Liz Ireland - Cecilia And The Stranger

Jake’s legs straightened cautiously. Something was not right. Thirty seconds had passed, if that much. Three shots. Jake hadn’t fired. It wasn’t like Gunter to hightail it just when he had his target cornered.

Shouts sounded on the street as Jake’s eyes alit on a disturbing sight. Pendergast. In the few moments of excitement, Jake had forgotten about the sleeping schoolteacher. His stomach clenched. A dark crimson patch was spreading across the side of the man’s shirt. On the other side of him, a pool of blood was gathering on the floor from another wound. Pendergast wasn’t sleeping anymore.

“They got him!”

Jake glanced over at the now-standing bartender, whose face was filled with curious revulsion.

“I reckon it was some sort of vendetta,” the man continued breathlessly, wiping his hands anxiously on the apron at his waist. “Man said he’d been a deputy!”

Jake froze as the man’s words sank in. Slowly, he turned back to Pendergast and saw his own hat still perched on the dead man’s head. There wasn’t much difference in their sizes, or even their clothes for that matter, if one didn’t stop to consider the newly bought appearance of the dead man’s. Gunter had made a mistake. A fatal one for Pendergast.

Three men burst through the door of the saloon. “Lou! What the hell happened!” one of them cried.

A skinny, grizzled old fellow with a tarnished star stuck on the breast pocket of his work shirt pushed through the others to look at Pendergast’s slumped form. His eyes bugged. “This man’s dead!” he pronounced, shocked. “We ain’t had but one dead person in town all year!”

“That’s so,” another man said. “And old Mrs. Grizwald was ninety-three.”

“This here looks like murder to me!” the sheriff announced.

The men remained congregated around the dead man while the bartender recounted what had happened. As Jake shuffled closer he just barely heard the words deputy and vendetta . The bartender had been asleep since the small hours, so it was no wonder he’d gotten his facts confounded.

Jake’s head was swimming. Gunter thought he’d killed him, that Jake Reed was dead. After five years of dreaming about it, and nearly two years of actively trying, the snake probably felt triumphant. More than likely, he was on his way back to Redwood right now to tell Darby the good news.

“I’d better find out the name of the deceased,” the sheriff said, beginning his official investigation.

Jake’s head snapped up. Four pairs of eyes were peering at him anxiously. He opened his mouth to speak, but hesitated, glancing down at the suitcase at his feet. Why not? Darby and Gunter would stop looking for him now. Becoming someone else would make him free—free to hunt them when their guards were down.

“Reed,” Jake said, surprised at how easily the lie came to his lips once he’d made up his mind. “Jacob Reed, I think he said his name was.” If he was going to be buried, he wanted the formality of his full Christian name.

The men shook their heads. “Guess we oughtn’t even to call Doc,” one of them said.

“No, it’s like Arnie here says. This man’s dead.”

The sheriff shot glances at both Jake and the bartender. “Don’t reckon either of you recalls where Reed came from.”

Jake shook his head. “Nope,” he said.

“You didn’t see who was shooting, did you?” the old man asked.

“Nope.”

“He was tight-lipped, that one,” the bartender piped up, nodding at Pendergast, the man who had talked until he’d passed out. “I had the feeling he was running from something.”

“That’s it, then,” said the sheriff, wiping his brow tiredly. “Maybe somebody around here saw something, but I doubt it.” In the sheriff’s mind, apparently, the investigation was now officially closed.

The bartender looked up as Jake picked up Pendergast’s suitcase and slammed some money on the bar. “Good luck to you, mister. Sure sorry this had to happen, with you from the East and all.”

“Could have happened anywhere.” For all he knew. This sad excuse for a town was as far east as he’d ever been.

“Where’d you say you were going?”

Jake stopped for a moment. He’d need to lie low for a while, and Pendergast had given him the perfect opportunity. “Annsboro,” he said.

The men nodded, then turned back to the more interesting matter at hand.

Annsboro. He didn’t know where it was, but he’d heard enough about it. Lucky town, really. Pendergast had been on his way back to Philadelphia. Now it looked as though Annsboro would have a new schoolmaster, after all.

Even in late September, Annsboro was cloaked in a dry haze. What few patches of buffalo grass there were in the town itself had long since withered and yellowed, their scorched leftovers, as well as the occasional scrubby mesquite or cedar, lending the place its only landscaping.

Jake pulled one of Pendergast’s white starchy handkerchiefs from his coat pocket. No wonder the schoolteacher had picked up new clothes, Jake thought as he raked the stiff cotton across his brow. The wool suit he had found in Pendergast’s suitcase, which was a snugger fit than Jake had first thought it would be, was so hot it felt like he was walking around with a brick oven on his back.

“If you’ll look to your left, you’ll see not only Annsboro’s mercantile, but also the sight of our future drug emporium.”

Lysander Beasley, Jake’s self-appointed guide to this wretched place, gestured grandly toward a squat brick building and the empty lot next to it. On a large wooden sign above the store, the word Beasley’s was spelled out in red curlicued letters.

“Owned and run by yours truly.” Beasley pinched proudly at one end of his pointy mustache. His neatly greased hair, parted down the center, created a pulled-back curtain effect, as though his forehead were a stage. The loud check print of his expensive-looking suit was showy, too—a flashy display of wealth, like his shiny new gold watch chain that glinted in the sun. Pudgy, florid and fatuous, Lysander Beasley appeared every inch the prosperous model citizen—the kind Jake remembered from his deputy days who would rave for hours about law and order. Then, when one of their own, like Otis Darby, happened to land in jail, they would discover compassion.

But even putting his own feelings aside, Jake couldn’t see much to be smug about in Annsboro, although one glance down the town’s dusty main street confirmed that the mercantile was probably the town’s most successful enterprise, except perhaps for what looked like a saloon clear over on the other end of town. That would make sense. If Jake lived here, he was sure he’d want to do more drinking than buying.

You do live here, fool, he thought, shaking his head in disbelief.

Incredibly, Lysander Beasley mistook his discouraged amazement for awe. “Oh, it’s a fine little town, all right. Why, I’d bet that in two years we’ll have a courthouse!”

“You don’t say,” Jake said, striking what he hoped was the appropriate note of wonder. He was rewarded with a hacking chuckle from his companion.

“But I’m sure you’re more interested in the schoolhouse than in buildings that don’t even exist yet.” Beasley guffawed again. “This way, Mr. Pendergast.”

Jake was staring at a dilapidated brick building directly across the dirt road from the mercantile. The place proclaimed itself to be a blacksmith’s, but the windows were boarded up. And other than some scattered houses, that was it as far as the town went.

“Mr. Pendergast?”

Startled, he looked at Beasley and they continued walking. If he didn’t get used to answering to the name of Pendergast, he might find himself with a heap of explaining to do.