Slocum and the Larcenous Lady

by Jake Logan

  Now, that fellow was a tad interesting to Slocum. Not just because he didn’t say much. Hell, Slocum never said much, either. But because he had an air about him that Slocum couldn’t figure out.

  The man was freshly shaved, and if he’d ridden into town today, he’d taken the trouble to knock most of the dust off his clothes. He was tallish, about an inch shorter than Slocum was, and had close-cropped, sandy brown hair and a similar mustache.

  He ate with one arm wrapped protectively around his plate, in the manner of somebody who’d been in prison for a while, but he didn’t have the face of a criminal. He looked like somebody who’d had money, maybe for a long time, and gotten to take it for granted.

  But if he was eating at Mandy’s Kitchen when the hotel dining room was just up the street, chances were that he didn’t have it anymore.

  Well, that was a mystery, all right, but it wasn’t exactly the thing on Slocum’s front burner.

  Chandler had let it slip that tonight, at six o’clock, he was expecting Lil’s answer to his proposal. Oh, Slocum knew what it would be, all right: a big resounding “yes.”

  And he also knew that tonight she’d be in his bed again, not Chandler’s.

  There was no controlling Lil. He had no more sway over her than he did the weather.

  She was, in fact, a force of nature.

  He pulled out his fixings bag, started to roll a quirley, and then remembered himself. “Do you mind, ma’am?” he asked the woman at the end of the table.

  “I certainly do, although what good it will do, I don’t know,” she said huffily.

  She aimed her stare at the other side of the table, where a cowhand had already lit up and was talking to a tablemate, his back to her. “It was kind of you to ask, however. You’re more of a gentleman than some people in here.”

  “I’ll just leave you folks to it, then,” he said as he rose, his tobacco pouch in one hand and his hat in the other.

  He flipped a generous twenty-five-cent tip to the serving girl on his way out the door, strolled up the street to the hardware store’s front, and pulled up a nail keg.

  He sat, his eyes on the saloon and its connecting hotel/dining room, and built himself a smoke. It was dark by this time, and the lights shone brightly in the downstairs windows and flickered on and off, here and there, upstairs in both buildings.

  He wondered if Lil had told Chandler that she’d marry him yet.

  He considered just riding out of town.

  And then he pictured Lil in his mind, every smooth and poreless inch of skin, every swell and dip of her form, and knew he had to have her, even if it was only one more time.

  He could always leave in the morning.

  After all, he didn’t want to stick around for the wedding and the mess that would inevitably follow. There was always a mess, wasn’t there?

  It was Lil’s way: the way of the thunderstorm, of the twister, of the earthquake.

  Once she set herself in motion, there was no way of holding her back until she got what she wanted.

  Yes sir, a real force of nature.

  11

  “Yes, David,” Lil murmured over the low flower centerpiece between them. She lowered her eyes almost shyly and added, “I should be proud and pleased to be your wife.”

  David Chandler took her hand gratefully and bent forward. It was a good thing they hadn’t been served yet, or his tie would have gone directly into his soup.

  “Lily, my love,” he said, bringing her hand to his lips. He kissed it gently. She smelled of jasmine. The scent of her was intoxicating, titillating, irresistible, as if just the sight of her wasn’t enough. “Thank you, my darling,” he whispered. “You’ve made me so happy . . . I don’t have the words.”

  Without a word, she leaned forward, too, and placed her other hand on top of his. She gazed deeply into his eyes, then whispered, “And David, you don’t how happy you’ve made me, just by asking.”

  The waiter arrived with a platter. Of all the damned timing! But he didn’t even flick his eyes away from hers. “We will be good together, my love,” he said. “You’ll see.”

  “Well, dearest darling,” she said, smiling as they broke apart and leaned back for the waiter, “I know my life will be incredibly enriched just by having known you.”

  Slocum ground out his fifth quirley of the evening just as David and Lil came out onto the street and started over toward the saloon.

  He sat and watched as they stopped for a moment on the sidewalk, kissed, then parted. Chandler went in through the front doors of the saloon; Lil went around the side, to the stage entrance.

  Slocum guessed that Chandler had his answer, and that it had been yes. Blast that Lily, anyway! he thought with an angry shake of his head.

  And then he wondered why he had any right to be mad at her. He wasn’t the one who’d asked for her hand, was he? Hell, he ought to be feeling sorry for Chandler. He ought to be turning her in.

  He ought to just go get on Panther and ride out of town and let them sort out this mess—or what was primed to become one—on their own. With that real nice Sheriff Kiefer to help them out.

  But the moon wasn’t full, not by a long shot, and he wasn’t going to take a chance on laming his horse out there in the dark.

  And then he was angry about that.

  He snorted, shook his head, slapped his hands down on his knees, and stood up. Things being what they were, he supposed there was nothing to do but go watch the show.

  “Slocum,” he muttered to himself as he went across the way to join the crowd that was beginning to push through the batwing doors, “you are sure a prime-grade fool.”

  Bill Messenger waited until the show had started before he went inside. It was just as well. He squeezed himself into a dark back corner of the building.

  Oh, he could see Lil all right, but there was no way she could see him over the glare from the footlights. There wasn’t another lamp lit in the whole place, except for one back behind the bar, and that had been turned down low.

  She was warbling a sad song, one he had forgotten the name of. Lord, nobody could sing a song like Tiger Lil. That voice was so sweet, so ingenuous and almost naive, that no one suspected the training that had gone into it. She’d told him, back when they were an item. She’d said that if you could hear the training, the voice wasn’t trained well enough.

  He didn’t know that this was true, but whatever Lil did when she sang, it worked. He could almost fall in love with her all over again, even knowing what he did about her.

  Almost.

  That was the operative word. Right now, if she’d been close enough, he would have reached out and strangled her.

  Maybe he would have kissed her first.

  Maybe he would have kissed her after, when she was still and quiet, no longer able to confuse him with her lies, her sweet, sweet lies . . .

  Lil finished the tune and burst into a more lively one. The audience sang the chorus along with her. He didn’t, though. His eyes flicked over the crowd until he found the one—the one who as especially besotted with her this time. Not that they all weren’t.

  But this one was sitting right at the footlights at a private table. He was rich. His name was David Chandler. Oh, he’d been keeping an ear to the ground ever since he came into town. This was just the first time Messenger had seen Lily’s new target.

  He supposed that he should feel pity for the man, considering what Lil likely had planned for him. But he felt nothing. All his emotions were tied up in Lil at the moment.

  Maybe he’d kiss her before he killed her.

  Charlie Townsend lay in his bed, slowly grinding his teeth.

  What the hell had happened? Where the deuce was the sheriff?

  Could he have missed Chandler? Really flat-out, plain missed him?

  Those jaws kept working, grinding relentlessly. Jaw muscles clenched, released, clenched again.

  He’d have to go back in the morning. That was all there was to it. He’d have to go ba
ck, get in closer this time, and take a chance on somebody recognizing him.

  Damn it!

  Slocum sat at the end of the bar, quietly nursing a beer and waiting for Lil’s second performance. The rest of the crowd was drinking and whooping it up, and he’d lay good money that there were more than a few wishful innuendos about Lil being whispered behind cupped hands into eager ears.

  He would have followed her back to her dressing room, but Chandler was staying put at his table up front, watching the stage entrance. Probably humming to himself, too, the poor bastard.

  Chandler wasn’t going to get lucky tonight, though. Not if Slocum knew Lil.

  No, she’d be tapping as his door later tonight, not Chandler’s. She’d make the bridegroom wait. And wait and wait and wait, while she was long gone, spending his money.

  How many men had she taken like this, anyhow? It must be quite a number.

  He gave a shudder, then signaled for a fresh beer.

  It arrived a half second before Lil walked out onstage again, in a new, bright blue, low-cut, spangled dress. As if one man, the crowd gasped, then fell into a nearly reverent silence.

  Slocum reached for his new beer, barely noticing when the foam spilled down over his fingers. Despite everything he knew about Lil, despite all their history, she still took his breath away, too.

  She started to sing.

  Slocum allowed himself to be carried away by the sight of her and the sound of her for this one last performance. Tomorrow he’d leave, but tonight, there was only the music she made.

  And later, there’d be only Lil, naked in his arms.

  David Chandler let her voice wash over him like warm honey. They’d talked at dinner. She had agreed to marry him between her first and second shows, tomorrow evening. That last show would be her farewell performance.

  He’d make an announcement, for the two or three fellows who hadn’t heard it from the grapevine already. And then they’d stay the night at the hotel and drive to the ranch in the morning.

  He wouldn’t bother her tonight, although it was killing him. That was her one request: that they save themselves for their wedding night. And he would respect her wishes.

  She couldn’t know how grudgingly, though.

  The only thing tempering his lust for her was the knowledge that after tomorrow night, she’d be his and his alone. No more low-cut gowns for the hordes of men who came to hear her sing. No more of those lascivious posters, such as the one that hung out front of this very saloon. No more peeks at her knees by cowboys, no more strangers’ stares at the turn of her ankles.

  He would be her sole caretaker, her only fanatic, and he alone would be the one to see her as they all imagined seeing her: nude, flawless, and beckoning him to her, only him.

  Forever.

  He silently vowed—for the hundredth time—that he’d remain an upstanding citizen. That he’d stay the man that he’d been—or at least, had been pretending to be—when Lil fell in love with him. That he would never revert back to his old ways, no matter how loudly they called to him.

  My God, he thought with a sigh as he sat there, just across the footlights from her. What did I ever do to deserve this, to deserve the likes of her?

  It seemed to him that there was nothing to this divine justice thing. Either that, or God wasn’t paying attention.

  And it was just as well that He wasn’t.

  When the last show was over, Bill Messenger waited around the saloon. He figured to give Lil enough time to get to her room and snuggle down for the night. And then he planned to sneak in and strangle her.

  He hoped to hell she had a room with two doors, like his: one out to the hall, and the other one opposite, out to the wraparound second-floor porch. The latter would be a helluva lot easier to get into without being seen. You always took a chance when you tried from inside the building.

  Or at least, so he supposed. He had been an inebriated almost-highwayman, not a hotel sneak thief.

  He already had the murder weapon. Tucked into his back pocket was a green scarf. Her scarf. It was all she had left behind. Of her things, his things, what he had, for one fleeting, golden moment, considered to be their things.

  As it turned out, they were all hers.

  What a fool he’d been! And still, as he’d listened to her earlier, as he’d perched on the edge of his chair, rapt, he thought that maybe he could be forgiven, just a little.

  Just a little.

  David dropped Lil at her door after she’d finished the second show. It was hard, keeping him from coming in and staying. He was persistent, if nothing else.

  But in the end, he acquiesced. He kissed her hand, she blushed—right on cue—and they both whispered, “Till tomorrow, my love,” as they parted.

  Lil watched until he had gone down the hall and turned the corner, then listened to the faint sound of his key in the door as he let himself into his rooms. Sighing in relief, she silently closed her door, then leaned back against it for a moment.

  This time, she might have to stick around for a bit. David Chandler’s holdings were far-flung and complicated. He was far from a simple man with a simple bank account that she could suck dry on her way out of town.

  But it would surely be worth the effort of staying around town, as Mrs. David Chandler, for a week or two. At least, she hoped she could figure out the best way to sink her claws into his property in that amount of time. Half of her wished that this complication had been apparent right from the start. Maybe she wouldn’t have tackled him in the first place.

  But the other half of her liked the challenge of him—and separating him from his property. It was rather thrilling in a way, wasn’t it?

  She walked to her chifforobe, unhooking her dress as she went. And she was smiling. One more night with Slocum, then on with the show.

  And the show always had to go on, didn’t it?

  Bill Messenger had bided his time, smoked a few cigarettes—the ground-out stubs of which now lay scattered about his boots, like last year’s confetti—and waited until the lights were blown out in Lil’s room. He sat on the second-floor wraparound balcony above the saloon, just feet from the little bridge that connected with the hotel’s balcony.

  He knew it was her room. Sitting in the shadows, he’d seen her, through the window, before she pulled the curtains, allowing the light to peer through only around the fabric’s edges.

  Now that the light was gone, he waited a little while longer. He’d thought about strangling her with one of her own scarves but finally decided on a cord: a cord in which he’d been methodically tying knots. In prison, he’d heard that they were supposed to give the cord a better grip or something.

  Well, who was he to argue? It was his first time killing anybody.

  No, it was his first time to mete out justice. True justice. An eye for an eye, right? Lil Kirkland might as well have taken an ax to him the day she married him. His life was over that day. Everything he’d known, everything he’d worked for, all gone in the blink of an eye.

  If that wasn’t murder, what was?

  All right. Enough. She had to be asleep by now. He stood up.

  As he walked quietly over to the bridge, and to the door that would let him into her room, he wondered whether it would be better or worse if she woke while he was doing it. Better, he thought.

  He stopped outside her door and hugged the wall.

  No, worse. He might be tempted not to do it. He knew all too well the effect those eyes, that voice, could have on him.

  He dug into a pocket and pulled out two wires. Who said that prison couldn’t be an education?

  Kneeling, he slipped the first wire into the lock, felt it give to the pressure, then inserted the second one. In three seconds flat, the door was unlocked and creaking open.

  He grabbed it, to silence it, and opened it more slowly, applying upward pressure. It worked. The door opened as if it were on silent casters.

  He slipped inside and let his eyes become accustomed to th
e deeper darkness within. He made out the shape of a bed, dimly made out rumpled covers. Reaching into his pocket again, he found the knotted cord.

  12

  David Chandler woke with the dawn, and the first thing he thought was Today. Today my life will change forever.

  And it would change in the best way possible. Lil would be his. Those old urges—to return to his old, lawless ways—would vanish. He could at last enjoy the fruits of going straight, which he had at first attempted only in an effort to hide from the law. He’d thought it was temporary.

  But he guessed that maybe, if you pretended to be different long enough, you actually changed. Could that be possible?

  He rolled to his side and focused on the wall clock: 5:17.

  Far too early. Too many hours of wakefulness before his betrothed—his betrothed!—was even awake, too many hours before she would be his. Too many hours for any one man to stand the waiting out of them.

  At least, consciously.

  He rolled onto his belly, hugged the pillow closer, smiled, and drifted off again.

  Slocum, too, was awake.

  He shifted his weight to reach for his smoking pouch, and in the process, woke Lil.

  She shifted with him, allowing him to reach his fixings, and smiled sleepily. “It’s morning,” she whispered. “I should go.”

  But she didn’t move.

  Before he licked his quirley, Slocum paused to brush a kiss over her forehead. She was beautiful in the mornings, with no makeup and her hair mussed and the sheets rumpled around her. Absolutely beautiful. And today she was marrying another man.

  How many times over was she guilty of bigamy? He didn’t know. Even she had likely lost track.

  Frankly, he didn’t care. At least, not about the legalities part. He just worried for her, worried that she was so casual about it, worried that someday, she wouldn’t make it out of town fast enough or that somebody would come out of her past to haunt her.