Cougar Tracks by Paul Lederer

Author:Paul Lederer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497694002
Publisher: Open Road Media

TEN

Ellen’s mouth twitched nervously and she turned her eyes downward. When she lifted them again Cougar could see thoughts scrambling around behind them as she thought how to answer the unexpected question.

‘All right,’ Ellen said hesitantly, licking her lips. ‘I was hoping we wouldn’t have to talk about it at all – that you wouldn’t find out. It’s simple. The oldest of motives: they want the money.’

Cougar’s heavy eyebrows drew together. ‘Who wants the money? And what money do you mean? You said it was simple to understand. Make it simple for me.’

‘The Brotherhood,’ she said at length and Cougar’s incomprehension only deepened. What in hell was the little woman in the white dress telling him? ‘That’s who it was.’ She touched the bracelet on Cougar’s wrist. ‘They all wear one of those.’

‘The Brotherhood,’ he repeated. ‘And just who might they be, Ellen?’

She turned her empty coffee cup nervously in her hands and glanced toward the restaurant door where none of their party had yet appeared. ‘Father really wouldn’t want me discussing this with you,’ she said.

‘I need to know, Ellen. If there’s trouble following us, we have the right to know what’s happening, how great the risk might be.’

‘I know that,’ she said very quietly. Then, determinedly, she told him. She began hesitantly and then spoke with a torrent of words now that the floodgates had been opened. There must have been a lot of pressure building up in Ellen, a vow to be silent offset by a need to share her knowledge. She told Carroll Cougar:

‘Back in St Louis where we had the church, Father had a body of “saints” around him. That was what he called them, “the Brotherhood of Saints.” They were like church elders, his apostles you might say. He promised them a lot … but they didn’t get quite as much as they expected.’

‘Such as?’ Cougar asked, not unkindly. The girl was flushed and very nervous. He tried to soothe her with a gentle smile.

She paused again and shrugged, banishing obligations, then continued. ‘I suppose it all started when something went wrong as Father was raising Luke Anderson from the dead!’

‘When he was what?’ Cougar shook his head as if his hearing had suddenly gone bad on him.

‘When … when he was raising Luke Anderson from the dead,’ Ellen repeated in a small voice.

Cougar asked patiently, ‘What went wrong?’

‘It …’ the girl was miserable. ‘It didn’t work,’ she said.

‘That I can believe.’ What kind of charlatan – or madman – was Dr White? ‘So what happened next? No. Let me guess. The Brotherhood got mad about it.’

‘Don’t laugh at me, Carroll. I hurt too much to be laughed at. ‘You’re right, of course. They felt betrayed … and of course they were angry about the money they had donated for Father’s new temple.’

‘What went wrong with that?’ Cougar asked, sighing inwardly, feeling deep sympathy for this woman who had been forced to endure such absurdity, and undoubtedly made to believe – or at least pretend to believe – in her father through all of this.

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