A Western Christmas Homecoming: Christmas Day Wedding Bells ; Snowbound in Big Springs ; Christmas with the Outlaw

by Lynna Banning

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I bribed Lefty Donnell to water them down. He just dribbles a teaspoon of whiskey into your glass. That’s how the Golden Nugget makes money, watering down drinks.”

  “Why, that’s cheating!”

  Rand chuckled all the way through his scrambled eggs and two cups of coffee while she ate a big stack of flapjacks and sipped a cup of tea.

  After breakfast they stepped out onto the boardwalk and headed up the street.

  Chapter Eleven

  Already the sun at this mountain elevation was merciless, pouring down like hot honey, wilting Alice’s upswept hairdo and dampening the camisole under her red satin dress. She wrinkled her nose. The air smelled like smoke and something oily.

  People stared at her. Even though she had knotted the red knitted shawl over her chest and wore the respectable sun hat she had unfolded from her travel bag, it was obvious to everyone that she was a woman with a questionable reputation. A “fancy lady.” While there were precious few women on the street to disapprove, there were dozens of men, mostly miners and shopkeepers, who cast admiring glances her way.

  The Alice part of her cringed at all that male attention. The Lolly part of her smiled and shamelessly batted her eyes. Rand, she noticed, kept her arm securely drawn through his, and whenever a man ogled her he tightened his hand.

  Coleman’s Assay Office was housed in a small, neat building painted bright yellow with window boxes of red geraniums attached to the front. Her heart squeezed.

  “Just look at that,” she murmured. “Dottie loved red geraniums, they were her favorite flower. Jim planted red geraniums for her until the day he died.”

  Rand conducted her up the walk and onto the wide front porch. When they entered the office a bell over the door tinkled, but there was no one behind the wooden counter. A handsome iron scale sat on one side.

  After a moment a smartly dressed woman in her forties stepped forward. “Yes?” Her gray-blonde hair was pulled into a prim bun at her neck, and her crisp brown shirtwaist and brown plaid skirt looked schoolteacher-ish.

  “Are you the owner?” Rand asked.

  “Who is inquiring?” the woman asked with a frown.

  “The name is Logan. I’m a US Marshal, Miss...?”

  “Whittaker,” she said quickly. “Emmeline Whittaker.”

  “I understand the original owner, Dorothy Coleman, is recently deceased,” Rand pursued. “Are you the current owner?”

  The woman bit her lip. “Yes, I am,” she said. “And no, I am not.” She studied Alice for a long minute and then flicked her gaze back to Rand.

  “Would you care to explain, Miss Whittaker?” Rand asked.

  “Um. Well, you see, Mrs. Coleman, the owner, left the business to me when she died.”

  “Oh? Mrs. Coleman had a will?”

  “You’ll have to ask my attorney about that, Marshal. His name is Jason Meade. Just up the street on the left, past the dressmaker.” She ran a disapproving eye over Alice’s satin and sequin dress.

  “Marshal, how long will you be in town?”

  Rand looked straight at her. “For as long as it takes.” He touched his hat brim. “Good morning, Miss Whittaker.”

  “Rand,” Alice whispered when they were back on the boardwalk outside. “Aren’t you curious about the business records? Why didn’t you ask to see the account books?”

  “I don’t want Miss Whittaker to know I’m interested. I’ll get the account books tonight.”

  “Tonight? How?”

  “Steal them,” he said shortly.

  She stared at him, but he looked away and guided her on down the street. “Rand?”

  He shook his head. “Later,” he intoned.

  Jason Meade’s law office turned out to be a small smudged white canvas tent with a painted wooden sign outside. Rand pulled open the entrance flap. “Mr. Meade?”

  A skinny, dark-haired man in serge trousers and a gray striped shirt looked up from a desk stacked with thick law books. “That’s me, all right.” His gaze landed on Alice and he jerked to his feet. “Say, aren’t you the gal who sang at the Golden Nugget last night? Lolly something? Lolly Maguire, that’s it. I recognize that red dress you’re wearing.”

  Alice smiled at him. “Mr. Meade, I am interested in purchasing the assay office across the street. What can you tell me about it?”

  “I’m afraid it’s not for sale, Miss Maguire.”

  “You mean the owner is not interested in selling?”

  He cleared his throat and gave Rand a quick glance. “The owner is, uh, deceased, Miss.”

  “Who owns the property now?”

  “Um...well, no one, actually. Miss Emmeline Whittaker is managing the office until the terms of the will are clarified.”

  “Do you have the will?” Rand asked.

  “Well, yessir, I do. But it isn’t exactly a public document. Not just anybody off the street can read it.”

  Rand pulled his vest aside to reveal the revolver. “I’m not just anybody, Mr. Meade. I’d like to see that will.”

  The lawyer’s eyes rounded. “Oh. Well, I’m afraid—”

  Rand fished in his shirt pocket and laid his US Marshal’s badge on the desk. “Now,” he added.

  Lawyer Meade blanched, then turned to a small steel safe in the corner, twirled the dial back and forth and swung open the door. “Here it is, Marshal.”

  Rand scanned the single page of yellowed parchment, then handed it to Alice. “Says here that upon Dorothy Coleman’s death, her sister, Alice Montgomery, inherits the assay office.”

  “Well, yes, that’s true, Marshal. We’ve wired Miss Montgomery a number of times, but there’s been no response.”

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  “I mean me,” Meade said quickly. “I wired Miss Montgomery.”

  “When did you send that telegram to the deceased’s sister?”

  “Oh, right after Miss Dorothy, that is Mrs. Coleman, passed on. Got no answer. No answer at all.”

  Rand folded up the will and stashed it in his vest pocket.

  “Wait a minute, you can’t take that! That’s a legal document.”

  “It sure is,” Rand agreed. “If I were you, Mr. Meade, I’d keep trying to contact Miss Montgomery. I am quite sure she will want to know about her sister’s bequest.”

  * * *

  That afternoon Rand leaned back on his dining chair and sent Alice a grin. “Interesting morning, wouldn’t you say?”

  Alice finished off her lemonade and he refilled her glass from the pitcher on the table. “Very interesting,” she agreed. “Emmeline Whittaker is usurping ownership of Dottie’s assay business. Lawyer Meade is lying. And it’s all making me terribly thirsty.”

  “Sheriff Lipscomb was in a real hurry to hush up your sister’s murder,” Rand said. “And it looks to me like the coroner, Dr. Harvey Arnold, was in on it.”

  “But none of that is a motive for killing someone, is it?”

  “Maybe not. But we’re not finished yet. I’m going to get my hands on the assay office account books, and you have another night of sleuthing at the Golden Nugget.”

  “This undercover business is wearing,” Alice breathed.

  Rand lifted his glass and touched hers. “More lemonade?”

  Chapter Twelve

  That night Rand busied himself at the Golden Nugget bar reading a cheap magazine while Lolly Maguire consulted with Samson the piano player and then began circulating among the patrons. Finally she glided over to the piano, and Samson played an introductory arpeggio. Lolly-Alice struck a pose and the room quieted.

  At the sound of her voice, Rand looked up from the account ledger he’d concealed under the pages of Gentlemen’s World. The tune Samson played as an introduction was familiar, something Rand had heard many times before, and
when he recognized it, he froze. Good God, it was the folk song “Barbara Allen”! He’d sung it a hundred times when he was growing up.

  “‘In Scarlet Town, where I was born...’”

  Lolly began to sing. But it wasn’t “Barbara Allen.”

  Back in Smoke River that first night he remembered asking Alice if she could sing. She’d said no, but obviously that wasn’t true. Her voice had a low, smoky quality that was impossible to ignore. And the words raised his eyebrows.

  “‘There was a lass from Dublin town, That all the boys from there around, Did want to kiss and take to bed, So...never did she want to wed!’”

  Rand choked on his beer, and the miners cheered and stomped their heavy boots on the floor. Where had Alice ever learned such a song? Could she be making up those bawdy lyrics on the fly?

  There was more. More suggestive words sung to the tune of the old folk song.

  “‘There was a girl from Abilene, Oh, she was pure as purest cream, Until she learned that sex was fun, And then...her work was never done!’”

  Rand clamped his jaw closed and forced himself to shut out Alice’s seductive voice and concentrate on the account ledger. Absently he reached for the shot glass of whiskey Lefty had offered in exchange for a magazine page with girlie pictures, turned over another page of debits and credits and choked.

  Something sure didn’t add up. He flipped back through the figures for the preceding thirty-six months and began making some comparisons, and all at once things began to fall into place.

  * * *

  Alice turned her face aside to snatch a breath of un-whiskey-saturated breath. What was this miner’s name, Charlie? Donald? Jonah, that was it!

  “Jonah, you’re a very successful miner. Did you ever visit Coleman’s Assay Office?”

  “Oh, shore, Miss Lolly. But she shore were busy! Miss Dorothy, she allus used to shoo away all them gentlemen, but they jest kept comin’ and comin’. Made some of us miners mad cuz we knowed she weren’t no loose woman, even if she was a widow.”

  “I bet you have a good memory for faces, Jonah. Who were these ‘gentlemen’?”

  “Mostly it was that doctor fella, Doc Arnold. He practically drooled all over hisself whenever Miss Dorothy walked by. And then sometimes there was the sheriff.”

  “That would be Sheriff Lipscomb?”

  “Yes, ma’am. And, lessee, oh, yeah, that lawyer over on Jasmine Street. Jason Meade his name is. Sometimes I’d hear Doc Arnold yellin’ at her and then she’d cry and carry on. Dang, it made me mad!”

  “Cry and carry on about what?”

  “Don’t rightly know. But iff’n I was to hazard a guess it’d be somethin’ he wanted her to do that she didn’t want to do.”

  “Something about money, maybe?”

  Jonah shook his straggly salt-and-pepper hair out of his eyes. “Nah. Doc’s got plenty of money. I’m thinkin’ it was something more personal-like.”

  Alice nodded. What kinds of things would a well-to-do man want a well-to-do woman to do? Lie for him, maybe? Steal for him? Surely not...

  She went cold all over and suddenly stopped dancing.

  “Gol-darn-it, Miss Lolly, I knowed I shouldn’t have told ya nuthin’. Ain’t none of my never-mind, anyhow.”

  “On the contrary, Jonah. You did exactly the right thing. You are a gentleman and a prince.”

  His leathery cheeks turned bright red. “A prince, huh? Golly, who’d a thunk that about ol’ Jonah?”

  Jonah tramped off with a gobsmacked expression on his wrinkled face, and Alice found herself in the arms of another beery miner. This one, called Tom, had lots to say about the Coleman’s Assay Office. Emmeline Whittaker had never gotten along with Dorothy Coleman, and after Dorothy’s death, Emmeline was often seen in the back room of the office, talking with both Sheriff Lipscomb and Jason Meade, the attorney.

  She’d heard enough. Alice left Tom in the middle of the floor and headed straight for Rand, sitting at the bar. He glanced up from the magazine he was reading. “You look like a cat who’s just lapped up a saucer of cream.”

  “And you,” she said in a low voice, “look like you’d just swallowed a cage full of canaries.”

  He grinned and leaned close to her. “You’ll never guess what I discovered in the assay office accounts,” he said quietly.

  “Someone was embezzling money from the business?” she asked.

  Rand stared at her. “How’d you figure that out?”

  “Intuition,” she intoned. “And Jonah McCrary and some miner named Tom just told me some equally interesting things.”

  “About your sister, Dorothy,” he guessed.

  “And Dr. Arnold. Jonah heard them arguing about something after Jim was killed.”

  “Money, I bet,” Rand supplied. “Interesting.”

  “Possibly not money,” she breathed. “Tom told me something even more interesting.”

  He gave her a considering look. “Alice, I have an idea. Could you manage some more play-acting tomorrow night?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  They planned it carefully. Alice made sure she looked the part of the marshal’s fancy woman, someone who would lie for a price. Then she made sure all the members of their staged “play” were present in the back room of the assay office—Sheriff Lipscomb, Dr. Arnold, her sister’s attorney, Jason Meade, and Emmeline Whittaker, who was now passing herself off as the owner of Coleman’s Assay Office.

  Before she walked into the office, Alice took a moment to make sure Rand was already hidden in the shadows behind the window curtain. Then she calmed her breathing, twitched her red satin skirt and said a brief prayer.

  Please, Lord, let me lie convincingly and not lose my nerve.

  Pasting on a smile, she advanced into the back room.

  The first person she saw was Emmeline Whittaker. “Good evening, Miss Whittaker,” Alice began. “Perhaps I might call you Emmeline? I’m sure we have a great deal in common.”

  “Oh?” the woman said, her tone frosty. “What could you and I possibly have in common?”

  Alice didn’t answer. Instead she smiled warmly at the lawyer, who was bouncing from one foot to the other, a worried expression on his narrow face. “Mr. Meade, how nice to see you again. Very shortly I may have need of your services.”

  She then turned to Sheriff Lipscomb, who had perched his bulky frame uneasily on a straight-backed chair. “Sheriff, I understand you have for many years enjoyed the trust of the miners of Silver City?”

  “Why, yes, ma’am. They sure do trust me. Miners are the lifeblood of Silver City.”

  “As you know,” she said in her most silky tone, “I am... How shall I put this delicately...? An acquaintance of Marshal Randell Logan.”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” the sheriff blurted out. “That bit of news has got all around town, hasn’t it, Jase?” He sent a significant look at Lawyer Meade. “Jase and me, we share a pint now and again and we’re on pretty good terms. He told me about you an’ the marshal visitin’ his office yesterday.”

  Alice risked a surreptitious glance at the curtain in the shadows where Rand stood. She hoped he was armed.

  “And,” she continued, “Dr. Arnold, I wanted to include you in our discussion because...” She stepped in close to him and lowered her voice. “I am prone to having fits, and I appreciate havin’ a medical professional nearby in times of stress. And,” she added in a loud whisper, “I fear our discussion tonight might be...stressful.”

  “What discussion?” Lawyer Meade queried.

  Alice fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Why, my offer to purchase the assay office, of course. The marshal didn’t tell you?”

  Emmeline Whittaker clutched her bosom. “Purchase the—?”

  “Coleman’s Assay Office, yes,” Alice purred.

  The woman’s face went white. “What on eart
h for?”

  “Oh, now, Miss Emmeline, surely you can guess? I look at you and I see a respectable businesswoman. I look at myself and I see...well, a less-than-respectable woman. And life moves on, does it not?”

  A puzzled look crossed Emmeline’s pale face.

  “Now,” Alice continued, “I have managed to save up a good deal of money over the years, and now that my middle years are fast approachin’, I feel I should invest in a respectable business venture for my old age. A business like this one, Coleman’s Assay Office.”

  Emmeline stared at her in dumbfounded silence.

  Alice grinned and smoothed her skirt. “I am prepared to make quite a large deposit, and I will have Lawyer Meade here draw up the papers this very night.”

  Sheriff Lipscomb coughed and sent a significant look to Emmeline Whittaker. “Whaddya need me for, Miss Maguire?”

  “Why, Sheriff, I am carryin’ a large amount of cash as we speak. I wouldn’t feel safe walkin’ back to my hotel tonight without an escort.”

  “What about yer marshal friend? Why cain’t he escort you?”

  Alice’s eyes went as wide as she could make them. “Why, I could not ever, ever let Marshal Logan know what I am proposin’ to do.”

  “Why’s that?” the sheriff asked.

  “Because...” Alice lowered her voice. “The marshal thinks I am returnin’ to Chicago with him. He doesn’t know I am hankerin’ to...well...retire, as it were.”

  She turned to Emmeline. “You understand, don’t you, Miss Emmeline? I need to find another source of income, one that’s more, um, steady. And more...respectable.”

  Emmeline sank onto a wooden chair. “This is all very sudden, Miss Maguire.”

  “Well, yes,” Alice said quickly. “I just found out that Mrs. Coleman had willed the assay business to her sister. But if the sister cannot be located...” She directed a smile at Lawyer Meade. “The business will be taken over by Mrs. Coleman’s longtime business assistant, Emmeline Whittaker, here. Isn’t that so, Mr. Meade?”

  Lawyer Meade nodded and ran his forefinger under his shirt collar. “Just what are you prepared to offer, Miss Maguire?”