Page 29 of Love and Order

CHAPTER 12

By the time Rion got the blanket wrapped around himself and joined the others at the table, pain and fatigue nipped at him like an annoying goat nibbling at his shirt hem. But it was a durn sight less than the night before when he almost couldn’t keep his eyes open or string two thoughts together.

“Mornin’.” He took the only empty seat, right beside Lu.

“Mornin’.” Lena grinned from her spot beside him.

Across the table, Joe and Calliope smiled and nodded in greeting, and once Seth asked a blessing over the meal, Rion pinned them both with a look.

“So how much trouble am I in?”

Trenamen’s brows rose as he reached for the plate of bacon. “You already knew the deck was stacked against you, and then you had the fool notion to break out of jail and take an innocent woman with you. It doesn’t look good.”

“First of all”—Calliope helped herself to a couple of flapjacks then looked at both him and Lu—“I’m happy you’re both alive—and relatively unharmed.” She handed the plate on to Lena and pinned him with a hard look. “But why didn’t you stay in the jail? We told you we’d do everything we could to help you.”

Rion debated before speaking, not wanting to hurt his sister’s feelings. “I don’t mean these words to be as harsh as they’ll probably sound, Calliope, but after however many years apart, I didn’t know if I could trust you. Lord knows I wanted to, but right from the first, you hid who you really were. I understand why, but that don’t take away the fact you did. And when you clued me in to your true identity, the first thing you did was start revealing all the murders you think I committed, started makin’ a case for why you need to lock me up.” He stabbed a single flapjack from the plate Lena held out toward him, plunked it on his plate, and passed the serving dish on to Lu. “Would you trust you if you were me?”

The words obviously struck a tender place if his sister’s squirming was any indication, but she quickly stilled herself. “For the record, I don’t believe you’ve committed any murders. But I had to take you in. All the evidence was pointing straight toward you.”

“Yeah. Well, that didn’t build my trust, and I could see real clear how stacked the deck was.” He nodded in Trenamen’s direction. “So I figured I’d do better on my own. I let you do your job—and then I escaped so I could do mine.”

Lu laid a hand on his left forearm, stalling any further comment. “Forgive me. This may seem a bit off the beaten path of the conversation, but you said something last night about Rion leaving boot tracks all over. That’s how you knew he was here.”

“That’s not exactly what we said.” Trenamen poured himself coffee and offered some to Calliope. “Sheriff Downing pointed out y’all are old friends.” He indicated Rion and Seth with the fork in his hand.

“Not just old friends. Brothers,” Seth corrected, mimicking Joe Trenamen’s motion. “We were taken in by the same ornery bag of bones off two different orphan trains.”

Understanding dawned in both Joe’s and Calliope’s eyes.

“Thank you for that clarification. Because of your connection to each other, we asked if we had Downing’s permission to stay behind and watch the house, expecting you might show up. Then, we started seeing the tracks around here—some of ’em pretty thick in places, like you were hiding and watching the house as well.”

Rion looked at Lu, and they both faced front. “I tried to say it last night. I haven’t worn those boots since the night I escaped the jail. I changed to the moccasins I’m wearin’ now just inside the back door of the town livery. Those boots ain’t been on my feet since. Where are these tracks, and how old are they?” Not that he could’ve left them anyway—he’d not been up to see Seth and Lena in a couple of months. Any track he would’ve left would’ve been obliterated by the elements long ago.

Confusion marred Joe’s eyes. “They were fresh. Since that big rain that came through a few days ago.”

“How many other posse members did Downing leave to watch my place?” Seth asked.

“Just the two of us. Why?”

Seth’s eyes closed. “I found a fella watchin’ the place last night an hour or so before y’all made your presence known. I figured Downing woulda left someone watchin’ us, and I thought that was him. I knocked him unconscious, tied him over his saddle, and sent his horse wandering toward Gartner Lake.”

Rion leaned forward to peer around Lu. “Did you recognize him?”

“Unfortunately, not well … not in the dark.”

“Show me where you found him.” Trenamen nodded toward the door.

“Right now?”

Trenamen started to nod, but Rion cleared his throat. “Why don’t y’all wait a minute. Lu.” He nudged her elbow with his.

“Maybe now’s a good time to tell them about that conversation you overheard.”

Looking a little uncomfortable, she nodded. “While the posse was here yesterday, we were hiding in a—” She darted a glance at Seth.

He hooked a thumb toward the trapdoor. “There’s a tunnel that connects the cellar to the outdoors, about ten or fifteen feet long.”

Lu returned her attention to Joe and Calliope. “We were hidden in the tunnel, and I overheard a whispered conversation from the outdoors end. I think it was two men, and I think one was with the posse and one wasn’t.”

She detailed the facts of the conversation, which left both Calliope and Joe mute for a moment after she’d finished.

“I know Miss Hattie’s a friend of yours, so I’m sorry for the unpleasant news about her. But I thought you ought to add that into whatever case you’re buildin’. It’s not me—but whoever it is might be on that posse.”

Joe seemed to ponder the information. “Between all of us, Callie and I have wondered if Sheriff Downing isn’t involved somehow.”

Beside him, Calliope nodded.

“Once we’re done eating, I want to see your boots.” Joe nodded to Rion, then shifted his focus to Seth. “And I’ll ask you to take me out to where you knocked the fella unconscious last night—as well as where that conversation would’ve happened. This isn’t makin’ sense yet, but I feel like it’s about to.”

After Rion finished his light breakfast of a single buttered pancake and a little coffee, Lu changed the dressings on his wounds and reapplied the warm sugar poultices, which had seemed to work wonders overnight. Then, he’d returned to bed and slept several more hours.

In the meantime, Seth and Joe went out to look at the areas Joe had asked about. They’d returned long enough to say they were saddling their horses and going to take a ride. Lu had wanted to go down and sit with Rion, to stay close and ponder what had happened earlier in the private moment they’d shared, but Calliope had requested both she and Lena stay and talk with her—as much about the man Rion had become since they’d separated as about the case. Lena was much more helpful with that topic than she could be. She was only just getting to know him herself—though she found it both enlightening and entertaining to hear stories of the real Rion Braddock. She’d scribbled details furiously from Lena’s stories into her journal.

When Rion emerged from the cellar again a little after noon, sleepy-eyed and hair mussed, he carried a thick stack of wanted posters and the dark blue Henley he’d worn briefly the morning before. As he deposited the posters on the table next to her, he yawned and blinked and, heading toward the stove, struggled to straighten out his shirt and tug it on. Seeing the posters contrasted against his sleepy fumbling, she was reminded of a bear just waking from hibernation. It appeared cuddly and harmless, but hidden beneath was a fierceness and skill for protecting what he saw as his.

And he’d said he wanted to protect her …

“Where are Joe and Seth?” He poured himself a cup of coffee, pausing a moment to take a sip before returning to the table and easing into the chair next to her.

Calliope motioned. “They went to look at the boot tracks and, from there, took a ride.”

He took another sip. “Thought they left when I went to lie down.”

“They did. I would’ve expected them back already.”

“Any of y’all concerned they’re not back yet?”

Lena nodded. “I think their purpose was to see if they couldn’t track down the fella Seth knocked senseless last night.”

“That’s right.” Calliope exhaled deeply. “They found what appeared to be your boot tracks, both where the tunnel ends over here”—she pointed toward the side of the house—“and where Seth found the fella watching the house. They have the same crescent mark, in almost the same spot in the heel—but the boot tracks are smaller than yours by about that much.” She indicated about half the pad of her thumb. “A little narrower too.”

Lu’s brows shot up, and Rion paused with the coffee cup nearly to his lips.

“So you’re tellin’ me someone else has a pair of boots just like mine … with the same scar in the right heel?”

Calliope nodded. “It appears so.”

He set his mug down hard, sloshing coffee over the edge. “Now do you believe me?”

Lu snatched the wanted posters away from the spilled coffee and rose to grab a towel.

“I’ve told you more than once.” Calliope stared him down. “I believe you. But this isn’t enough to clear you. Not yet.”

Lu returned and dabbed up the spilled coffee.

“It’s enough to prove someone’s framin’ me!”

Lena cleared her throat. “Rion, it’s a start. Can you think when that mark first appeared in your boot heel? Or how it got there?”

He closed his eyes and rubbed the heel of his palm against his left eyebrow. “I don’t know. It was there from the time I got the boots.”

“So you bought them like that?” Lena raised an eyebrow. “Was it a mark the boot maker made?”

“I didn’t buy ’em new. Somebody gave ’em to me.”

At Lena’s quizzical look, he continued.

“I hadn’t collected any decent bounties in a while, and my boots were worn thin. Fallin’ apart, actually. Somebody had a spare pair and told me if they fit, I was welcome to ’em.”

Calliope frowned. “Who?”

Jaw clenched, Rion shook his head.

“Does that bear out with the evidence at the various murder scenes?” Lu took her seat, leaving the towel in case it was needed again. “Were these boot tracks at the other scenes, or only these last few?”

“Without being able to refer back to the case notes, I’m not sure. Joe’s worked this case since the first murder five years ago. I came into it much more recently.”

“All right. Then let’s go back to why we came here.” She pushed the stack of posters at him. “Who has a grudge against you? Ellwood Garvin and who else?”

As if to shake off the vestiges of sleep, Rion rubbed his eyes again then started to leaf through the posters.

From across the table, Calliope took one of the posters from the stack. “What are these?”

Rion snatched it back, returning it to its place. “It’s history. My history. Who I’ve tracked, caught, and collected on in my bounty hunting. Every poster’s in order of when I turned the fella in, so please don’t go grabbin’ things and puttin’ ’em out of order.”

“All right.” She came around to stand behind her brother.

“Calliope, the murders date back to …?” Lu raised an eyebrow.

“May of 1868.”

“So you’ll want to look at those bounties you collected on prior to that, since whoever is doing this has been setting you up from the first murder.”

“Right.” He took another swallow of his coffee, set the mug aside, and leafed down through the stack. Finding the right place, he turned to the posters in question and started going one by one again.

“This one was hung, so it’s not him.” He turned to the next page. “Jailed …”

Lu laid a hand on the page before he could flip it, then turned the previous poster over again. “Do you know anything about this man? Did he have family—someone who might want vengeance because he was hung?”

“That’s a tall order just after I woke up.”

Lena rose and checked the coffeepot, then carried it over and topped off his mug. “I’ll make more if I have to …”

He blinked, took a sip, and looked again. “I don’t remember any family with this one.” He moved on, going poster by poster. On the sixth or seventh, he paused, his brows arching.

“This fella—Dunwitty. He had an ill-tempered mama and an equally foul-mouthed wife. They threatened to come after me as I dragged him away.”

“That’s something.” Calliope drew up a chair and sat on his left side. “Have you seen either of them since?”

“Not that I recall, no. But I’ve been in a lot of places in the last five years. They coulda been in some town somewhere.”

“Lu, would you write his name down so we can look into it further?” Calliope asked.

Lu jotted it into her journal.

“But it’s not just seeing them once, is it?” Lena eyed them all from her place at the end of the table. “Whoever has been doing this has been setting him up across a long time.”

“That’s right.” Calliope nodded.

“But if we narrow this stack into a shorter list”—Lu tapped the posters—“we can work on narrowing it even further into who had the means to do such a thing.”

As Rion flipped to the next poster, Lena turned Dunwitty’s poster so it stuck out from the stack for easier finding.

After a couple more, he tapped a page. “Walt Esper escaped jail. He was facin’ a hanging, and his friends broke him out. Ain’t seen him, but he might have a grudge.”

Lu jotted the name, adding notes to remind her why each name was of interest.

He waded through more pages, pointing out Jimmy Albey, whose son had made a lot of strong threats; Edward Hunney, who’d threatened that his family would make Rion’s life a misery; Clyde Page and his gang, who’d leveled a lot of threats; and Al Langer, whom Rion had shot in the course of capture and who had nearly died.

“Langer’s probably out by now. I don’t recall that he had a long sentence.”

Lu pointed to the date scrawled somewhere on the page. “These are the dates of when you turned them in?”

Rion nodded. “And if there’s a second date, like on this one”—he pointed to a different poster—“it’s the date of death. Usually a hangin’.”

She jotted the date beside Langer’s name, then went back through the stack to log the dates on the other five as well.

Calliope stopped him before he continued his perusing. “If I had to guess, we’ve gone far enough back. This one is more than a year before the first murder.”

“If you say so.” Rion took the last swallow of his coffee and gathered the posters back into a pile, leaving the few turned out as Lena had done. “I’m gonna go lie down again.”

His sister rose and moved the chair so he could get out. “Do you mind leaving those so I can show Joe when he returns?”

“I don’t mind.” He pushed to his feet, rubbing his shoulder as he did.

Rion gave his sister a hug as he passed her, and as he started down the steps, he caught Lu’s eye. “You mind comin’ down and keepin’ me company until I fall asleep?”

He didn’t have to ask twice.