The next document is a marriage certificate between Annabeth Bigelow, apparently the older sister of the ill-fated James Bigelow, and a man named Percy Grover, who were wed on June 4, 1896, in Trinidad, Colorado. Next is Annabeth’s death certificate a year after her marriage to Mr. Grover, the result of a riding accident. When I flip this certificate over to look at the next item in the folio, my breath hitches in my throat, as does Belinda’s. There atop the rest of the documents is an unframed wedding portrait, small in size, but clearly of Martin and another woman. And it’s not Candace. I’ve seen Candace’s photograph. Thisbegowned woman is plump and brown-haired and a bit older than Martin, I’d wager. I turn the photograph over. Someone has penciled inAnnabeth Bigelow and Percy Grover—June 4, 1896.
“Good Lord,” I whisper. Martin is not only masquerading as dead James Bigelow; he married under the name Percy Grover, too. It is falling into place now as I stare at a younger Martin in a wedding suit. I turn to Belinda. “That cattle ranch wasn’t his father’s like he told you, nor did it belong to a kindhearted rancher who gave him a job like he told me. The ranch was his father-in-law’s. And then his wife’s. Martin inherited it when this Annabeth died in a riding accident.”
When I say this last bit, a cold thought prickles inside my head.
“She’s a rancher’s daughter and she died in a riding accident?” I mumble, and I should’ve left the thought unsaid. Belinda falters next to me. I grab the chair I’d pushed aside and pull it to her.
“Sit down.” She doesn’t argue with me.
“You can’t be thinking he killed her?” Belinda says with a gasp, her eyes glittering with fear and dread.
I suddenly remember Kat was hovering at the doorway when I began working on the lock. I glance up and relief pours through me. She has wandered off, thank heaven, apparently having gotten bored with my efforts to pick the lock.
“We don’t need to be wondering about that right now,” I say. “Forget I said it.”
And she nods, wide-eyed. But we both now know Martin is a coldhearted liar who can’t be trusted. Everything in this drawer tells us we know that much.
I turn back to the folio, which seems to me now to be a grand collection of Martin’s accomplishments as much as importantpersonal records, or why else would he keep them all? I want to find Candace’s death certificate; Candace, that young woman whose parents had enrolled her in a prestigious riding school where she met Martin Hocking. I want to see the cause of death as consumption. Martin could not have killed Candace outright to get an inheritance from her, not if she died of consumption. I need to know her disease killed her and only her disease so that I’ll know if Belinda, Kat, and I must run from this house this very night and report Martin to the police.
I scan the documents that remain. An invoice for Annabeth’s headstone. A bill of sale for the Colorado cattle ranch for twelve thousand dollars. A birth certificate for a Percy Grover, born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1875. The bill of sale for a house in Los Angeles, dated four months before I married Martin; a marriage certificate to Candace, dated July 1897; two certificates of stillborn births—boys—delivered dead to Candace and Martin Hocking. The first in November 1897—which means Candace had been with child when she married Martin—and the second in March 1898. But there is no death certificate for Candace.
I rummage through the other folios. I find maps of California and Colorado, bank statements—only in the name of Martin Hocking; the largest balance is three thousand dollars. And then a collection of obituaries from different California newspapers. The obituaries are all for men. Martin circled the names of surviving daughters and where they lived. Some of the obituaries are from newspapers that were printed only a few weeks ago; others are older. Among the older pages is George Dixon’s obituary, and there within it, in a penciled circle, is Belinda’s name.
“That’s how he found you,” I tell her, though that fact is obvious to us both at the moment.
Belinda stares at her name as if she doesn’t recognize it as her own.
“Why?” she finally says, several seconds later. “Why me?”
I leaf through the obituaries. The men had all been of means, and all had been preceded in death by their wives, so their surviving children had surely inherited from them. That being the case, what had Martin hoped to gain from a marriage to Belinda? A roadside inn is no great boon. He had to have chosen her for another reason, and even as I’m wondering what it is, I think I might already know where to go to puzzle it out. The boiler room will tell me if I am right.
But first I rifle through what I am able to of the rest of the desk. I find a locked strongbox the size of a jewelry case, the title to Martin’s automobile and the agreement records for its garage, and receipts from the grocer and butcher and the Emporium. I find pay stubs from Martin’s years as a stable hand in Los Angeles. I find no files at all related to his working as an assessor for an insurance company—not one—and nothing that tells me what Martin works on at this desk when he’s home.
I decide to try the hairpins on the strongbox, and as I lift it out of the drawer, I spy an envelope that was resting underneath it.
The envelope is addressed to Martin at the Los Angeles address, postmarked six months before I married him. The return address is Las Palomas Sanatorium in Tucson, Arizona. I turn the envelope over and lift its broken flap. It has been opened. I pull out the letter inside and begin to read:
Dearest Martin,
Please don’t be angry with my father or with me. I know it was not your wish that I come to the sanatorium,but Papa believes I will fare better here. I may even improve. That is why I allowed him to spirit me away like he did. It wasn’t to anger you or conspire against you. He was afraid if he told you he was going to step in to care for me that you would prevent him from doing so. I have always taken your side with him, Martin. You know I have. But I feel he is in the right this time. Please, please try to understand!
They are taking wonderful care of me here, and I do feel stronger, even if it is only a little bit. Please come and see me as soon as you can and bring Kat. I know I haven’t been the mother to her that I should’ve been, but I want to try to change that in whatever time I have remaining to me. I have made so many mistakes, Martin. We both have. But we do not need to keep making them. Please, my darling. I know it has not been good between us. I know now I took the losses of our sons too much to heart. I was not a good wife and I utterly failed Kat as a mother. I know I cannot be the wife for you that I should have been, but please, please let me attempt to be the mother I should’ve been to Kat. Please bring her to me. Let me see her.
Your loving wife,
Candace
My breath stills in my lungs. Here is the reason I can find no death certificate for Candace in Martin’s desk. She’s not dead. She’s alive, or at least she was nineteen months ago. And since there is no death certificate and three thousand dollars instead oftens of thousands in Martin’s bank account, she must still be at that sanatorium. Martin told me many months back that his dead wife had been bequeathed an inheritance from her grandmother and that that was what had allowed him to buy this house, but Martin hasn’t inherited anything from Candace. She’s not dead. He must still be living off the sale of Annabeth’s ranch.
As I look down at Candace’s letter, I feel my strength leaving me like blown dandelion wisps. Up to this point my mounting anger at Martin’s deceit has felt like something to be harnessed and utilized, like a team of ready horses. But now I feel undone. Emptied of vigor.
This is surely how Belinda felt just an hour ago when she saw that photograph of Martin and me, as though her world was suddenly made of paper and she was made of thread. Her world was tearing into bits and she was unraveling as the pieces floated away on too swift a breeze.
Candace isn’t dead.
Kat has a mother and it’s not me.
13
