by Nerys Leigh
In a stunning lack of imagination, a painted sign above the door proclaimed the shabby, squat, tin-roofed building as the ‘Deep Rift Saloon’.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll wait out here,” Brewer said, eyeing the gloomy interior with distaste.
“Maybe you should stay out here too,” Jonah murmured to Phoebe.
She gave him a withering look and walked inside, just like he knew she would.
At least he’d made the effort.
There were only two small windows and the doorway letting light into the saloon, which was probably just as well since it didn’t appear to be a place one would want to see in too much detail. A bar spanned one entire wall, the rest of the space being filled with tables and chairs. At this time of the day it was almost empty, but a handful of patrons played cards or slouched over drinks.
A bored-looking young man walked past them carrying two full spittoons. Phoebe grimaced and looked away, pressing a hand over her mouth as he tossed the contents out the door.
Jonah made his way to the bar where an older man with an eye-patch rubbed at a stain on the scuffed surface.
“What can I get you?” the bartender said. His gaze fell on Phoebe as she walked up behind him. “Um… is she with you?”
“Is that a problem?” she asked, in a tone that said she didn’t care if it was.
The bartender’s one eye flicked to Jonah. “Uh, I suppose not. We don’t get women in here.”
“Can’t imagine why,” she remarked, making a face as the young man returned the spittoons to their places by the bar.
“We’re just here to ask you some questions,” Jonah said. “About Ralph Baker, the accountant who disappeared.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that. I wasn’t here. It was my night off.”
His reply seemed a little too fast, especially as Jonah hadn’t said on what night Baker vanished. Although if the marshal had questioned him already, he might just have been repeating his answer.
“So you don’t know if he was drinking here or not?”
“Sorry, no.”
“Who was here in your place?” Phoebe asked.
“John White, only you can’t ask him because he left last week. Got a new job, he said. Didn’t say where.”
The spittoon-emptier walked by.
“How about you?” she said to him. “Were you here that night?”
The young man gaped at her as if she had three arms. He then turned bright red, shook his head, and told his feet, “No, ma’am. I only work during the day.”
Jonah sighed. They weren’t getting anywhere. Everything too conveniently backed up the whole story of Baker getting drunk and then losing his way back to town.
He didn’t buy it for a moment.
“Thanks,” he told the bartender, before herding Phoebe back outside.
Brewer walked up to them. “Do you have everything you need now? Because I have to get back to work.”
Jonah looked around them, hoping an idea would leap out at him.
“Yes, we’re done for now,” Phoebe said. “Thank you for your time.”
“Good luck in finding Mr. Baker.” Brewer nodded to her and left.
“Why did you tell him he could go?” Jonah asked, watching Brewer walk away in the direction of his office. “I might have wanted to ask him something else.”
She nudged his arm with her elbow. “That man,” she said, flicking her eyes to the side. “He’s watching us.”
Jonah glanced in that direction and immediately saw the man she meant. He stood outside the saloon, staring at them.
No, not at them. At Phoebe.
Jonah vaguely remembered seeing him nursing a glass in the saloon. Which meant he’d followed them out there.
A sudden burst of annoyance swept over him. No man had the right to ogle another man’s wife, no matter how beautiful she was. Phoebe was his, at least for now.
She touched his arm, clearly bothered by the man’s unwanted attention. “I think…”
“Don’t worry,” he said, scowling in the man’s direction, “I’ll take care of it.”
The man’s eyes widened as Jonah started towards him. Whirling around, he hurried away, disappearing around the saloon building.
And stay away, Jonah silently sent in his direction. No one bothered his wife if he had any say in it.
Except him, possibly.
He turned back to her. Strangely, she wasn’t smiling in thanks. She was probably still nervous.
“You scared him away,” she said, looking towards where the man had gone.
Jonah’s chest may have puffed out a little. “I sure did. Come on, I think we’ve done everything we can here.”
Chapter Four
Back in Black Hawk, they ate supper in the restaurant where they’d had lunch and then returned to the boarding house.
“I wonder which one Mr. Baker was staying in,” Phoebe said as they passed the other doors in the hallway on the way to their room.
Jonah took the key from his pocket as they came to a halt. “We’ll speak to Mr. Bowen about it eventually, but I don’t want to tip him off to who we are quite yet. Sometimes people won’t talk if they know you’re a Pinkerton agent, even if they have nothing to do with whatever you’re investigating. To them we’re one step away from being the law, and lawmen make people nervous.”
She walked into their room ahead of him. The bed stared at her, taunting. She tried to ignore it.
“Do you make people nervous?”
He was tall, which might be intimidating to some, but he didn’t seem threatening to her. He had a rather pleasant face, with the hint of laughter lines around his eyes and mouth. When she really thought about it, some might think him handsome.
Not that she’d thought about it.
One corner of his mouth hitched up. “Do I make you nervous?”
“Not in the slightest.”
The other corner of his mouth rose to meet the first. “Good. But yes, I sometimes make people nervous, especially if they’re guilty.”
She shrugged off her jacket and hung it on a hook on the wall by the door. “Do you think Mr. Bowen had something to do with Mr. Baker’s disappearance?”
Jonah removed his own jacket and hung it next to hers. The sight of their jackets hanging side by side unexpectedly triggered a long-dead memory. Two jackets, hers and her new husband’s, hanging in the hallway of their new home. ‘It’s like they belong together,’ she’d said, ‘just like us.’ Norman had just grunted in response. She’d been too stupid and in love to understand what that meant.
Frowning, she turned away from the jackets on the wall.
Jonah was watching her. “Are you all right?”
Drawing in a deep breath, she sent the memory back to its grave, where it belonged. “Perfectly.”
She walked to the table and sat on one of the chairs. The bed was nearer and probably more comfortable, but she wasn’t going anywhere near that until she absolutely had to.
Apparently having no such qualms, Jonah sat on the bed and leaned down to pull off his boots. “There’s nothing that makes me think Bowen was involved, but I’m not ruling out anything this early in the investigation.” His boots removed, he shuffled up the bed, stretched his legs out, and crossed his ankles, leaning back against the headboard. “That can be your first lesson – don’t discount anything or anyone when you first start a case. Everyone’s a suspect and everything is a clue, until you rule it out.”
She nodded. It made sense. “What do you think about that man back at the mine? I’m sure he was watching us.”
He sat forward to rearrange the pillows behind him. “Everyone was watching us, or more accurately, you. You were the prettiest one there. Other than me, of course.”
She snorted a laugh. “Of course. I don’t mean watching like that. He seemed troubled, like he wanted to tell us something but couldn’t. I think he knows something.”
He stopped fussing with the pillows to stare at her. “Why di
dn’t you tell me that at the time?”
“I pointed him out. You looked right at him. I thought you’d seen it.”
“I thought you were just pointing out that a man was watching you and you didn’t like it. He left as soon as I started towards him.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Really? That’s what you thought? That I couldn’t cope with a man looking at me and needed my big, strong husband to chase him off?”
He shifted on the bed, looking awkward. “Maybe.”
She heaved a sigh. “I think this investigation would go a lot easier if you’d think of me as a fellow Pinkerton agent rather than just a woman who needs your protection. I can protect myself.”
He frowned and looked away. “Agents protect each other, no matter what sex they are.”
Something in the set of his jaw and the tone of his voice told her she’d hit a nerve. She wanted to ask why, but she knew he’d never tell her. “So if two male agents are working together, they warn off any women looking at them the wrong way?”
He smiled. It was a nice smile, warming his eyes. And there was a dimple in his left cheek which might have been considered attractive. By women who weren’t her.
“If necessary,” he said. “The danger females present to a Pinkerton agent can never be underestimated. We’re extremely attractive to the fairer sex. The combination of intelligence and manliness is irresistible. You’d be surprised at the number of times I’ve had to almost literally fight off women trying to steal my affections.”
She pressed her lips together as a snort of laughter escaped. “Yes, I imagine I’d be very surprised at that.”
His smile nudged loose a tiny part of the wall around her heart. She nudged it back into place.
“So why aren’t you married? With all those women vying for your attention, I would have thought at least one of them would have caught your eye.”
He shrugged. “One or two, but it never went anywhere. This job doesn’t lend itself to being married, what with being away from home so much.”
“And the constant danger of rampaging women.”
His dimple reappeared. “That too.”
Even though she joked about it, she imagined he’d had plenty of opportunities to find a wife, if he’d wanted one. If her life had been different, she might have… but that was a ridiculous idea, and not one worth considering.
“You’re right,” he said, “I shouldn’t have assumed that at the mine. I won’t do it again. Tell me more about this man.”
~ ~ ~
They discussed the case for a while, deciding to return to the mine the next day to find the man Phoebe was convinced knew something.
Jonah was still a little embarrassed about that. How could he have so badly misinterpreted what she meant when she pointed him out? He replayed the incident in his head. He didn’t want to think that he’d been blinded by his desire to warn the man away from her, but it was hard to avoid.
Was he jealous?
No, he couldn’t be jealous. They’d known each other for all of two days. She wasn’t even his real wife. It had to be something else. And when he worked out what that something else was, it would all make sense.
Having decided on their plans for the next day, they settled down to read.
He looked at Phoebe where she still sat on the wooden chair at the table, as if afraid to get any closer.
“The bed’s more comfortable.” He patted the space beside him.
Her eyes didn’t leave her book. “I’m happy right here.”
Shrugging, he went back to his dime novel, even though he’d been on the same page for the past ten minutes. For some reason, he didn’t seem to be able to concentrate.
After a while of barely getting anywhere, he gave up and closed his book. “Well, I’m ready to turn in. I just need to use the privy.”
She sprang from the chair so fast it almost toppled over. “May I go first?”
He leaned back and waved at the door. “Go ahead.”
Once she’d left the room, he placed his book down, giving up all pretence of reading.
She was as skittish as a mouse. Given she’d been married, it couldn’t be that she’d never before been alone in a bedroom with a man. Did she not trust him? No, he didn’t think that was it. Despite having known her for so short a time, he was already sure Phoebe wasn’t the kind of woman who would spend the night in the same room as a man she didn’t trust.
So what was it?
Maybe it was best he didn’t know, although he did need to somehow make her more at ease around him. If she was overly tense while working, she might miss what was going on around her. That could get one or both of them in serious trouble.
He was still pondering how to get her to relax when the door opened. Snatching his book from beside him, he pretended he’d been reading all along.
She walked in and came to a halt, her gaze hovering around but not quite settling on him. “The privy’s free now.”
He placed his book onto the bed and stood. “I won’t be long.”
She nodded silently, loitering just inside the room as he walked past her and closed the door behind him.
This wasn’t going to be easy.
He returned five minutes later. There appeared to have been a struggle.
Phoebe sat in bed with the covers pulled up to her chest, her previously neat chignon making a break for freedom and one shoulder of the nightdress she now wore bunched at the side of her neck.
The room bore witness to how she’d got there.
One drawer in the chest sagged open. There was water in the washbasin. And on the washstand. And on the floor in front of the washstand. A washcloth drifted slowly across the basin. A wet towel lay strewn across the end of the bed, along with the dress she’d been wearing when he left.
He took a step forward, stopping when his boot crunched on something hard. He bent to pick up a tiny button from the floor. The color matched her dress.
Straightening, he pushed it into his pocket.
He spent the next minute or so closing the drawer, hanging up her dress on one of a cluster of hooks in the corner, draping her wet towel over the back of a chair, and emptying the washbasin. He found her soap submerged beneath the washcloth.
Neither of them said a word.
When he’d finished, he looked around to see if he’d missed anything. It was then that he noticed her shoes were missing. He cast around the floor, bending to check beneath the bed. No shoes.
She pressed her lips together as he took hold of the covers at the foot of the bed and lifted them.
Her shoes were still on her feet.
Lowering the covers, he pushed his left hand into his pocket and pulled out the button. “You could have asked me to step outside to give you time to change into your nightclothes. I would have gone.”
He held out the button. She opened her hand and he dropped it into her palm.
“I’ll bear that in mind for tomorrow.”
Clearly, he had a lot of work to do regarding the whole relaxing issue. Maybe some levity would help.
“I’m going to get undressed and wash up now,” he said. “I have no objections to you watching, but I thought I should warn you.”
Not a hint of a smile touched her lips. “Just let me know when you’re decent again.”
Shuffling forward in the bed, she flipped the covers over her head.
He chuckled. He couldn’t help it.
Her voice emanated from beneath the covers. “I heard that.”
He stifled another laugh. “Sorry.”
He fetched his pajamas from the drawer where he’d left them and set about undressing. At a thud, he looked round to see one of her shoes lying on the floor by the bed. As he watched, her second shoe emerged from beneath the covers and dropped to join it.
“Mr. Hays?”
“Yes?”
“Would you mind passing me my hairbrush from the top drawer?” Her hand thrust out into the open.
He fo
und the hairbrush and placed it against her palm.
“Thank you.” Her fingers wrapped around the handle and it vanished into the depths of the bed.
It was all he could do to not burst into laughter. “You’re welcome.”
He watched the Phoebe-shaped mound moving beneath the covers as he washed. The whole situation was ludicrous, but he was smiling nonetheless. Still, they’d have to work out something more practical for the next night.
When he was finished and dressed in his pajamas, he sat on the far side of the bed to her. “I’m ready, if you’d like to come out of hiding.”
Slowly, as if she wasn’t quite sure he was telling the truth, she pulled the covers from her head.
Her hair was unpinned and tumbling over her shoulders in soft waves. Of course, he’d expected it would be, what with her having asked for the brush and all, but he wasn’t at all prepared for how it would affect him.
The dark, almost black curls, a smattering of silver hairs glinting in the lamplight, drew him into their shimmering depths. A vision of the silken strands sliding between his fingers twitched at his left hand.
He wrenched his gaze back to her face, before she noticed him staring.
Her eyes flicked down to his pajama-clad chest and back up again.
He raised one eyebrow. “Am I decent enough?”
She looked at his eyebrow as if it had personally offended her. “I suppose.”
“Good.” He swiveled his legs in under the covers and punched the pillow a few times to reshape it to his liking. It was only when he lay down that he noticed she was still sitting up, her spine rigid as she stared at the wall across the room. “Are you planning to sit up like that all night?”
Her eyes darted down to him then back up. “No.”
There were a few seconds of silence during which she didn’t move at all. He wasn’t even sure she was breathing.
Although he still wished he knew why she was so nervous with him, the logical part of him knew it was better he didn’t. He didn’t want to get to know her any more than he needed to. He already liked the way she bickered with him. He didn’t need to like her any more.
“I promise I will stay firmly on my side of the bed,” he said.