CHAPTER 33

Half an hour after the conductor had Joe tossed from the train, the locomotive rolled into Yuma station. Darkness still clung to the desert. Anna quickly dressed. She stripped a fine linen pillowcase from her pillow and filled it with supplies from the picnic basket—chocolate, pate and crackers, and two bottles of champagne. She added the decanter of brandy, though it was crystal, thus heavy and easy to break.

Anna donned an enormous new hat decorated with artificial fruit and wrapped herself in a cloak. She collected Joe’s discarded coat, put his hat into her pillowcase, and joined the flood of rumpled passengers disembarking from the train. On the platform, she perched on a bench, staring down the tracks, waiting for Joe. He would be walking for hours. She felt a pang of guilt. The winter desert was frigid in the wee hours, and he was unprepared. He could be hurt, having been tossed from a moving train. For all she knew, he was now being eaten by a Gila monster.

So, Anna did what any girl would do in her position, with her estranged love in danger. She headed down the moonlit tracks, past railcar after railcar filled with produce, in the direction from which the train had come, the pillowcase and Joe’s coat slung over her shoulder.

The conductor called after Anna. “Miss Blanc! Where are you going? Where do we take your things?”

“Please leave them on board. I’ve decided to go on to Oklahoma City. Do hold the train for me.” She hollered back without turning around. “I’m just stretching my legs.”

“You can’t walk out into the desert alone. It’s still dark. Come back!”

Anna broke into an awkward run, leaping from railroad tie to railroad tie, which spread out before her like an endless ladder. For all his heroic posturing, the conductor wasn’t very persistent. When she cast a glance behind her, he wasn’t following.

She slowed to a walk when she could no longer hear him calling her, carefully watching each footfall to avoid the dangerous desert creatures she had been warned about. Away from the noise of the station, she could hear coyotes yipping in the darkness—the darkness into which she was venturing. It raised her hackles. She thought she could fight a single coyote if she kicked it or came at it with windmill arms, but it sounded like a whole pack singing. If Joe were being eaten by a pack of coyotes, he would certainly need her. Anna doubled her resolve.

Her enormous hat weighed on her neck, shifting with every stride, tugging on her scalp. From time to time, she tilted back her head to see past the brim to the glowing horizon. She became aware of a coyote that periodically moved in the scrub ahead or behind her. She could see his silhouette. Anna knew how coyotes worked. Joe had told her. A single coyote lured their prey while the rest of the pack hid. Then the whole pack attacked. They attacked dogs sometimes, or children, or a small woman crawling on hands and knees through the desert.

Her neck began to ache. She ripped the heavy artificial fruits off her lovely new hat and threw them at the coyote, apple by pear, angry at yet another chapeau ruined. She hit the coyote on the nose with a pomegranate. It yelped and ran away, only to double back and resume its slinking.

She watched the sun rise on the Sonora desert. Dawn revealed a severe landscape and an orange sky. Saguaro cacti stood like men, waving their arms at her as if warning her to turn back. There were twisting Joshua trees and spiky yucca with pale flowers on towering stalks that loomed like ghosts.

The sun chased away the coyote, who was no doubt now seeking out his den. But other creatures were about—scorpions likely, snakes to be sure, colonies of fire ants, and whatever a Gila monster was. She heard rattling in the brush—an insect, or maybe a snake.

Anna would have to keep to the tracks and watch her step.

She worried for Joe, who had no large hat to protect his complexion from the rising sun. Also, he had no pate and no champagne, but she would soon remedy that. She could only hope he had found the flask, grapes, and cheese.

The day quickly grew warm unlocking the scents of sand and heat. The pillowcase became heavier with each step. She shed the coat she wore and the one she carried, tossing them over the low arm of an exceptionally tall saguaro cactus beside the tracks. They fell slack in the windless day. She would have to remember to pick them up on the way back.

The cold night had succumbed to the March sun. It shone down with a tepid brilliance. Anna had tired of walking and despaired of ever saving Joe Singer when, to her relief, she encountered a miracle—a handcar on a turnout from the main track. It had a teeter-totter handle—the kind you pumped with. A dirt road ended where the handcar rested. It must be someone’s personal handcar. God obviously wouldn’t mind if she borrowed it, or He would not have provided it. With both hands she pulled the switch so that the little car could access the main track. She set her pillowcase on the platform and hoisted herself up, which wasn’t easy in a corset and skirts. From her new vantage point, she could see farther. Her spirit sank. She could see dirt, cacti, rocks, and yucca. She saw false water like mercury sparkling in the sun. She saw tracks disappearing over the horizon. She could not see Joe Singer. Anna pushed the teeter-totter lever down, leaning with her whole desperate body, causing the handcar to lurch forward. She was thrust off balance and fell onto her backside, pricking her hand on a nail. She picked herself up, sucked the blood from her finger, and pulled the lever back up. She forced it down again, propelling the handcar onto the track.

Slowly, she developed a rhythm—up and down, up and down, pushing forward with each cycle. Periodically, she stopped to drink champagne.

It was gone noon when Anna finally spied a lone figure limping down the tracks in the distance amid the watery illusion of a mirage. For the first time in hours, she could breathe again. She felt grimy, tipsy, had blisters on her hands and feet, and her arms burned with exercise, but she didn’t care. Joe Singer was alive, upright, and walking. She let the push car coast up to Joe, then pulled on the brake. His pants were ripped, his white shirt had dirt stains. He carried his carpetbag hoisted over one shoulder. He was singing under his breath, “She’s my little Eskimo.”

The heat, exhaustion, and champagne were having their way with Anna. She felt she might not look her best. She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear and lifted her chin. She began to descend from the handcar, caught her Louis heel on a ladder rung, and felt herself falling gracelessly forward into the air, flailing her limbs. Joe caught her in his arms. She buried her face in his salty neck and began to sob. “I’m sorry they tossed you from the train, but it wasn’t my fault, and I’m of two minds about you.”

“I know.” Joe held her against him and she didn’t resist. “Where did you get the handcar?”

“If I told you I stole it, would you arrest me?”

“No, I’m planning on becoming an accomplice. You got any water?”

“I gave you water.”

“I drank it.” He pulled the silver flask from his pocket. It was dented nearly in half.

“There’s champagne on the handcar.” Anna hiccupped.

Joe smiled. “That explains a lot.” He climbed the steps to the platform with leaden boots, favoring his right leg. The champagne bottle lay propped up between a wooden box and Anna’s pillowcase. Joe grabbed it, tilted back his head, and swigged, finishing the last few sips.

Anna looked back down the tracks toward Yuma. They had a long journey ahead of them, and it would only get hotter. They had been walking or pumping for hours.

A feathery mesquite tree near a large rock formation cast shade onto the desert not fifteen feet from the tracks. “Maybe you should rest in the shade. I brought food and your hat.” Anna rummaged in the pillowcase for Joe’s derby hat, which now had a dent, and set it on his bare head. “I was so worried that you’d been injured falling from the train. I feared you’d been eaten by a pack of coyotes. Even though you don’t deserve my sympathy.” She touched a red mark on his cheek. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m bruised and I’ve got cactus spines in my—”

“I can get them out,” she said quickly. Even if they were fighting, she should not withhold treatment.

“Thanks. But we are miles away from any tweezers.”

Anna took his hand. “Come and rest in the shade, then.” She led him to the shadow of the rock formation, his hand warm and comforting in hers after the horror of fearing for his safety. The second champagne bottle felt hot to the touch. She popped the cork. Warm bubbles overflowed the top. She rescued them with her mouth, then handed the bottle to Joe. He tipped his head back and drank.

Anna lowered herself onto the ground with her legs out in front of her, her back against a rock. Joe took off his hat and lay down with his head in her lap.

She stroked his hair. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

She began to feed him from the pillowcase. Having forgone the heavy silverware, she resorted to dipping crackers in the pate and raising them to his curved, sunburnt lips.

Joe chewed and swallowed. “How far is it to Georges?” He intercepted the next cracker and guided it to Anna’s mouth.

She swallowed. “You mean how far to Yuma?”

“Same thing. Georges is in Yuma.”

“Yes . . . Well, maybe.”

Joe tilted his head back to look up at her. “What do you mean, maybe?”

She folded her arms across her breasts and looked away.

“We took the train to Yuma because Georges is in Yuma. You told me the hotel clerk said Georges went to Yuma.”

If Anna’s judgment hadn’t been compromised by champagne, if she hadn’t been thoroughly exhausted, she may have remained quiet. But as her mind was muddled by the heat and the bubbles, and she was especially susceptible to Joe Singer when he’d been thrown from trains, and as he had cactus spines in his bottom, she confessed. “I may have misspoken.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It might not have been the hotel clerk that told me Georges was in Yuma. It might have been someone else.”

“Who?”

“A . . . um . . . a French dancer.”

Joe sat up, turned his face to her, and frowned. “Georges’s mother told you?”

“Yes. And at the time . . . well . . . I believed her. She’s a woman of faith. But now I’m thinking . . . would a mother, no matter how religious, really tell her lover’s wife’s spawn—the wife who replaced her—would she tell her rival’s spawn how to capture her blood son so they could arrest him? And if I were feeling spiteful, I might send someone on a wild goose chase to Yuma.”

“And you just decided that now?”

“Actually, I wondered about it from the beginning, and decided she was definitely lying while we waited for the train.”

Joe ran his hands through his hair. “You lied to me.”

Anna crossed her arms. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . You are trying to hang my brother.”

“It’s my job.”

“You should have recused yourself and given the case to Detective Snow.”

“Detective Snow? You know he couldn’t solve a murder if it happened right in front of him. Anna, a man is dead.”

“Yes, I know. It’s a tragedy. It really is. He’s never going to laugh or sing or buy ugly suits again. But persecuting my brother won’t change any of that. He didn’t do it.”

“If he didn’t do it, you don’t want Detective Snow on the case. He might plant evidence. You want someone honest.”

“Wolf then.”

“Wolf’s in love with you!”

“You’re supposed to be in love with me too!”

“It’s because I love you that I’m staying on the case! Luckily, Captain Wells doesn’t know I’m in love with you, so he’s not going to take me off the case. Why did you have to drag me all the way out into the desert? You just wanted Georges to get away.”

“That’s not true,” she said without conviction. Even Anna wasn’t sure what was true. That was a danger when one lied. She put her head in her hands. Torn ribbon that had previously adorned false fruits dangled from her hat.

“Why did you bring me out here, Anna?” He swept his hand across the forbidding desert horizon and rippling mirages. “I thought you wanted to be a detective.”

Anna wiped her brow with her sleeve. “Georges didn’t do it. I wanted to find the real killer. I thought we could carry on to Oklahoma City, and I didn’t think you’d go because you were too busy chasing Georges. We have to interview Samara’s father or rather Flossie’s father. I suppose his name would be Edmands.”

“And the Oklahoma City cops couldn’t interview him or at least establish an alibi before we trek all the way out there?”

“Like they interviewed Samuel Grayson’s father? I’ve tried with them. They didn’t ask him any of the questions on my list. We need to interview him all over again. By the time we get back, maybe Georges will be home.”

“I can’t believe you lied to me. And I’m not riding on your ding-busted handcar.” He made a loud, agonized growling sound. “And all I can think about is you naked.” He narrowed his eyes at her, rose painfully to his feet, turned his back, and limped down the tracks toward Yuma.

Anna sat dumbly against the rock and watched him go. She shouldn’t have lied. She shifted against the rock. She was a bad estranged fiancée. She had known that story was taffy all along. She just hadn’t admitted it at first because deep down, she had wanted to lead Joe astray—the man she loved. She wasn’t foolish. Foolish could be excused. She was duplicitous. She pinched herself hard. She did it again.

Anna loved her brother, too, and loyalty was a virtue. Pursuing him as a suspect was an unspeakable betrayal of kin.

But did she truly know her brother? What if he was guilty? For the first time, Anna allowed her mind to visit that possibility. What if he had drugged Matilda and killed Samuel Grayson? Shouldn’t she want him to hang? She pictured his beloved face and tried to imagine him as a killer. Then, Anna pinched herself for disloyalty.

“Why do you have to be so hard on my brother when I love you so much?” she yelled after the tiny speck on the horizon that was Joe.

As she watched him leave her, she became aware of a bad smell, a horrible smell, like Lucifer himself had indigestion, as if hell was opening up to swallow all liars. She hadn’t done it; it wasn’t a lady’s smell. Joe couldn’t have done it. She reached down beside her to grab her pillowcase and flee the ungodly odor. She felt something smooth and fat, like a large snakeskin purse bursting with money. It was laying on top of her pillowcase.

Anna had no snakeskin purse, and if she had, it would not have been bursting with money.

Before she could react, something clamped down hard on her finger. A sizzling pain shot up her arm. She tried to retract it, but the grip was like a vise. Anna bent to face her attacker and looked down into lizard eyes and the face of a beast of mythic proportions. He stretched as long as a baseball bat, wider than her thigh, with a coral-colored pattern on his sin-black skin.

Anna tried to stand and couldn’t; the heavy monster still dangled by its jaws from her finger. She collapsed onto rocky soil and cacti that pricked her such that Joe would need tweezers. The giant lizard clung. The pain worsened, blinding her. She felt dizzy, like spinning sunlight. She picked up a rock and struck at the beast again and again.

Everything went black.