6 — Spring, 1887

Tyrone knew that his money ship had been out of kilter for some time. A fresh start was needed. So, he plodded on by selling his businesses to satisfy his hungry creditors and by signing over the deed to his house, along with title to his 300 acres of land, to The Old Security Bank. He’d find and use the buried gold to pay off The Old Security Bank to get back his beloved Billingsly. He was a Billingsly, and Billingsly men knew how to will themselves to come out on top with luck or no luck; there could be no other way.

As the stagecoach proceeded along the path bordered by live oak trees leading to Billingsly at around three o’clock in the afternoon in late May, the clouds began to part, giving way to blue skies. The stagecoach driver followed the dirt path and stopped several feet from the sprawling porch. As the driver placed Billingsly’s portmanteau on the floor of the foyer, Billingsly smiled broadly as he looked at Billingsly. Laura deserved something special. He’d take her to Paris and Rome after he unearthed the valuables buried on his land. He didn’t know the worth of the valuables, but he knew his father and his father was generous with his wealth.

Billingsly tipped the driver and bounded up the steps with eyes full of mirth, excited to tell Laura that they wouldn’t have to leave Billingsly and that she’d get a much-deserved European vacation.

No sooner had he loosened his cravat as he walked in than he looked near the staircase and saw Laura lying on the floor. He ran to her and knelt beside her, shaking her. “Laura, Laura! My dear God, what has happened?”

Eyes that were bright just a few seconds ago were now full of mist and pain. The clues of her condition were staring him in the face; they were too obvious for him to ignore: Her eyelids covered her eyes, her pallid face was lifeless, and her body was stiff.

He stood up and looked at the grand staircase, guessing that she’d fallen and tumbled down the steps. The two broken spindles to the balustrade confirmed the idea. The shock of finding his wife dead collapsed him on the floor, and he began to sob.

Reflexively, he lifted Laura enough to hold her head against his chest. He caressed and stroked her head like a little girl would do with a doll. Feeling a knot on the back of her head, he screamed, “John, Sam, anybody. Help.”

No response.

He thought about lying next to Laura in bed, telling her about his vacation plans for her, which he imagined would spring her to life. But he first needed to alert someone about Laura’s death. He stood up and carried her body upstairs, periodically resting her against the wall to gain a better grasp, recalling the days when he was younger and had no trouble carrying a much lighter Laura to bed.

On the way to the bedroom, he felt a breeze coming from his study.

He then walked to the grand bedroom and gently put her down on the left side of the bed and arranged her clothes and body as to make it appear she was asleep.

He then took heavy steps to the study to close the window.

The damage was on stark display. A metal hasp was on the floor, and shards of wood lay scattered. Laura’s imported French bibelots, which had been on a shelf, were now shattered as they lay on the floor. The cabinet that contained his father’s gift to him and Laura was caved in. His face went flush with rage and cordlike veins throbbed at his temples when he realized what probably happened.

He dreaded looking in the cabinet, afraid that the box containing his father’s flasks was gone, as would be any plans to use the buried treasure to restore his wealth, or at least some of it. He kicked shattered pieces of wood out of his path, then bent down to look at the bottom shelf. Empty. His head swelled with thunderous pain. He wanted to go to his bedroom and lie next to Laura and fall asleep, just like Laura. But he couldn’t move much; the pain intensified with his every move. He chose to sit at his desk and will the pain away.

At the first sign that his headache had begun to subside, he stood up and took two steps and stopped. The pain was still there, but it had leveled out. He took two more steps. The pain was subsiding. As he walked out of his study, the sledgehammer that had crushed his cabinet, and now his heart, came into view as it rested against the wall near the door. He picked it up and turned the wooden handle. His initials were etched along the bottom of the handle.

Filled with rage, he threw the sledgehammer against the wall of the study, oblivious to the huge hole in the wall he made.

As much as they could be his best laid plans, they were now ruined. He bit his bottom lip and uttered with quiet ferocity, “I’m going to kill the son of a bitch who did this to me!”

But he’d first have to figure out who killed his wife, stole the flasks, stole Billingsly.

He rounded up a courier and sent him for the chief of police, a person he knew well. But he’d start his own investigation for now.

He unlocked the rifle cabinet, which was in a room near the kitchen, and grabbed a .22-caliber rifle. Although he thought the killer was probably long gone by now, he was trigger-happy, ready to kill anyone who possessed the slightest suspicion. He loaded it with two cartridges, then hied to the tool shed to look for evidence of an intruder.

The door lock to the tool shed was in place.

As he walked away from the shed contemplating what he’d do next, he caught a whiff of kerosene that stopped him in his tracks. He sniffed like a hound until he stopped at the open window to the shed, convinced that the smell emanated from there.

He blew the lock open with his rifle and flung open the door to the shed.

He picked up the lantern and walked over to the window, wondering if that was how the killer had gotten into the shed. A piece of cloth attached to a rusty nail caught his attention. He took it off the nail and examined it after he exited the shed. It was a small piece of blue denim cloth that had been torn from someone’s trousers, he thought. The reddish color on the cloth had saturated most of the cloth. He rubbed it with his right thumb and index finger—it was blood.

Once back inside the house, he put the piece of cloth in a small muslin bag for safekeeping.

While waiting for the chief of police, he put out hay for his remaining horses to eat, then rode his favorite Cleveland Bay into the paddock while thinking of how’d he exact revenge on the bastard who had shattered his life. The killer couldn’t just die a simple death; he’d have to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. He owed as much to Laura.

As his thoughts turned to who killed Laura, he spotted the chief of police proceeding down the driveway atop a roan horse. “Chief,” Billingsly shouted, “I’m over here.”

The chief waved and directed his horse to the paddock.

Billingsly and the chief dismounted in unison. Billingsly closed the gate to the paddock and shook the chief’s hand.

“I came as fast as I could, Mr. Billingsly. Is something wrong?”

“Yes, Chief, something is wrong. Someone killed Laura.”

“My God! Where is she?”

“Come with me. I’ll take you to her.”

The chief tied his horse to a nearby hitching post and climbed the steps to Billingsly with Tyrone.

In the foyer, the chief said, “Okay, tell me what you know.”

As Tyrone told the chief about what he knew and when he discovered Laura’s lifeless body on the floor, the chief removed a tobacco can from his breast pocket and inserted a wad of tobacco on the right side of his cheek. The chief had an extended paunch that strained the buttons to his shirt, a bulbous nose, a drifting right eye, and long, untamed salt-and-pepper hair.

“I see,” the chief said. “Anything else you care to add?”

Tyrone had to report that his wife had been killed. But he didn’t have to offer a reason. To do so would mean he’d have to tell the chief about the gold hidden on his property. He envisioned the ghoulish site of men digging up his land, looking for gold like forty-niners.

“Nothing I can think of, Chief.”

“Where is she, Mr. Billingsly?”

“Upstairs in bed … ” Billingsly said with a trailing voice, mindful that the door to his study was open.

Tobacco juice spilled from the chief’s mouth, which caused him to use his shirt sleeve to remove the juice from his lips. “Let me take a look at her.”

Billingsly decided to walk alongside the wall and in tandem with the chief to obscure the chief’s vision of the study. Billingsly, with his long legs, found himself moving ahead of the chief, whose stubby legs and heavy weight caused him to climb slowly up the long, winding staircase. Billingsly slowed down to allow to the chief to catch up. As they reached the top of the staircase, Billingsly blocked the entrance to his study and pointed in the direction of where the body lay. He quickly closed the door to the study and caught up with the chief in the bedroom.

The chief looked over Laura, looking for signs of blood. He didn’t see any. Except for the slight bluish cast of her face, she looked like she was sleeping on her oversized bed. “You sure you have nothing else to add?” the chief asked.

“No, Chief.”

“Well, I only ask because I don’t have much to go on. All I know is she fell down the stairs. Could’ve been an accident.”

“Damn you, Chief. It was no accident.”

The chief widened his eyes at Tyrone’s harsh tone. “How do you know it wasn’t an accident?”

“Laura’s never fallen before.”

“Was she depressed about anything, Mr. Billingsly? Word around town is you’re not in the best of financial health.”

Tyrone’s eyes darkened and he felt as though the chief had punched him in the gut with the force of a prize fighter. He had been good to the police department, giving money for uniforms and weapons. Yet the chief failed to show proper respect and deference.

Tyrone softened his disdain for the chief’s line of questioning. He lowered his voice and tone and said, “I just don’t think it was an accident.”

The chief turned around and began to exit the bedroom when he noticed the gargantuan portrait on the wall. “Who’s this?” the chief asked, standing two feet from the portrait.

“That’s my father, Edward.”

“That’s a big portrait; he must have been a hell of a man.”

Tyrone nodded.

Tyrone escorted the chief out of the house. As the chief was about to descend the porch steps, he turned to Tyrone and said, “The coroner will be here in short order.”

“Thank you,” Tyrone said.

“If there’s something you have forgotten to tell me, I’ll listen.”

Tyrone felt another punch to the stomach. He held his tongue and emitted a tight smile.

After a couple of hours at Billingsly, the chief mounted his horse and waved goodbye.

Laura’s body would be taken to the morgue several hours later, and he made arrangements to notify his children of their mother’s death. He then drank copious amounts of bourbon until he passed out on the kitchen floor.

After his hangover slackened, he looked in the mirror as he dressed; his face looked craggier than usual, worn by the death of his wife.

A few hours later, he went to see Ann and John. Ann had been good to his family, and he wanted her to know. He knew John had access to the mansion and thought John might know something. At this point, he’d cling to anything John could offer. He’d check with Sam later to see what he knew.

Ann opened the door. “Massa, this a surprise to see you here at this hour.”

Billingsly was silent, working up the nerve to tell Ann about Laura.

“Why you have that long look on your face? Come in, Massa?”

Billingsly stepped inside. “Ann, something terrible has happened.”

Ann braced her stomach with both hands as she waited for Billingsly to divulge the bad news.

“Someone killed Laura while I was out of town,” he said, straining to maintain his composure.

Ann’s body went limp. Tyrone grabbed her by her left arm as she was falling to the floor, weakened by Tyrone’s heavy words and an immediate sinking feeling that John may have had something to do with it; it fit with his need to leave so fast. He helped her take a few steps to a chair where she sat.

“Where’d you find her, Massa?”

“On the floor of the foyer, lying there like she just went to sleep,” he said as his shaky voice trailed off. He coughed to remove the catch in his throat, then continued: “She did not deserve to meet her demise that way. Where is John? I’d like to talk to the boy.”

Ann was silent, not knowing what to say.

She began sobbing and her body heaved.

Billingsly grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “Ann, where is the boy? Tell me.”

Ann didn’t like lying to Billingsly, but her first instinct was to protect her son. “Don’t know, Massa. He said something about looking for a job because the missus said he was no longer needed.” She paused, then said, “Mentioned something about going elsewhere to hunt for work.”

“You suppose John knows anything about this?”

She recalled that John had fulminated about how Madame Billingsly wasn’t fit to be in the world. It began to make some sense. But then she recalled that John told her that he’d never killed anyone. She breathed a sigh of relief. “No, Massa. I can’t imagine my boy would know anything.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, Massa. My boy would never do nothing like that.”

“I know that Laura rode him hard.”

“My boy got too much respect for you, Massa. You taught him a lot. I look at his manners, the way he talk, and thank you for helping him. No, he could never hurt you like that.”

“Mind if I look around?”

Ann had no choice but to assent. Although he asked permission, he was going to do what he wanted. She nodded her head.

He looked in John’s small room, which held a mattress on a rickety pinewood bed frame. Billingsly looked behind the bedroom door and saw a tattered shirt attached to a hook. He sniffed the shirt; it was suffused with John’s body odor. He folded it and put in the pocket of his frock coat—he figured he’d study it for possible clues.

Billingsly walked to the front door and turned around. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out the bag with a bit of denim cloth that he removed from a nail in his tool shed. He walked over to the lantern that sat on the rickety kitchen table.

“This is all I got to go on,” he said, holding the denim cloth near the light for Ann to see.

He gauged Ann’s reaction. She looked confused as she squinted to understand what he was showing her. “It may lead nowhere, but it’s something for now.”

“What is it, Massa? What’s that red stuff on it?”

“That’s blood. I found this in my tool shed. The bastard cut himself on a nail while climbing out of the window in the shed. It’s a piece of denim to someone’s trousers; looks like it was torn when the bastard snagged his pants on the nail on the window ledge.” He hesitated, then allowed himself to think revenge had taken its own course. “Maybe the bastard bled to death somewhere.” He paused. “If you hear something, you must tell me.”

“Yes, Massa.”

Billingsly walked to the door of the cabin he had built for Ann and walked down the crooked steps. He donned his hat and hopped in his barouche and drove off. He’d see to it to talk to Sam and Emmaline to ascertain if they knew anything.

k

Within a week after Laura’s death, Billingsly had buried his wife in her family’s plot in Richmond, a city she’d known she’d be buried in someday, just like a long line of her ancestors. He used the week to sell his property, including his prized Cleveland Bays. The Old Security Bank would put Billingsly on the market for sale.

Since he didn’t tell the chief of police all he knew, there would be no official police investigation. As a last act to find out who killed Laura, Billingsly hired two bounty hunters to find John to talk to him. Sam had told Billingsly that John had encouraged him to take some time off work that Laura had promised him. This news raised Billingsly’s dander. Emmaline knew nothing.

He asked the bounty hunters to send word to him in Birmingham, where he’d soon move, of what they learned from John. They had orders to kill John if they had the slightest indication that John knew something about Laura’s death.

Without Laura and the flasks, the world he knew in Richmond had finally collapsed on him.

He had one bit of fortune: he had maintained contact with James Sloss, the owner of Sloss Furnace in Birmingham. Both had an interest in Cleveland Bay horses and had first met a few years ago at the Upperville Colt Show where Sloss encouraged Billingsly to work for him. Billingsly had begged off, telling Sloss that his wife would never leave Richmond.

Within a few weeks after his creditors had hounded him, he sent Sloss a telegram asking if he still needed an executive to work in his steel business. Sloss replied by telegram: “We can use a talent of your caliber. Come on down to Birmingham where you belong.”

When Sloss learned of Billingsly’s plight, he told Billingsly a move to Birmingham would be good for him, a chance to start anew, to leave behind the wreckage in Richmond.

Billingsly agreed.