by C. A. Asbrey
“Well, it’s a free pair of hands and the thought of gettin’ the law to empty all the chamber pots and clean the latrines is real temptin’.” She sat back and mused. “No. She’ll use everythin’ she hears here. I can’t do it.”
“We’ll pay,” Nat cut in. “I’ve got another reason. I need to know everyone she speaks to. I want her watched.”
“In a brothel?” Pearl guffawed. “Have you any idea how many people come through here? And how do they watch her without her knowin’. This place was built for secrecy. No, Nat. That ain’t gonna happen. It ain’t possible.”
Nat perched on the edge of the desk. “Fine, what about offering fifty dollars to anyone who sees her talking to anyone not employed here?”
“How about takin’ your money and shovin’ it right up your—”
“Now, Pearl,” Jake cut in, “that ain’t ladylike.”
“I’m only a lady in my spare time, and I don’t get a lot of that.” Her chair creaked as she leaned back. “I’ll have even less time if I play this dumb game and it’s worth a whole lot more than fifty stinkin’ dollars. Find another whorehouse to ask questions in. This one’s special.”
“Aw, come on, Pearl. Just a few weeks?”
“Two, at most, and just do your best.” Nat smiled his most charming smile. “We’re trying to find out what happened to Bessie and Dora. Won’t your girls be pleased to think you did something?” Nat walked around the desk and wrapped his arms around her thick waist and gave her a squeeze. “Two-and-a-half, and I’ll throw in a night with Jake.”
Pearl pushed him away. “Don’t be disgustin’. He’s like my nephew. Fine, two-and-a-half weeks, but she works as hard as anyone else here—and if I catch her usin’ anythin’ she learns here for anythin’ other than findin’ the girls, I’ll skin her alive myself.”
Nat kissed her cheek. “You’re a star, Pearl. She’ll be good as gold and work like a slave.”
“I will not. I have a job to do.” They all turned toward the slight figure in the doorway dressed in a simple skirt and white blouse, her dark hair gathered in a bun. “Not only that, I’m recovering from an injury.”
“Deal’s off. I ain’t havin’ a maid who talks back,” snorted Pearl.
Jake turned. “How long have you been there?”
Abigail ignored him and appealed direct to Pearl. “Look, I need to get in here to get background on the girls. You don’t have to like me, you don’t even have to see me, but I want to help that poor boy of Dora’s. Can you imagine what it must be like growing up knowing your mother has disappeared and no one cares enough to even search for her?”
Pearl gave small harrumph as Abigail continued. “That damages a boy. What kind of future do you think he’ll have with that kind of anger? He could end up, well—” she flung an arm out toward Nat and Jake, “like them.”
“Hey!” cried an indignant Jake.
Pearl bristled. “He could do worse.”
“Sure, yes, I don’t want to talk to your customers, just the staff. They’ll know most about Bessie and Dora.” She walked over and looked straight into Pearl’s pale blue eyes. “Please. I’m asking you woman to woman. What’s the worst that can happen? If I don’t find out anything, I’ll just walk away. Nobody’s any worse off.”
Pearl let out a rasping sigh of impatience. “Why does this matter to you?”
“I care about people. You might not have seen that in the law before, but I’m not your usual town sheriff, am I?”
“I can’t trust you.”
“Mrs. Dubois, you can’t trust anyone here, and you know it. As soon as I learned the fake Innocents were killers, I prioritized them. You saw me do it. If someone is killing women around here I can’t think of anything more urgent, can you? We are both women. Stealing matters, but not as much as murder.”
Pearl simmered. “You empty the all chamber pots every mornin’. You work the kitchens and the latrines. Nowhere else. If I see you anywhere else, I’ll kick your bony ass outta here, and I got a kick like a mule. Got that?”
♦◊♦
“Did she hear us, Nat?”
He shrugged. “Dunno, Jake. Probably. She’s got ears like a hungry watchdog, that one.”
“So, she knows we’re watchin’ her.” Jake leaned on the post and gazed out into the yard. “Remind me why we’re not ridin’ outta here and headin’ straight back to Ghost Canyon?”
“Because we owe Bessie and Dora?” Nat sighed. “Not to mention Pearl.”
“Yeah. That’s the problem. We always told Pearl we’d have her back if she needed us. This loyalty stuff ain’t all it’s cracked up to be when you could be facin’ twenty years inside.”
“I know.” The dark eyes slid sideways. “When folks have seen you at your worst, and still stick by you, you don’t let them go.”
“At their worst?” mused the older man. “You mean like covered in dried puke, blood, and I don’t even want to think what else? That’s about as bad as it gets.”
“I’m not talking about Abi.”
“I know you ain’t talkin’ about Abi. That’s what worries me.” Jake turned and examined his nephew. “She’s a challenge to you, and you can never resist a challenge.”
“She’s no challenge to me,” snorted Nat. “Women are good at getting gossip out of other women, and Pinkerton’s smart enough to use that. There’s no reason I can’t do the same. Anyway, I’m talking about the people who cared for us when we were cold and hungry. Pearl is real cut up about this.” The dark eyes stared into Jake’s. “And so are you. Dora was special to you.” He put up a hand to ward of objections. “I’m not saying you were in love, or anything like that. You were real fond of her. You were friends.”
Jake glanced at the ground with a heavy sigh. “Friendship’s about the only honesty I’ve ever seen in my whole shitty life. That boy’s got nobody. He’ll end up in an orphanage until he can be sold as cheap labor to a farmer. Dora would’ve hated that. He’s smart. She was tryin’ to buy him the chance of a future by gettin’ him an education. It’ll waste his whole life.”
“So, we use Abi to find out what the women around here know. Stuff we can’t get them to talk to us about. We at least try to get him justice. It’s better than nothing.”
“Yeah, right. Then we go; far away from here, and her, and we don’t see Pearl for a real long time. This ain’t good, Nat. We can’t mess with the law up close like this. It’s a dangerous game.” Jake pushed himself upright, his gaze following the boy carrying the bucket of coal from the shed. “Hey, you!” He called over to the lad. “Do you work here?”
A pair of bright eyes blinked their way, from a not-so-bright-face face covered in soot. “Sure. Can I help you, mister? Clean your boots for you?”
“They need it, but no thanks. What’s your name?”
“Henry.”
“I’m guessin’ you do odd jobs and polish boots, Huh? Do you want to earn thirty dollars?”
The boy’s face lit up, his hazel eyes standing out in his soot-covered face. “Thirty dollars?” The head tilted in suspicion. “What d’ya want me to do?”
“I want to ask you about that maid who came here today. The one with the dark hair?”
“Abi? Sure. I’ve seen her.”
“Yeah,” the gunman pulled out a banknote. “Well, I want you to watch her real close, and let me know if she passes a note to anyone or gets one delivered. It might be done real sneaky-like, so you’re gonna have to watch real close. I can give you ten now, and the rest when you get me the information I want. Give it to Pearl, and tell her to contact Mr. Black urgently. Have you got that?” The urchin reached out a filthy hand, only for the note to be snatched just out of reach. “What have you got to do?”
“Tell Miss Pearl if Abi gets a note or leaves one for someone else.”
“And my name?”
“Mr. Black.”
“Good for you.” Jake arched his brows. “There’ll be an extra twenty if you can find out the name of the pe
rson she’s passin’ notes to. His name, description, and where he’s stayin’. You know what that adds up to don’t you?”
The boy’s lips moved in tandem with his computation. “Ten, then twenty, then another—that’s lots! Wow. Are you sure, mister? There are ladies in there who are much prettier. Lulu has great big lovely—”
“I’m sure,” Jake cut in.
“—eyes,” Henry carried on.
“It’s Abi,” Jake asserted. “You tell me as soon as she speaks to anyone outside this place. Got that?”
“Sure,” Henry nodded. “You got it, mister. Are you sure Miss Pearl is alright with this?”
“Yup. We’re very old friends. In fact, I used to do your job here.”
“Yah, did? It’s great here, innit? I don’t know why you’d ever leave.”
A smile twitched at Jake’s lips. “Sometimes, I wonder that myself. Good to meet you, Henry.”
“And you, Mr. Black,” Henry hauled his bucket of coal into the building. “See ya.”
“Black?” Nat queried.
Jake shrugged. “One of the aliases I use now and again. I like to keep them simple.”
“Nah,” Nat shook his head. “I prefer a complicated alias. Common names always seem too false to me. I want something that doesn’t sound like you could make it up on the spot.”
♦◊♦
The distant mountains formed a jagged fortress of slate gray against the horizon, encircling the rugged land with spiked castellations. The countryside below was too wide to be called a valley and lacked the expanse of a plain, but the scrubby, graveled land cut out by glaciers was vast enough to lose any number of homesteads among the many trees and rivers cutting through the rough, stony sod.
This was the haystack Nat and Jake had to search for the missing needles, but where to start was a daunting question. Bessie and Dora had travelled out here and disappeared, along with a wagon and team of horses. One glance at the terrain told anyone with any sense it was not their decision. The men had pored over maps, garnering information from Pearl and her security man about the whereabouts of other cabins in the area, some abandoned after their stakes failed to produce a living, let alone the fortunes in gold the prospectors dreamed of; while others were still inhabited by men still scratching a living. That gave them about a tenth of the picture. Two of Pearl’s security men took one-half, and they took the other. None of them were sure they’d ever see Bessie or Dora again, but they had to try.
The low sun blinded them when they loped into the tumbledown homestead. A curious jackrabbit blinked at them from the edge of the clearing, the spoon-like ears twitching at every unfamiliar sound in this peaceful area. It decided against the pleasure of their company and hopped off, bobbing its fluffy tail through the long grass until it disappeared into the shrubbery.
“This’ll have to be the last one for the day,” Jake scanned the sky. “We’ll lose light in a few hours.”
“Yeah, we’ll search, then we might as well camp here for the night when we’re done,” Nat agreed. “It shouldn’t take long. It doesn’t look like anyone’s lived here for years.”
“Yeah,” Jake sighed, “or even been here. They could have abandoned the roads and used the horses, I guess.”
“Why would two women do that?” Nat shook his head. “No, we stick to places they could have taken a wagon. If that doesn’t work, we don’t even know where to start.”
“I guess so. I’ll take the barn and the woodshed. You take the back of the house. If the place isn’t in too bad a way we could spend a night indoors.”
Nat paused. “I think we’re searching for bodies now, Jake.”
Jake turned to fix his partner with a stony stare. “I’ve been lookin’ for bodies from the moment I left town. Dora would never leave her boy alone. He was her whole world.”
Nat sighed and gave a joyless smile. “Yeah. She was different.”
“I liked her spirit and her humor. She loved so fierce it shone.” He dropped his head. “She always reminded me of my ma. Now that she’s died young, she reminds me of her even more.”
“It’s been over a week. We’ve come up with zero.”
“Yup,” Jake kicked out at nothing in particular, “and I’ll be damned if I’ll see another woman’s murder go unrevenged.”
A caustic grin played around Nat’ lips. “Unrevenged? Is that a word?”
The gunman strode over to the barn calling over his shoulder. “Dunno. If it ain’t, it sure as hell should be.”
♦◊♦
“She sure hates you. What’ve you done?” The question came from the slim black woman who sat across the table from Abigail as they snatched a few minutes to drink their coffee at the kitchen table.
“I’ve no idea. She just doesn’t seem to like me. I probably won’t stay very long.”
“She ain’t too forgivin’ if you do somethin’ wrong. You need to talk as smooth as a toad’s belly once you upset her, but it’s worth it. The money’s real good here.” Seraphina’s brow creased. “You seem familiar. Where do I know you from?”
“I’ve no idea. Have you ever shopped downtown? Could you have seen me there?” Abigail smiled at Seraphina’s expressive simile but saw an opportunity lurking in the background and changed the subject. “Do you think she’s hoping for a career change? She’s short-handed now those other two girls ran off. She asked me and I refused.”
Seraphina shuddered. “Somethin’ bad happened to them. They’d never ran off before. They’d never do that.”
“Really? What? What do you think happened?”
“I think it was natives, or outlaws, or maybe they had an enemy?” The girl’s mind ran with wild schemes from dime novels.
“An enemy? Did they have an enemy? Are there natives around here?”
“Nooo. That’s just me thinkin’ out loud. Everyone loved them.” She giggled. “Some more than others. A couple in particular, loved them three or four times a week and twice on pay day.”
Abigail grinned. “Perhaps someone got jealous?”
“I doubt it. Bessie’s been around for years. She’d have gone off with anyone who wanted to make an honest woman of her. Dora, she loved Ben Middleton, but he’s already married.”
“Ben Middleton? Could it have been his wife?” Abigail widened her eyes and tried to make it sound conspiratorial. This wasn’t likely scenario, but it was a technique she used often to get gossipy women to open up to her.
“What?” chortled Seraphina. “Liz Middleton? She weighs about eighty pounds soakin’ wet. Dora would have flattened her, and Bessie could lay out a miner in a fight. I saw her do it once with my own two eyes.”
Abigail nodded, noting that a slight build never stopped Helene Jegado who poisoned at least thirty-six people before being caught and executed. “Do you think? No. It couldn’t be. Could it?”
“What?” Seraphina leaned forward, being drawn in without even realizing it. Abigail’s voice dropped to a whisper as her eyes widened with mock horror. “What if Ben Middleton did it? What if his wife gave him a hard time?”
Seraphina bellowed with laughter as she rocked back and forth. “Ben? Have you seen him? He’s been blind this last three years. Dora had a soft heart and looked after him. There’s no way he could have gone out after a wagon and taken two women. He can barely get about town.”
“How can he afford—well, Dora’s services?”
“He works as a musician. Teaches and tunes pianos by day and plays the bars in the evenin’s. He plays around here sometimes. His wife thought he was workin’ when he saw Dora.” She stretched her neck forward. “Between you and me, I think Dora often did him for free. I’d often catch them sneakin’ off together, or him comin’ out of her room at dawn.”
“Dora must have loved him.”
“I guess. She was sweet, real sweet.”
“I cleaned their rooms,” Abi pressed. “It gave me the creeps, thinking of them dead somewhere. Dora had a telegram from someone who signed themselves
‘R.D.’. She was going to meet them the day after she disappeared. Who could that have been?”
“‘R.D.’?” Seraphina shook her head. “I’ve no idea. She never said anythin’. ”
“Abi! Where are you, girl?” Pearl’s voice could screech through every floor of the building when she put her mind to it and it had the cadence of finger nails on a blackboard. “There you are.” She appeared at the doorway in a black peignoir covering substantial, industrial-looking lingerie. “We got a party comin’ in and there’s a whole sack of potatoes to peel. Get to it.”
♦◊♦
The woman prodded the Station Master with a sharp forefinger. “My hat box. It’s gone.” He stared up and down the platform, bustling with people arriving from San Francisco, and shrugged. “Hat box? Where did you lose it?”
“I put it on the rack above my head when we left San Francisco, and now it’s gone. Somebody must have stolen it.” Her accusing stare followed a woman walking by with a huge hatbox, her sharp nose leading her way as the woman headed for the gate to town. “I thought that was mine for a moment there.”
“Did you see anyone take it?”
“No,” she turned to her husband. “Did you see anything, Bob?”
“If I had, I would have stopped them, dear. I was reading.”
She harrumphed. “Don’t I know it. You’ve had your nose in that book since we left. I could hardly get a word out of you.”
“It was a pleasant journey, dear,” her husband paused. “Until now.”
The platform cleared of passengers leaving no more than a few stragglers. “Well, that’s everyone.” The Station Master shrugged. “If it’s not on the train and we didn’t see it get taken away by anyone, I guess we’ll have to submit a report. Come with me.” They followed the man into the office where a tall, gangly man spoke through gapped teeth.
“I’m here to collect a telegram I’m expecting. From R.D. to R.D. They told me it would be in about now, and to be here to collect it at one-thirty, precisely. The name’s Rigby Daintree.”
“Sure,” the clerk rifled through a drawer and handed over an envelope. “Here you go, sir.”