A Lady Never Trifles with Thieves

by Suzann Ledbetter

  Down to my bones and deeper, I was proud of my father and prouder still to be Joseph Beckworth Sawyer’s daughter. Papa never lied to me. He treated me like an equal. He believed I’d hung the stars and the moon but didn’t shy from heating my backside with a hickory switch if the situation called for it.

  Funny, how those who condemned him as a father never once asked my opinion. I reckon my growing up healthy, strong, and mostly happy was thought to be a fluke of nature, akin to the Methodist preacher’s oldest daughter owning the fanciest bordello in Little Rock.

  But whether a saint, a sinner, or somewhere in between, Papa had no stomach for kowtowing to a thieving judge or his flunky, Federal Marshal Logan Roots. Before roosters crowed the dawn of April 22, 1870, Papa, Won Li, myself, and a wagonload of worldly goods were aboard a ferry pointing toward the Arkansas River’s west bank.

  Denver City was chosen by process of elimination. Papa said Missouri was too near our native state in terrain, attitude, and number of shootists fawnching to put more holes in him than a berry sieve. Texas was a second cousin to hell on earth, with Oklahoma and Kansas Territories being firsts. California was too far removed, and Papa would sooner leave Arizona and New Mexico to the rattlesnakes and Apaches.

  My thoughts on starting a detective agency weren’t solicited, but the idea gave me the hooray kind of goose bumps. Denver City’s renown as the Queen City of the Plains sounded classy, lively, and large—three adjectives a blind man wouldn’t affix to Ft. Smith, Arkansas.

  Hindsight says I was too busy imagining the miracle of sneezing in the mercantile without a neighbor lady bringing a mustard plaster to the house to notice Papa was straining to catch his breath. I don’t know for certain when he passed. He rode slumped in the saddle, for quite a spell, as if he were napping before his body canted sideward and slid to the ground.

  I’ll hear that thump till the day I join him and Mama on the other side. I don’t remember what came after, but the second morning after Papa’s burial, Won Li said he had no choice but to tranquilize me with a gill of poppytea. He’d carried me from the gravesite, which I’d refused to leave, to a pallet he’d fashioned in the back of the wagon. The next I knew, the purple-blue peaks of the Rocky Mountains were spiking the horizon.

  I’d have died of melancholy and sunstroke if Won Li hadn’t intervened: thus he’d saved my life and should have been shed of his obligation. He not only disagreed, he was hugely insulted by my assumption, and went about as though I were invisible for nigh onto a week.

  “A darned peaceful seven days it was, too,” I said as I unpinned my flowered and feathered straw hat. It looked more fetching on the office’s hat rack than it did on my head. Having been raised as ungoverned as a weed, I doubted I’d ever get accustomed being trussed from tip to toe in ladylike foofaraws.

  Loosening the topmost jacket buttons saved me from strangulation without exposing my ample charms. After chucking my gloves and reticule in a bottom drawer, I commenced the daily chore of feather dusting the red grit from the massive oak partner’s desk.

  The owner of the secondhand store had told me two speculators had hauled it all the way from Georgia. Scars, ink splatters, and alligatored shellac had cheapened the price, as had the gouge on one side from an original owner’s attempt to saw it in half after a disagreement with his partner.

  The storekeeper had warned me, “I won’t sell it to you unless you promise me one thing. When the day comes you want rid of it, you gotta swear you’ll burn it, bust it up for kindling—I care not what—long as you don’t lug it back here. I already done bought and sold that monstracious ugly sumbitch five, mebbe six times and I don’t never want to see it agin in this life, nor the next.”

  The old coot took me for my word. For ten dollars cash money, plus six bits delivery, he threw in two high-backed swivel chairs, a pair of fancy upholstered parlor ones, a hat rack, and framed portraits of Washington crossing the Delaware and Napoleon with his hand stuck in his coat, scratching his belly.

  I’d arranged a secretary’s accouterments around the blotter on my side of the desk. On the other was the morning edition of the Rocky Mountain News, an ash receptacle with a half-smoked cigar, a bottle of whiskey, and other tokens of manly occupation.

  For the longest time, I’d fooled myself into believing I’d decorated what would have been my father’s realm only for show. As the window lettering said SAWYER INVESTIGATIONS,DEPUTY U.S.MARSHAL JOSEPH BECKWORTH SAWYER (RET.),PRINCIPAL, visitors would be mighty curious if they didn’t see or smell a trace of the old lawdog in charge.

  Now just because my mother had gypsy blood doesn’t mean I believe in séances, haints, or any of that voodoo claptrap, but one evening it came to me as clear as water that Papa was leaned back in his chair. The newspaper was open across his knees, and that nasty cigar was crotched between his fingers.

  There must be barbers in heaven, for his salt-and-pepper hair and beard were trimmed and combed. The trail dust had been brushed from his hat and boots; his shirt and trousers were laundered and pressed.

  He couldn’t have looked more at home in our parlor in Van Buren. I took it for a sign he admired seeing his name spelled out in gilt on the window and countenanced my carrying on without him.

  If I hadn’t let my mind drift, the clamor of footsteps on the floorboards wouldn’t have given me such a start. Two expensively dressed gentlemen of middle age gandered about the room as though I were a part of the furnishings.

  “Is Mr. Sawyer in?” asked the taller one. His voice was reedy, and his nose and cheeks flushed, in the mode of one regularly exposed to sunlight or liquid corn.

  “Not at the moment.” I walked around the desk to return the feather duster to its drawer. “Perhaps I can be of assistance?”

  The shorter, heavyset man asked, “When do you expect him back?”

  “I’m sorry, but I really can’t say. Mr. Sawyer doesn’t hold to clocks and calendars.” I nodded at the parlor chair beside the desk and its twin alongside Papa’s. “I’m Mr. Sawyer’s assistant and would be happy to take down the particulars of your case.”

  They exchanged vexatious glances. “Mr. Sawyer came highly recommended,” said the taller, “but this is a matter of urgency. We cannot afford to wait—”

  “Then the sooner I’m apprised of the situation for Mr. Sawyer’s review, the better. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Grudgingly, he introduced himself and his companion. The names were as familiar as yesterday’s newspaper.

  Garret McCoyne was a banker and had inherited several parcels of prime Denver City real estate. The shorter man, Avery Whitelaw, owned silver mines and stamp mills that extracted gold and silver amalgam from crushed quartz.

  Wealth and influence weren’t their sole commonality. The McCoyne and Whitelaw households had recently been burglarized by a bold and very cunning thief.

  With no evidence of forcible entry at either home, it was presumed their second-floor windows had been breached by means of a rope with a grapple attached at one end. Hooking a chimney corner, cupola, or other sturdy rooftop amenity would be pattycakes for an experienced cracksman. In each instance, the thief stripped a pillow of its case and absconded with a fortune in jewelry, including Mrs. McCoyne’s renowned diamond-and-ruby tiara.

  What use one might have for such a geegaw I couldn’t fathom, but a quarter newspaper column had been devoted to Mrs. McCoyne’s nervous prostration from which she might never recover.

  The police were stymied. The McCoynes and Whitelaws were absent from their homes at the time of the intrusions. Their servants had neither seen nor heard a disturbance. None of the jewelry had surfaced as yet.

  The burglar would strike again. As William Somerville said in his poem, “The Lucky Hit,” “So in each action ’tis success that gives it all its comeliness.” The sole questions were, Who would the thief target now? and When?

  Criminitly, how my palms did itch. What a boon it would be for Sawyer Investigations to capture him in the act and
recover the loot. Which I’d be delighted to do, except how should I know which Denver City mogul would be robbed next? The answer to when was a slightly less nebulous soon.

  McCoyne said, “Should Mr. Sawyer deign to make an appearance, tell him Mr. Whitelaw and I will return tomorrow afternoon at two.”

  My eyes flicked to Papa’s chair. “There’s every chance he will, gentlemen. I’ll be sure to give him your message.”

  After they took their leave, I fanned myself with the accounts ledger. Thirty-six dollars and seventy-three cents was all that separated me from destitution. Bills were mounting atop the desk. The rents were almost due on the office and the house.

  The agency’s till would not be vastly enriched by the fee nicked from J. Fulton Shulteis’s charges for dissolving the LeBruton maritals. Somehow, by early tomorrow afternoon, I must produce a flesh-and-blood father, or McCoyne and Whitelaw would take their business elsewhere.

  Two

  “Much as I appreciate your thoughtfulness, Won Li, you needn’t bother to bring my dinner every day.”

  “It is no bother, Miss Joby. To bank the cookstove, harness the horse, hitch the buggy, and venture out in the midday heat is a humble servant’s greatest pleasure.”

  I laughed. “Humble servant, my rear end. Why not admit you come here every day to spy on me, and be done with it?”

  “You are most impertinent.”

  “I’m also right.”

  For once, he didn’t rise to the bait. Some people enjoy trading postage stamps or mint coins as a hobby. Won Li and I swapped jibes.

  “The appointment with Lawyer Shulteis,” he said. “He made good on his threat never to speak to you again?”

  The remark stemmed from my arrest for prostitution three months earlier while investigating another spouse who’d cleaved onto others at every opportunity.

  Shulteis explained to the magistrate why I’d been dancing on Madame Felicity’s bar when the police raided the bordello. The charge was dropped, but Shulteis deducted five dollars from the agency’s fee for his trouble. He’d also sworn he wouldn’t acknowledge my existence if we passed on the boardwalk. As for Won Li, I couldn’t recall ever seeing him so angry. Over the years, I endured hundreds of his lectures on comportment. More often than not, the lamp wicks would burn down to threads before he’d run out of steam and banish me to my bedchamber like a child.

  “Fulton is an attorney by profession,” I said, stifling a grin. “He lies like a rug when it suits his purposes.”

  Won Li’s arms raised to chest level and braced like a cigar store Indian’s. “Need I ask what the case for which he obviously hired you entails?”

  “Nope.”

  “You promised you would never engage in that type of work again, Joby.”

  “I most assuredly did not. I promised I’d never pass myself off as a bride of the multitudes again.”

  My fingers were crossed behind my back at the time, but what Won Li didn’t know wouldn’t put his pigtail in a swivet.

  “I am not one to butt into your business—”

  “No, you aren’t. When you meddle, you throw your whole body into it.”

  I bit my tongue a moment too late. Won Li bulled up as stony as a statue. I was a head taller, but he had the rare kind of dignity that sawed lesser humans off at the knees.

  “I’m sorry, Won Li.” I laid a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t shrug it off. “Why you didn’t string me up years ago, then cut the rope a minute short of mortal, I’ll never know.”

  His mouth crooked a nonce, the closest he ever came to a bona fide smile. “The thought has occurred to me.”

  “It will again.”

  “Of that we can be sure.” He bowed at the waist. “I leave you to your dinner and will return for you at four o’clock.”

  He scuttled forward. The iron gray braid dangling from his shaved crown to his waist ticked like a pendulum.

  “Ummm…Won Li?”

  “Yes?”

  “Could you make that half past five?”

  “As you wish, Joby.”

  I frowned. Blind obedience was not his strong suit. “You aren’t even going to ask why?”

  He didn’t so much as glance back at me. “A wise man does not ask a question unless certain he wants to hear the answer.”

  With that, he was gone.

  The roast beef, steamed vegetables, and particularly the angel cake were delicious. I was hungry, but I picked at more food than I consumed. The office was simply too hot and sultry for a full noonday meal.

  Studying the city directory between bites didn’t aid digestion, either. Like a gambler perusing a racing form for a horse with a serendipitous name, number, or color, my finger descended the listings as though the cosmos would identify the burglar’s next victim.

  It would have been easier to predict which house was prone toward a lightning strike. Everybody knows, a flue without a wisp of smoke purling forth is in peril. Lightning is drawn to cookstoves, but never one with a fire burning in it.

  Dirty utensils and dishes stowed in the basket, I gloved my hands and repinned that boulder of a hat on my head. Much as I admired Denver City, its womenfolk were sticklers about social convention. A cyclone ripping the town to hell and gone might excuse a lady appearing in public sans proper accessories, but something as piddling as heat stroke would not.

  The boardwalks teemed with a splendid display of democracy in motion. Upturned crates supported three-card monte and chuck-a-luck games for the convenience of those who preferred to lose a week’s wages in the great outdoors. Millionaires tipped silk top hats to shopgirls in homespun bonnets and gingham dresses. Wealthy matrons and Jezebels alike were decked out in the latest Parisian fashions, which enraged the former and amused the latter.

  Ragtag street vendors hawked, “Apples! Fresh apples!” “Cee-gaaars!” “Roaasted pea-nutsss” and “Raaazors, scissors, knives to grind.” Weary cowboys with dirt-creased necks and saddlebags slung over a shoulder yearned for a hot bath, a shave, and a cold draught beer—in that order.

  Hollow-cheeked consumptives, wanting desperately to believe that altitude stayed the Grim Reaper’s call, shuffled alongside working stiffs of every nationality and creed. Unbeknownst to them all, a fast-wilting female detective cleverly disguised as a slender, blue-eyed, young lady of modest means and temperament was in their midst.

  The clang of a horsecar’s bell was a sore temptation. Admission to the steel-railed trolley only cost five cents. I couldn’t divine a cheaper luxury, but my purse was too thin for mollycoddling. A disciple of Benjamin Franklin’s “a penny saved is a penny earned,” I was not, yet a nickel couldn’t be spent but once.

  Why hadn’t I asked Won Li to wait and drive me in the buggy? An excellent question, answered by the prospect of basking in his tacit disapproval all the way across town and back.

  His chauvinism was selective. It applied to no one, save me. After Papa died, turning tail for Ft. Smith held no appeal for Won Li or myself. Before we arrived in Denver City, he indulged my talk of soldiering on with the agency. Won Li presumed it to be a tribute to my beloved father, which I’d jettison when the shock of Papa’s death relaxed its grip on my heart.

  Realizing I was not only stone serious but a born detective rankled the liver out of my patron. He’d encouraged my childhood ambitions to become an actress, then an alchemist, and later, an archaeologist. It never occurred to him that private investigation conglomerated all three.

  The difference between Won Li and my father was that Papa prayed my realms of interest didn’t portend life imprisonment, even though incarceration would let him know where I was and what I was doing at any given moment. As for Won Li, he refused to accept my disinterest in attending medical school or pursuing a college professorship. The occupational totem pole his dreams had carved with my likeness ranked “female detective” so low, I’d have to look up to see solid ground.

  The day the agency opened for business, I was full of starch and vinegar. I made a
deal with the old devil: If Sawyer Investigations went bankrupt, I’d set my sights on a medical career. Won Li was too honorable to bet against my success, but there was nothing in our agreement about cheering me on.

  Lo, if he had any idea how few nickels separated my dream from his, he’d be posting letters of inquiry to the Eclectic Medical College, Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, the Boston Female Medical College, and the University of Michigan.

  The LeBrutons’ scarlet hibiscus bushes and my face were the same shade of aflush upon my approach to their block stone home. A broad veranda wrapped the front and bowed gracefully around a bay-windowed turret. White lace curtains frothed the windows, uncommonly large, sashed affairs for a city where winter came early and stayed on like a shirttail relation down on his luck.

  The front screen was unhooked. An ancient Negress in a gray dress answered my second pull on the vestibule’s bell cord. Her flint expression telegraphed displeasure with my impatience. I chastised myself for provoking her.

  Maids’ and butlers’ attitudes in delicate household matters were always suspect. Sympathetic as they might be to their mistress, their salaries weren’t paid from her purse.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am,” I said. “I have a matter of importance to discuss with Mrs. Penelope LeBruton.”

  “Is she expecting you?”

  Proper etiquette required a note requesting an appointment, which could easily fall into the wrong hands. Even if it didn’t, a response might take a week or more, depending on the status the receiver strove to maintain.

  As I reckoned the birdlike crone knew what color drawers her ladyship had donned that morning, I said, “No, there simply wasn’t time to—”

  “Then whatever you’re selling, young lady, the missus doesn’t need it.”

  My palm held the oak door at bay. “J. Fulton Shulteis hired me this morning to act in Mrs. LeBruton’s behalf. I think if you tell her that, she’ll agree to see me.”