“I RECKON YOU NEED TO go on home and pack your things,” Adam said to Martin as he strode back into the living quarters at the warehouse.
“Huh?” Martin looked up from the table where he was sitting and talking with Boaz. “What are you talking about?”
“We need to go to New Bern. I’ve got a letter from your cousin that he’s asked me to take to the attorney for that Dudley woman.”
“Dudley woman? What Dudley woman?” asked Martin.
“She’s the woman who was robbed, whose husband was killed,” Adam answered.
“How’d you learn her name?” asked Boaz. “Even Lawson hadn’t been told who she was.”
“Will learned who she was from a colleague. Those who know her have wanted to keep her name out of the papers, though, for the woman’s safety, since those highwaymen still haven’t been caught.”
“So what’s this letter about that Will wants us to deliver?” asked Martin.
“I’m getting to that,” said Adam. He crossed over and pulled up a chair at the table to sit down with them. “Guess what the woman’s first name is.”
Boaz shrugged and shook his head. “No idea.”
“Just tell us,” said Martin, increasingly irritated.
“Hyacinth. Her name is Hyacinth.”
Boaz’s eyes grew large. “Oh really?”
Adam nodded. “Yep.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” said Martin.
“Don’t you remember?” said Adam. “The silver mirror that corpse had in his pocket—it had a hyacinth blossom on it.”
Martin’s eyes also grew large and he slapped his leg. “I’ll be damned! You’re right!”
“Well, you know more than me,” said Boaz. “I talked to Lawson, and he’s going up to Harlowe Creek tomorrow with a couple of men to see that corpse for himself, but I was going to ask you to go with him. I reckon if you need to go to New Bern, though, I can just send Jones with him.”
Martin rolled his eyes, then looked at Adam and chuckled. “Oh, Jones’ll just love that.”
“I don’t care if he loves it or not,” said Boaz. “Only three of y’all who went out there yesterday are still in town. That Ben fella has taken off, and somebody needs to show Lawson and his men where that body is.”
“Did he have any ideas about Ed Willis?” Adam asked.
Boaz shook his head. “Unfortunately, no, but he did say that he’d probably be able to guess at how long that body’s been in the creek when he sees it. He also said that depending on how damaged the body is, even though he won’t be able to tell for sure, he ought to at least be able to rule in or rule out whether or not the knife that killed that man up at Harlowe Creek could be the same kind that killed Ed Willis.”
“How in the world is he gonna do that?” asked Martin.
Boaz shrugged. “Don’t know exactly. He said somehow they’d be able to look at the size of the wound and that would tell them whether they were at least made by similar-type weapons.”
“Does he think it’s likely that both men were killed by the same person?” Adam asked.
“He thinks they were,” said Boaz, “but not because of any evidence he has—says it’s just a feeling in his gut. It ain’t like we’re livin in some big city where there’s a bunch of crime. You get two stabbins and they happen ten miles apart—first stabbins we’ve even seen around these parts in I don’t know how many years—what are the chances that they’re unrelated?”
“That’s true,” said Martin.
“Mm-hmm. Makes sense to me, too,” Adam agreed.
“And I gotta tell y’all somethin else,” said Boaz. “It’s real interestin about that woman up in Craven County bein named Hyacinth Dudley and that flower on the mirror was a hyacinth. Lawson said he has a feelin that the corpse up in the marsh was either robbed by those same bandits, or he might even be one of those bandits. Said it would make sense to him.”
“Interesting,” said Adam. “It wouldn’t surprise me, but what made him say that?”
“The way Lawson figures it, that woman and her husband were attacked a couple of weeks ago. If those men were headed south rather than north, then they’d have passed right through here. That Dudley man got killed while they were robbin him and his wife. So it sounds like they started out as thieves, not killers. Looks like Ed Willis was also killed for money. Y’all said that corpse had nothing on him except the mirror you found and the canteen nearby. It don’t make sense that someone would be just wandering through the swamp with empty pockets and nothin on him. Now they might’ve come across another traveler and robbed him blind and killed him—and that could be who you found—or they coulda got into a fight somewhere along the way and one of ’em killed the other one.”
“Why do you figure whoever killed that man in the swamp didn’t take the mirror, too, then?” asked Adam.
“Don’t ask me,” said Boaz. “Mighta just been a careless mistake.”
“So when do you want to leave for New Bern?” Martin asked Adam.
“First thing in the morning, I reckon.”
“It’s gonna be damned cold out on the water, you know that,” Martin said.
Adam nodded. “Yes, it will, but would you rather deal with cold weather or cold-blooded murderers?”
“Fair enough,” said Martin.