Town Social

by Simmons, Trana Mae

  She paused a moment, listening to Perry's cousin, Marg, practice one of the new songs she had recently added to her repertoire. Cathy Percival, the banker's wife, was actually standing at the bar sipping a glass of lemonade and nodding her head as the haunting notes of the ballad filled the room. Sunny waved a hand at Cathy, then preceded on to the washroom off Ginny's office. A few minutes later she reemerged to find Cathy gone. Feeling refreshed, she headed over to Saul's saloon.

  Halfway across the street, she swerved to avoid dragging her skirts in a pile of horse droppings, which reminded her that as soon as she got the Cultural Center up and running, there was another goal on her agenda. One way or another she was going to force the town to pay attention to street upkeep! She swung her gaze toward the jailhouse up the way. Jake was sitting on that darned chair, which almost seemed a part of his backside. She giggled beneath her breath when she thought of demanding he patrol the streets for garbage rather than human lawbreakers. Those whiskey eyes would spit scorn and cantankerousness at her so fast she'd have trouble ducking the flood.

  He rose to his feet and she stumbled on a rut. Gosh darn it anyway! She hadn't had a bout of clumsiness since the night of the fire. She'd been so pleased with the civility she managed whenever he stopped by to check on their progress at the Cultural Center. Now all he'd done was stand up from halfway down the street and her feet faltered!

  She hesitated at the other set of batwing doors, calming the flutters in her stomach she assured herself were caused from her audacity in entering this shady establishment. They didn't have a thing to do with the recollection of her dreams — dreams of what something other than friendship would be like with Jake Cameron — dreams which had absolutely no future, as they had both agreed.

  Even out here on the walkway she could smell the interior of Saul's place, and she wrinkled her nose. Mixed with some yeasty aroma, the same odors of cigar smoke and sawdust that at Ginny's appeared part of the atmosphere smelled differently here. She finally recognized the yeasty aroma as the same one she'd smelled in a glass of warm beer a cowboy had left half finished on Ginny's bar.

  Saul Cravens peered over the batwings and smiled at her. Throwing open one side of the doors, he said, "Sunny! I thought you'd forgotten all about me. You needn't come inside if you don't wish. I understand that a lady of your sensibilities might be offended in here."

  "I wouldn't think of insulting you like that, Mr. Cravens," Sunny replied. "This is your place of business and we have some business to discuss."

  "Saul, please," he reminded her. "And please do come in then."

  He held the door for her, and she entered. Although she knew Aunt Cassie would have a fit when she learned her niece had been seen going into this saloon, she eagerly gazed around, unable to suppress her avid interest. Aunt Cassie had also had a hissy fit when Teddy unfortunately chattered away about them having iced sarsaparilla at Ginny's yesterday, and this place was everything she had expected to find at Ginny's and didn't. Stark and plain, the tables set on a warped pine floor, and wall decorations were nonexistent — except for one area covered by brightly-colored women's garters. Feeling sure the answer would embarrass her, she bit back her query to Saul about the significance of the garters.

  Saul placed a hand on her back, murmuring for her to come with him to his office in the rear of the room. As they passed, she peered inquisitively at the bar on her right. Unlike the highly-polished mahogany bar at Ginny's, deep nicks and scratches marred Saul's bar. It even looked like a couple of the craters on the front might be bullet holes.

  And, yes, there it was. Over the bar hung a picture of a very full-bodied nude woman! She reclined on a fainting couch, a flirtatious smile on her lips and a come-hither expression in her eyes. One hand strategically lay across the apex of her thighs and the other one cupped her...breast!

  Oh, my!

  Saul evidently caught the direction of her gaze and grunted a disconcerted sound. Stepping around her, he blocked her view and urged her quickly through the door to his office, closing it firmly behind them.

  "Uh...please have a seat, Sunny." He held the top of a hard-backed chair politely, but Sunny turned and reopened the door part way. Cravens flushed slightly.

  "Sorry," he muttered. "I'm not used to having a lady in my office. I only closed the door from force of habit."

  Since the entire town knew of the soiled doves who worked in Saul's saloon, Sunny assumed he had had other women in his office, but she held that thought in abeyance. After all, the man was offering a donation for the cause of culture in the town.

  She seated herself, and he took his place behind a plain desk. Removing a ring of keys from his vest pocket, he avoided her eyes and unlocked a desk drawer. "I assume you've come for my donation," he said as he placed a cash box on the desk. "I think you'll find it appropriate, but if you need more, please don't hesitate to ask."

  "I do have one comment," Sunny said. "Since we'll be in competition for customers, I find it extremely generous of you to help subsidize our Center."

  "Quite the contrary," Saul said with a wry chuckle. "In case you haven't noticed, my dear, business in this town has picked up considerably since you ladies announced your plans. And I anticipate an even bigger draw when you finally get open."

  Sunny's brows rose in inquiry, and he continued. "It's not that much further for the cowboys who work the ranches around here to ride on west to Abilene on payday instead of into Liberty Flats. Abilene's on the path of the cattle drives and still a wide open town, which makes it a rather dangerous place. Some of the youngsters who want to sow their wild oats will make that trek, but the customers I cater to in this town are a fairly steady clientele."

  "I guess I don't understand," Sunny mused. "We'll still be competing, won't we?"

  "Not at all." Saul leaned back in his chair. "Your Center will offer entertainment earlier in the evening. In fact, it will draw people into town even more often. Granted, some of the men leaving the performances will stop at my competitor across the street, but others will want a less...uh...refined atmosphere in which to indulge themselves. And they'll be even more ready for what my place offers after an evening of abstaining in the company of the ladies."

  His eyes wandered upward toward the second floor of his building, where Sunny assumed the indulgence to which he referred took place. A hot flush of indignation stole over her. She'd just bet the men would be ready to break their evening's abstinence! Saul was insinuating the men would not only be thirsty for drink but also be randy after being in close proximity with their untouchable feminine companions for a few hours and then taking them home.

  She gritted her teeth in vexation, trying to think up a suitable chastisement — one which would let him know she had seen beneath his supposedly innocuous comments without humiliating herself by blurting out her understanding. But Saul leaned forward. He removed a bag of coins from the cashbox and pushed them across the desk toward her.

  "My initial donation is one hundred dollars, Sunny. I consider it an investment in the town and in my own business."

  "You...ah...appear to be a very astute businessman," Sunny admitted with a defeated sigh. She accepted the donation, placing it in her reticule but making no move to leave the office. This was the perfect opportunity for her to pursue the avenue for the information Mary's foreman had inadvertently led her to thinking about.

  "I understand you've lived in town your entire life," she mused, "so it makes sense that you want to operate a long-term business here. And you must have known my mother, Samantha Foster."

  An interested gleam grew in Cravens' gaze. "Yes, yes, I did. We went to school together, of course, although she was a few classes behind me, as was your aunt. I graduated from what Liberty Flats had to offer back then and after that I spent the only time away from here in my life. While Samantha and Cassie completed school, I attended a business college back east for four years."

  "Both my mother and aunt went to a lady's finishing school in St. Louis
, then returned here," Sunny said. "In fact, I attended the same school as my mother for two years."

  "It must be a fine school. I'd already sold my father's ranch and opened this place by the time Samantha returned from her stint at the St. Louis finishing school. Instead of the rather tomboyish creature she'd been previously, she was a lady grown by then. Why, she and Cassie had the men of the county beating a path to their doorstep."

  Sunny shook her head. "It's hard to imagine my aunt as a belle with lots of beaus chasing after her," she admitted. "Now she's so...well, different."

  "Yes, quite," Cravens agreed.

  "Everyone seems puzzled by the change in my aunt," Sunny prodded. "All I've been able to find out is pure speculation. It might make things easier between us if I understood my aunt a little better."

  Saul steepled his fingers against his mouth for a moment, then dropped his hands. "I only know what you've probably already heard yourself, my dear. Pure speculation, also. Have you asked your aunt?"

  "She isn't at all willing to talk to me," Sunny admitted. "She appears very resentful of my presence here. I just thought that if I knew why, maybe we could attempt to work things out."

  "If Cassie won't talk to you, there's only one other person who might know the full details of what happened here nineteen years ago."

  "Charlie Duckworth?" Sunny questioned.

  "I see you already have your suspicions about that," Cravens said with a nod. "Charlie's as tight-lipped as Cassie, though. But I can tell you a couple thing you may not know."

  "What are those? Please."

  "After Charlie came back to town and settled again at his family homestead, he received periodic letters with St. Louis postmarks on them. Ruth Hopkins son, Brad, helps his mother sort the mail at the post office window in the Hopkins general store and he comes in here now and then. And on one occasion the telegraph operator, Turley, told me that Charlie received a wire from a St. Louis bank about...oh, three months before you arrived in town."

  Inwardly chastising herself for her curiosity about information Ruth's son and the telegraph operator should have kept confidential, Sunny nevertheless leaned forward. "That was around the time of my mother's death. Did he say what information the wire had?"

  "Well, yes. It was late one night, and Turley was the last man in here at the time. He knows he's not supposed to pass on the information in those wires to anyone else, but he'd had a couple drinks too many. I, of course, kept the information to myself, but I thought it peculiar Charlie didn't notify anyone else in town — even your aunt. If he had, surely the word would have spread in this small town."

  "Please," Sunny urged. "Tell me what the wire said."

  "Well, since you've already pretty much guessed it, I'll just confirm it. It was notification that your mother had been killed in an accident."

  Sunny furrowed her brow. "My mother's attorney notified Aunt Cassie, because I was much too upset to handle it myself. But he informed me that he wrote her a letter, so it would have taken a lot longer to get the news to my aunt. I never heard a word back from her or anyone else in this town. It seems extremely odd that neither Mr. Duckworth nor my aunt would have realized my mother had other friends here in town, who should have been notified."

  "Extremely odd," Saul agreed with a shrug. "But only the two of them would be able to explain their actions."

  "And since my aunt won't talk to me...."

  Sunny rose, slipping her reticule over her arm as Saul politely stood, also. "Thank you for your donation, Saul. It's too bad we don't have a newspaper and a printing press in town. I've sent the details for our opening night programs off by mail to Dallas, and I listed all the donations on the back of them. It's too late now to add your name, but I intend to also have a poster in the window of the Center listing all the contributors to our endeavor. I'll make sure you're noted on that."

  Saul waved a negligent hand. "As I mentioned, this is an investment towards my own profits, also. But I admit, it gives me a sense of satisfaction to know the townspeople will see my name on that list of contributors. And it will indeed be a spat of advertising for me."

  "That it will," Sunny said with a laugh.

  "Let me escort you to wherever you're headed now, Sunny."

  "Oh, that's not necessary."

  "My pleasure, my dear."

  He stepped around the desk and extended his arm. Sunny hesitated a second, but the thought of crossing through the saloon to the boardwalk outside had her slipping her fingers around his forearm as she started out the door.

  As Cravens and Sunny passed without noticing him at the table where he sat just outside Saul's partially open office door, Jake narrowed his eyes beneath his tilted-down hat brim. He'd meant to come in here and drag Miss Sunny Fannin's cute little ass out of Cravens' saloon, telling her in no uncertain terms to never come in here again — with or without an escort. Not that he had any right to order her around, he'd reminded himself, which hadn't made him hesitate at all.

  By the time he'd entered the saloon, however, caution prevailed. If he stormed into Saul's office and dragged Sunny out of there — or tried to — he might end up a hell of a lot more embarrassed than her. If she defied him, his only alternative would be to pick her up and carry her. The thought of having her spitting and snarling in his arms was appealing, but he'd rather have that happen in a private spot, not in front of the avid eyes of the few early drinkers in the seedy saloon.

  And Miss Sunny Fannin had made it perfectly clear she had absolutely no desire to ever again seek out a private spot that included his presence!

  Yet he wasn't about to leave as long as Sunny remained in that unsuitable place, so he bought a beer for an excuse to hang around. His choice of seat had been intentional, also, and if Sunny hadn't opened that door herself, he would have found some excuse to go into Saul's office.

  He remembered telling Charlie the other night that part of his job was keeping his ears open. He hadn't really meant snooping, which his eavesdropping just now could be construed as, but he'd sure come by some interesting information. Sunny and Saul disappeared out the batwings, and Jake leaned forward to pick up his lukewarm beer. He swished a mouthful around before swallowing it.

  So Cravens wasn't at all perturbed about competition from either Ginny or the Cultural Center. Either that, or the man was a damned good liar. Yet Cravens' justifications made sense. More traffic in town meant he would get his own share of those customers, both for the liquor he sold and the services he provided on the second floor. If Cravens was telling the truth about how he felt, he had no rationale for sabotaging the opening of the Cultural Center.

  That meant someone else had their own reasons for the vandalism.

  The other information he'd overheard was just as confusing. Damn, he wished Charlie would open up to him. Didn't his friend realize he wouldn't judge him? He knew Charlie well enough that he figured there must have been a hell of a good reason for him to leave Samantha Fannin on her own to raise a child. Charlie's own child — or the child of some other man?

  He waved away any problem with Samantha using a different name. Hell, half the men he'd arrested used different aliases, and plenty of the women he'd run across in his life admitted to not wanting their true names known. The men's reasons were straightforward — attempts to avoid capture. The women had various other motivations. Some were running from abusive relationships; others didn't want their families to know what had become of them. Some just didn't like the name they were born with and picked one they were happier using.

  For a brief second he contemplated sending a couple wires to St. Louis. But he'd just heard how confidential Turley kept the information that went through his office. Charlie would have a kickass fit if he found out Jake was digging into his past — and Jake would be on the receiving end of the ass kicking.

  He supposed he could ride to Abilene and use that telegraph office, but that would take at least a day, then another day to go back and pick up the answers. And it woul
d be just his luck to run into a Ranger patrol — maybe General John B. Jones himself, who constantly led his company up and down the frontier area from Rio Grande City to the Red River. Damn being tied to this town under strict orders not to leave until a replacement came!

  Since he had to obey orders or face expulsion from the Rangers, maybe he should stay a little closer to Sunny. Only in order to keep abreast of what she was finding out, he assured himself. He owed Charlie that much at least, even though he'd pretty much lost his suspicion of Sunny being a gold digger after he got to know her better. However, she could yet cause his friend Charlie a whole lot of embarrassment by pursuing this nonsense about him being her father. Or was it nonsense, he wondered still.

  Shoving back his chair, he left his half-full beer on the table. For some reason he found himself whistling a rather jaunty tune as he headed out to pick up his friendship once again with the perky blond, even though he knew he should be concerned about his friend.

  ***

  Chapter 15

  Instead of stabling his horse as usual when he planned to be in town for a while, Charlie rode the palomino right up to the picket fence surrounding Cassie's house. He was tired of avoiding her — tired of a brief tip of his hat if he happened to be in town and meet her when she made one of her rare excursions out. Besides he could see down the street that the town was pretty much deserted this afternoon. Everyone was at the church for the much touted fundraising social. If anyone saw him here...well, he was also tired of pretending to have no interest in Cassie Foster's life.

  After tying his reins to the fence, he strode through the gate and up the porch steps. Memories assailed him — times when he wouldn't even have bothered to knock. Times when he wouldn't have bothered with the front door and instead gone charging around back and straight into the welcoming kitchen, not worrying about whether he had a hole in his pants knee or his hands were washed.