by Wesley Ellis
“Bonaday is right,” Sheriff Colton said. “Before you can make a charge like that stick, you have to have some proof. Otherwise—”
The attorney poked a smoking cigar at the sheriff and said, “Don’t tell me what I need or do not need to make the charge stick, Sheriff. I have a witness who is willing to testify that Mr. Chen Ling and, the deceased were well acquainted.”
“That’s not true!” Ki said angrily. “I never saw the man before. He and three others came to my room to rob me.”
“Hold it!” the sheriff bellowed, raising his hands for silence. “Blake, where is this witness of yours?”
“Right here,” the attorney said, stepping aside and letting the hotel night clerk step forward.
The sheriff made no attempt to hide both his skepticism and contempt. “George? Last night you told me that you didn’t see anything!”
The clerk was little more than a pimply-faced kid, barely out of his teens. Stung by the fact that he was not going to get to pocket the profits from Ki’s one hundred dollars, maybe he had decided that he would get even or take a bribe. Either way, Ki knew that George was lying and that he would be well paid to perjure himself in court.
George gulped and continued his lie. “But after I saw the dead man’s face, I remembered later how that rich Chinaman and him went upstairs together. They said hello to me when they passed and seemed real friendly.”
“That’s an outright falsehood,” Ki said. “He is lying to you, Sheriff.”
“Prove it!” the attorney snapped. “We have a witness who says that the Chinaman and the dead man were acquainted with each other. I suspect they went up to his room and quarreled. Then the Chinaman somehow threw him out of the window. Murder in the first degree.”
But the sheriff was not convinced. “There is too much we don’t know for a charge like that. No one was in the room who can say what really happened.”
“Sheriff Colton, that is not your concern, and I suggest you are way out of line. I’m the attorney-at-law here, and I—”
Dan Bonaday had heard enough. “You money-graspin’ sonofabitch! You know you can’t get a first-degree murder charge to stick without someone else having been in that hotel room!”
Don Blake was a large man himself and when the- two advanced with clenched fists, it took all the sheriff’s power to get between them and prevent a fight from breaking out right in his office.
“Stop it!” Colton yelled. “Or so help me, I will jail you both for obstructing the peace!”
He shoved Bonaday and Blake away from each other and glared at George. “Now listen here,” he said in a hard voice. “I ain’t prepared to believe anything you say, boy. I don’t trust you as far as I could—”
“Sheriff Colton!” the attorney bellowed. “I demand that you keep your opinions to yourself and let a judge and jury decide whether or not this witness is telling the truth.”
George looked frightened, but he was also resolute. “I’m tellin’ the truth, and I’ll stand up and swear to it before the court. That man,” he said, pointing a shaking finger at Ki, “that man and the dead one were friends. He murdered him.”
“How?” The sheriff looked at Ki. “Mr. Chen Ling can not weigh one hundred seventy pounds soaking wet; the man that was tossed out the window was six feet tall and well over two hundred pounds.”
The attorney sneered. “The Chinaman is a martial-arts man. I’d bet anything on it. All the rich Chinese have their kids taught in the martial arts to defend themselves. That one may look weak, but I’ll bet you he isn’t. Isn’t that right, Chen?”
Ki said nothing.
“See?” the attorney crowed. “He damn sure knows that he could have used superior quickness and balance to throw a heavier but clumsier opponent through his hotel-room window. But he isn’t about to admit that and incriminate himself.”
“You aren’t going to get away with this,” Bonaday growled. “Even if Chen and the dead man did know each other, you can’t prove that what happened wasn’t self-defense.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” the attorney said. “But his witness and I are heading over to see Judge Heath right now, and I assure you he will see fit to issue a decision to set a trial date and keep that yellow-skinned killer behind bars!”
The attorney and George left and when the sheriff had closed the door on them, he turned to face Bonaday and Ki. “I have no choice but to wait and see if they are successful in getting the murder charges filed. If Judge Heath signs the order, I’m afraid that you are going on trial for murder, Mr. Ling.”
“But damnit!” Bonaday roared. “Judge Heath eats out of Orin Grayson’s back pocket. Of course old Heath will issue the order! And Ki ... I mean, Chen Ling, will be sent to court and then prison as sure as hell is hot!”
Ki did not miss the fact that Bonaday, in his extreme anger, had used his real name. Fortunately, the sheriff did not seem to pick up on that. But what did it matter, anyway? If he was going to be stuck in this jail, he was of no value to anyone. Not to Bonaday and his stage line, and especially not to Jessie. Ki swallowed his bitterness. He tried to think of some way out of this mess, but there was none. And he could not even have prevented this from occurring, because he had been fighting for his life. Sure, he wished now he had not used the sweep-lotus kick that had sent the assassin plunging in a hail of glass to his death. But there had been four of them with guns, and there had not been time to act with anything less than lethal force.
“Sheriff? Can I talk to Mr. Bonaday privately?”
“Sure,” Colton sighed. “I’ll be outside getting some fresh air. Take your time, Dan. But if you try and slip him a weapon or even a hacksaw blade, then I’ll find it and jail you for a month. By then, what you have left of a business will be gone. Think about that before you do anything foolish.”
Bonaday flushed but kept his mouth shut until after the door closed. Then he walked over to Ki and gripped the bars. “Hell of a mess you got us into now, Ki.”
“I got us into?” Ki could not believe his ears.
“Well, sure! What good are you to me behind bars? Now I gotta find a way to get you out of trouble.”
Ki bit back his anger. “Get a message to Jessie Starbuck. Tell her that this cell isn’t so bad and that the only thing she can do is to push this Judge Heath to set a quick trial date. They can’t convict me of anything. Also, there is the matter of the men George said came rushing down from the upstairs hallway. George can’t deny he said that, and his statement backs up my own story.”
Bonaday shook his head. “You don’t seem to understand how the deck is stacked against you, Ki. This is Reno, Nevada, not San Francisco or Texas. Orin Grayson and the judge are very important and powerful men. They can get you convicted and sent to prison. They can and they will.”
Ki shook his head. “Jessie won’t ever let that happen. She’ll hire a dozen of the finest lawyers anywhere if that’s what it takes to overturn the conviction.”
“You may be right. But it’ll drag out in one courtroom after the other and by then, by God, I will be dead of old age and you will have gray hair instead of black. Don’t you see? Even if you eventually win, we’ve lost.” Bonaday slipped a derringer out of his boot top. “Take this and—”
“Uh-uh. I don’t need a gun,” Ki told the man. “I can escape whenever I want.”
“How?” Bonaday asked with a suspicious look. “Sheriff Colton ain’t brilliant, I’ll grant that, but he’s not stupid either.”
“I know. But you heard him. He doesn’t believe for one minute that I am strong enough to have thrown a man to his death. He underestimates me. That is the key.”
“Yeah, well, let me tell you this, Ki. After last night, Colton might underestimate you, but you can bet that he is the only one!”
Ki agreed with reluctance. After overcoming the four men they had sent to his room last night, Grayson, Ford, and whoever else he was up against would not ever make the same mistake of underestimating his fighting ability. But
for right now, none of that really mattered. He was in jail until the trial was over. Then, win or lose, Jessie would see that he was free again.
At the moment the telegraph office had opened that morning, Jessie had sent an urgent message to her old friend and bank president, Mr. Friendel, care of the Bank of San Francisco. The message had been very brief, but there was enough to let the banker know that he was to engage and send the finest legal mind to Reno, Nevada, immediately. The lawyer was to be paid and employed by Daniel Bonaday.
Afterward, Jessie had gone to work in the Sierra Stage Line office under the direction of Peter Bakemore, who was nearly giggly with happiness. Jessie spent the entire first two days listening to the accountant explain his complex system of record-keeping. She had easily followed the explanations and even had to admit that Bakemore was a brilliant accountant, one far underpaid and unappreciated. He had set up a system of double bookkeeping that was in perfect order and then created several ingenious peripheral systems of additional checks and balances. Figures were not the things that Jessie enjoyed most in life, but she did know enough to realize the man was an accounting wizard. When this was all over, if it were determined that Peter Bakemore was completely innocent of any wrongdoing, then she knew that she wanted this man on her own payroll.
True to all predictions, Judge Heath had written the order to the sheriff that ordered Ki retained in jail for trial. A date had been set for two months in the future, but Jessie was confident that the San Francisco attorney she had sent for would get the trial date moved up considerably. His name was Lawrence Applegate and Jessie had seen him on the street with Dan Bonaday soon after his arrival in Reno. Physically, at least, the California attorney was not impressive. Of average height, build, and looks, he was in his early forties, with sand-colored hair and blue eyes. He dressed nicely, but was not a fashion plate like many of San Francisco’s legal lions. He carried a black, accordion-type briefcase that bulged with papers and legal tomes. He looked intelligent and intense, and Jessie did not doubt for a minute that he was the best.
The trouble was, she could not dare to pay the man a visit. In fact, she had let Bonaday know that Applegate was not to be made privy to the fact that it was the famous Jessica Starbuck who was his real employer.
News came at the end of the week that the trial date had been moved up. Jessie was in the Sierra Stage Line office when Orin Grayson shouted, “Damn Judge Heath! Why did he do a stupid thing like that!”
“Because that new attorney of Bonaday’s found some law on the books that said there was not enough evidence to support a trial for murder. He swore he would move to have the judge removed from his bench if he did not try the case next week.”
“And the judge believed him?”
“He had to. Apparently, Applegate showed the judge the legal precedent and made it clear he had friends, both here and in California, who would see to it that he either agreed to the earlier trial date, or he would be made to look like an ignorant fool.”
“Damn!” Grayson shouted. “Heath is getting senile. When this is over, I’m going to see that he retires so that we can get someone smarter and with considerably more backbone on the judge’s bench.”
Grayson stepped out into the main office. “Miss Wilson, I want to speak to you at once.”
Jessie smiled at Bakemore, who was right in the middle of another explanation. She almost welcomed the excuse to leave, but she was nervous whenever Grayson wanted to see her. Since that first night together when she had tried to get him to divulge who else was behind the conspiracy against the Bonaday Stage Line, they had spoken only briefly. Roxy Bonaday had taken one look at Jessie and had hovered around Grayson continually ever since.
Now, as Jessie walked in to see Grayson, the assemblyman was clearly agitated. “Vickie,” he said, closing the door behind her and motioning her to a seat, “please sit down and let’s talk. First, I’m sorry that I have been ignoring you. Believe me, you’ve been on my mind night and day.”
“You’ve been very well occupied,” Jessie said, making it sound as if she were jealous.
“You mean by Miss Bonaday?”
“Yes. She is lovely.”
“Sure, but after having you, I see the difference between a girl and a woman. When this is over and I have bankrupted and driven the entire Bonaday family out of Nevada, we can make up for lost time. Right now, though, I don’t want anything to make Roxy more jealous than she already is. Do you know what the girl wants me to do?”
“No.”
Grayson sighed. “She wants me to have our attorney, Mr. Blake, drop the murder charges against Chen Ling. Can you imagine that!”
“But why?”
“The girl is all mixed up. She wants to marry me and ... well, of course, I am sort of leading her on in order to keep her loyalty. I’ve told her that I have offered to buy her father out, and that right before he is due to lose everything, I’ll bail him out financially.”
“And she believed you?” Jessie was astounded at Roxy’s gullibility.
“Yeah. I even set up a bank account with both our names on it. The account is to go to her father the day he agrees to quit his business. Also, I have promised to see that the Bonaday stagecoaches and all their physical assets are not impounded by the courts for the satisfaction of bad debts. You see, Dan Bonaday is a pretty sick man. Bad heart. He’s had several attacks and Roxy is the only one who knows about them. She thinks that her father is killing himself and ought to get out of business at any price. I, of course, fully agree.”
Jessie sat still, letting the impact of what she had just learned sink in fully. This explained so very, very much. Now she understood Roxy Bonaday a little and found herself feeling sorry for the foolish girl rather than just despising her for betraying her own father. Roxy was in love with Grayson—for that, she could not be faulted. Despite their age differences, Grayson was debonaire, handsome, and absolutely peerless as a lover. A girl like Roxy, who might have been a virgin when she fell into the assemblyman’s clutches, would soon become helpless to resist his charms and persuasive powers.
“Are you sure about the bad heart?”
“Of course! Roxy says that the only ones who know about it are the family doctor and us—you’re the fourth one, and I don’t want you to say a word. Old Dan is too proud to even tell his son, Billy.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to go see Bonaday. Tell him that you regret what has happened and realize what a fool you were to come to work for me. Ask him to give you a job.”
“He won’t do it. And even if he did, Billy hates me now.”
“Change his opinion.” Grayson leaned forward. “This is between the two of us. Don Blake says we haven’t got a chance of convicting Chen Ling for murder. The best we can do is to get him a short jail sentence. And quite frankly, that might backfire. We could even make him angry enough to stay right here in Nevada and pour money into the Bonaday lines. I can’t afford to let that happen.”
“But—”
“Let me finish, Vickie. Once you get back in their good graces, find out everything about the Chinaman that you can and report it back to me. Maybe we can buy him off or strike a deal—he agrees to leave Nevada for good, we agree to drop the charges.”
“And if he won’t agree?”
Grayson shrugged. “We underestimated him once, but we won’t a second time. The man is dangerous. We want him out of the picture.”
“Who is ‘we’?” Jessie dared to ask boldly.
Grayson’s eyes drew down to slits. “My dear, lovely money-grasping young lady, there is one thing you have to remember. It is definitely not smart to ask questions that don’t need to be asked. You must never want to know more than is necessary. It just puts you under a greater risk. Do you understand what I am saying?”
Jessie nodded. She understood. Understood, too, that she was going to come back into this office tonight and go through the files that she had not seen yet.
“Come here a second,” Grayson said with a wink that left little doubt he wanted to kiss her—or worse. The office had a window, but it was high enough that he could explore her privately from the waist down without being observed from the outer office.
Jessie laughed and shook her head. She gestured out the window. “I can’t. Bakemore is a very suspicious man and a little possessive. He’d guess what you were doing to me and it would cause all sorts of havoc.”
“The man is a frustrated little ... you ever see his wife?”
“No.”
“She’s a real hard woman and one that probably puts an apron on him the moment he walks in his front door. She wears the pants in that family, and during the daytime she earns a little money on the side by having men visit her through the back door. No wonder a beautiful, soft-spoken woman like you is driving him half crazy.”
Jessie shrugged as if that were of no concern to her as she turned and walked out the door. Her mind was already on the sudden turn of events brought about by Grayson’s request that she spy for the Sierra Stage Line. She felt real hope for the first time in a week. With any luck, there would be no trial and Ki would be free very soon. Just yesterday there had been another holdup on the run between Carson City and Genoa that had netted the highwaymen five thousand dollars in gold. Ki would be wanting to ride the coaches and put a stop to that sort of thing. And maybe, Jessie thought, after I go to work for the Bonaday Stage Line, I can help, too.
Chapter 8
Roxy Bonaday had inherited her father’s no-nonsense way of approaching problems. She had been watching Jessie and Orin Grayson through the office window and had not been pleased. Even a blind person could have seen that Orin was attracted to Vickie Wilson.
Jealousy was an emotion Roxy had only experienced once, and that was in the seventh grade over a boy named Benny Overman. Roxy had grown up full-bodied and high-spirited. Her hair was dark brown, her eyes large and almond-shaped. She would have been considered beautiful had it not been for the almost masculine strength of her jawline and the fact that her nose was a little larger than was fashionable. Roxy was not the kind of girl a mild fellow would be attracted to. She laughed a little too loudly, enjoyed off-color jokes, and liked big and aggressive men. She also felt strongly attracted by a man who had the guts to take what he wanted—Orin Grayson was exactly that kind of man. The fact that he was much older than she was did not matter a whit.