Cy looked at him with a furrowed brow and shook his head. “Ain’t no rush,” he said. “We got to wait until after dark to move the bodies anyway.” He rose from the table and gestured toward the corpses. “But we can’t leave ‘em here. Katie and Pete could walk in any minute. Let’s get ‘em down to the basement.” Lee knelt down alongside Kevin Emory’s left ankle, which was still cuffed by the leg-irons. He reached into his pocket for the key.

“Leave it on,” Cy said abruptly. “Since the bodies are staying here while you’re gone. Got to have something pointing to you as well. Keeps us both honest.” Lee looked up and squinted but left the cuff attached. He held his cousin’s ankles while Cy gripped the body by the armpits. They carried the bodies downstairs and laid them in a dark corner of the basement.

Back in the kitchen, Lee put the ledger in the box along with the pouch of coins and the refilled coin tray. He closed the cover and set the latches, then pulled out the key ring and locked the toolbox. “That was a good idea you had,” he said. “About keeping us honest. Made me think I should leave the box with you until tonight. I’ll take the key with me. That way we trust each other. And we don’t have to worry about someone else bumping into it.”

Cy put the box on top of a cabinet, where it was unlikely to be noticed right away. They walked out toward the lock, where Lee retrieved his damp clothes from the swing-beam.

“Let’s lock the scow down,” Cy said. “Get it out of the way and set us up for later.” They reset the lock, brought the scow through, and moored it to a post near the mouth of the flume. Lee led the mules across the lock and tied them up near the water. Cy peered out at the uninhabited islands in the center of the river. “Show me again where you’re thinking,” he said.

Lee pointed at the island. “There’s a huge sycamore we can use as a landmark. And flat ground next to it for digging.” They agreed that Lee would bring a second canoe down from Pennyfield at seven and Cy would find a reason to send Katie and Pete to Great Falls before he arrived.

“One more thing,” Cy said as Lee set out. “If you got one, bring a shovel.”

Chapter 24

Pennyfield Pages

Saturday, March 29, 1924

During Lee’s walk back to Pennyfield, his thoughts spiraled from the central question: who had killed his cousins? His fingers reached past the wet bills in his pocket to absently finger Katie’s sandstone pendant. He resisted reason, which told him that she must have been involved. Maybe against her will. He had given her the leg-irons and no one else at Swains had ever seen them. But if she’d used them to lock the bicycle, they never could have been used to drown the Emorys, because he hadn’t given her the key. So she must have chosen not to lock it. That was troubling – a breach of faith, however small. There must be another explanation, he thought, as his fingers closed around the pendant. If she was coerced into helping the killer, he prayed she hadn’t been hurt in turn. Maybe she would return to Swains and tell Cy she had left the leg-irons unlocked by mistake. Someone else must have found and used them.

Cy. Lee still sensed that he might have had a hand in the killings. He knew that Cy owed his cousins money. And he knew that Cy’s vices – gambling and drugs – meant he might not have been able to pay. So Cy had a motive, both to steal and to cancel a debt. But the gold and silver was still in the toolbox and that didn’t make sense. Maybe Cy had come across a payback killing and scared the killer away. And then he was preparing to saw the toolbox free of the leg-irons when Lee arrived at Swains. No matter how Lee tried to construct a logical thread, it fell apart when he thought it through.

But instinct told him that Cy was dangerous. Whether or not he was involved in the murders, Cy would regard Lee as a witness who might incriminate him. Or he might worry that Lee would exhume the Emorys’ money for himself. As he assessed this possibility, Lee realized that he was the one at risk. By disposing of Lee, Cy could silence him and keep all the gold and silver. But Lee was younger, faster, strong; if he kept his guard up, he thought he could defend himself.

What if Cy returned to the burial spot by himself in the days ahead? If the money was missing when he and Cy went back for it, Lee could tell the Emory clan that Cy had been seen passing gold and silver coins. And that would mean he would have to spend the next seven months wondering when a bullet would find him from the woods along the canal. So it was in Cy’s interest to live up to his agreement with Lee. Each of them would get almost four hundred dollars of the Emorys’ money. Even for Cy, that had to be enough.

But Lee still felt anxious. Striding fast on the approach to Pennyfield, he lightly tapped Tom Emory’s knife in his pocket. It would come with him tonight. And he needed more… some other form of insurance. Not for his safety, since that was up to him alone. But in case things went wrong. What if Cy managed to betray and bury him along with the bodies of his cousins? He shuddered at his next thought. What if Katie really was involved in the murders and was collaborating with Cy? What if everything he felt about Katie, about the two of them together, was an illusion? He shook his head and willed the doubt away. That couldn’t be, and he would return from tonight’s loathsome tasks to be with her again. She would be innocent. He held the pendant lightly in his pocket. And if he was wrong, if he was killed tonight, he would make sure he left a thread for others to follow.

By the time he reached Pennyfield, this thread was forming in his mind. He entered the lockhouse and went straight to the dining room. On top of a bureau he found the locktender’s log-book, which he carried to the table. He hung his coat on the back of a chair and tore out a blank page from the back.

As he considered how to word his message, he struggled with the many purposes it had to serve. If he was killed by Cy tonight, he wanted someone to find his body. The only person he could trust right now was Charlie Pennyfield. This was Charlie’s lock, and he had trusted Lee to watch over it the last ten days. And Charlie wouldn’t be conflicted, since he was outside the circle of Emorys and Elgins. He was due to return on Sunday or Monday. So the message had to tell Charlie where to look. And it had to warn him that the killer or killers were still at large. He could leave an additional clue at the burial site that would implicate Cy for his own killing and the murder of his cousins. And Katie? He ardently believed she was innocent, but if she was part of it, then something should point to her as well.

If he survived and made it back to Pennyfield, he could recover the note before Charlie found it. But what if someone else intercepted it first? His blood chilled as he considered another possibility: maybe Katie was the killer, and maybe she would find it. If that happened, she and Cy would go free and his body would never be found. He needed to leave the message in a place only Charlie would see it… somewhere no one else would care to look. Maybe the shed. And just in case, he needed to guide Charlie to the burial site using terms that wouldn’t help an unwanted reader. He tapped his pen in rhythm against the table as he thought.

He still hoped that his cousins had been killed by enemies from their bootlegging world. If so, their deaths were a sad fate of their own making. And if Cy lived up to his word, he and Lee would split the Emorys’ silver and gold. A few hundred dollars would be a stake he could build on. He could start saving for a house. Something small in Seneca, with a view of the meadows. Would Katie like it there? Keep your focus, he scolded himself. These are the only words you can speak from your grave.