Fowler began to swing a pocket watch before Rebekah's wide, unblinking eyes. Within moments, her face started to change. Her brow furrowed. Her jaw hardened. Her scowl made her look older and more masculine. Suddenly, a voice like thunder boomed from her lips: "I am Emmanuel."
Everyone jumped in their seats. Ladies in the front row began to sob.
Sadie rolled her eyes. Here we go.
Rebekah proved to be a masterful performer. She could answer any question posed about the Bible. In fact, she could quote the text backwards, starting at random pages. She could translate passages fluently in Hebrew, Arabic, and Greek. Whenever people accused her of spouting gibberish, she would turn her burning, black eyes on the skeptics and reveal their personal secrets, a feat which left them red-faced and sputtering.
Sadie wondered how much Fowler had paid these shills to sit in his audience.
By the end of the show, supposedly intelligent adults were prostrating themselves at Rebekah's feet. Ladies tore off diamond rings, pearl necklaces, and silver broaches. Gentlemen dumped out the contents of their wallets. As Sadie watched Denver's nouveau riche succumb to religious frenzy, she could completely understand how the doddering elder, Lilybelle Welbourn, might have pledged her family jewels to Fowler.
Sadie did some rapid calculations in her head. Fowler's troupe performed two times a day, seven days a week. Even if he'd arranged the usual 60/40 split with the house, she estimated a sell-out crowd would earn him $2,000 per performance—and that was just from the door receipts. Judging by the number of True Believers, who were now mobbing the reservation table for private appointments, Fowler could easily rake in another $1,000 today from the people who were clamoring to see Emmanuel—or rather, Rebekah.
Sadie's jaw hardened. The time had come to put this child-peddling huckster behind bars.
Plotting to search Fowler's hotel room, Sadie left her seat and jostled her way to the lobby. To her annoyance, she spied Cass with a smoking cigarette, waiting for her beside the elevator. Sheathed in his trademark black, he'd propped his athletic leanness against the wall and tucked a heel beneath his buttocks. This casual pose let his duster gape, as if to testify he'd shed his double-holstered rig, per the city ordinance. Nevertheless, Sadie had no doubt he was armed—and in places where most lawmen wouldn't think of searching.
Her feet faltered.
Her ex-lover stood as still as a lamppost amidst bobbing bowlers and jaunty beaver hats. Nevertheless, he got noticed. Frequently. Even when he wasn't trying, Cass exuded a feral magnetism. Appreciative ladies blushed and giggled in his presence; scowling beaux hustled their sheep-eyed sweethearts past his wolfish grin.
Sadie glared at the traitor.
Cass was looking at her—or maybe at Mace's topaz—with flame-blue eyes that shot sparks up her spine. Cass had always been able to melt the iciest virginal resolve. But after last night's stunt with the opium-coated putty, she'd be damned if she succumbed to his roguish charms!
She was just envisioning the pleasure of grinding her heel into his foot, when she noticed Mace. Her boss lurked among Fowler's camp followers, who had nothing better to do between shows than park their rears and clutter up the hotel's two staircases. Like a great hulking spider, the detective sat amidst the chattering sycophants. He was watching every move Cass made.
Sadie groaned. She didn't dare take the elevator now. If Cass challenged her about the topaz—and he would—all hell would break loose. Mace's suspicions about her missing emeralds would be confirmed.
Sadie turned toward the staircase, only to spy another obstacle: Collie and his ever-present...
Wait a minute. Where's Vandy?
Alarm bells tolled in her head. Collie's coon stirred up more trouble than a coyote in a hen house. She quailed to imagine the little fiend in her hotel room, gnawing on her lip paint or crapping on her pillow. She shot the boy a dark, foreboding glare, the kind Wilma drilled into chatty recruits.
But Collie wasn't a Pinkie recruit. He was a 17-year-old hillbilly, who regarded moonshine like mother's milk. He got his jollies by picking door locks and eavesdropping under windows.
As if guessing her thoughts, the boy smirked and tipped his hat.
"Lady Fiore!"
Sadie nearly jumped out of her skin to hear this panicked, female voice call her alias.
"Oh, thank heaven I found you!"
Cautiously, Sadie peered around a luggage cart, piled six-feet high with traveling trunks. Wyntir was navigating her way past a 10-foot sterling statue of Horace Tabor. Huffing and puffing, the young heiress clutched her blue-velvet hem just shy of the scandalous height of her ankles.
"Oh mio dio!" Sadie responded in her best diva voice. "Slow down, signorina! What is all the fuss?"
Wyntir dutifully reined in, but she looked on the verge of hyperventilation. "Please don't think poorly of me," she begged. "Dante so rarely leaves the manor house in the mornings. I took the opportunity to sneak into town. I never expected him to come here! I know it's a dreadful imposition, but please, oh please, tell him we've spent the morning together—shopping!"
Sadie hiked an eyebrow. Trouble in paradise?
Now she could see the handsome physician shaking rain from his overcoat. Apparently, he'd just entered the hotel through the Larimer Street door.
Sadie cast Wyntir a sidelong glance. "You attended the prayer meeting behind Dante's back?"
Wyntir blushed to the roots of her raven-black hair. "I know it sounds terribly childish, but I wanted to meet with Rebekah. Dante won't let me have friends who talk to ghosts!"
"You, uh, have other friends, who talk to ghosts?"
"Well... yes," Wyntir admitted. "Papa and I used to host meetings of the Spiritual Telegraph at Greyfell Manor. It was our way of being close to Mama. But after Papa's death, Dante forbade me to host séances at the house." Wyntir's eyes filled with tears. "How else am I supposed to speak to my parents? I don't have the Seer's Gift!"
Sadie fidgeted. Although she didn't share Wyntir's belief in ghosts, she did share the pain of being suddenly and cruelly orphaned. "To have such a protective guardian must feel confining," Sadie murmured in consolation.
"Oh no, you mustn't think that," Wyntir protested, looking chagrined. "Dante's the best thing that ever happened to me. He took me under his wing when I had no one else to turn to. He helped me through the most dreadful of times—times when I thought I might never be happy again. I love him! I couldn't live without him!"
Sadie steeled her features against a show of cynicism. Granted, there were things in the world she couldn't live without. But not one on her list was a man.
"Carina," she said gently, "have you told Dante how important your faith is to you?"
"Of course, but..." Wyntir bit her lip, twisting her handkerchief in her hands. "He doesn't believe in spirits. He doesn't even believe in God," she whispered hoarsely, as if she feared she would be struck by lightning. "I pray for him every night before I sleep, and every morning when I rise. What else can I do? I couldn't bear it if he left me!"
With new eyes, Sadie watched the psychiatrist. Dante had stopped at the hatcheck counter to surrender his bowler. As he bent his head to sign a receipt, light from the lamp at his elbow shot rich threads of chestnut through his hair. He was one of those rare gentlemen, who disdained wax to avoid "hat head," probably because his hair was so thick, it defied compression. Sadie found herself admiring the incongruously playful curl, spilling across his high brow.
Suddenly, she felt compelled to raise her sights toward the elevator. Cass was tapping ash into a silver spittoon, conveniently located near his boots. He was frowning at the way she'd ogled Dante.
Good, she thought uncharitably.
"Yoo-hoo!" a croaking female yodeled across the lobby. "Is that you, Dante, dear?"
Wyntir sucked in her breath, digging cherry-red, lacquered fingernails into Sadie's forearm. "Matters just got worse!"
"They did?"
"Infinitely worse," Wyntir assure
d her.
The heiress's gaze was riveted on a wizened, stoop-shouldered dowager in a dilapidated fox stole. As the elder shuffled toward the hatcheck counter, she dragged an enormous orange-and-yellow carpetbag across the tiles and slapped the hands of any bellhop foolish enough to reach for it.
"That's Mrs. Welbourn," Wyntir whispered. "She was sitting beside me during Rebekah's performance. Come on! We have to head her off!"
Lilybelle Welbourn? Sadie hid her delight. For three days, she'd been trying to figure out a way to meet the Welbourn family without revealing her Pinkerton affiliation.
But as Wyntir made the introductions, Sadie's delight turned to bemusement.
"Well, I'll be dinged!" Lilybelle cried.
Squinting through gold-rimmed spectacles, the dowager leaned toward Sadie for a closer look. Breaths bearing the distinctive trace of chamomile, mixed with whiskey, wafted across Sadie's face.
"You're a Skinwalker!"
"I'm a... er, what?" Sadie inquired politely, wrinkling her nose.
"Don't you dare deny it!" Lilybelle wagged a gnarled forefinger under Sadie's nose. "I know a Skinwalker when I see one! You have yellow eyes, just like you do in your coyote form!"
Wyntir cleared her throat. "Um... Mrs. Welbourn spent some time among the Navajo people."
"That I did." The dowager loosed a raspy chuckle. "Took two braves as my lovers—under the same full moon. Now that was something to howl about."
Wyntir's face flooded with color.
Sadie's lips twitched.
"Fiore agreed to attend my birthday party," Wyntir said hastily, attempting to change the subject and prevent social suicide all in one breath. "Isn't that splendid?"
Lilybelle snorted. "Splendid is my age. Throw a party when you're 91. Then you'll have something to celebrate." She began rummaging in her carpetbag. Lots of mysterious clanking ensued. "So, Lady Coyote," she said, finally retrieving a sugar-dusted tin. "Did you come to Denver for the opera? I hear your compatriot, Dolce LaRocca, holed up here, in Tabor's toothpick palace. Maybe you should warn her about the Daredevil."
"That was frightful news," Wyntir breathed, turning wide, worried eyes to Sadie. "Dante and I were horrified when we read the account this morning in the Rocky. Thank heavens you're safe! You must have been terrified. Not to mention outraged!"
"Coyotes don't get mad," Lilybelle said sagely. "They get even."
Lilybelle doesn't know the half of it, Sadie mused, watching Cass prowl within earshot. He settled in a cowhide chair outside the Cattleman's Saloon and ordered a boot buff. Sadie had no doubt he was eavesdropping.
Weasel.
"You gonna put a curse on his dillywhacker?"
Sadie jumped half a foot at Lilybelle's question.
"That's what I'd do to the Daredevil," the dowager confided over Wyntir's sputtered objections.
"Such novel ideas you Americans have," Sadie said drolly.
Lilybelle flashed a cherubic smile. "Jelly donut?" she offered, thrusting the tin at Sadie.
"I know I'm famished!" Wyntir said, her laughter growing strained as she watched Dante shake the hand of an acquaintance. She tried to drag Lilybelle out of sight, behind the luggage cart. "Perhaps we should make our reservations for lunch."
"Nonsense. I didn't smuggle jelly donuts into Tabor's drafty firetrap because I want chilblains. I brought them to lure Tahoma back from the Great Beyond!" Lilybelle planted a lusty kiss on her fox's snout. "Strawberry was his favorite," she confided, "when he was in his human form."
Sadie fixed a smile on her face and tried not to groan. So Tahoma is the reason why Minx consulted a psychiatrist in the Welbourn case?
"But darling, you've eaten three of Tahoma's donuts already," Wyntir cajoled, desperately trying to hide her face from Dante. "Surely that can't be healthy."
"Ha! Three donuts a day keep the doctor away. I'm as fit as a fiddle. You see any other 91-year-old woman, strutting her stuff around this hotel?
"Dang," Lilybelle muttered. The donut she'd been waving under Wyntir's nose had spouted a leak. Red goo gushed between her fingers, plopped on the younger woman's skirt, and splattered Lilybelle's shoes.
The dowager scowled. "Dante," she bellowed in a voice three times her size, "bring Wynnie your handkerchief. She messed on me!"
Wyntir looked like she wanted to crawl into a portmanteau when a bemused Dante turned in her direction. If the good doctor was disturbed by the sight of his ward in a sea of Fowler's sycophants, he hid his annoyance when he crossed the lobby.
"Is there a problem, ladies?" he greeted in his cultured, East Coast baritone.
"My dress is ruined!" Wyntir wailed.
"Yeah?" Lilybelle retorted. "Well, my greedy strumpet of a daughter-in-law is trying to lock me in an asylum!"
Unperturbed by these outbursts, Dante nodded to Sadie, passed Wyntir his handkerchief, and acknowledged Lilybelle's complaint with a gallant bow.
"I won't let that happen, dear lady."
The dowager raised adoring eyes to her hero. "Of course you won't! That's why Harridan—I mean, Sheridan—stiffed you for your fee and hired that buggerhead, Baines." Lilybelle cackled, elbowing Dante in the ribs. "You should have seen the look on Harridan's face when I told her I tossed my diamonds in the Platte. I'm tempted to do it for real this time, just to see if she'll jump in after them!"
Sadie steeled herself against a frown. Had Minx been hired to solve a theft that never occurred?
"You are fond of practical jokes, signora?" Sadie asked, careful to keep the accusation from her tone.
"All's fair in love and court. Ain't that right, Dante?"
Dante smiled. A rare power, like dawn breaking through a storm, radiated from that smile. Even Sadie was momentarily captivated—which surprised her. God knew, she'd seen plenty of charming smiles on handsome men. Cass's roguish dimples came painfully to mind.
"Put your mind at rest, my dear Mrs. Welbourn," Dante said. "Professor Baines may have a reputation, but it fails to do justice to the profession of Psychology. As an expert witness in a conservator hearing, Baines would lack credibility with a judge, just as his hypnotism research lacks credibility with the university's Board of Regents. You have nothing to worry about."
"That's what Tahoma said." Lilybelle flashed her impish grin. "Only he knows where my diamonds and rubies went. And I had Brother Enoch swear him to secrecy!"
Dante frowned.
Wyntir fidgeted.
"Perhaps Brother Enoch's spirits could tell me where my diamonds went," Sadie interceded, dabbing woefully at the corners of her eyes. "I do not think this Daredevil means to return them."
"My dear contessa." Dante turned to her, looking concerned. "You have been through an unholy ordeal. You are alone, vulnerable in a strange country. In good conscience as a gentleman, and as a medical doctor, I cannot allow you to spend a single lira on false hopes, which is all Enoch Fowler can provide. I traveled into town to offer my condolences, but more importantly, to offer my support to help you recover from such a reprehensible violation."
Pleased by his consideration, Sadie sneaked a glance at Cass. He made a great show of yawning behind his hand. She wanted to punch out his lights.
"How kind you are, dottore. It has been so long since I have had a trustworthy gentleman on whom I can rely."
"Dante, I was just telling Fiore—while we were window shopping," Wyntir added hastily, "that you were as horrified as I was to read the news about Daredevil."
Lilybelle nodded. "That young whippersnapper should have his hide nailed to an outhouse wall. And if I were 10 years younger, I'd do it myself!"
Cass grinned.
Sadie struggled to hide her annoyance. "A man who would commit such a crime must be very stupid, no?" She made sure she spoke loudly enough for Cass to hear. "To pit himself against your fine, American policemen? To waste his best years in some disease-infested prison?"
"The criminal intellect is often misunderstood," Dante cautioned her gently. "He might ha
ve a rare, hidden genius. A contempt for the trivial life. Most likely, he is thrilled by danger."
Cass nodded smugly.
Sadie wanted to groan. Good Lord, don't encourage him!
"What woman would be safe from such a man?" Wyntir breathed. "Fiore, you simply cannot spend another night in this hotel! Come stay with me and Dante. We have Dobermans, servants, and a spiky, eight-foot fence to keep out vandals. We can even bar the windows if we have to! You'll be safe with us on East Colfax Avenue. Won't she, Dante?"
Dante's deeply compelling stare made Sadie's skin flush. "Wyntir has a point. You should not be without an escort. Denver hasn't left its frontier roots far behind. This town is still teeming with men of questionable moral character. Clearly, the hotel hasn't taken sufficient measures to protect its guests. But at Greyfell Manor, you'll be among friends. We have plenty of bedrooms."
At his mention of bedrooms, heat sizzled from Sadie's scalp to her toes. Her libidinous flush embarrassed her. Even if the gold flecks in Dante's eyes smoldered like tiny bonfires, and she liked the mountain-fresh way he smelled, he'd given her no legitimate reason to conclude he was proposing a tryst. Indeed, he'd demonstrated nothing but professional courtesy since they'd met.
Maybe that was the problem, she mused. The respect he'd shown her made his hospitality especially tempting. A wounded part of her yearned for platonic comfort after Cass had been such a louse. A stay on Colfax Avenue might unearth all kinds of useful intelligence about Minx's disappearance.
Unfortunately, detective work often required a Pinkie to paste on a beard and crawl through a window in the dead of night. How was she supposed to explain such behavior to a psychiatrist? And how was she supposed to sneak out of Greyfell Manor while Dobermans were prowling the premises?
Reluctantly, she declined Dante's offer.
"You are like an answered prayer, carino. But I would not wish to insult Signore Tabor after he has given me his personal assurance, he will see to my safety," she lied glibly. "It is a matter of diplomacy between our two countries. I am sure you understand."
Wyntir looked disappointed.
Cass looked amused.
Dance to the Devil's Tune (Lady Law & The Gunslinger Series, Book 2) Page 6