Mercury's Rise (Silver Rush 04)

by Ann Parker

  “My favorite, as you well know.” She moved past him to the table and chairs in the sitting room, saying, “We must talk. Now.”

  Mark poured a measure of brandy into each glass, picked one up, and swirled the liquid around. “Yes, we must. But first,” he handed her the glass and picked up the other, “to a truce.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “A truce? What kind of truce?”

  He set his glass down. “Now, darlin’. You sent for me, remember, and reading between the lines, I gathered you were in some distress, so dropped everything and came right away. I’m here to help. But in return, I want something from you.” He looked at her, his blue eyes colorless, taking light from the table lamp.

  She drew back. “How dare you presume!”

  “Darlin’, don’t you presume.” He sat down at the table, and indicated the chair opposite. “Here’s the deal. You tell me what the trouble is, and what you want me to do. In return, we set our differences aside and act the happy family, and present a solid front. To your family. To William. No washing dirty linen in public. You remain civil to me, and I to you.”

  Inez cradled the warming glass, watching him closely. “That’s all?”

  “That’s all. I only ask that you hear me out without shooting at me.”

  “Ha!” She set the glass down with a tink. “I knew it. You want me to halt divorce proceedings. That’s what you’re really after.”

  Mark rolled his glass between his hands. “I’d be lying if I said no. I’m hoping once I tell you my side of the story, explain what happened after I left our house that day, that you’ll give it due consideration and eventually take me back.”

  “So. You want me to sit here while you spin out your tale.”

  “I want you to listen without interrupting. To hear me out to the end.”

  Rather than answer right away, Inez brought the glass to her mouth and let the brandy slide in. The spirits-filled heat in her mouth hinted of apples and recalled a hot summer evening, long ago. She and Mark lay on a grassy hill, brandy close at hand, the night heat having sapped all their energy. Her head rested on Mark’s chest, riding the rise and fall of his breath. All her senses had been captive to the act of inhalation and exhalation, and by the panorama of a dark sky invaded by stars.

  Inez set the glass and her memories aside. “Very well. Since this involves my sister and her husband, I will listen. And I won’t interrupt.”

  She crossed her arms. Mark raised one eyebrow.

  Inez shrugged. “The deal didn’t include that I believe you. Only that I listen.”

  “Fair enough. I know you can sniff out a lie quicker’n a coon dog can pick up the scent of a ring-tailed bandit. I’d be a fool to lie to you, Inez.”

  Mark tipped another inch of brandy into her glass, and an equal measure into his own.

  He began. “Last year, May ninth. Our boy just turned five months old. We’d been talking about selling the saloon, moving on for his health. Going to Denver or maybe making our big move to San Francisco.”

  Inez kept her arms crossed, her back rigid. Would he really think I need reminding? The day is branded on my mind and heart forever. She said, “You said you were going to talk to some possible buyers for the saloon. You thought you could play one off another, see who would offer the most.”

  He held up a finger, like a teacher gently remonstrating a truculent student. “My time to talk, Inez. That’s our deal.” He continued, “I made all the arrangements, signed the papers. Had money in my pocket from a handshake deal backed by cash.”

  He stopped, took a deep breath, and said, “I was on my way to the Silver Queen, bringing the papers for you and Abe to sign and put the cash in the safe, when I did something stupid.” He swirled the brandy in his glass, took another taste, set it down and said, “I stopped for a drink at the Comique. Just a quick one, you understand. I was trying to settle my mind on our next steps, thinking about how long it’d take to complete the transactions and when we might be able to leave Leadville.”

  He had been leaning forward, over the table. He now settled back and looked directly at Inez. “I said I wouldn’t lie and I won’t. I was talking to one of the actresses who had finished up a two-night show. She was saying good-bye to the folks she knew, and I offered to buy her a drink. We talked.”

  Inez squinched her eyes shut, as if that would make his words disappear. Actresses. Always, it was actresses.

  “Darlin’, I swear. We only talked.”

  “Go on,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Anyhow, I suppose I must’ve been a little careless and someone got a look at the roll I was carryin’. Because when I went out back to Stillborn Alley to relieve myself, he must’ve followed me.” He stopped and passed a hand over his eyes. “Going through the door to the alley is the last thing I remember.”

  The Comique. He was just halfway down the block, other side of the street from the Silver Queen. Inez picked up her brandy with shaking hands and took a larger mouthful than was prudent, ignoring the burn as it raced down her throat.

  “As to what happened then,” Mark said, “I only know what I was told. When I didn’t come back after a while, the actress sent some Johnny-boy out to look for me. He found me bleeding in the mud, head stove in, stripped of near everything except what God gave me at birth, and damn near dead. The actress, Josephine’s her name, had me bundled in a blanket, carried to her wagon, and she took me with her out of town.”

  Inez leaned forward, incredulous. “You bought her one drink. You talked. You were beaten, and she took you with her? Like you were some homeless mongrel she found on a street corner?”

  “I know, I know.” He sounded tired. “Later, I heard I wasn’t the only one who was unlucky that night. I heard the papers called it the bloodiest night in Leadville’s calendar. Garrotings, robberies, assaults, killings on State Street, Harrison Avenue, up on Capitol Hill, on the road to Malta…But I didn’t find all that out until much later.”

  “I remember that night.” She looked away, so he couldn’t see her pain. “Later, when we could not find you anywhere, I thought you had been killed in the melee. That you had been robbed, killed, tossed down some abandoned mine shaft.”

  He didn’t remonstrate her for interrupting, simply tipped more brandy into her glass. “Josephine tells me she thought I’d died six times over the following two days. She finally found a doctor, only to have him tell her she’d do better to set aside money for a coffin rather than spend it on bandages, ointments, and restoratives. Josephine’s not a woman to believe anything she doesn’t want to hear. I gather she threw him out, swearing he was a charlatan and a carpetbagger. Still, it was months before I recovered my senses.”

  “How many?” Inez asked.

  Mark frowned. “How many what?”

  “Months.”

  He looked at the gas flame in the lamp, brow furrowed. “Six, maybe seven. And my leg didn’t heal for a long while. It still isn’t right, even now. All that time, we kept moving. She had to go where the work was, so we crisscrossed Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico territory…never did come back to Leadville.”

  I’ll bet she made sure of that. Inez bit her tongue to keep the words from escaping.

  “When I was finally well enough,” he said, “I told her everything. That I was married. That I’d left you waiting in Leadville that night. That I had a son, and would have to go back. And I started writing letters, to you and Abe.”

  “We never got them,” Inez said tersely. “Not a single one. Did you give them to Josephine to mail?”

  He looked at her in honest surprise.

  Inez sighed and looked away. How can a man be so smart about the ways of men yet so stupid about women? He gave her letters to mail, and she probably threw them away, first chance she got.

  “In every letter I sent,” he continued, “I asked that you reply to me care of General Delivery, Denver. We crossed through Denver every few months, and I’d check. But I never got a reply from
you or Abe. So, I thought, maybe you’d both just given me up for dead and sold the saloon. Maybe Abe had headed to New Orleans or San Francisco, and maybe you’d gone back East, home to your family, with William. It took a while, but I finally remembered your family’s address in New York. I sent letters there, to you, to your father, your mother.” He shook his head. “No one answered. But I was certain that was where you’d gone. I figured maybe your father wasn’t giving you the letters…after all, he’d been against our marriage from the start, and would probably be glad to have you think I was dead and gone. So, I thought, well, I’d start all over again. Go back to gambling, since we were traveling so much, and make enough to bring you and William back. When I had enough, I figure’d head east, knock on your daddy’s door, and win you back.”

  Inez shook her head at the impossibility of it all, the upside-down nature of what she was hearing. She picked up her snifter, deciding that, yes, she needed another sip, or two, or more, to get through the rest of the evening.

  Mark said, “It was sheer luck that I happened on the divorce notice in the Rocky Mountain News. I had to read it several times to accept what I was seeing: You were still in Leadville. We were in Denver at the time. Josephine had to head to Kansas City, and I told her I would be returning to Leadville.” He stopped and looked steadily at Inez. “I took the first train up I could get. You know the rest.”

  I don’t know “the rest” by half. She had questions, so many questions demanding to be asked. Things that didn’t make sense about his story, questions about Josephine and their relationship during his time away. But the expression on his face couldn’t have said it plainer if he’d shouted: he was done talking about his life during those missing months. Done for now.

  Still…

  She leaned forward, having to ask, needing to read his face when he answered, to see if he was telling the whole truth, a half truth, or an outright lie. “Did you really write letters while you were recovering and afterwards? You wrote to Leadville, and back to New York?”

  He lifted one hand wearily and dropped it. “What shall I swear on that will convince you I’m telling the truth? On my mother’s grave? The Bible? How about on our son, since the blood that runs through his veins belongs to both of us.” He gave her a level stare. “I swear on our son that I tried to reach you, in every way I could.”

  She waited. “Are you done? Have I performed ‘adequately’ to fulfill my side of the bargain?”

  He shifted in his chair. “I’m done. Now, what’s the real story here at the Mountain Springs House.”

  Inez drank deeply and waited for the liquor to warm her limbs and soften her words. Then, she started from the beginning, with the terrifying trip from Leadville and Mr. Pace’s death.

  She finished with the Herb Paris, Calder’s near-miss, the wild buggy ride and unfortunate demise of the livery horse. At that point, her glass was empty and the bottle nearly so. “I realized that I wasn’t making much headway,” she said slowly. “If this were Leadville, it would be different. But I’m too bound here. Too confined by rules and society expectations, too concerned for family.” She shook her head. “I realized I needed help. I thought that if anyone could help me get to the bottom of the doings here, it would be you.” The words were bitter and difficult to say, but she said them.

  Inez added, “They are obviously hungry for investors at the hotel. I understand they are planning to expand and grow their operations. Everyone is expecting a boom in Manitou. When will it come? Hard to say. But the sick, the dying, they arrive in ever-increasing numbers, looking for a miracle. Right now, many seem to believe that miracle will arise from Dr. Prochazka. I suppose those who are behind the Mountain Springs House are eager to keep that belief alive and fan the flame. On the other hand, the people who do not recover, who falter and fail despite the best treatments…well, how convenient for all if they just go away in some way or another, wouldn’t you think?”

  Mark nodded somberly. “You still have Mrs. Pace’s medicine bottle from the stagecoach?”

  The bottle was safely tucked away in one of her hat boxes. Inez brought it to Mark. He looked it over carefully, rubbed his thumb along the stopper, and removed it to sniff at the vapors trapped inside. “Can’t tell anything through the mint,” he said, and restoppered it. “Why would they want to kill Mrs. Pace?”

  “Because she was working to convince her husband to back off from investing here? Because she was outspoken about the efficacy of the medical treatments?”

  “But why kill the man’s wife? Seems that would halt any chance of gaining an investor. Particularly if the tonic was to blame.”

  “She has a weak heart,” Inez explained. “If she had taken her dose and died in Leadville, it would have been put down to the altitude and her condition. None would consider a tonic she had been taking all summer without ill effects.”

  Mark looked away, deep in thought. The gas-fed flame inside the glass lampshade hissed and flared.

  “Strange,” he said finally.

  “What is strange?”

  He glanced at her, smoothed his mustache, and then said, “You recall I’ve started a Friday night poker game for out-of-towners.”

  “Of course,” she said stiffly.

  He continued. “The night before you left, I had a couple of wealthy greenhorns from back East show up. They were taking in the town, looking over the mines, weighing where best to put their money. The desk clerk from the Clairmont directed them my way, saying if they wanted to take part in a friendly game of the better sort, to go to the Silver Queen and tell Mark Stannert that he’d sent them over.” A brief smile flashed over his face. “That boy has a lot of horse-sense. He only sends the ones primed to have a good time and with money to spend.” Then he sobered. “One of the men was named Pace.”

  Inez sat up straighter, dread welling up inside. “Mark. You didn’t.”

  Mark sighed and splayed one hand on the table. The light winked off his wedding ring. “I was sociable and hospitable as always, but this Pace fellow was a constant complainer. Going on about Leadville being washed up, no opportunities, on its way to being a ghost town once the silver disappeared. Ended up driving most of the other players away, until it was just him, me, and another greenhorn from Tabor’s hotel.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “Pace made some bad moves at the table, and I wasn’t inclined to be lenient. He got under my skin, so I decided it would be an opportune time to provide him with a different kind of ‘investment opportunity’ and add to our bank account, courtesy of his funds.”

  “Oh no, Mark.” She rested her head in her hands.

  “Well, darlin’, how was I to know what would happen and that you’d take up with his widow, of all people? Anyhow, I relieved him of all he carried and then some. Although I won’t press the widow with the script he signed. Didn’t plan to push it any further, as it was.”

  “Oh, Mark.” She couldn’t come up with anything else to say.

  The drumming ceased. “I regret the loss of self-control. It’s possible, you know, that it was his heart that gave out, just as the doctor said. I’d bet my bottom dollar he didn’t tell his wife of his night at the Silver Queen. Probably weighed heavily upon him.”

  Inez looked up. “Then, there is all the more reason to resolve this. If it’s all a coincidence, although someone pushing me down the stairs and trying to poison Calder’s horse doesn’t seem very coincidental, you can at least advise Harmony’s husband on the validity of this possible investment he is poised to make. So, are you talking to Lewis tomorrow? Is he planning to show you the sights and give you his pitch?”

  “It’ll be a regular party. Messieurs Lewis, Epperley, and DuChamps, along with a Dr. Zuckerman. Early breakfast, a walk around the grounds, then meet the hotel’s physician. I guess he’s the star of the show.”

  “Listen well to what they say, ask appropriate questions, and wave your bankbook under their noses if they seem suspicious. While you do that, I shall go talk to the wid
ow Pace, and do some looking around for myself.”

  Mark stood. “Just be sure to be back by ten in the morning, and dressed for a drive. I’ve made arrangements for a family excursion tomorrow. You, me, William. Horse and buggy.”

  Inez narrowed her eyes. “Why didn’t you mention this sooner?”

  “I’m mentioning it now, which is the first chance I’ve had.” He rubbed his face. “It’s been a long day on the train. Meeting all your relatives on top of it took me by surprise. That aunt of yours seems smart as a steel trap and able to whip her weight in wild cats. Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea for us to take William and go for a ride. Give us a chance to get to know our son again.”

  I know my own son. The retort died unuttered, as she realized the few days of awkward and intermittent contact with William had only proved that she really didn’t know him. Not that well, not yet.

  She said instead, “I should warn you, William did not remember me.” The memory of their initial meeting was still too fresh and painful to elaborate on. “Even now, he approaches me almost as if I were a stranger. And they call him Wilkie.”

  “Wilkie.” He looked bemused. “Not a bad handle. Sounds like an actor.”

  “My son will never go on the stage.” Inez rose abruptly. “Let’s not let our talk veer in that direction. I believe it’s time to bring the evening to a close.” She hesitated, and then said, “Thank you for coming, Mark. I would not have asked for your help, if I could have thought of anyone else who could do this.”

  “Then I’m all the more honored that you would turn to me, despite your misgivings,” said Mark.

  “Just don’t let me down. As you have so often in the past.” She walked to her bedroom.

  Mark followed. “‘You wound, like Parthians, while you fly, and kill with a retreating eye.’ Haven’t changed a bit, have you. Always with the last word, on the way out the door.”