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  He planted his fists firmly on his hips and glared across the room. "Tell me this, Emma. If Machado, Sr., is not the father of Joseph, Jr., then who in hell is? Was Mrs. Machado having an affair? Or do you propose that she was the victim of an immaculate conception?"

  "Hardly that, for it would imply that Mrs. Machado was virginal." Her voice sounded as if she'd bitten into horseradish root. "I'm saying that Mr. Machado was not the only male in that household."

  A blade of shock riveted his body as he sank into the chair next to her. "Are you contending that she – that Mrs. Machado actually – ?"

  "Do you see? Even you cannot speak the words aloud."

  Her face looked so stricken that Malachi wrapped both arms around her and whispered into her hair. "Mrs. Machado seduced her own son?"

  Unthinkable. A mother encouraging, even permitting, sexual congress with her son? Malachi could not imagine a sin more heinous, nor an act so wickedly despicable.

  "That is what Aaron claims." Emma burrowed her face into his shoulder so that he could hardly understand her muffled words. "If you had seen his agony, you would not doubt him."

  Malachi inhaled deeply, attempting to organize his jumbled thoughts. "One time?" he asked hopefully.

  She shook her head.

  "When did the ... affair begin?"

  "Aaron was thirteen."

  Shock rippled through him again, but yes, Malachi could imagine it. The powerful changes in a young boy's body, the wickedness of a self-absorbed and selfish mother.

  Emma and he sat locked together for long minutes until he finally released her, holding her at arm's length. "As hideous as their behavior is – and criminal – it is no evidence that someone other than Alma Bentley murdered Joseph Machado. We have to allow that Alma could be lying to us."

  His own words were a knell clanging its death tones in his mind. He wanted desperately to believe Alma's account, to believe the poor, misguided girl was guiltless of actual murder.

  "Unless ... " Emma rose to pace the length of the kitchen. She bounced her fingertips together, for all the world, like the lawyerly Portia making her case for the pound of flesh without a drop of blood. "Unless Joseph knew about the relationship and threatened to tell the authorities."

  "What did Aaron say about that?"

  "He claims no one has known all these years save him and his mother. That he returned home to see his brother – son – God, how terrifying – and make a full confession."

  "There you have it, then. Aaron, brimming with guilt all these years, confronts his mother – or his father and – "

  Emma took up his line of thinking. "And threatened to make the awful secret a public scandal."

  "Then someone took advantage of Alma's attack on Joseph to silence him permanently."

  Emma stopped in the middle of the room and gazed at him with wide, frightened eyes. "But who? Which one of the remaining Machados would kill Joseph to keep the secret?"

  God, Malachi thought, any one of them could be the culprit. The father, enraged at the unnatural relationship of his wife and elder son. The mother, terrified her perverted secret would be exposed. The daughter – could the daughter have known the truth all these years? And how might that knowledge have affected her?

  There were plenty of suspects at the ready.

  "What motivation would Phoebe have?" he asked.

  Emma thought a moment, biting her lower lip. "Phoebe could've been afraid the scandal would harm any marriage prospects she had," she ventured.

  "What prospects?" he scoffed. "As sorry as I am to say the obvious, Phoebe Machado is an unattractive spinster unlikely ever to receive an offer of marriage."

  Emma crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed them as if she were chilly. Her face showed her turmoil. "Is it conceivable, Malachi? Are we really postulating that such degradation is possible?"

  "You heard Aaron's story from his own lips. You believed him."

  She nodded even as uncertainty flitted across her face, the same doubt he experienced.

  What hellish secret were they about to unleash?

  Chapter 26

  “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones” – Julius Caesar

  In the end, after much discussion in Sarah's kitchen, with the woman hovering about like an annoying fly, Malachi and she decided their limited time was best served by involving the Sheriff Nathan Butler, laying Aaron Machado's claims before him, and having him investigate the Machado family. Malachi would alert his friend the very next morning and convince him to begin investigating Aaron.

  "We'll set off tomorrow for Bakersfield if Nathan is free."

  "What should I do?" Emma asked.

  "Nothing." Malachi's mouth had taken on the set line Emma recognized when he expected no opposition from her. "You've risked far too much already by confronting Aaron without knowing what he is capable of."

  "He was an innocent victim!"

  "Perhaps, but you didn't know that when you gamboled off to see him without telling anyone."

  Emma bristled and drew herself up to her full height. "I have never gamboled – not once in my entire life!"

  "I forbid it." He growled, narrowed his eyes, and gave a look that bespoke of dire consequences if she disobeyed him.

  She fumed internally. How dare he order her about like a common foot soldier? She hadn't allowed her parents to determine the course of her life and she certainly would not allow Malachi Rivers to do so. Did he think because he had bedded her she would tuck her tail between her legs and whimper off like a cowering puppy?

  But if anything, she'd learned from her parents that subtle resistance was far more powerful than outright rebellion. She pouted and grimaced, wheedled and whined – Malachi was far too clever to be taken in by false sweetness from her – and thus convinced him that she'd, albeit reluctantly, follow his advice. Bah, more like orders!

  "It's much better this way, Emma," he whispered, his concern almost convincing her to abandon her subterfuge. "I should be quite grieved to lose you so soon after deflowering you."

  Had he not jested, she might've given up on the preposterously daring plan that had wormed its way into her brain. But the levity with which he uttered those words – I should be quite grieved to lose you so soon after deflowering you – strengthened her resolve to disobey.

  Let Malachi and Sheriff Butler travel to Bakersfield to ascertain for themselves what she was already convinced of – that Aaron Machado was the dupe in this Old Testament tragedy – the sex reversal of the story of Lot and his daughters.

  Emma's time was far better spent in speaking to the women of the Machado household. For she knew from having grown up with her mother that the female was the more deadly of the species, and she was in no doubt that either Phoebe or Mrs. Machado was the wicked specter in this ill-fated tale.

  #

  Prudent enough to wait until the men folk had taken off on their journey of tilting at windmills, Emma began her own exploration the next morning. Malachi had enjoined Sheriff Butler to send a wireless telegraph message to the sheriff in Bakersfield. To Emma's delight he'd also persuaded Stephen that the story might be a newsworthy one, so her uncle became the third member of their adventure.

  Good, no men about to influence or control her activities.

  Now, however, as the early winter sun had faded to a purple and pink dusk in the sky behind the ostentatiously palatial mansion belonging to the Machado clan, Emma wondered if she'd been precipitous in encouraging Stephen to go. She might've benefitted from his reassuring presence.

  The gloom of the Machado domicile lay like Hawthorne's seven-gabled house, all dark shadows and looming shades. For the first time she realized how remote the place lay from any hub of activity, sitting as it did like a bird of prey some ten miles east of Placer Hills.

  She'd saddled and ridden Old Stripling from her home and now hitched him to the post at the front of the outbuilding, a barn badly in need of several coats of paint. W
hy had the Machados allowed their property to fall into such ruin when they had the services of two strapping young men, aided by a hefty fortune to hire any number of workers?

  Emma shivered in the cooling air and drew her cloak more closely around her.

  Raising her hand to the door knocker, she hesitated a moment before lifting the bizarre brass gargoyle and rapping it several times against the base. Around her she encountered only barren silence, not the peaceful quiet of the country woods where her own home lay, but the deafening and deadly silence of expectation.

  Like the awaiting of some imminent calamity.

  Her breath sounded loud and labored to her ears, as if she'd run a great distance – or fled from a grave disaster – and an eerie feeling of danger rippled down her spine.

  The thought crept into her mind that she ought to quit the place, jump right back on Old Stripling and gallop as fast as the mare could race to the safety of home. She shook her head. Foolish to succumb to nothing more than overwrought nerves. She was skittish as a young filly. How Malachi would tease her if he knew she'd run away from two harmless old women! She was no frail flower to be crushed so easily.

  Besides, she still carried Papa's Deringer in her handbag.

  Emboldened by that thought, and having banged the hideous knocker several more times, she abandoned her position on the front landing and strolled around to the right of the mansion, the side that led away from the barn and her grazing horse.

  The posterior of the house was even less appealing than the front. What had clearly been a verdant garden of roses lay as fallow and barren as the Mojave Desert surrounding the elder Machado's small cottage three hundred miles south of here. Perhaps such barrenness had been passed along in the blood with the dark Portuguese floridness and fleshy body.

  The ruination of gardens was something Emma deplored, the neglect somehow more devastating than unwatered orchards or untended fields. The roses had been allowed to flourish unchecked, their dead heads withered like dried apples, their petals curled and brown at their base. All this potential lusciousness shriveled and dying chilled Emma nearly as much as the thought of the wickedness that had transpired within the walls of the mansion.

  Where was everyone? The master of the house would likely have returned to the tending of his crops, but surely Phoebe and her mother would not have resumed their social activities so soon after Joseph's death.

  And what of their servants? An estate this size must require half a dozen men and women to keep it running smoothly.

  But she could see such was not the intent of this house – to run efficiently – and recalled the testimony of the housekeeper about the paucity of servants in the Machado home.

  Were there so few servants by design?

  Emma did not doubt that what she did next constituted a serious breach of ethics, propriety, and legality, but that damned curiosity of hers must be satisfied. She strolled casually to the rear entrance. If anyone came bounding from that direction, she would claim befuddled ignorance.

  When the heavy back door gave way to her tugging, she swung it wide open and placed her foot carefully on the single concrete step. Two more steps led upwards to what was clearly a work or storage room off the kitchen area. Even from the doorway she could glimpse a large coal stove and pantry.

  Hours later she would determine that her intense caution, focused directly ahead of her, accounted for her lack of awareness from behind her. Suddenly the air swooshed out of her body and she pitched forward, landing on her hands and knees and feeling the great massive weight of someone's body anchoring her to a grimy floor.

  A pair of large, pasty hands clamped around her neck from behind her, squeezing until the blackness of the store room dwindled to pinpoints of light behind her bulging eyes. Then stygian darkness overtook her brain.

  #

  The train ran faster than horses and with less damage to horseflesh, so Malachi and his two companions battled the dust and nuisance of The People's Railroad. They arrived in Bakersfield in the late afternoon. To their surprise, Sheriff Wilfred Kern waited for them at the station platform. Several horses were tethered to the post where he stood.

  "Been a change in plans," Kern said after the introductions were made.

  "How so?" asked Malachi.

  "Something's happened to Aaron Machado." While he waited for their stunned expressions to abate, the sheriff unhitched the horses and made them ready for travel. "We'd better take a ride out there so you can see for yourselves."

  A dozen questions flew through Malachi's mind, but overriding them all and planting a fist of steel right in the vicinity of his heart was the single perplexity of Emma's safety. He pushed the worry aside. At this moment he knew she was tucked into the fierce arms of her loyal servants, Sarah and Ralston. Exactly where he'd left her.

  As they rode the several miles to the Machado place, a single refrain ran through his mind. Thank God Emma didn't have to witness whatever lay on the outskirts of this god-forsaken, arid land.

  An aura of infertility hung about the land as if someone had declared it too desiccated for life or optimism to flourish. Several of Kern's men stood at attention outside the open doorway to the small house. Even from the roadside Malachi could smell the rank, coppery stench of blood and offal.

  Of violent death.

  "Nobody's touched anything, Sheriff," a tall, lanky deputy said. "We was waitin' for you."

  Kern nodded and pushed the door open wider, indicating Sheriff Butler, Malachi, and Stephen should advance before him.

  The cottage interior was brightly lit, the front room facing as it did the western sun. Nothing in the sitting room looked amiss and Malachi glanced inquiringly at the Bakersfield sheriff who jerked his head to the right. The four of them proceeded down a narrow hall and veered to the left into a utilitarian kitchen fixed with an inside pump and a wood-burning stove.

  Their eyes swung immediately to the carnage arranged like a stone titan at the brightly-painted kitchen table. The man Malachi presumed was Aaron Machado slumped onto the table, his back toward them, his face turned their way. His right arm dangled from his side, but otherwise his body remained seated in a grisly parody of a man laying his head atop a table to rest a moment and subsequently falling asleep.

  But of course, Aaron was not sleeping. The pool of blood flooding the smooth tabletop, the bits of brain matter speckling his head, and the firearm which lay neatly just beyond the reach of his right fingertips testified to that stark fact.

  The three of them froze like unwilling players in a macabre tableau for several long moments, taking in the violent scene before them.

  "Suicide?" Sheriff Butler finally asked, walking carefully around the stiffening body.

  "'Pears so," Kern replied around the sodden end of a hand-rolled cigarette. "Can't figure out why, though? Any ideas about that?"

  Malachi felt Nathan Butler's eyes on him and guessed he wondered why his good friend had dragged him down south on a dusty rail, offering little conversation and less explanation. For that part, Malachi was truly sorry. His mind had been wrapped up in his own dark thoughts, so fraught with awful possibilities and wicked scenarios that he'd scarcely muttered a word. Stephen, normally ebullient to a fault, had been equally silent.

  "You knew the man better than us," Butler said at last.

  Kern lifted his shoulders in half-hearted disinterest. "Didn't know the man all that well myself. Solitary sort of fellow who kept to himself most of the time."

  The cigarette dangled precariously as he studied Sheriff Butler. "But you were sure het on having me be here when you visited Machado. I figure you know something I don't."

  Stephen Knight stepped up to the body and bent to peer at the ghastly wound at his right temple, but otherwise remained silent. Malachi wondered if he'd print an article about this sordid scene. He hoped not. The prurient nature of the death of one brother and the suicide of another would add further titillation to an already sensational trial. And do Alma no goo
d.

  Butler nodded toward Malachi. "Your show, buddy."

  "Apparently Aaron Machado had a guilty secret which was about to be revealed to the entire world," Malachi said, offering the shortened version. Hell, for all he knew that was the only version.

  "Ah, that would do it, then," Kern said.

  "I wouldn't be so sure of that," Stephen said at last, pointing to the dead man's head where the bullet hole looked far too small for the profusion of blood that oozed onto the table and dripped onto the floor.

  "What?" Malachi asked, moving to stand behind Stephen and peering over his shoulder as he bent to examine the neat circular hole in Aaron's temple.

  "Take a look, Sheriff Kern," Butler suggested, apparently understanding Stephen's meaning right away.

  "Well, shit," Kern muttered after a few minutes of close scrutiny.

  "What?" Malachi repeated.

  "That's no self-inflicted wound," Kern said. "There's no powder burns around the wound. Machado didn't pull the trigger."

  "Unless his right arm's about five feet long, wouldn't you say?" Stephen Knight asked.

  "At least," Kern confirmed. "Goddamn. Looks like we got a murder on our hands, gentlemen."

  He turned steely eyes around the room to encompass the innocuous-looking kitchen, past Stephen and Butler to land squarely on Malachi.

  "Goddamn it all," he said to no one in particular.

  Chapter 27

  "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes" – Macbeth

  When Emma came to her senses, her head pounded like a percussion instrument at her temples. Her scraped palms and knees stung from their bloody abrasions. She felt the cold hard surface beneath her as she lay sprawled on what was clearly a cement floor, damp and musty smelling. When she sat up, the thrumming of drums in her head increased.

  But most of all, her parched and aching throat reminded her that someone had placed leonine paws around her neck and attempted to choke her to death. She had absolutely no doubt of that fact. Any attempt at calm fled as she relived the moments before she'd crashed to the floor after snooping in the back room of the Machado mansion.