The Promise Bride

by Gina Welborn

  He looked at her as if she’d suddenly sprouted horns.

  Emilia ignored him. “I’m not some burden you have to cart from place to place. I’m not your responsibility. I don’t need your protection.” She resumed her trek toward Warren Street. She hadn’t taken three steps when he spoke again.

  “Mrs. Collins,” he said in a tight voice, “until I discover who killed your husband, you do.”

  * * *

  Mac opened the door to the blacksmith’s shop. Miss—no, Mrs. Collins; he had to get the change into his head— shot him another of her I-don’t-need-you glares before easing past him.

  The vindictive part of his soul wanted to leave her to her own devices. The comment about not trusting him hurt—especially after all he’d done to earn it last night and by signing for her repayments this morning. If she were dealing with any other merchant, he’d march to his office and let her fend for herself. But not with Hess. Even though the man looked like a painted postcard of St. Nicholas, he was nothing but a crudity. Why had Finn done business here when there was a good blacksmith with identical rates two blocks away?

  Mac released the door and stepped inside. Heat blasted his skin even though the barn doors at the opposite end of the shop were open. Should he have been specific about Hess’s character with Mrs. Collins? Exposed her to such embarrassment? No. Surely the blacksmith would be on his best behavior with the county sheriff on hand. Mac opened his coat, adjusting the lapel so both his tin stars were visible.

  “Mr. Hess?” Mrs. Collins repeated her call five times before Hess stopped pounding on the horseshoe hooked over his anvil and thrust it into the water barrel to hiss.

  “What do you want?”

  She remained unflinchingly courteous in the face of Hess’s scowl. “I’m Mrs. Phineas Collins.” She opened her journal. “According to my records, I owe you twenty-seven dollars and nine cents.”

  Hess looked at her as if she were an oddity in a traveling circus.

  “I would like to work out some sort of arrangement—”

  “Not interested.” The blacksmith wiped a rag across his damp forehead, swiping soot from one side to the other.

  Mac took a step closer to Mrs. Collins. He didn’t want her spending a second longer in the blacksmithy than necessary, so he didn’t give Hess the same you-will-hire-her glare he’d given the other shopkeepers—not that Pawlikowski had needed it. The hard winter had changed everything. Men who might otherwise be moved by a widow in desperate need of credit had been bombarded by tales of woe for the last two months. Mac’s silent intercession on behalf of Finn’s widow closed the deals as surely as his signature witnessing them had. Hess was a different matter, but Mac was behind Finn’s widow—both literally and figuratively—as far as Hess would know.

  “Ain’t nothin’ you can do for me.” Hess raked his lecherous gaze over Emilia. “At least not here.”

  It took all Mac’s resolve not to plant a fist in the man’s jowls. The naïve city girl couldn’t know Hess was a frequent customer of some of the cheaper brothels in town. Mac swept aside his long coat to finger the gun handle strapped against his right thigh. One more filthy look at the widow and he would haul the worm to jail on some pretext.

  Mrs. Collins tapped her journal against her palm. “Mr. Hess, I’m willing to consider any honorable offer you have.”

  Good for her! Mac compressed his lips to hide a grin.

  The blacksmith’s face lost its leer. He crossed beefy arms over his chest, the sooty rag dangling like a flag of truce. “Finn still have the wagon I sold him last September?”

  Mac tensed. “What’s your interest in it?”

  Mrs. Collins twisted to throw another of her useless glares at him.

  He kept his eyes trained on Hess. September. What else happened last September? The Harvest Festival and the hot-air balloon race. That wasn’t it. What had his tired brain been unable to connect last night? What was it trying to tell him now?

  Hess swiped his rag along his jawline. “Might be interested in trading it for a two-wheel cart I’ve got out back.”

  Mrs. Collins jerked her attention back to the blacksmith. “We might be able to work something out, but I’d like to see the cart you’re offering first.”

  Was the wagon purchase another piece of the puzzle Mac needed to fit into Finn’s murder? Or was it insignificant? What else happened last September . . . a brothel girl ran away! Or so Big Jane had said, but the brothel owner employed two bouncers to keep undesirable men out and her girls in. How had one slipped away? Mac and several other men in town had tracked her for several days but never found a body or other physical evidence aside from a blue scarf.

  “Sheriff!”

  Mac snapped his focus back to Mrs. Collins. “What?”

  “Would you come take a look at this cart Mr. Hess is offering to trade? I’d like to know if you feel it’s something I can drive.”

  How many times had the woman said she didn’t need him today? Ten? Twelve? Was this one of those times when Hale would advise that any mistake she made was hers to make and Mac needed to stay out of it?

  Nah.

  Besides, she’d filed the proxy. No fixing that now. Keeping her and her siblings safe—making sure they succeeded—was his new priority, even if she didn’t think him trustworthy.

  Yet.

  He followed them outside to where a cheap but functional cart sat. Mac gave her a nod to say it was a manageable size and another one when Hess said it was worth about eight dollars. While she asked questions, tugged on the wheel, and bartered with Hess about how she’d pay off the remaining twenty-dollar balance, Mac thought through every bit of evidence related to Finn’s murder. Time to pay a visit to Madame Lestraude. If anyone knew what was going on inside Big Jane’s house, it would be another brothel owner.

  And maybe if Mac solved the mystery of Finn’s murder, he could get rid of the yawning hole in his chest.

  Chapter Nine

  Helena Avenue and Main Street

  April 11

  Mac pulled Lightning’s reins too quickly, and the horse snorted. “Sorry, boy.” He patted the gray’s neck. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Like the sight of forty or fifty people lined up outside The Resale Co. at ten o’clock on a Monday morning had startled Mac. Had they heard Finn’s widow was working there?

  During the four days he’d been escorting prisoners down to Deer Lodge Penitentiary, Emilia Stanek—Collins!—must have become a celebrity in town. Isaak Gunderson had to be pleased. The store hadn’t seen so much business on one day since . . . since Mac moved to Helena. At least the crowd meant she was alive. But if the last four days proved anything, it was that Mac needed to figure out a way to make sure the little family was protected so he could sleep at night.

  One thing at a time. First he needed to pay a visit to his mother to ask if there was any chatter among the brothel owners about how a fifteen-year-old girl escaped Big Jane’s house last September.

  Because, after days of trying to fit puzzle pieces together—everything from real possibilities to wild speculation—the only thing he knew for sure was that Finn had bought a covered wagon he didn’t really need, and a few months later, a brothel girl went missing. Were the two things connected? Or mere coincidence?

  Mac turned Lightning toward home. A change of clothes and a decent shave were in order before he visited Madame Lestraude’s Maison de Joie.

  Oh, how he hated the name of her brothel. He saw nothing joyful—nothing even charming—about the place even though his mother insisted it epitomized the height of the profession. It was nothing more than three stories of flesh trade euphemistically called a luxury hotel dressed up in French fashion, silk draperies, suffocating perfume, and smiles that never reached the young women’s ancient eyes.

  But Madame Lestraude—Mary Lester to those who knew her before she ran away from home—insisted she cared for her girls. Mac huffed. Giving the girls lessons in deportment, reading, writing, and sums
hardly counted as caring for them. Not when she charged her girls room rent and demanded they dress in the latest fashion at their own expense. Not when she rotated girls in and out every six months with other high-end brothels in Nevada and Wyoming to keep her clientele interested and to keep her girls and the clientele from forming attachments. Not when . . .

  Mac rubbed a hand over his unshaven cheeks. Going over the list of reasons did no good. He’d argued all of them a hundred times before. Nothing worked. Madame Lestraude had no desire to become plain old Mary Lester again—not even for her only son, who wanted to give her a real home. He was ready to leave at a moment’s notice. He’d accumulated plenty of money to start over anywhere his mother agreed to go.

  If she would agree to leave.

  Mac rode into the alley behind his two-story home. The town supplied the county sheriff with a house built for a family. Painted sky blue with white gingerbread trim, it boasted a large front porch, a cupola, and enough space to mislead a woman into believing life inside its walls would be safe and comfortable. Not for Mrs. Simpson. Six weeks after her husband’s frozen body was found, she’d been forced to vacate it for the newly promoted sheriff.

  Him.

  He’d only been in the house five weeks, but if history repeated itself, the lovely home would be no more than a place to stable his horses, eat his meals, and keep his clothes. Was it time to plant roots in Helena? To give up thinking he could save his mother from the life she’d chosen over him?

  He slid off Lightning, settled him in his stall next to Thunder, gave both horses a good rub down and some oats, then headed toward the house, past the fenced-off garden that had once been Mrs. Simpson’s. How Finn used to tease about Mac’s determination to grow a decent tomato. Just one. It wasn’t a lofty goal, but he’d never managed it when he lived in the boardinghouse and tried to grow tomatoes in pots on the balcony.

  Mac swung open the screen door and stopped cold.

  What if Sheriff Simpson had been after another runaway brothel girl? Or helping one escape! A logical explanation for why he’d gone alone instead of with a posse. But then, wouldn’t one of the madams or crib owners have reported a missing girl? Maybe not. One escaped girl was bad enough. If word got out that another one had successfully run away, it could start an epidemic in the red-light district. But why would anyone choose February for an escape when the threat of more snow loomed in the air? The only way it made sense was if you could get someone out fast and under protection from the elements.

  Like the thick tarp over Finn’s wagon.

  A man who lived next to the railroad.

  Finn once boasted that, back in his thieving days, he could sneak onto a train faster than a mouse.

  Mac shoved the door open. Too many things plagued him about Finn’s death. Were the clues that contradictory, or had he lost all perspective? Grief did that. He knew it might. Of course he knew. But knowing it and experiencing the heaviness that permeated his mind, heart, and spirit like they were trapped inside a dark cave were two different things. Maybe that was why custom dictated black curtains over windows to lament a family member’s passing. The shadowed rooms tinged in gray mimicked in the physical realm a soul’s mourning.

  Tonight, after he’d crossed off all the items on his list of things to do, he’d lose himself in the poetry of Walt Whitman. The man shaped words to capture emotions, something Mac envied. His talents lay elsewhere, but every once in a while, he longed to seize the right words, tie them together, and compel them to express the longings of his heart.

  Maybe if he could just put the right words together, he’d finally get through to his mother. After all, her letters—the ones she’d written to her sister—had sent him to Helena to find her in the first place.

  Mac stumbled and righted himself against the kitchen table. Finn had understood. His friend, his brother, the one man who knew how it felt to be the son of a woman who’d slept with so many men she didn’t even know who had sired you. Never again would they share a cup of coffee while watching the sun set in a blaze of glory. Never discuss the deeper meaning behind a passage of scripture or why certain hymns tightened their throats with gratitude. Never pound each other’s backs in greeting.

  Mac pressed both hands against the table and squeezed every muscle in his face. Hot tears bled from his eyes. He gripped a chair, yanked it back, and fell into the seat. In the seven days since Finn’s death, Mac hadn’t stopped. Had kept his focus on things to accomplish. Pressed on. Dammed up his sorrow, anger, and disbelief.

  Now it poured out in throbbing torment.

  Why, God? Why him? Why him and not me?

  No answer. No comfort. Just pulsating grief and the watery promise of heaven. Mac needed something to hold, to touch, to strike. Heaven—though he knew it was as real as the pine-wood table supporting his crossed arms and bowed head—felt too insubstantial and slippery to prop up such heavy anguish.

  He pounded the table with one fist. Again. And again.

  Why, God? Why?

  Someone once told him that questioning God was a sin. The way he figured it, God didn’t mind the questions so much as those who tried to make up their own answers. So he prayed for all the things he knew were true—but weren’t offering consolation yet—to permeate his soul, clear his mind, and bring him peace.

  After the tears slowed, he sat up and wiped his face. Blubbering like a child wasn’t going to bring his friend back. Neither would solving his murder, but one thing was more productive than the other. A wash, a shave, and then it would be time to get some answers.

  Wood and Joliet Streets

  Half an hour later, Mac tied Thunder’s reins to the hitching post outside Maison de Joie. He went in the front door and dipped his chin at the huge bodyguard. The title implied the man kept the girls inside safe. Hardly. Mr. Lui protected them from drunk clients so they could keep making money for their madam.

  Mac knocked on the door of her office.

  Moments later, she pulled aside the peephole cover before unbolting the locks and letting him in. Dressed in her traditional burgundy, blond hair curled and pinned up, she looked like she was about to step out for a night at the theater. “Mac, this is an unexpected pleasure.” She backed away from the door. “Please come in.”

  Mac removed his hat and stepped into the richly appointed room. As always, a large bouquet of hothouse roses sat on the edge of her desk, their elegance and fragrance masking the ugly work they oversaw. The urge to topple them with a swipe of his hand, to spill water over her ledger so the ink ran until the dollar figures were no longer distinguishable, made Mac grip his hat brim with both hands. “I won’t take up much of your time.”

  “There’s no rush. The girls are sleeping.” She extended a white hand toward the overstuffed wingback chair opposite her mahogany desk. “And Mr. Green was just here, so there’s not even a lump beneath the cushion.”

  Madame Lestraude hid money in various places around her office for her assistant to find, like some twisted game of hide and seek. As long as Green kept turning in every penny of larger and larger bags of cash, she continued to trust him. Mac had stumbled—or, more accurately, sat on—the secret over a year before. The game was as ridiculous as it was manipulative, and he’d given up trying to make sense of it.

  He settled into the chair and tossed his hat on the desk. It bumped the vase of roses, making the petals shiver. “How much did you tempt Green with this time?”

  Madame Lestraude’s painted lips twitched. “In other words, how much more do you need to come up with to tempt me out of my life of sin?” She lowered herself into her ladder-back chair. “Never mind. I won’t tease you today. You look like—never mind. What can I do for you?”

  Nice of her to refrain from vulgarity for him. “Remember that brothel girl who went missing last September?”

  “Of course.” She picked a fountain pen from the middle of her ledger and closed the book. “Why do you ask?”

  “I wondered if there were any
new rumors circulating about her . . . or any others. Maybe about a runaway in February?” Mac didn’t blink to ensure he caught every nuance of her expression.

  Other than a slight pinching around her eyes—which could either be suspicion or curiosity—her features remained placid. “Nothing I’ve heard.”

  “Anything you suspect?”

  She twirled the pen between her fingers. “Meaning?”

  He held his facial muscles in check. Suspicions and rumors were dangerous. If word got around that Finn had helped runaway brothel girls get out of Helena, whether it was true or not, affected business owners might decide to make up their losses with Emilia Collins or Luci Stanek. Although Madame Lestraude would never do such a thing—she only employed women who entered the sisterhood by choice because she could charge a premium for the illusion of romance that was as phony as her French name—she’d never cross owners who employed different recruitment tactics.

  Mac leaned forward. “Meaning you know as much about what goes on in . . . here”—he couldn’t bring himself to call this place her house—“as you do about what goes on around town.”

  “I’m flattered you think so highly of me, but I’m afraid I don’t know anything more than what the newspapers are reporting.”

  Unlikely, but if that was the game she wanted to play, so be it.

  “And speaking of the papers, you might want to drop a friendly word in that sensationalistic reporter’s ear. Joseph Something-or-other.”

  As if she didn’t know the full name of the man who’d been single-handedly waging war on prostitution since the day he stepped foot in town. After his exposé of Chinese opium joints, decrying them as “a threat to young white womanhood,” the newly elected city council had authorized a police raid. That raid, and the subsequent press approval, resulted in the establishment of quarterly license fees. There wasn’t a person in Helena Madame Lestraude resented more than the reporter who’d started the ball rolling.