JAHLEEL—MEAN, STUPIDMAN
As much as I hate that Lydia can’t escape the room, I’m glad that the snake Palmers doesn’t notice. I meet him in the middle of the study away from my desk. The proud charlatan with his nose aloft looks around. “Where are the famed chess sets? Tavis used to say you’ve collected the rarest and most expensive ones and put them on display wherever you went.”
“Well, he might have been wrong. Everyone can be wrong.”
“Torrance, you asked me to meet you at ten. I assume you have my money.”
I’d pull out my father’s pocket watch, but this fool might ask for it. “I believe it’s 9:50. Nothing like an early thief.”
“I’m no thief. Just claiming what should be mine. Why are you almost whispering?”
Leaning on the cane, I say I don’t want to waste my breath. “Sit in a chair.” I move to one left from the surgery party. “You want twenty thousand pounds of the money I made from my investments, from a business you’ve never worked. How is it yours? Remind me.”
Refusing to sit, he stands, luckily with his back to my desk—Lydia’s hiding place. The man’s neck above his wilting cravat is red like a beetroot. “I’m the aggrieved party. I should be paid for my pain.”
Acting like I’m checking my coat, I say, “I hear you bungled the one opportunity to help Wilcox Coal grow.”
The man bears a smug look. “I’ve bungled nothing.”
“Oh yes, according to Tavis, you ruin everything you touch. And you let him die knowing it.”
For the first time, Palmers looks uneasy.
“Mrs. Palmers is here. Lovely woman. I see you brought her tonight.”
He nods but goes toward my cabinetry where I once housed liquors and pain medicine. The wood gleams with emptiness.
“Does your wife know you forced your son to steal from Wilcox Coal to pay your taxes? Even made him siphon funds for the ill-tailored smock you’re wearing.”
“He told you no such thing. Torrance, he’d not betray me.”
“That’s the thing with fathers and sons: we learn from them by their actions and omissions.” I pull from a coat pocket the list of debts that Tavis had encumbered onto Wilcox Coal. From another, I pull his father’s current debtors. “I paid off and settled your son’s creditors once. I was quite surprised that you have debts with the same people, most starting their tabs within weeks of Tavis’s death and my payment.”
“Coincidence. Tavis loved to gamble.”
I offer a shrug. “Da, is true. But my steward has been bored recently. He enjoyed digging through numbers and talking with the creditors and some retired tax assessors. Those men only mentioned you. Then I realized Tavis covered for you.”
“Those are lies. My son is dead. Dead men can’t talk or be a witness.”
“Yes, he’s dead.” This time, I say it with remorse. “But the dead do leave clues and sloppy ones convincing records. Do you think Mrs. Palmers wants to hear this? Does she want to know you’re the type of man to ruin a young woman, a family friend in your care, as you tried to do to Katherine in St. Petersburg?”
“Everything comes back to that bigamist, that liar. She turned Tavis against us. She made him liberal.”
“Liberal enough that she tried to help. She did the books for Wilcox Coal. She knew what Tavis was doing with the money. She let him, thinking the company would grow beyond the debt.”
“She knew?” Palmers seems befuddled about why a wife would try to help her husband’s family. Then he grunts. “No. I don’t care what she told you. I want the money. And why are you still whispering?”
“Don’t want just anyone listening. And I do care, because Katherine didn’t cut Tavis off from the Wilcox coffers. They were dry from helping you stay out of debtors’ prison. Then you made Tavis take that stupid bet with a horse without training. It bucked and fatally injured him.” I fold my hands and cough to cover the shifting under my desk. “How does it feel to send your son off to be slaughtered? Did you collect the hundred pounds?”
“He took the bet of his own free will. How was I to know the horse wouldn’t clear the fence? I didn’t want Tavis to fall and break his back.”
I pull up a sheet of parchment, listing them out. “You risked his life for these debts?”
Palmers swallowed hard. “What’s done is done. Katherine committed fraud. Twenty thousand and the coal company is a new start for everyone. Tavis would agree.”
“Of course he would. He never stood up to you.”
“It’s that jezebel’s doing. She turned him against me. Tavis wouldn’t have had to take the bet if he just pilfered from the coal coffers.”
