Grasping her hand so tightly he thought the delicate bones might snap, Rafferty paused to study the pair once he was standing outside, on the car’s platform. The wind was whipping Minnit’s red fringe and stringy hair. The ostrich feather in the woman’s stylish hat rippled and bobbed as though it might fly loose. But their faces remained fixed, as though frozen in anticipation.
Jack stood, waiting them out.
Gideon Minnit was about to step forward, but the woman stopped them all cold.
“Hello, Jack!” she called to him in a clear, if nervous, voice. “Remember me? Your . . . fiancée?”
Chapter 31
The train’s hoarse whistle made the air around them quake for a moment. “All aboard! All aboard, now!” the businesslike conductors were calling to what few people were still heading toward the train. Jack stood motionless, staring at the woman, his eyes seeing something vaguely familiar while his mind denied it.
“You dang well better get down from that platform and face the music—both of you!” Gideon taunted, clutching his red hat to keep it from flying off. “So help me, if the train starts to roll, I’ll yank you down from there myself!”
The sudden jolt as the car’s brake was released turned Amber’s insides to pudding. “Jack, we have to get off!” she whispered urgently. “Here comes Watson. He’ll help us—he’s on our side, believe me!”
Rafferty thought that an odd comment, coming from the woman who’d taken flight with him all those weeks ago, but it still didn’t compare to what Watson’s companion had baited him with. Fiancée? No way in the world could—
The train’s whistle blew more insistently this time, and Amber gave him a slight shove. His senses entered a state of suspended animation as he heard his boots clunk against one metal step, and then another ...the wind was bitter yet he felt nothing . . . his mouth tasted like he’d been on a hellacious drunk the night before, and as he studied the statuesque blonde, he wished he would’ve been. “I think you’re mistake—”
“Face it, you crooked so-and-so! Your goose is cooked!” Minnit crowed as he stepped forward. “And my business with you won’t wait any longer, young lady!”
Her courage bolstered by his cocky tone, Amber stepped around from behind Jack to confront the man in the clingy red clothing. All decked out to perform, was he? Well, she’d give him a show he’d never forget! She started by holding up her hands so the two glittering rings were nearly in his face.
“Are you referring to these?’’ she taunted. “These rings I won fair and square, when you forced me to—”
“Don’t make me get nasty!” Gideon squawked. “Since I got Miss Blanche back, I’m willing to go easy on you—even after all the crap I’ve been through—if you’ll just hand those rings over. If you’re not going to marry me, Amber, you’ve got no right to wear them.”
“Matter of fact, I’m going to marry Rafferty,” she replied boldly. “He’s such a man he’s already got me with child. And you’re right—I won’t want these vulgar diamonds reminding me of you every time I see them.”
As she slowly slipped the ring from each weather-reddened hand, the train behind her chugged to life. Steam hissed from around the engine in a great white cloud, and as the metal wheels began to clank along the track her deliciously wicked plan made her laugh aloud. With a big grin for the pipsqueak in front of her, she turned suddenly and hurled first one ring and then the other in front of the rolling locomotive.
Gideon squealed like a stuck pig. The huge gem-stones flashed briefly in the sunlight, borne along by the brisk wind, and as they plummeted in front of the train the little man rushed past her as though he, too, intended to become the iron horse’s victim.
“NO! I can’t believe you’d—”
His words were drowned out by the train’s final whistle and its steady chugging away from the station. Amber had never won such a victory—could feel the incredulous stares from Rafferty, the blonde, and Watson as he approached at a lope with Maudie. But she only had eyes for Gideon Minnit, who was now hurtling toward her, screaming hysterically.
“Goddamn you to hell, you little bitch! I—”
“Goodness, Mr. Minnit, I’ve never known you to swear! Why—”
“Shut up!” he shrieked. “That was all I had left! My show’s gone, my tents and animals stolen! My—”
Amber crossed her arms, clucking at the little fellow, trying not to laugh as he danced wildly around her like a fiendish, frustrated fairy.
“Well, perhaps it’ll make you feel better to know you haven’t really lost anything else,” she said calmly. “You see, I had your rings appraised, Mr. Minnit, and I found out they were nothing but glass and paint. Glass and gold paint, Gideon! Which means they’ve been fakes all along, just like you!”
Flushed with triumph, Amber smiled at the shocked faces around her. “Excuse me,” she said as she stooped for her carpetbags, “but a woman in my condition has no business standing out here in the cold.”
Her heels clicked steadily across the plank platform, and Jack snapped out of his trance to follow her toward the depot. “Why the hell didn’t you say something when—that was in Bemidji, wasn’t it? And—”
But Gideon Minnit wasn’t finished being humiliated. He rushed around them, yanked open the door, and stood there blocking their entry. “You’re crazy!” he spewed. “I bought the one ring in St. Louis for nearly two thousand dollars! And the bigger one I won in a riverboat gamble—worth nearly twenty-five hundred!”
“Well then, you got conned,” Amber assured him in a whisper. “Believe me, Gideon No-Bigger-Than-A-Minnit, if they were worth anything, I’d have sold them long ago just to spite you! Now move!”
His reaction took a moment, but once the words sank in Minnit folded like a dying flower. A shudder went through him and his whole body sagged. He staggered backwards, his usually-impish face aging with each step.
“Don’t even think of leaving!” Felicity called after him. “Since I paid that farmer for Miss Blanche, you don’t even own a horse to ride away on, Gideon.”
It was the final blow. Minnit collapsed on the nearest bench, looking like a deflated red balloon with limp blond ribbons. Tears streamed unchecked down his cheeks as he heaved with silent sobs.
Felicity quickly assessed the situation as the rest of them stepped inside the busy depot. Hearing that Amber was pregnant and soon to marry Rafferty had put a damper on things—and Gideon, in his inimitable way, had done his damndest to steal her thunder! But she remained undaunted as she glanced around their tight, nervous circle. Booth had apparently tied the horses, and as he strode inside, the black and white collie bounded ahead of him to greet Jack and Amber, yipping and wiggling in her excitement.
What a man Watson was! His swarthy face and rugged jawline beneath that uncompromising black hat made an even more alluring image than the one she’d dreamed of these past lonely weeks. Booth was looking her over with new interest, it seemed. He’d missed her, too!
“Well now, where were we?” she said as her heart fluttered up into her throat. “Booth, I—we were expecting you—or at least a telegram—much sooner than this.”
His mouth curved in a tight smile. “Had to hole up for a while. Long story. I didn’t think you’d mind, though, knowing how you love surprises.”
Her smile nearly slipped but she caught it. The big scene she’d so carefully orchestrated over these past months wasn’t proceeding as she’d hoped, but the expectant faces around her were begging for the show to go on. She turned her attention to Rafferty, grasping his arm as she gazed at him. “You look a little more . . . disreputable than I remember, Jack. But time has only made you all the more striking . . . so very masculine, with that mustache. You don’t have the faintest idea who I am, do you?”
During Amber’s confrontation with Minnit, he’d had time to pull his thoughts together about this mysterious, well-dressed woman, yet his conclusions didn’t add up. He studied the flaxen hair tucked up into her hat, the rosy complexion and cunni
ng green eyes . . . a body straight out of a man’s finest fantasies. But the eyes drew him back for a deeper look, now that he was face to face with her, and—
“Here. This’ll jog your memory.” Watson was slipping something from the inside of his coat—a photograph, it was—and the woman’s face flushed.
“Where’d you get that?” she demanded in a shrill voice . . . a haunting voice from Rafferty’s past.
The detective shrugged. “Mrs. Jorgensen keeps a clean house. She thought I might want it.”
“Damn you!”
The blonde tried to snatch the picture away, but Rafferty dodged her delicate hand and stepped back, his heart hammering. One glance at the sepia-toned figures confirmed the doubts in his mind and he stared at her, open-mouthed. “Bitsy Sisser!” he hissed. “But you’re dead! I killed you!”
“That’s what she’d have us all believe!” a strident voice called out from the depot doorway. “Don’t let her run off, after all this!”
Watson instinctively wrapped an arm around Felicity, his grin returning. “That’s my partner, Scott McConnell,” he said, and he nodded toward a quieter corner of the train station. “I suggest we get out of the main aisle, so people won’t be gawking at us. And so we can catch every word of a truly amazing story. Right this way, dear.”
Felicity scowled in frustration. There was no escaping the burly detective’s grasp—no way to recapture the colossal surprise she’d intended to reveal. So she walked stiffly beside Booth and plunked herself down on the bench he’d steered her to. Jack and Amber remained standing nearby, Maudie seated at their feet and watching the proceedings with alert interest. Her escort slipped onto the bench beside her with an intimate ease that would’ve thrilled her only moments ago. He held her close, all right. But his intentions were anything but amorous.
Scott McConnell, a slender, dark-haired man wearing spectacles and a suit, hobbled toward them with the help of a crutch. One pin-striped trouser leg was slit to leave room for a calf that was splinted and tightly bound with a bandage. “Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” he gasped as he reached them. “We’ll discuss this injury later, all right, boss?”
“I’m sure we will,” Booth replied wryly. “Right now, though, we’d much rather hear what you found out in Dodge. Wouldn’t we, Jack?”
“Damn right!” Rafferty’s thoughts were still whirling in his head as he stared at the woman on the bench. Last time he saw Bitsy, she weighed better than two hundred pounds and had henna-red hair—and his knife was sticking out of her chest. “By God, this better be good! You’re supposed to be dead and buried—”
“And it was that fancy casket that told the tale!” Scott blurted.
Watson had to smile at his young associate’s enthusiasm. “Catch your breath, son. Must’ve busted your butt getting here—and maybe in the meantime, Felicity—or whatever her name is—will tell her side of the story.”
“That’s my real name,” she muttered. Her pretty face was clouded over in a pout and she crossed her arms, looking away from him. “If Mr. McConnell knows so much, why, he can just go ahead and spill it! He won’t get but half of it right, though.”
Scott let out a sly chuckle and eased himself onto the bench that faced his partner and their wily client. “I’ve got enough, though,” he replied confidently, “and it was your own friends who gave me the best clues, Mrs. Nunn. When I visited your, uh, former place of employment, I became immediately suspicious when a couple of the ladies were still so impressed by Bitsy’s burial. Even though you had nothing but the scanty clothes in your armoire, you were laid to rest in an expensive bronze casket with engraved detailing around the lid and a bouquet of bronze roses on its top, as well as on each end.”
“Sounds first-class,” Watson commented. He could feel Felicity trembling now, despite the aloof facade she’d assumed. “How’d a lady of the evening afford such a fine farewell?”
“That has nothing to do with anything,” she insisted breezily.
McConnell tapped his crutch against the floor in his excitement. “Oh, but it does! When I asked directions to the appropriate undertaker’s, they explained that Douglas Nunn died this past summer. I went to his furniture store to look around at the coffins in the back room, and since the sheriff was with me, the new proprietor saw no harm in letting us go upstairs to the private apartment. He explained that Nunn’s widow was in Denver, visiting relatives. But of course, I knew better, didn’t I?”
Felicity glared coldly at him. Damn this brash young upstart for ruining the moment she’d lived for this past year and a half!
“Well, what should we find upstairs but a casket that matched the description of Bitsy’s,” Scott went on lightly. “Due to the nature of my investigation, Sheriff Jennings agreed that I should look for documents verifying the identification of this Mrs. Nunn. And we found them—a marriage certificate stating that Douglas Nunn and Felicity Sisser were married on February tenth, 1898, in Finney County, and a few copies of the poster proclaiming Jack Rafferty was wanted for murder. That press Nunn used to print his funeral programs came in handy, didn’t it, Felicity?”
She couldn’t reply. The sight of Rafferty’s powerful fists clenching and unclenching at his sides choked her as though her former lover were grabbing her by the neck.
“But what fascinated me,” the young man went on, “was that, in this comfortably-furnished apartment, one of the bedrooms had a large oak table with this bronze coffin on it ... instead of a bed.”
The depot seemed to go silent all of a sudden, and Felicity felt herself flushing. “Figure it out, smart alec!” she hissed. “Douglas enjoyed dead women. It was his way of having the last laugh with ladies who wouldn’t give him a second look because he was a mortician!”
Rafferty grimaced, and when he heard Amber’s soft gasp he led her toward the bench where McConnell sat. “Jesus! Let’s sit down before it gets any worse.”
“I didn’t ask for this!” Mrs. Nunn said in a strangled whisper. She looked beseechingly at Booth, but the set of his jaw told her they were going to hear every damning fact before his partner was finished.
And indeed, Watson was too intrigued to cut Scott short for the sake of his client’s sensitivity. Her story was even more twisted than he’d imagined, and he felt Rafferty had a right to hear all the ins and outs firsthand, after what he’d been through. “So what about this casket?” he asked quietly. “How’d Nunn come to have an exact replica of Bitsy’s? Or was it a common model?”
“No, sir, none of the other undertakers in Dodge carry one like it. Because it was custom made,” McConnell added with obvious glee. “A few smudges of mud on the edge convinced me to look it over more closely. Lo and behold, it’s fitted with a false bottom, Booth! The bronze bouquets on each end conceal a latch that allows the top and sides to be lifted away. Which means that after the family leaves the graveside, the body can be left in the hole while the very expensive casket’s removed, to be sold again and again!”
“Holy—” Watson gave his client a penetrating look. “Is that true, what he’s implying?”
Felicity sighed, resigned to the fact that the handsome man of her dreams was determined to know everything, no matter how it humiliated her. “Douglas was more ingenious than people gave him credit for,” she replied with a little laugh. “His beautiful bronze casket attracted the finest families in Dodge to his doorstep—families who’d have nothing to do with him, except when somebody died. By selling them such an impressive casket, he was answering their need to give a loved one the finest funeral money could buy, while he himself grew as rich as they were by playing upon their grief and guilt. Another one of his little ways to get even, you see.”
It was a small consolation that the faces around her registered fascinated horror; a small reward that since her original plan had been ruined, she still held cards Scott McConnell couldn’t play for their spellbound audience. “And what did this trick casket have to do with me?” she asked smugly. “It seems yo
u’ve been so obsessed by my late husband’s little quirks that we’ve completely forgotten about poor Bitsy and her burial.”
“Not at all!” the young man replied. “In fact, all these irregularities convinced Sheriff Jennings that I wasn’t just some flash-in-the-pan investigator, and that we needed to find out if there was even a body in Bitsy’s grave. “You don’t just lose a woman that size,” he said, and—”
Felicity’s lip curled. Art Jennings had liked her well enough when she used to service him a second time for free.
“—so while Festus, the gravedigger, was busy spading up that plot in front of your marker, Bitsy, he admitted to the sheriff that a derelict was buried there. Confessed that Nunn paid him a commission to keep quiet about the false-bottomed casket, and to help him haul it away after the funerals, when it was dark.”
Booth’s partner wore an infuriating grin, and she sensed he was about to disclose yet another unsavory detail. She had disliked McConnell the moment they met in Watson’s Colorado office! Why couldn’t Booth have handled this case alone?
“Being the honest man he is, Festus told us Nunn paid him quite a bonus to keep quiet about switching the bodies,” Scott said. His low voice seemed to resonate in the depot, and even though people were coming and going in the background, this little corner was so quiet that his words carried as easily as a preacher’s on Sunday morning.
“Those teeth really shine when Festus smiles—and he did, when he first claimed he had no idea where Bitsy’s corpse ended up,” McConnell continued. “He said to us, ‘You’d think folks would’ve noticed that whore’s body would no more fit in that skinny casket than mine would fit in a bread box.’ He had a point there, didn’t he, Mrs. Nunn?”
So—the old nigger was just as two-faced and worthless as the rest of them! Felicity straightened on the bench, looking Watson’s insidious assistant in the eye, despising his spectacles and his fancy clothes and his erudite air. He would not reveal the way Douglas had rewarded the gravedigger’s silence! Those white teeth did indeed shine when Festus smiled . . . which was every time Nunn gave him a go at her, even after they were married.
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