“Of you?”
“Yes.”
She stepped closer.
“A fat woman everyone ignored.”
His expression changed.
“Exactly why it worked.”
Mabel continued.
“You could steal from my mother.”
“Control her mine.”
“Poison me.”
“And nobody looked twice because they thought I was too foolish to understand.”
Jonah’s jaw tightened.
Mabel smiled.
“That was your mistake.”
He reached inside his coat.
Mabel’s breath caught.
Gun.
But before he drew it, the office door exploded inward.
Gideon stood there.
Jonah froze.
Gideon’s revolver was already aimed.
Behind him came Sheriff Vale.
Then Merritt.
Jonah stared at Mabel.
“You brought them.”
Mabel shook her head.
“No.”
Gideon answered:
“She was late.”
Mabel almost laughed from relief.
Jonah’s hand slowly moved away from his coat.
Sheriff Vale stepped forward.
“Jonah Abernathy, keep your hands where I can see them.”
Jonah’s face changed.
Not fear.
Calculation.
He looked toward the ledgers.
Then Mabel.
Then Gideon.
“You think this ends with an arrest?”
Gideon’s voice was low.
“No.”
Jonah smiled slightly.
“Good.”
He looked at Mabel.
“Because Bellamy isn’t the only doctor who signed papers.”
Mabel froze.
“What papers?”
Jonah said nothing.
Sheriff Vale cuffed him.
As they led him out, he looked back.
“Ask your husband why he really owed me five hundred dollars.”
The door closed.
Mabel turned slowly toward Gideon.
His face had changed.
There it was.
Another secret.
“Gideon.”
He looked down.
“What did he mean?”
Sheriff Vale stopped near the hall.
Merritt looked uncomfortable.
Mabel’s pulse quickened.
“Why did you owe Jonah money?”
Gideon remained silent.
“Tell me.”
Finally he looked at her.
“The mine accident.”
“What about it?”
“I borrowed money afterward.”
“For treatment?”
“No.”
His jaw tightened.
“For information.”
Mabel stared.
“What information?”
Gideon looked toward the portrait of Hannah.
“About your mother.”
The room went still.
Mabel whispered:
“What?”
Gideon’s voice dropped.
“I knew her.”
Seven years earlier, before Hannah died, she had traveled secretly into the mountains.
Mabel never knew.
She told Jonah she was visiting a cousin.
Instead she went to Gideon.
Why?
Because Gideon’s first wife, Sarah, had worked briefly as an assayer before marriage.
She knew mineral samples.
Hannah brought her ore from the eastern cut.
Sarah confirmed gold.
Then Sarah became ill.
Not pneumonia initially.
Something else.
Gideon had always questioned it.
Merritt had treated her late in the illness.
Symptoms.
Vomiting.
Weakness.
Neuropathy.
Cardiac irregularity.
The same pattern.
Mabel sat slowly.
“No.”
Gideon’s eyes filled with something she had never seen.
Grief, still alive after six years.
“Hannah suspected Jonah.”
“She asked Sarah to keep the assay secret.”
“Then?”
“Sarah became sick.”