Virgil Earp, Private Detective

by J. R. Roberts

  The man swallowed and said, “Yessir.”

  “The girl who was killed,” Clint said. “Did she come here with a man last night?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yessir.”

  Clint studied the young man, who seemed nervous and afraid. He didn’t think the clerk was lying to him.

  “Did a man ever come here looking for her? Or did a man ever visit her in her room?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive, sir.”

  “Are you the only clerk who works here?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I’ve never seen another one.”

  “I work here m-most of the time.”

  “And the times you’re not here, and the desk is empty? Like last night?”

  “I, um, sometimes slip into the back for a, um, drink . . . sir.”

  “A long drink?”

  “Well . . . sometimes I have too much and I, um, fall asleep.”

  “And your boss doesn’t know?”

  “No, sir,” the man said. “You won’t tell ‘im, will you?”

  “Not as long as you continue to tell me the truth.”

  “I will, sir. I swear.”

  “Has anyone from the police been here to talk to you yet?”

  “I, uh, talked with the inspector this morning.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  The man hesitated, then said, “You won’t kill me?”

  “Not if you tell me the truth.”

  “Well, he asked me the same thing you did, about men comin’ here to see Miss Quest.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I-I told him the only men I saw was you and Mr. Earp.”

  The young man shrank back, as if he was expecting Clint to yank him over the desk.

  “Okay,” Clint said, “it’s okay. Forget it.”

  The man relaxed. Clint turned and left without saying anything else to him. As he stepped outside, he saw Virgil walking toward the hotel.

  “What’d you find out?” Virgil asked him.

  Clint told him, then asked, “How about you?”

  “Nothin’ about anybody seein’ her, but I stopped at the telegraph office.”

  “And?”

  “My man in Nevada says Sally Quest was an only child,” Virgil said. “No sister, no siblings, so nothin’.”

  “So what the hell was her game?” Clint said. “What was she after?”

  “That description you got of the man she met?” Virgil asked. “That mean anything to you?”

  “No, you?”

  “No,” Virgil said, “but I guess we’re gonna have to find him.”

  THIRTY

  Clint and Virgil were about to split up again when two uniformed policemen approached them. They were the same two who had come to Sally’s room.

  “Excuse us, gents,” one of them said, “but the inspector would like you to come to the station and make your statements.”

  Clint looked at Virgil. “Oh, we forgot about those,” he said.

  “Damn,” Virgil said. “Tell the inspector we’ll be there presently.”

  “No,” the other policeman said, “he sent us here to get you and bring you back.”

  Clint could see the man’s words rankled Virgil, but he stepped between them.

  “Okay, Officer,” he said, putting his hand on Virgil’s good arm, “lead the way. We’ll come along.”

  The policemen eyed them both cautiously before turning their backs.

  “We might as well get this done,” Clint said to Virgil, “so we can get on with our business.”

  Virgil hesitated, then nodded. He and Clint followed the two policemen.

  The police station was a brand-new, three-story brick building. The two policemen walked Clint and Virgil past the front desk and down a couple of hallways, until they reached Inspector James’s office.

  “Thank you for coming in, gentlemen,” he said, rising from behind his desk.

  “We’re sorry you had to send for us, Inspector,” Clint said. “We did intend to come in, but we got kind of . . . caught up.”

  “That’s all right,” James said. “I wonder if you’d make your statements separately, so I can talk to you each in turn out here.”

  “Sure,” Clint said.

  “I’ll go first,” Virgil said.

  “Thank you,” the inspector said, again. “Mr. Adams, would you have a seat?”

  “Sure,” Clint said. While Virgil left to give his statement, the inspector sat, and Clint sat opposite him.

  “It seems to me you and Mr. Earp have been busy this morning and afternoon,” the inspector said.

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Well, as you said, it slipped your mind to come in and make your statements,” James said. “Has Mr. Earp taken another case so soon?”

  “Not that I know of,” Clint said, “but then he doesn’t check in with me before he takes a case on.”

  “And you weren’t together all day?”

  “No,” Clint said, “we each had our own business to take care of.”

  James frowned.

  “I understood that you were just passing through Colton,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Then what business would you have had to take care of?”

  “That was just a figure of speech, Inspector,” Clint said. “All I meant was, we each had something of our own to do.”

  “I see.”

  “How has your investigation been going?”

  “Slowly, I’m afraid,” the inspector said.

  “That’s too bad.”

  “I’m afraid the young lady may have chosen to bring the wrong man to her room.”

  “So you believe her death was the result of a random meeting?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Me?” Clint asked. “Inspector, you made it very clear to Mr. Earp and me that you didn’t want us thinking about this.”

  “And that was enough to dissuade you?”

  “Well, I don’t know about Virgil,” Clint said, “but I try to be as law-abiding as I can.”

  “With your reputation, I’m sure that’s wise,” the inspector said. “Still, I can’t help thinking you’d have some thoughts on the subject.”

  It occurred to Clint that the inspector might actually be asking for help.

  “Well . . . I don’t really believe she came all this way and was the victim of random violence,” Clint said. “After all, we’re in California, not the Wild West. You are more . . . sophisticated here, aren’t you? Much more modern?”

  “Supposedly,” the inspector said, “but I’m not at all sure that everyone here got that message.”

  “I understand you’re from back East, Inspector.”

  “I spent some time with both the Philadelphia Police Department and then the St. Louis police. I just sort of worked my way west.”

  “And how are you finding it here?”

  “I believe it is a sort of combination of what’s going on in the East and the West.”

  That was as good a description as any Clint had heard to describe California. After all, how much farther west could you get? And yet when people talked about the “West,” they obviously were not talking about California.

  “Well, I’m not a detective, Inspector, so I don’t know what help I could be to you,” Clint said. “My plan was to simply stay out of your way.”

  “I suppose that is a wise plan of action,” the inspector said.

  Behind him Clint heard Virgil enter the room.

  “Ah, Mr. Earp. Finished already?”

  “I didn’t have much to say.”

  “So I guess it’s my turn,” Clint said, getting to his feet.

  As he left the office, he heard the inspector say to Virgil, “Mr. Earp, will you have a seat?”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Clint finished making his statement, and instead of going back to the i
nspector’s office, he chose to wait outside for Virgil.

  When Virgil came out, they compared notes and found that the inspector had taken the same tack with both of them, and that they had each handled it in a similar manner.

  “I told him my client was dead and that it was his job to find out who killed her, not mine,” Virgil said.

  “I pretty much said the same thing,” Clint said.

  “Where were we before we got hauled over here?” Virgil asked.

  “The man Sally met at that restaurant I went to,” Clint said. “We’ve got a description.”

  “But we don’t know if he’s from here or was just passin’ through,” Virgil pointed out.

  “Let’s check the livery stables in town,” Clint said. “Maybe he killed her last night and left town this morning.”

  “Don’t you think the police would’ve checked on that already?”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Clint asked.

  They spent the rest of the day finding any place a man could’ve left a horse and then checking on men who had left town that morning. They found three cases of men leaving town, but none matched the description Clint had been given by the gap-toothed waitress.

  “So he’s still in town,” Virgil said. “Whether he’s passin’ through or he lives here, he’s still here.”

  “So all we have to do is sniff him out from among the two thousand people who live here, plus visitors,” Clint said.

  “Well, hey,” Virgil said, “luckily there’s two of us.”

  “What about James?” Clint asked. “Maybe he’d like to help.”

  “And then there’d be three,” Virgil said. “That oughtta get it done a lot sooner, right?”

  “Virgil, if you don’t want to—”

  “Hey, hey,” Virgil Earp said, “O.K. Corral, remember? At least nobody’s tryin’ to kill us.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Clint and Virgil walked to James’s boardinghouse. Meanwhile, Link and Dave Holman, along with Derek Morrell, left the boardinghouse to walk over to Philadelphia Street and the business center of Colton. The two groups took different routes, and did not pass each other along the way.

  “Why ain’t we out lookin’ for Virgil Earp?” Dave asked. “Why would we do that?” Link asked.

  “I figure that must be why we’re here,” his brother said. “To kill an Earp, and if it was James, we coulda done that as soon as we got here and he let us into his boardinghouse.”

  “Idiot,” Link said. “When he let us in, we didn’t know who he was.”

  “Okay, so we coulda dunnit when we found out who he was,” Dave said. “My point is, we’re here ta kill Virgil Earp.”

  “That wouldn’t be very smart,” Morrell said.

  “Why not?” Dave asked.

  “Look what happened in Tombstone, after his brother Morgan was killed and Virgil was crippled. He hunted them all down and killed them, even Ringo.”

  “Doc Holliday got Ringo,” Dave said.

  “That’s what you say.”

  “Virgil Earp ain’t got no Doc Holliday here in town,” Dave said.

  “You are an idiot,” Link said.

  “Why?”

  “What would Virgil Earp need with a Doc Holliday?” Link asked. “He’s got the Gunsmith.”

  “You wanna go up against the Gunsmith, Dave?” Morrell asked.

  “That wouldn’t be my job, Derek,” Dave said. “It would be yours. Unless you’re afraid of Clint Adams?”

  “Link is right,” Morrell said.

  “About what?” Dave asked, frowning.

  “You are an idiot.”

  “Oh yeah? How about—”

  “Shut up,” Link said, and then added, “idiot.”

  When Clint and Virgil arrived at the bardinghouse, they were admitted by Kate.

  “All alone?” Clint asked, as Kate let them in.

  “James is in the office, doing paperwork,” she said. “Are you here to see him or me?”

  “Him, I’m afraid,” Virgil said.

  She looked at Clint and asked, “Both of you?”

  “Both of us,” Clint said.

  “Well, go ahead, then,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll welcome the distraction.”

  They headed back to the office. James was sitting behind his desk, poring over some papers.

  “Hey, little brother,” Virgil said. “Wanna play detective?”

  James sat back, looked up at them, and rubbed his face over his face.

  “What are you talkin’ about?”

  “We could use your help.”

  James looked at Clint. “He’s makin’ a detective out of you, too?”

  Clint shrugged. “I’ve got nothing better to do right now.”

  James looked down at his paperwork, then at his brother.

  “You know, neither do I,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”

  THIRTY-THREE

  They sat in the parlor and had coffee that Kate was nice enough to serve them.

  “Four mugs?” James asked.

  She sat down on the sofa next to Clint.

  “I served the coffee, so I get to stay.”

  James looked at Virgil.

  “It’s okay with me,” Virgil said.

  “Fine,” James said. “What do you want me to do?”

  “We have a man’s description,” Virgil said. “He was seen with Sally Quest the afternoon she was killed. We need to find him.”

  “And how do we go about that?” James asked.

  “Simple,” Clint said. “We walk around town and ask people if they’ve seen him.”

  “That’s simple?” James asked. “That could take forever. I think I’d rather go back and do my paperwork.”

  “Really?” Kate asked. “You hate paperwork.”

  “You’re right,” James said. “At least this way I’ll be outside. Okay, so what do we do? Split the city up among the three of us?”

  “Four of us,” Kate said.

  “No,” Clint said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you might be the one to find him,” Clint said. “He’s already killed one woman.”

  “What makes you think this man is the killer?” she asked. “Maybe the killer is a woman.”

  “This is the last person she was seen with,” Clint said. “It’s all we have to go on, and I don’t want you finding him.”

  “If I find him, I won’t approach him,” she said. “I’m not that stupid. I’ll just see where he goes and then tell you and Virgil.”

  “We can cover more ground with four of us, Clint,” Virgil said.

  “I can testify to the fact that she’s not stupid,” James said, then added, “at least, most of the time.”

  “James!” she said.

  All three of them were watching Clint, as if the decision were just his.

  “Okay, fine,” he said. “But make sure you don’t go anywhere near him.”

  “I promise.” She crossed her heart.

  “All right,” James said. “What’s this fella’s description?”

  “He’s a big guy, rough-lookin’—” Virgil started.

  “Oh, fine, that narrows it down,” James said.

  “Quiet, James,” Kate said.

  “In his mid-thirties,” Virgil went on. “He was wearing worn trail clothes, a gun on his right hip—oh, and he had a scar on his left cheek.”

  “Hell,” James said, “that could be Clint.”

  “Except for the mid-thirties part,” Virgil pointed out.

  “How big?” Kate asked.

  “The scar?” Virgil replied.

  “No, how big is the man?”

  “She said he was big, with wide shoulders—oh, and she said he had a cruel mouth.”

  “Only a woman would say that” James said.

  “Only a woman would see it,” Kate said. “What else?”

  “That’s it,” Clint said. “Now we hit the streets and see if we can find anybody who’s seen him.”


  Kate stood up, seemed agitated.

  “What is it?” Clint asked.

  “I don’t think we have to go out,” she said.

  “Why not?” Virgil asked.

  “James,” she said, “the three men staying here.”

  “What about them?”

  “Have you taken a good look at them?”

  “No,” James admitted. “They came in late, I gave them their rooms . . . I don’t think I’ve seen them since.”

  “Well, I have,” she said, “and that description matches one of them.”

  Clint stood up.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive,” she said. “Right down to the cruel mouth and the scar.”

  “Do we have names?” Virgil asked.

  “I only know first names,” she said, “and I don’t know which is which, really. I just remember Link, Dave, and . . . Derek.”

  “Ring a bell?” Clint asked Virgil.

  “No.”

  Clint looked at Kate.

  “Are they in their rooms?”

  “No,” she said. “They left just a little while ago.”

  “All three?” Clint asked.

  “Yes.”

  “All right,” Clint said, “now you stay out of it, Kate. There’s three of them, and we’ll probably have to deal with all of them.”

  “So now we go out and look for them?” James asked.

  “No,” Clint said, “we’ll just wait right here for them to come back.”

  “Shouldn’t we send for the police?” Kate asked.

  “No,” Virgil said. “This is for us to do. James, get your gun and strap it on.”

  “So now I don’t get to go out?” James complained.

  “Kate,” Clint said, “do you have someplace you can go for a while?”

  “I can go home.”

  “I thought you lived here.”

  “No,” she said, “sometimes I stay here, but I have a small place.”

  “Then go to it,” Clint said.

  “But . . . why not send for the police?”

  “We don’t know if these three men have done anything,” Clint said. “We don’t know that the man we’re looking for did anything but have a cup of coffee with Sally Quest.”

  “Then let the police ask them.”

  “Kate,” Virgil said, “the girl was my client—still is. This is for me to do.”