by Anna Schmidt
His remaining choice was between camping outside of town or taking the last available room at the boardinghouse. In the end, he had opted for the boardinghouse.
He’d met briefly with his Wells Fargo contact when that man had come through town on the stagecoach. The agent had taken a certain amount of pride in providing Seth with what he called the perfect cover for his activities. “The groundwork’s been laid for folks to think you are checking out land for potential investors from the East. Most folks won’t believe it, but after a week no one will pay your comings and goings the slightest mind. As long as you stay out of trouble,” he’d added.
But trouble was part of the job. The cover story would do for explaining why Seth often took forays into the countryside, checking out various locations. But to gather information Seth also needed to frequent local dens of pleasure, play cards, and down shots of rye whiskey with the locals. Sometimes those encounters could lead to fights. Sometimes his best source of information came from spending a night in jail with others.
Back in Whitman Falls, he’d had Lilly at the Dandy Doodle to act as an extra set of eyes and ears. Here in Tucson that would not be the case. He’d already had the opportunity to study his housemate and local bartender, Oliver Taylor, and found him to be a man with a drinking problem of his own, and far too much interest in gossiping to be of use. The landlady was the suspicious type and would be more so if he started asking questions. The current district sheriff was rumored to be in cahoots with some shady businessmen in the area and, unless Jess Porterfield could defeat him in the next election, was likely to hold his position as the local lawman. Seth was on his own. The last thing he needed was the distraction of Miss Amanda Porterfield.
The fact that the Porterfield woman would also be bunking at the boardinghouse had never occurred to him. The fact that she was in Tucson at all was bad enough. The fact that apparently she would be living close to him, taking meals with him, and generally, be aware of his comings and goings was most unsettling.
Of course, it wasn’t that she was the problem—he was. From the minute he’d laid eyes on her back in Whitman Falls, he had been unable to get her out of his mind. He wondered if his fascination with her was really a sign that it was time for him to give up his undercover work and live a normal life—with a wife and family and people who knew and accepted him for who he really was. A wife that maybe looked a lot like…
“Drop it, Grover,” he muttered, and tightened his resolve to ignore Miss Amanda Porterfield.
But sure enough, there she was, seated across from him at supper. He turned his attention to the other boarders, mentally recording their names and any possibility they might be a help or a hindrance in the work he had to do. To the Porterfield woman’s right was Mrs. Rosewood, fifties, widowed, dowdy in appearance. Next to him was a shopkeeper, Miss Jensen, who could be trouble since she was already flirting with him. Miss Dooley presided from the head of the table while Ollie, the bartender from the saloon, took his place at the foot. The food had been placed in the center of the table for the boarders to help themselves family-style, but Seth couldn’t help thinking they made a most unlikely family. Ollie had been the first to reach for the meat platter the minute Miss Dooley raised her head from the silent grace she informed them would begin every meal.
No one protested when the bartender took more than his share, and the only sounds in the room were the clink of flatware on plates, the muffled noise of street traffic from outside, and the necessity of having to chew and swallow without the cover of conversation. And through it all, Seth had the oddest feeling that Miss Porterfield was working very hard to keep a giggle at bay.
Her mouth twitched as she picked at her food and sipped her water. She kept her head down, focusing her attention on her plate, except for the couple of times she glanced at her dinner partners from under lowered lids framed in a lush fan of pale lashes. Then, as if a signal had sounded, the widow passed her plate to Ollie, who added the beef rib bones that he’d sucked clean to her leavings, then his cutlery, and passed the stack on to Miss Jensen, and so on around the table until Miss Dooley presented the stack of dishes to a hired girl who appeared from the swinging door that led to the kitchen.
A moment later, the girl returned balancing a stack of small plates and a steaming pie that she set in front of Miss Dooley. The landlady sliced the dessert expertly into six even pieces, dished a piece onto each plate, added a fork, and passed them down the line.
All this was done without uttering a single word.
The military precision with which this feat was accomplished was ridiculous, and Seth felt a bubble of laughter clog his throat at the same moment he made the mistake of glancing at Miss Porterfield. She had just taken a bite of her pie, and when she looked up, she actually winked, as if they shared a secret.
Seth frowned and concentrated on devouring his pie. This would not do. For her own safety, they could have no connection. At breakfast he would take a place at the far end of the table next to Ollie, so that looking at her would be less likely.
Seth washed down the pie with the rest of the water in his glass, wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin, and stood. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, addressing his landlady. “That was a mighty fine meal.”
“For some of us, it is still in progress,” Miss Dooley retorted, her fork in midair. “Do you have pressing business, Mr. Grover, that would prevent you from waiting until everyone has finished?”
Seth heard a soft snort and saw that Miss Porterfield had covered half her face with her napkin. The tremble of her shoulders told him she was laughing. He had to fight a smile as well because there was no denying the absurdity of the landlady’s ridiculous rules that were more appropriate for toddlers than for grown men and women.
“You’ll forgive me, ma’am, but my employer expects me to accomplish a good deal while I am here in Tucson. And while you made it quite clear that the start of the meal is sacrosanct, you said nothing about the length. Perhaps if you require your boarders to abide by your schedule, it would be best if I found other accommodations.”
He had paid her a full month’s rent in advance, although if things went well, he expected to be here less than a week. He had paid her with gold coins and had not missed the way her eyes had widened in surprise. Now she looked at him in horror.
“Not at all. You are quite within your rights to come and go as you please—within the confines of my curfews, of course.”
“Then I’ll say good night,” he replied, including the others as he placed his napkin next to his plate, pushed his chair into place, and left.
He was barely down the front steps when he heard the bartender call out to him. “Hold on there, fella. I’ll walk with you.”
“On your way to work?” Seth asked, seeing no recourse but to wait for the short, pudgy man.
“I’ve got some time. Never saw anybody stand up to the old lady the way you did. Rocked her back on her heels, all right.” He chuckled. “She’s one tough old bird, that one, but she sets a fine table.”
“You lived here long?”
“Going on five years now. Seen a number of boarders come and go—Mrs. Rosewood and me have been here the longest.”
“The widow?”
“Yeah. Keeps to herself, that one. She don’t go out much.”
They walked along in silence past the closed shops. “Now those two young misses…” Ollie continued, chuckling under his wheezing breath. “That hatmaker sitting next to you was making eyes at you, all right, and the other one? You ask me, that little girl is headed for trouble, especially once she faces the Baxter twins.” He let out a low whistle. “That whole Baxter family has got the idea they are something special. That boy is meaner than a cornered copperhead. Him and that girl will give her trouble she ain’t never thought about,” he predicted.
“Maybe you should warn her,” Seth suggested.
“Naw. No chance of that. We keep different hours, her and me. You, on the other hand…”
“Why would I say anything? I don’t know the family.”
It was at least a partial lie. Seth had had the opportunity to check up on Ezra Baxter. Whenever he moved to a new location, Seth made it his business to find out what he could about locals—especially community leaders. He had discovered that in the months following the death of his wife, Baxter had struggled in both his business and his personal life. The boy was by all reports a wild one, always at the center of any trouble from boys his age in town, and the girl—well, he didn’t know much about her. What he did know was that Baxter had taken up card playing, apparently as a way to ease his grief. He was bad at it, and he lost large sums on a regular basis. He also had a temper. Seth had not yet been at the table during one of the man’s games, but if he could believe the local gossip, Baxter was a powder keg about to explode.
Not his business, of course, but Seth had long ago learned to be aware of any potential for trouble. He turned his attention back to Oliver. “Sounds like the family has seen some tough times.”
“Haven’t we all? No reason for them to go acting like they do. You just let the little lady know that I said she should watch herself around them—the boy especially.” Ollie pulled a cigar from his shirt pocket and paused to light it, striking a match on a hitching post.
“What sort of trouble has the boy been in?”
“There’s more than one respectable female in this town who’s been accosted by that boy. Oh, nothing criminal, just takes a certain pleasure in scaring them. And that Porterfield woman being such a pretty little thing…” He drew on his cigar and shook his head.
“How old is this boy?”
“Fourteen going on twenty. I’ve had to run him off from the saloon more times than I can count. And just yesterday, the girl was caught shoplifting at the general store. Nothing came of it, of course. Folks feel sorry for them—being motherless and all—so they get away with mischief like that.”
“Well, I expect Miss Porterfield knows how to deal with mischief,” Seth said as the two men continued walking toward the saloon.
“There’s mischief, and there’s just plain meanness. These young’uns seem to enjoy hurting things—animals and people alike.”
“Sounds like somebody ought to speak to the father.”
“He’s the cause of it all—takes a belt to those kids at the drop of a hat. Not your usual punishment, either. Folks say there’s a cruelty to it—that he don’t know when to stop. I’m telling you, it’s her who needs warning. Their daddy has his own problems.” They had reached the far end of the street where three saloons were open. Ollie headed for one of them. “You coming in?”
“Not tonight,” Seth replied, and tipped his hat before moving on past the saloons to the livery stable where he’d boarded his horse.
He supposed he could slip a note under Amanda Porterfield’s door—anonymous, just warning her to watch her back. He didn’t need to get involved in her business. There certainly was no need for a conversation she might take as him being interested in developing a friendship. The way she had winked at suppertime already indicated that she was the sort who liked getting to know those around her. No doubt because they had met in the mercantile in Whitman Falls—even though she had denied remembering that—and having sized up the rest of the boarders, she had decided he was the most likely candidate to be her friend.
And the one thing Seth Grover had realized was that if a man needed to keep his true business a secret, he did not allow anyone to get too close. He’d made that mistake once, and it had ended in disaster.
* * *
The first thing Amanda noticed when she woke on her first full day in Tucson was a small folded piece of white paper near her door. The second was the smell of coffee and fried meat wafting up from downstairs. The third was that she had just fifteen minutes to dress and get down to breakfast, or incur the wrath of Miss Dooley. She could already hear the high-pitched chatter of Miss Jensen as she talked to someone on her way downstairs.
Wanting to get off to a good start on her first day, Amanda ignored the note lying on the floor, scrubbed her face at the small basin in her room, cast off her nightgown, and hurriedly donned the clothes she’d laid out on the room’s only chair. She twisted her hair into a topknot and anchored it as best she could while hopping on one foot as she thrust the other into a slipper. That would have to do until she could return to her room after breakfast and finish dressing. Tonight she would meet her pupils for the first time, and she intended to use this day to see what she could learn about them from others in town.
As she opened the door and stepped into the hallway, she heard the first of six chimes on the clock Miss Dooley kept on the mantel in the sitting room. Before closing and locking the door to her room, she picked up the note, thrust it into her pocket, and raced down the stairs, reaching her place at the table just as Miss Dooley bowed her head for the mandatory silent grace.
Under the guise of prayer, Amanda glanced around the table and immediately noticed that Mr. Grover had elected to sit elsewhere. She felt insulted. Did he think she’d flirted with him at supper the night before? She most definitely had not. If she had shared a glance with him, it was in the spirit of kindred souls who saw the humor in the landlady’s regimen. If anyone was flirting with the man, it was Miss Jensen, who had batted her eyelashes so much that Amanda had been sure the woman had an uncontrollable twitch.
Well, she had far more important things to think about than to worry about why the man, once again dressed all in black—although he appeared to have left his gun in his room—had decided not to sit across from her. Even so, it did not escape her notice that he had selected a chair that would make eye contact between them nearly impossible, especially with the dour Mrs. Rosewood seated between them.
The hired girl, whose name Amanda had learned was Bessie, made the rounds pouring coffee for everyone except Mrs. Rosewood, who was served tea in a beautiful china cup. Mr. Taylor reached for the platter of sausages and eggs the minute Miss Dooley raised her head and placed her napkin on her lap. As seemed to be his habit, the bartender took more than a single portion of the food. He passed the platter to Mr. Grover, who offered it first to Mrs. Rosewood before serving himself. At least he had manners, Amanda admitted grudgingly as she accepted the bowl of fried potatoes Miss Dooley passed to her.
She took some and then turned to offer the bowl to Mrs. Rosewood. The widow ignored her, and at the same time, Mr. Grover held out the platter of eggs and sausages to Amanda, who saw no alternative but to trade serving dishes with him, her fingers brushing his in the process. Once the exchange had been made, she noticed how he silently offered to serve Mrs. Rosewood. The widow nodded and smiled slightly.
Amanda rolled her eyes. So not only was the milliner taken by the handsome Mr. Grover, but so was the grieving widow. Well, she would not be lured into whatever game he was playing. Clearly, he was a man so arrogant that he collected female hearts like trophies. He would just have to accept that her heart was not a collector’s item.
They ate in silence again, ignoring as best they could the chomping, slurping sounds emanating from Mr. Taylor’s end of the table. At supper the night before, she had found the scene amusing. This morning, with everything on her mind regarding the Baxter twins and her new job, she found it irritating.
Bessie came out to refill coffee cups and retreated again into the kitchen. Amanda could hear the ticking of the clock from across the hall. The beats seemed in perfect rhythm with the beating of her heart. Suddenly, she thought of her family back on the ranch, sharing breakfast and talking over one another as they shared news and plans for the day to come, and the vision of sitting at this table—day in and night out—with no conversation, no laughter, no interaction at all, was more than she could take.
“How was your evening at work
, Mr. Taylor?” she ventured.
Everyone froze as Ollie glanced nervously at Miss Dooley. Everyone except Mr. Grover. “It certainly seemed as if that end of town was busy,” he added, ignoring the way others glanced nervously at their landlady.
Well, she did not need—or want—his support. “Have you lived in Tucson long, Mr. Taylor?” she continued.
“Five years,” Ollie finally managed.
“And what about you, Miss Dooley?” Amanda continued, even though Mr. Baxter had already offered details of her landlady’s past. But she focused on Miss Dooley deliberately because she could practically feel Mr. Grover studying her with amusement.
Miss Dooley released a long, exasperated sigh. “Is it the will of all gathered that we partake in conversation during mealtimes?” she asked.
“All in favor?” Mr. Grover said as he raised his hand. Immediately, so did Mrs. Rosewood and Miss Jensen. “Looks like a majority, Miss Dooley,” he said softly. “I mean, I assume since she spoke out that Miss Porterfield is in favor of the motion.”
“I’ll vote for talk at supper,” Ollie announced. “But leave me out of it in the morning. All I want is to eat and get some sleep.” He stood and left the room.
“Very well,” Miss Dooley said. “However, there is to be no discussion of religion or politics—those topics can upset digestion. Agreed?”
The four remaining boarders nodded. Miss Dooley turned to Amanda. “I was born and raised here. I have watched this town develop from nothing to what it has become today.”
Amanda smiled. “Then I wonder if you would be amenable to coming to speak to my students one day?”
“Why on earth would you want me to speak with your students?”
“I can’t imagine that I will be able to maintain discipline if they have to listen to me lecture them for hours day after day. It would be wonderful to surprise them now and then by inviting local people to engage their minds and imaginations.”