this.

Without a coat, Kerry’s arms caught the serrated edge of the mountain winds. She forced her shoulders still and wrapped an arm around Tully.

Wolfe sauntered to stand inches from her, his eyes nearly level with hers but his presence making him seem like he took up more space. Kerry had to force herself not to step back. She could smell the fish on his breath from his dinner. And wild onions, fried.

“Now, I’d hate to go assuming a man’d be guilty first thing out of the milking stall, but it sure ’nough sounds like we got us a likely suspect.”

Rema pushed forward. “He didn’t make a move for nothing out of my bag. And he had plenty of chance.”

All eyes traveled downward to Rema’s bag on the ground, the brown-and-blue satchel clearly handmade from a flour sack.

Kerry met Cabot’s eye as he looked from the bag to her aunt, and back to her. She knew what he must be thinking, he and his sort: What in God’s name would any thief want to steal from that old hillbilly’s sack?

A silence followed, and Kerry felt the cut of it.

“All’s I’m sayin’ is he had the chance,” Rema insisted. “I caught a few winks. The twins was entertaining theirselves. He didn’t so much as make a jab at it.”

The voice of the woman in mauve had gone shrill again. “Everyone in our car saw how he leaped to his feet and shouted like some sort of madman. The conductor had to threaten him. And the foreigner had something in his hand he was terribly protective of—and jumpy about. A weapon, for all we knew.”

“No’m.” Jursey spoke hoarsely.

All eyes turned on him again.

“It weren’t any weapon. I can swear to that. It was a sketch drawn up by hand was all. Of Biltmore.”

Madison Grant stepped forward. “A sketch? As in a kind of layout of the house?”

Eyes wide with confusion, Jursey shook his head. “A sort of layout, I reckon. I don’t . . . it was just the house.”

Wolfe’s forehead rumpled. “Now why would any foreigner type cart around a drawing of somebody’s house?”

“Unless,” Grant suggested, “that person meant trouble to somebody inside. I hesitate to cast aspersions, but such things do happen these days: prominent persons like the Vanderbilt family in New York and Newport being intentionally targeted.”

Tully smacked her brother’s arm. “Judas,” she hissed. “Judas Damn Traitor Iscariot.”

“I didn’t say he done it, Tuls. Only said he wasn’t carrying a weapon.”

Wolfe snapped his suspenders. “That’s it, then. Good a place as any to start in the searching. What’d he look like, this fellow? Italian, somebody was mumbling just now? Which way’d he set off?”

Someone pointed toward the stand of balsams.

“Everyone knows,” quavered the woman in mauve, “you can’t trust Italians. Not south of Florence, you can’t.”

Stepping behind a balsam, Wolfe shook its branches as if the man himself might fall like a pine cone from among its needles. “Well, now. I reckon we can make out his prints in the mud setting out toward the lodge there.”

Slowly, Jursey pulled the cap from his head. Then tossed it to the ground.

Kerry joined him. Rested a hand on his shoulder. “Nothing’s been proved, Jurs. Far from it.”

Jursey lifted his face, pale and drawn. “You don’t reckon our friend really killed him?”

Kerry again pictured the Italian with his phony last name yanking the cap lower onto his head and slumping down in his seat each time the vestibule door opened.

“Sure wouldn’t seem likely, Jurs, I’d agree. Sometimes people get blamed when they don’t deserve it. But also, sometimes people we don’t want to blame . . . sometimes they disappoint us.”

Cocking back his foot, Jursey kicked the cap, sending it and a glob of mud into the balsams. He turned to Kerry like he might bury his face in her neck, but then he seemed to remember his age and the manhood he was supposed to uphold. He slumped. And looked as if he might cry. “I just wanna go home.”

Kerry hugged her brother close. “I know.”

Tully sniffled. “The man on the train made hisself out like he was nice.”

Kerry bent to kiss the top of her sister’s head. The stationmaster’s lantern spilled yellow light toward the edge of the woods. Kerry’s eyes followed the strand.