A Lady Never Trifles with Thieves

by Suzann Ledbetter

  Before the law clerk dissolved to a puddle of embarrassment, I said, “Oh, mind your own business,” to the men, then aimed a sweet smile at Percy. “Thank you very much for your help. The next time I see Fulton, I’ll certainly put in a good word for you.”

  “As relating this incident would do nothing to further my career, I would prefer my employer remain ignorant of it.”

  Our eyes met. “Then it will be our little secret,” I said. He knew I’d use it to finagle another favor someday. Such is the nature of commerce.

  The ceaseless wind batted my hat and fed me sips of grit and soot as I made my way up Larimer. Or down it. Or specifically, in a due northeasterly direction, until I reached the corner of H, where I turned due south-southeast.

  Had the city’s founders possessed a thimbleful of horse sense—or sobriety—the folly of platting streets to intersect with the banks of Cherry Creek, rather than in accordance with a compass, might have occurred to them. As it had not, the entire metropolis was laid out antigoggling to the mountains, the sun, the moon—any and all topo-graphic and celestial landmarks humankind has relied upon for navigation since the dawn of time.

  Although Arkansas was graven on my soul and flavored my speech, Colorado in general and Denver City in particular had stolen my heart, as it had tens of thousands of gold-fevered come-heres who’d sallied west to make a fortune and found a home. I only wished the damnfool first arrivals had squared longitude with latitude like the rest of the world.

  The smell of spilt beer and bodies several days removed from a bath wafted from every fifth or sixth doorway. Disembodied conversations and laughter chased out onto the street as well. Thankfully, it was too early in the evening for much gunplay.

  Clattering away on a vacant lot between an auction-and-storage concern and a brothel were Aloysius Q. Dablemont and his steam-driven rainmaking machine. The balding, portly climatologist stood on a soapbox, his bowler aloft, telling the dozen or so folks gathered round that last night’s mizzling rain was a mere sample of his contraption’s wares. A pure-de-frog strangler was within his realm, but they cost extra and must be paid for in advance.

  Further on, two mangy curs trotted behind an ice wagon, lapping at the water dripping under its doors. From the opposite direction came a dray heaped with offal. The dogs yelped and stutter-stepped. Their bone-sharp heads swiveled from one conveyance to the other.

  The horns of their dilemma reminded me of my own. A legal means of snipping Mrs. LeBruton’s bonds of unholy matrimony could be as close as a page in the god-awful heavy books hugged to my bosom. If not, there was more up my leg-o’-mutton sleeve besides my arm.

  It was resurrecting Papa for his appointment tomorrow with Misters McCoyne and Whitelaw that had me flummoxed. Men of their station and prestige would not be dissuaded by excuses, nor would they confide in Joe B. Sawyer’s able female assistant. Currying the carriage trade was vital to the agency’s prosperity. The rent, expenses, and Sawyer Investigations’ future could not be staked on crumbs tossed by J. Fulton Shulteis.

  Before the appointed hour, what if I positioned Won Li behind a screen? Selling McCoyne and Whitelaw on the pretense that secrecy was crucial to covert investigations would take some fast, fancy talking. I’d emphasize the general knowledge that Wells, Fargo employed undercover operatives. So did the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. It stood to reason that stealth was a higher priority for a small concern like ours.

  The hitch in that grand scheme was Won Li’s adamant refusal to cooperate. Even if his faculties deserted him for a nonce and he agreed, the odds of him feigning a low-country Arkansas accent were equal to passing myself off as a deposed Hungarian princess.

  I hated like sixty to admit it, but the only device left to me was the truth. That is, the shade of lavender that had come to simulate the truth for having told it to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who’d sought a personal audience with the agency’s namesake.

  The banker and the stamping mill owner would not be amused when informed that Papa’s arrival in the city had been unavoidably delayed. Lo, it proximated gospel enough to pinch my soul whenever I thought it, much less said it aloud.

  How ironic, being acclimated to him being abroad as much as he was home, my mind was still a storehouse of things tagged Don’t forget to tell Papa and Wait’ll Papa hears this or sees that. Bittersweet would be the day it became habit to take two plates from the cupboard instead of three.

  Harp not on that string, I thought, quoting Shakespeare. Sagacious advice, and like most admonitions, a whole lot easier to say than heed.

  A horse’s familiar nicker reached my ears. Izzy, my father’s Morgan gelding, was harnessed to our buggy, pulled up alongside the boardwalk. Having spent most of his life as a saddle-mount, his disdain at being relegated to part-time dray horse was pronounced.

  No driver with a pigtail coiled under a gray felt Stetson occupied the buggy’s seat. My heart tripped a beat. Seldom did Won Li wander afield. The neighborhood ran to seedy, and the Chinese were no better admired in Denver City than they were in Ft. Smith—or, to my knowledge, anywhere in the U.S. of A. It behooved him to wait with his chin tucked and hat brim pulled down like a bona fide, red-blooded American.

  Why folks resented the Hop Alley denizens’ cheap labor I couldn’t comprehend, as few, if any, detractors would work as long and hard for the same coin.

  Also a country mile short of endearing were the Occidentals’ strange garb, singsong lingo, and peculiar customs. Conventional wisdom decreed that Chinese men lived in filth, feasted on rodents, gambled to excess, worshipped false idols, smoked opium, and lusted for white women. By contrast, Caucasians were pillars of hygiene, eschewed squirrels and beaver as entrees, were prudent gamblers and devout Christians whose lungs were as chaste as their fleshly desires. What mostly tied people’s goat was the Asian proclivity for bowing, scraping, and all the while smiling like incumbent politicians. Won Li was an exception, but it seems that happy-go-luckiness can be construed as mockery and punished accordingly.

  Fearing it had, my eyes fell on a tall, burly gent buttressing the agency’s door frame. This time, it wasn’t anxiety that put the skitter in my pulse. From our first meeting, city constable Jack O’Shaughnessy had sundry effects on my physiognomy. I wasn’t prone to swoons, but that sly, mustachioed grin of his limbered my knees.

  Jack was ten years my senior and a tick or two shy of handsome, as his features were hewn rugged by travail. He was of excellent character, however, and possessed of a ready humor.

  The latter presented itself the night he and other members of the police force stormed Madame Felicity’s sporting house. I was engaged in a high-kicking, petticoat-swirling cancan when Officer O’Shaughnessy swung me down from the bar to provide escort to a horse-drawn paddy wagon.

  Into his ear, I’d whispered, “Please don’t give me away, but I’m really not a dancer.”

  He’d grinned and drawled back, “Believe me, ma’am, I noticed that right off.”

  After J. Fulton Shulteis restored my good name, Jack began dropping by the office, claiming an eagerness to make Papa’s acquaintance. When it became apparent I was the Sawyer in whom Jack was most interested, I informed him that romance was at the bottom on my list of ambitions.

  “Happy to hear it,” he’d said. “I’m not the marrying kind, either.”

  That took me aback, though by all rights, I should have been relieved. A woman of lesser gumption and greater arrogance might have felt insulted by his abrupt, categorical, unchivalrous, and seemingly intransigent immunity to her feminine wiles.

  “Boon companions we’ll be, then,” I said. “Friendship without the onus of courtship.”

  “Yep. No entanglements, no expectations.” He crooked a brow. “As long as one doesn’t lead to the other.”

  “There’s no reason to think it might, seeing as how we have this understanding between us.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And we aren’t attracted to each other—well, n
ot in that way. You know, how men and women usually are—giddy and breathless and wrought-up in each other’s company.”

  Bent knuckles stroked my cheek, a caress all the more tender for his large, rough-skinned hands. “I can’t speak for you,” he’d drawled, “but as you can see, darlin’, I’m not the least bit giddy or breathless.”

  Leaning into his touch, had I been a cat, I’d have purred. “Nor am I. Which is as it should be, between…er, friends.”

  “Ummhmm.” He licked his lips, hovering inches from mine, but as I stretched upward on tiptoes, he’d pulled back. “I wouldn’t want you any other way.”

  It was then I knew that lying with a straight face was but one of many things Jack O’Shaughnessy and I had in common.

  Friendship swelled inside me as I traversed the few remaining steps to the agency’s entrance. Jack grinned and doffed his narrow-brimmed hat. Rather than his dark wool, brass-buttoned uniform, he was dressed in striped trousers, a black frock coat, starched white shirt, and a string tie. A lilt of bay rum sweetened the air.

  “Nothing dire has befallen Won Li, has it?” I asked.

  Jack lifted the law books from my arms. He gave their titles a cursory examination, then turned his sky blue eyes on me. “When I left him, he was strawbossing the youngsters he hired to rebuild the toolshed. Again.”

  A blush crawled warm up my neck. “The slightest breeze would have blown it over.”

  “Might could,” he allowed, “but blowing it to hell and gone took a crazy woman and a beaker of nitrostarch.”

  “I am not crazy. I’m a scientist.”

  Jack rested a hand on my shoulder. “We’ve already plowed this ground, darlin’. It scares the liver out of me that someday you’ll end up six feet under it.”

  “Oh, and constables are renowned for longevity?”

  He didn’t reply. Not because a half-dozen of them weren’t rattling round inside that thick skull of his. Unlike Papa, Jack knew instinctively that bellowing and blustering stiffened my backbone, whereas silence allowed guilt an opportunity to nibble at my conscience.

  I delved into my reticule for the door key. Blasting through the shed’s roof had dislodged all memory of Jack’s invitation to supper and a minstrel show. Then again, the LeBruton business had been uppermost in my mind, seconded by the McCoyne/Whitelaw conundrum, plus the sorry state of the agency’s finances.

  As I strode into the furnace the office had become in my absence, I considered excusing myself from the evening’s plans. Duty had called Jack away several times in the past, with no remonstrations from me.

  However, Dr. Thaddeus MacKenzie, a Boston psychologist of regard, hypothesized that interludes of mental leisure invigorated the brain, just as napping did the body. What better time than the present to test the veracity of his theory?

  An hour later, Jack and I were seated in the Tremont House’s dining room, tucking into platters of beefsteak and the customary trimmings. The wine he’d ordered to accompany the meal shone like liquid rubies contained in a crystal goblet. I’d read that a taste for wine was an acquired one, but never guessed an affection for such a tart, dry beverage could develop between the first, puckery sips and the second glassful.

  Jack’s fork paused between the plate and his mouth. “So, you were summoned to Shulteis’s office again, eh?” He angled his head. “Before you curse Won Li for tattletaling, the endleaves of those books you were toting had J. Fulton Shyster’s seal embossed on them.”

  For reasons unknown, I couldn’t muster a jot of irritation. Cops are as inquisitive as private investigators—and their daughterly assistants, as it were. My tone was teasing when I said, “You’re quite the nosy Parker, aren’t you, Constable?”

  “No more than you, Miz Sawyer.”

  I dabbed my lips with a linen napkin. The Tremont House didn’t skimp on the amenities. Their week’s laundry bill would put me in tall cotton for the balance of the year. “Are you familiar with a man by the name of Rendal LeBruton?”

  Jack chewed and swallowed a chunk of pan-broiled potato before answering. “I’m proud of you, Joby. We almost got a whole meal down before the interrogation commenced.”

  “A simple question does not an interrogation make.”

  “That’s true. It’s just the warning shot.” To onlookers, his expression suggested an unconsummated belch.

  I wasn’t fooled for a second. Crime and criminals were his cerebral meat and potatoes. For all intents, Jack’s rank was municipal detective. The official promotion and pay raise were stalemated until the city approved a departmental funding increase.

  “Rendal LeBruton, eh?” he said. “On the runty side? Brown hair and a Vandyke beard?”

  I nodded. The description jibed with a framed tintype I’d seen on Penelope’s lowboy chest of drawers. Papa always said folks are leery of big men and large dogs, but it’s the small end of both species that bears watching.

  Jack leaned on his forearms and lowered his voice. “I know you won’t betray a confidence, but if Shulteis hired your father to get the goods on Mrs. LeBruton, I’d take care not to let her hear it on the wind.”

  “Oh?” I struggled for nonchalance. “Far be it for me to argue, but Joe B. Sawyer can hold his own against any mere slip of a female.” I smiled. “Present company excluded.”

  “It’s apples to oranges, darlin’. You’re as whip-smart, adventurous, and ornery as any gal in the Territories, but there isn’t a mean bone in your body. On the other hand, I hear the LeBruton woman is a hellion when she’s drunk and she’s seldom, if ever, sober.”

  The child-sized blonde’s transmutation to a sozzled Medusa didn’t quite parse. “Heard from whom?”

  Speaking a mite softer than the scrape of utensils on china and orbital conversations, Jack said, “About a month ago, we got a report of a ruckus at the LeBruton house. The beat cops found an ungodly mess—broken bric-a-brac, furniture upturned, and the wife in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. Mr. LeBruton said the missus lunged at him with a butcher knife. Missed him by a yard, but she lost her balance and tumbled down the stairs, knife in hand. Pure luck she didn’t break her fool neck. LeBruton begged the constables to keep mum about the whole affair.”

  Disgust soured my stomach. Under my breath, I murmured, “I’ll just bet he did.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  I waved a dismissal. “You said someone reported the fight. Who, exactly?”

  “I don’t know, exactly.” Jack’s chuckle was indulgent.

  “Probably a neighbor, or a passerby. It wasn’t the first call the police have paid there. Won’t be the last, either, I’ll warrant.”

  A crease pinched between my brows. My audience with Penelope LeBruton was of less than five minutes’ duration. I’d assumed Rendal to be the aggressor the moment I saw her.

  Abelia loathed him, but taking her word that he was a wife-beating swindler was akin to Rendal coaching the police into believing Penelope was a harridan and a drunkard.

  Bullpats. I’d smelled not a whiff of strong spirits in the house, nor any perfumed artifice to mask the scent. If Penelope was a dipsomaniac, she accomplished it without the telltale puffiness about the eyes, a hint of tremor in her hands, or blooms at her cheeks and nose caused by dilated capillaries.

  Asking Jack if the alleged butcher knife was found at the scene was as moot as defending the accused. His information was secondhand, whereas my contention was intuitive, although I’d be fascinated to hear how anyone, drunk or sober, could hurtle down a flight of stairs clutching a large knife without slicing or stabbing oneself to a fare-thee-well. Had Penelope done so, the station house rumors and Jack’s repetition of them would have included a grisly account of her injuries.

  The logical conclusion was that Rendal LeBruton’s campaign to asperse his wealthy wife and portray himself as a loving, helpless husband was well under way.

  There would be a lamp burning late into the night at the clapboard cottage Won Li and I shared. If God was merciful, the books
I borrowed would supply a loophole to allow compliance with the law in regard to printed notices, while lessening the odds of the respondent learning of it.

  Except loopholes had the frequent and nasty habit of becoming nooses. I dashed such thoughts with a healthy swallow of wine.

  Four

  The night was star-bright and deliciously cool when Jack and I emerged from the Denver Theatre onto Lawrence Street. The minstrel show, a troupe late of Cheyenne and bound for Salt Lake City, had me in stitches one minute and dew-eyed the next when a tenor keened “The Maid of Monterey.”

  Jack’s arm captured my waist to negotiate the throng disbursing to the line of waiting phaetons, wagonettes, buckboards, and buggies. My elbow bumped the holstered revolver concealed by his coat. The badge authorizing its service was pinned to an inside lapel.

  Little did he know, his lady friend carried more than a clean hanky and female possibles in her reticule. Although not as readily accessible, a sweet, pearl-handled derringer rested within the drawstring ties, along with spare cartridges, bottled smoke powders, a tin of flash powder, tincture of Morpheus, smelling salts, and a string of tiny Chinese firecrackers.

  Like private investigators, constables were never completely off-duty and supplied their own weapons, but they were dunned the cost of their uniforms and earned a salary equal to a greenhorn cowhand. Just as when Papa was a U.S. marshal, I wondered why men of such intelligence and grit chose to be peace officers.

  Jack gave my ribs a squeeze. “You know what they say. Beware the quiet woman and rattlesnakes.”

  “I was just thinking about what a wonderful time I had this evening.” I winked up at him. “Dinner and the show were nice, too.”

  He laughed—a great booming sound, like barrels rolling off a wagon. “Then I reckon we should step out more often.”

  “Do you know what I’d truly love to do someday?” I took his hand for a boost into the buggy.

  Tease that he was, Jack wiggled his eyebrows. “Marry an Irishman and have six sons and two daughters all named for the patron saints?”