by Cameron Judd
“Upstairs, up in the attic above the store…is there somebody staying up there these days?”
Macky’s face drained of color. His eyes darted and he swallowed hard, seemingly unable for the moment to form words.
“What’s wrong, Macky? Did I ask something I shouldn’t have?”
“They…they…they ain’t nobody up there, Luke! Ain’t nobody! That’s where we store things and such that we got to get out of the way. Why you think they’d be somebody up there?”
“Sheriff Crowe saw somebody looking out of the window up there. Seemed pretty sure about it. Man with a beard, he said.”
Macky shook his head violently, eyes squeezed closed. “No. No. No.”
“Why are you speaking so…firm about it, Macky?”
Macky moved close to Luke and spoke in a tense whisper. “I don’t want to get in trouble…not supposed to talk about it, Luke.”
“Your uncle?”
“I told you…ain’t nobody up there! No uncle, no nobody! Why you think my uncle’s up there? What uncle?”
“What I meant was, is it your uncle Campbell you’ll be in trouble with if he catches you talking about this?”
Macky slowly nodded. “Yeah.”
“All right, then, Macky. We don’t want to get you in trouble. So we won’t talk about this.”
Macky smiled, relieved. “You a good one, Luke!”
Luke smiled back reassuringly and patted Macky’s shoulder. “It’s good to help each other out,” he said.
Luke proceeded on up the stairs and into the building. As always when he entered Montague’s Emporium, Luke marveled that such a fine business existed in such a small and humble town. As general stores went, this compared to most as a mansion to a shed. Tall, broadly constructed, lined with shelves high enough that it required mounting a ladder to reach their tops. And on those shelves was an array of merchandise ranging from basic farm and ranch tools through ladies’ sewing notions and fabrics, all kinds of guns and munitions for the menfolk, plus saddles and other tack gear. There were socks and leggings, canvas work trousers, and dresses fit for weddings. Shoes, boots, fencing supplies, leather goods, broaches, snoods, chairs, saws, lamps, candles, axes, saws, billiard tables, rope, chain, buckles, canned food items, cured hams, sacks of feed, tablets, and pencils…and out back, in a pen, chickens, turkeys, and ducks. The fowl were, like the front steps and porch, largely the responsibility of Macky, and he cared for his birds with devotion. He’d been known to softheartedly set some of them free at times, creating a small but noticeable population of free-ranging domestic fowl on the streets of Wiles.
Luke heard the muffled voice of Campbell Montague coming from the rear of the store, where he kept a large but simply furnished office. As Luke made his way in that direction, he rounded the end of a shelf and stopped.
Atop one of the rolling ladders used to access high-shelf items, Oliver Wicks was perched, peering through the partially open glass transom above the office door of Campbell Montague. Luke opened his mouth to accost the boy, but Oliver noticed him and gestured for silence. Oliver’s brashness angered Luke, but before he could speak, Katrina Haus’s voice came through the closed door at an unexpected volume, the voice of a woman upset.
The door of Montague’s office flew open and Katrina emerged in a rush, pretty face twisted in seeming anger and perhaps fear. She pushed past Luke, jostling him into the ladder, which in turn jostled Oliver at its top. Montague came out after her, slowly, saying, “Ma’am…ma’am, please do not be angered at me…there are reasons you cannot know for my hesitation…” Then he stopped, seemed to deflate a little, and leaned back against the frame of the door. His gray old eyes lifted to Luke.
“Hello, Marshal Cable.”
“Hello, sir.” Then, up to Oliver, “Boy, come down from Mr. Montague’s ladder!”
Only as Oliver came down did the merchant notice him. “Well, son, I didn’t realize you were there! Best not to climb those ladders without me knowing. I’d feel responsible if somebody fell and got hurt.”
Oliver grinned. “I’m the most steady-footed fellow in all this county, sir, in this state! I can very nearly climb a straight wall if I have to, and run from one end of this town to the other without ever leaving the rooftops! And ne’er a slip or fall, ever!”
“He’s telling you straight on that, sir,” Luke said. “This boy is an ape, a monkey. He was taught to climb by his father, who back in England was…well, never mind that.”
“A climbing boy and second-story man, a budge, a burglar’s assistant,” Montague said, nodding. “Yes. I’ve heard that tale. I find it remarkable and laudable that Mr. Wicks has so thoroughly reformed himself and become quite the productive citizen. Your father is the finest carpenter I know, son. I’ve made use of his skills in this very edifice. Those shelves behind you…he made them.”
“I know,” Oliver said. “And he did work for you up in your attic not long ago.”
“Uh…yes. So he did.”
“Well, that’s interesting, and might answer a question I’ve been puzzling over,” Luke said. “Somebody told me recently that they’d seen somebody looking out of that attic window at the front of the store. Man with a beard. And since Oliver’s daddy wears a beard and was working up there, maybe that’s who they saw.”
Montague still had the smile he kept on his face almost perpetually for the sake of the buying public, but it seemed to Luke that it faltered now. Luke remembered Macky’s panicky reaction and reluctance to address the issue of the attic’s possible occupancy, and wondered just what this delicacy was all about.
Montague, seeming to want to shift the subject, turned to Oliver, leaned down a little, and said, “And, young man, what were you needing to get from the top shelf up there?”
“Oh, sir, I don’t need a thing,” Oliver said. “I was just up there for a better view.”
Montague looked perplexed. “Nothing to see from up there except the same thing you see from down here. Same shelves, same walls.”
“Oh, there was something to see a minute ago that ain’t here to see now.”
Montague still looked confused. Luke nudged out a foot and kicked Oliver’s ankle just hard enough to hurt.
“One moment, please,” said Montague in a suddenly choked voice, disappearing back into his office. As soon as the door clicked shut, loud explosions of coughing erupted on the other side, coughing to make it sound as if the victim might expel his own lungs. Luke frowned at Oliver.
“Lord, that’s a bad cough he’s got. He been that way long?”
“Just lately,” the boy replied. “Last four, five times I’ve been in here, I heard him coughing like he has the consumption.”
“I hope it’s not that.” On the other side of the door, the coughing continued, but a little less intensely and a little slower. “You and me got something to talk about while we’ve got a private moment here,” Luke said to Oliver. “I think you know what it is.”
“Yeah, I know. You’re mad at me for looking at that woman while she was in there talking to old Montague.”
“First off, a boy your age ought not call him ‘old Montague.’ It’s disrespectful. Second off, you’re right. You shouldn’t have been peeping and listening in to a private conversation. And you ought not to be following any woman around just to look at her in a lusting, bad way. You know all this already.”
“I do know. Sorry. She’s just so pretty, that’s all.”
“You’ve got yourself in an odd and bad pattern, Oliver. You’ve become known as the boy who spends his time climbing on the rails and rooftops…but that’s just the odd part, not the bad part. The bad part is this thing of you peeping at people through windows. Women in particular. There are folks in this town who believe you might be the kind to grow up and be a danger to women. Do you know what I’m getting at here?”
“Yeah. I know.” Oliver’s face was a portrait of dejection. His eyes shifted toward the door of the emporium again and again, a boy ready
to bolt.
“I have half a mind to let you spend a little time in my jail, Oliver, young though you are. I’d lock you up and turn Dewitt loose on you. You know what he’d do?”
“Preach religion at me.”
“That’s right! Preach it at you right through the bars. And you know Dewitt: he wouldn’t let up. No matter how much you wanted him to. He’d shove Bible at you hard and steady until you were praying to God that he’d go away. You want to spend a couple of days like that, Oliver?”
“No. Bloody hell, no!”
On the other side of the door, Campbell Montague seemed to be regaining some control of his cough. He still hacked loudly and wetly, but the explosions were less violent and steady.
Oliver declared, “I don’t care what people say about me in this town—”
“You make that obvious by the way you behave,” Luke cut in.
“Half the stories people tell about me looking in windows and such aren’t true, Luke. Bloody lies.”
“Which means the other half are true,” replied Luke.
“Jiminy Christmas, Luke, window-peeping isn’t something I set out to do! I like to climb, that’s all. And sometimes when I climb I find myself able to see in windows, and some of the things I see grab me attention.”
“So you look.”
“Yes. Wouldn’t you? Tell me true, Luke. If you were up on the porch rail of Joe Keller’s house, and you looked over and realized you could see right between the curtains of his daughter Rachel’s room, and she was in there getting ready for her Saturday bath, wouldn’t you look?”
“That would catch the eye, no doubt. Anyone’s eye! But it would also remind me that I was where I wasn’t supposed to be, and that I’d be in a mess of trouble if I got caught. And then I hope I’d have the good sense to get down from that porch rail and back home where I belonged. And maybe find something better to do with my time than climb all over houses and fences and porches and such where I could get myself in trouble. Maybe even shot. Have you ever thought about something like that happening, Oliver?”
“No. People here know me. Nobody here would shoot me.”
“Listen to me, Oliver: not everybody may have the forgiving attitude toward you that you think they do. And there’s new people coming into Wiles all the time. People who don’t know you and who might not take well to a local boy who talks like a foreigner peeping through their windows whenever he gets the notion.”
The boy frowned, blustered a little, then said, “All right, I admit it. I like to see women. I was looking through the transom just now because from up there I could see her chest right clear while she argued with Mr. Montague. She wears that dress cut bloody low in front.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself.”
The boy nodded.
“Hey, could you tell what she and Mr. Montague were arguing about while you were spying on them?”
“Couldn’t hear well enough. But he had one of her flyers in his hand, looking at it and frowning, and then he shook his head and that’s when she raised her voice to him. Something about him being wrong about who she is, and how dare he say such a terrible thing? That’s when you started shaking the ladder and she got up and stormed out.”
The door opened. A weary-looking Campbell Montague, at last cough free, emerged. He glared briefly at Oliver, then forced a smile at Luke.
“You need to see me, Marshal Cable?”
“May I sit down with you in your office and us talk a minute or two?”
“I’m available to our local law enforcers anytime, Mr. Cable. Do come in.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
When Montague pulled a wooden box from a drawer and from it produced an expensive cigar that he trimmed and handed toward Luke, the lawman didn’t decline. Montague came around the desk with matches in hand and held out fire from which Luke lit up. Rich, tasty smoke filled his mouth deliciously. Montague lit up a cigar for himself.
“A beautiful thing, a good cigar,” said Montague, blowing a perfect smoke ring that floated up toward the transom window through which Oliver Wicks had been spying minutes before.
“Yes, sir,” replied Luke. “Speaking of beauty—” “Oh, yes,” Montague cut in. “I thought you might be coming to ask me about the young woman who visited here earlier.”
“In a way, yes. Though initially, sir, I didn’t come in specifically to talk to you. I was merely following the woman, and this is where she happened to go.”
“An eye for feminine beauty, you possess?” Montague asked with a grin. But beneath the grin was something different. He seemed preoccupied, maybe worried.
“It’s not beauty I’m following, though she’s got aplenty of it,” replied Luke. “It’s a little different than that. Ever since Katrina Haus showed up in this town, I’ve had suspicion regarding her.”
“What might that suspicion be, Marshal?”
Luke opened his mouth to answer, but a scuffling noise from high outside the door caused him to look back toward the transom window, still tilted open. Through it he saw Oliver Wicks, back up on his perch again, spying as before. Luke would not answer Montague’s question with the boy within earshot, not unless he wanted Oliver spreading what he said all over town. He glared up through the glass at young Wicks and held silent.
Montague, noticing, assessed the situation, rose, and with a long rod made for the purpose, pushed the transom window closed. He grinned through the glass at Oliver as he did so.
“There, Marshal,” Montague said. “If we speak softly we should be immune to eavesdropping.” Montague sat again, and sighed. “I must confess I like that boy, nosey and troublesome as he may be. I’m delighted by that British way of speaking that he inherited from his father. And his mode of moving about this town intrigues me. I’ve seen him go from roof to roof with the agility of a leaping deer. The heights belong to young Oliver.”
“Yes, sir. And in his own mind, so does the notion that he can look through any window he might happen to reach and intrude himself into any private situation he wishes simply because he is able to do so. I know he’s peeped at women sometimes. I’m weary of giving the boy warnings. Before long I’ll have to take more drastic actions. But I don’t wish to, because I like the boy, as you do.”
“I see your predicament, Marshal. Now to the matter at hand. You were following the beautiful Prophetess Haus because you hold some suspicion regarding her.”
“I am confident that the woman is a soiled dove, sir, a fallen frail.” Luke glanced again toward the transom window; Oliver had vanished now that he could not hear their conversation any longer.
“I am not surprised to hear that, Marshal, given the woman’s way of, well, displaying herself. A merchant knows that what is conspicuously displayed is usually for sale. But she has other tricks up her sleeve, too. She came to me asking permission to hang a flyer on my public board up front, advertising what can only be a sham: a spiritualist exercise in which she claims to be able to speak to the dead loved ones of those who will pay to attend.”
“You don’t believe in such things, I take it.”
“Highly skeptical, to say the least, highly skeptical.” He paused and looked serious, then cleared his throat and set off another coughing spell, though not as severe as before. Luke watched him with concern as he struggled to recover.
“Your cough worries me, sir. Have you had it investigated by a physician?”
“Too many cigars, that’s all.” He pushed one of the Haus flyers toward Luke. “Have you seen these?” Montague asked.
“I have.”
“She has been hanging these about town. Though she asked permission, I did not allow her to place this within this establishment. And not merely because I disbelieve in spiritualism.”
“I might know what you are thinking, Mr. Montague. Perhaps some suspicions beyond what we’ve already discussed?”
There was a long pause. Then Montague said, “Labette. The past trouble over in Labette County?”
Luke nod
ded. “Do you think it really could be?”
“Several similarities are there. A pretty woman, accented voice, claims of being able to talk to spirits. Marshal Cable, can I trust you?”
“Of course you can.”
“I will tell you something, then, that I would prefer to keep secret from the town at large.”
“Now you’ve got me bewildered. But I try to keep secrets when asked, unless keeping the secret goes against my duty to enforce the law.”
Montague weighed that a moment. “Good enough, then.” He sat down on his desk chair again and leaned forward on his elbows. “Marshal, are you aware that I have a brother?”
“I know Macky is your nephew, and shares your surname, so I presume his father is, or was, your brother. But I have been told somewhere along the way that Macky’s parents are dead. Perhaps I was misinformed. Is Macky’s father the brother you are talking about?”
“No, no. Macky’s father was my brother Theo, dead now since Macky was too young for him to remember him. And Macky’s mother died giving him birth. No, the brother I am talking about is still living. His name is Simon, and he is my senior by three years. We have not advertised his existence in the last several years, at his own instruction. He stays to himself and does not seek the company of others. Though sometimes I think he gets lonely.”
Luke made a leap. “Mr. Montague, is Simon living in the attic area above the emporium?”
Montague gaped. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t. But it’s been mentioned in town that a face has been seen looking out the window onto Emporium Street. I heard it said that the face resembles your own, but bearded. And when I questioned Macky about it a few minutes ago, he got worried about me asking. I take it he’s had it hammered into him that he isn’t to talk about the attic of the emporium. And he didn’t talk about it. Just storage space up there, he told me.”
Montague nodded. “Macky is saying what he’s been told to say. There is a reason for secrecy.”
“So I would assume.” Luke waited for more explanation.
Montague puffed his cigar and coughed again. “Simon will never be a part of regular society again. He is…damaged, you see. Not like Macky is damaged, from birth, but from a terrible injury that was done to him a few years ago…some of that very ‘trouble over in Labette County’ you mentioned.”