Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(20)

“Then I’m glad to meet you, well and truly. We need all the help we can get.”

The chief wasn’t quite so enthusiastic. “No amount will be enough, not since the election. There’s no one left who really wants to charge your daddy properly, and there are plenty of folks with money who want to see him turned loose and sent back to that pretend church of his.”

Ruth made a face like she wanted to spit on the ground, but was just barely too ladylike to give it a go. “It ain’t no church. I’ve spent a lifetime in churches, some of them better than others. What’s going on at Chapelwood, that’s just a gentlemen’s club for men in hoods.”

“Chapelwood . . .” I made note of the name. I remembered it from Coyle’s last letter. “That’s what they call the church?”

“I don’t know what the reverend calls it on his taxes, but that’s the name of the old estate. Listen, sir—if you really mean to help, I’d be happy to talk to you, but the chief’s right. We shouldn’t do it here.” She glanced around nervously.

Eagan agreed. “I need to get home. My wife will be wondering if I’m still alive and if I’ve killed anybody on my way out the door—but, Ruthie, you might want to take this fellow over to George’s. I expect they’ll have quite a lot to talk about.”

Ruthie shook her head. “I’ve got a husband to get back to myself. But this afternoon, sir,” she said to me. “Perhaps you’d like to join us for supper.”

“That’s a very kind invitation, and I’d be delighted.”

She gave me an address, and we agreed on six o’clock.

Then we all parted ways—Eagan back to his vehicle, the girl back to her new husband, and me to find a corner where I might flag down a car. I had no intention of walking back to the hotel in the increasing warmth.

Honestly, I don’t know how anyone stands it. And if this is September, ye gods—what the hell can be said of their summer?





Leonard Kincaid, American Institute of Accountants (Former Member)




BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA SEPTEMBER 25, 1921


I’m so very tired of the front page. I can’t escape it soon enough, and, I mean, really, you’d think they’d run out of room or interest at some point. Right now, my escapades compete only with the elections and the upcoming trial of that man who murdered the priest.

God, I wish one of those stories would usurp me.

As for Stephenson . . . I knew him. Not well, but well enough to know I’d prefer to keep some distance from the man. He’s always been an unpleasant fellow, nasty to everyone—especially his own family. I’ve seen his wife and daughter around town, quiet and browbeaten, except for how the younger daughter kept running away.

I’ve heard rumors that he’s become one of the Chapelwood men. If that’s correct, it’s no surprise to me; but he joined the group after I escaped it, so we never worshipped together.

I almost want to talk to him. I almost want to visit him in his cell, ask him questions about their progress and their plans. Would he talk to me? Maybe he doesn’t know that I’m banished and hated. Maybe they stopped talking about me, after a while. Of course, it might be the other way, too—they may warn every newcomer about the mad accountant who left his place at the reverend’s side, and now creeps through the streets to rob Chapelwood of its sacrificial lambs.

That’s more likely, isn’t it?

I think it probably is.

I should avoid the jail, and the angry father who waits there for his reckoning . . . not that it’ll be much of a reckoning. No one expects a conviction. It’s a jury of his peers, after all—most of them Klansmen, or True Americans, or men who are wholly sympathetic to those causes. I say this not because I know it for a fact, but because you may as well count on it. It’s just been announced that Hugo Black is the attorney on the case, and that says everything you need to know right there.

This is not a jury that will hang a man for shooting a Catholic, certainly not when his daughter had run off unexpectedly to marry one. Furthermore, certainly not when he was surprised with a son-in-law from Puerto Rico, as brown as the octoroons who used to work the laundry by my office.

? ? ?

I haven’t thought of those women in months. They were lovely, and they used to sing while they stretched out the hospital linens along the lines. I liked their voices, and by proxy, I even learned some of their songs. I wonder if anyone has noticed I’m gone. I wonder, if one of their numbers comes up, would she recognize me in her very last moments?

The laundry women. Good heavens, that feels like a lifetime ago.

? ? ?

I ran the equations again last night, twice for good measure. I was extra thorough because I’m always extra thorough—I’d hate to get it wrong, not when someone’s life and death hangs in the balance. But let me be honest: I’m looking for Edwin Stephenson’s name or position.

Wouldn’t that be nice, to find him in the digits? What a relief, if I could kill someone terrible, for once. I’d love to feel like my unfortunate reign over the front-page news is helping the city in a concrete way, and not merely a metaphysical one.

But I did not find Edwin Stephenson in the numbers. Alas, I never do. Instead, I found a woman who is not likely to be missed—if I am careful. And I am learning to be as careful in my murders as I am thorough in my math.