Рита Браун - A Hiss Before Dying

Hearing more squad cars and the ambulance, she inhaled as much as she could, then ground out the cig on the sole of her shoe before dropping it in her pocket. No point in advertising that her no-smoking plan had fizzled.

Sheriff Shaw soon reached her in the woods. Wordlessly, he studied the body. He, too, noticed the chit, and Cooper filled him in on the background Harry had provided.

“Umm.”

“Boss, two dead men in a week. A quiet year and now this. The driver had to be forced under that boulder,” she said. “I don’t see how he could crawl.”

“Maybe not. People find unusual strength if they’re scared enough. He had half a face, so he was scared,” the sheriff countered.

“Must have been terrified. Who can do that to flesh? He was killed, yes, but by a human?” She found the means of death puzzling.

“Now this.” He looked up at a perfect fall sky. “And really it has been such a quiet year.”

“Not anymore.” They sighed, almost in unison.

December 31, 1785 Saturday

A fragrant cherrywood log crackled and popped in the fireplace of the inviting parlor, John Schuyler, in a chair, opened his eyes.

“Four more minutes.” John Schuyler’s wife, Catherine, smiled at him.

He smiled back and looked at the large grandfather clock that had cost his father-in-law a fortune to import.

Fortunately, Ewing Garth possessed a fortune, which his two daughters, Catherine and Rachel, and their husbands would someday inherit.

Charles West, Garth’s other son-in-law, a former British captain in the late war, stood up, lifting his glass, as they’d been visiting in the library after dinner.

The others stood also.

Bettina, the head woman slave and cook, came in from the kitchen, as did Roger and Weymouth, Roger’s teenage son. Roger, as the butler, was the male slave with the most power, which he used judiciously. Bettina, also wise about these things, expressed herself more than Roger, but everyone thought that was because she was a woman.

Charles looked around the room at these people whom he had learned to love. “Happy New Year.”

All, Bettina, Roger, and Weymouth, too, lifted their glasses and toasted the New Year and one another.

“Did not the Romans understand this day better than ourselves?” Catherine, at twenty-two, was reaching the apogee of her beauty. “Janus, who can see the past and the future.”

Charles, tall, blond, impeccably educated, nodded. “A dubious gift.”

Ewing, late middle age, smiled indulgently. “Oh, now, Charles, if a man is speculating, Janus could certainly add to his fortune.”

“Well,” his son-in-law tilted his head, “yes.”

Bettina looked out the hand-blown glass windows. “Snowing heavier.”

The others followed her gaze.

“January.” Rachel, not a late-night person like her husband, Charles, was struggling to keep awake. “The dead of winter.”

“I try to remember that. The leaves are sleeping and will unfold in springtime,” Ewing remarked. “Old as I am, every year spring comes as a miracle.”

Roger walked over to the window, putting his hand on the glass, which was cold. “Might I suggest that Catherine and John, Charles and Rachel head home before this grows worse? No one wants to get lost in a snowstorm.”

Bettina scolded. “Roger, did you leave prints on that glass?”

“No.” Roger smiled at her. He knew her ways and she his.

“Didn’t one of Paul Axtell’s sons die in a blizzard?” Catherine asked.

“Terrible thing,” her father replied. “You and Rachel were just little things. No one was prepared for the ferocity of the storm. We knew it was going to snow. You can feel that in your bones—but this was as though Borealis was extracting his revenge.” Ewing cited the Greek god of the north wind. “Started in the late afternoon. Isabelle and I,” he recalled his late, much missed wife, “took you two outside to play in the large twirling snowflakes, but within an hour the sky grew dark, the wind picked up. In we came and within minutes the house felt as though someone was pummeling it. The noise of that wind! The snow was so thick I doubt people could see the hand in front of their face. Paul’s son, a big, strapping boy, Samuel, went out to bring in more firewood. They found him when the storm passed, almost twenty-four hours later; he lay between the woodshed and the house, not twenty yards from the back door.”

“Poor fellow, so close,” Rachel, always kindhearted, said.

“Mother Nature can be cruel.” Ewing rose from his chair. “Poor Paul never really recovered, and now, these many years later, his mind is completely gone. His daughters must watch him all the time. He wanders off. Forgets where he lives. A sad life, and once he had everything. I suppose there’s a lesson there, but I prefer to focus on a happier one for the New Year.”

“Mother used to pray for thankful increase, so let us hope that is what 1786 brings to us.” Rachel smiled as Charles took her hand and kissed it. “Happy New Year,” Charles said.

“Yes.” Rachel kissed his cheek.

“I’ll fetch your wraps,” Bettina offered, while Roger, not waiting for more direction from Bettina, who could be bossy, left for the back of the house.

Weymouth preceded his father down the long hall, heart pine shining, each man now carrying a lantern with a candle in it. They set their lanterns on the long, elegant hall table, which Ewing also had shipped in from England. Most of the furniture in the big house, as it was called, came from there. The Garths weren’t much for the French fashion, they found it too ornamental, too frilly.

The men helped the women on with their wraps. Roger opened the door and Ewing’s daughters kissed him good night.

The two couples walked together through the snow, then parted ways as Catherine and John headed toward a tidy two-story clapboard house toward the west and Rachel and Charles turned east toward its duplicate.

“Happy New Year,” they wished one another, glad to see the candles shining in their own windows.

When Charles opened the door for his wife, they were greeted by his Welsh corgi, Piglet, who had faced the war with him, and the aroma of a good fire. Their two daughters, one two years old, an adopted child, and one a year old, along with Catherine and John’s son, a year and a half old, were sound asleep down in Ruth’s cabin on the double row of slave quarters, the buildings facing one another.

Ruth loved children and they loved her. All the children, slave and free, played together as toddlers.

Charles, unwrapping his scarf, smiled at his wife. “We’re alone.”

She teased. “We have Piglet.”

Taking her in his arms, he held her, then kissed her. “That we do. Let’s make the most of this peace and quiet.”

Catherine and John came to the same conclusion.

Down at the weaving lodge with its huge shuttle loom, the peace and quiet was disturbed. Bumbee, a gifted weaver, slept near the enormous fireplace. A knock on the door awakened her. She wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and hurried to the door, but she didn’t open it because her worthless husband, whom she had left in high drama, often tried to win back her affections, if only for a night.

“Who is it?”