Colorado Moonfire

by Charlotte Hubbard

  Lyla’s heart was fluttering so fast she could feel it. The marshal looked even worse than when he’d landed in the canyon after his toboggan flight—or perhaps his dark blue uniform made him appear wan. He’d nicked his chin shaving, and his thick, sandy hair had been blown awry. His eyes were pools of dull green, surrounded by lavender shadows that revealed how close he was to collapse. Yet he’d come to rescue her!

  She cleared her throat, wondering why words seemed lost after all the highs and lows she’d shared with this man. “You…I’ve never seen you in uniform, Marshal Thompson,” she mumbled.

  Oï’ve nivver seen ye in uniform…His blood was barely pumping, and all she could say was—

  Lyla’s eyes, as round as plates, stopped the retort he knew was sheer weariness on his part. He’d intimidated her with his uniform—the last thing he’d intended—and she assumed he was here to ship her off to prison for her crimes. Barry found a smile and put it on for her. “I couldn’t very well come in my hospital gown,” he explained patiently, “and I—well, it’s important that people see me looking fit and able to carry out my duties.”

  “Ah.” Lyla’s gaze fell to the article on his cluttered desk and her heart sank. “So you think I did it. After keeping you sedated, and lying about that fire, and losing that toboggan, you figure I—”

  “I know damn well you didn’t shoot me,” he interrupted firmly. “But only you can answer to the crimes this article charges you with. Did you have my pistol on you when we came to town?”

  “Aye,” she responded with a shrug. “But saints preserve me if I’d had to defend us with it, heavy as it is.”

  Barry nodded, relaxing. “And you took Buck to the stable, and then intended to go to the Rose, like you told us in Geary’s office?”

  “You know how exhausted I was,” she pleaded. “All I could think of was crawling into my own bed after a hot bath—which I’m in sadder need of now, I’m afraid.”

  Her hair hung limply around her shoulders, and the plaid flannel shirt and pants she wore looked and smelled slept-in, bless her. But he couldn’t let Lyla’s pitiful condition sway him until he’d heard all the facts. “What happened in the livery stable?”

  Lyla sighed, hoping her answers sounded more plausible to Marshal Thompson than they had to everyone else. “It—it was like they were expecting me. I was hardly off my horse before Wally Eberhardt’s pistol clicked behind me. He and Connor Foxe were accusing me of shooting you—and planning to escape with your horse, and—”

  “Who’s Connor Foxe? Can’t say I’ve made his acquaintance.”

  His tone was cool and businesslike. Where was the man who’d wanted to take her away from the Rose and take care of her? “He’s Frazier’s brother, I think. Younger, cockier—no manners—and before I could convince the two of them that I’d saved your life instead of plotting to end it, they marched me here. Accused me of trying to flee the country with the jewelry stolen on Christmas Eve.”

  Barry had to hand it to her for bringing up the subject of the loot. Her palms were on her upper thighs, squeezing and releasing nervously, and his own hands itched to be in their place. “That’s the issue that ties the knot in the noose, because I had no idea you’d so much as seen that jewelry. Where’d you get it, Lyla?”

  He was trying to temper his voice, but damn it, he still sounded as though he took the Times account as gospel 1 She’d been ready to admit she was removing Emily’s diamond when the two men cornered her, but now she kept her right hand over the bulge it made in her pocket. He’d get no more than he asked for until he stopped treating her like a criminal! “I found it in your saddlebags.”

  Frowning, he searched for signs she was teasing him. “Where was this?”

  “In the shed behind the cabin, where I kept the horses,” she explained “After I cut your bullet out and sewed you up, I went out to tend them, and there were the jewels, in a leather pouch.”

  Either she was telling a truth that wasn’t the least bit likely, or she was a bare-faced liar like nothing he’d ever seen. He glanced at the sketch in the paper, wondering if the cunning temptress portrayed there was the woman he’d publicly set his cap for. Or should he believe the saucer-eyed little waif sitting across from him, silently beseeching him to listen with his heart instead of his head? “How do you think they got there?” he asked quietly.

  This was the weakest link in her story…especially since Thompson would have no qualms about searching her for the missing items. “I honestly can’t say,” she answered in a halting voice. “I’m guessing the thieves circled back when they saw the storm was getting worse and put them in your tack, figuring you were dead. I didn’t see them ride in because I was working on you. Why they didn’t barge in, demanding shelter, I don’t know. They would’ve noticed my mare, the smoke from the chimney…”

  She sounded as sincerely puzzled as he was. This theory seemed as farfetched as the ones he and McClanahan had tossed back and forth, yet Lyla was the only person who could give him an educated guess. Unless she was, as Matt had reluctantly suggested, in on the robbery from the start. Thompson shifted, wishing he didn’t have to keep his personal feelings separate from his professional duties. “Was everything in the bag when you found it?”

  “No. But it’s hard to say what all might’ve been missing.” Lyla stalled, wondering how to phrase her reply so she didn’t sound presumptuous. “I didn’t know how many pieces got stolen at the Rose, you see. My shamrock pendant was gone, as was the…ring they got from your pocket. Frazier’s gold-headed walking stick was missing, too—but I didn’t think about that until last night, when I saw him with it. He’s behind this whole thing, Barry—and Wally, Rex, and Connor are his accomplices.”

  Thompson felt his pulse quicken. “Whoa, wait a minute. You’re implicating Foxe because he had a walking stick with him? He can certainly afford more than one, honey.”

  “They implicated me because my jewelry was missing.” Lyla blurted. “They originally intended to kill you, but when they learned you were in the hospital, they decided I could be blamed for shooting you. Then they—”

  Comparing this to his own theories, Barry let her vent the frustrations she’d kept to herself since her capture. The thieves had thought he was dead when they rode off, but saying Frazier Foxe and his own deputy were party to that attempt was like—

  “—telling you, they’re all in on it. Connor and Wally knew I had the jewels on me,” Lyla continued urgently, “or why would they have cornered me at gunpoint before I even had time to unsaddle the horses?”

  The marshal wished he could get up and pace, but he was too weak and his head was throbbing. What he’d assumed would be a simple matter had become a tangle of wild assumptions and circumstances he was just too exhausted to sort out. When the young woman across from him stopped for breath, he asked the most logical question he could think of. “Miss Chatterly says Foxe came here to get you out, but Deputy Adams wouldn’t release you.”

  “Maybe that’s what Frazier told her,” she said, “but the truth is that I refused to leave with him. I’d just overheard the four of them saying how I’d fouled up their plan to kill you, and then they were thinking of another attempt—finishing you off in the hospital!”

  Was she trying to mislead him by telling lies so incredible no one could disprove them? He leaned on his desk, trying to keep his eyes focused despite his relentless pain. “I’m surprised you didn’t jump at the chance to get out of here. Wouldn’t have been that hard to get away from Frazier, at his age.”

  “At two in the morning? When they were talking murder? What sort of fool do you take me for?” Lyla fell back against her chair, frustrated beyond words. Either he was too ill to understand what she was telling him, or he thought she actually was a criminal. Which wasn’t exactly the thanks she’d expected for saving his life…or for giving herself to him, body and soul. She clenched her jaw, determined not to cry.

  Barry couldn’t ignore the suspicious hour of Foxe’s
visit, or the fact that Lyla was sincerely frightened of him. She was trembling in her chair, looking away so he wouldn’t see her glistening eyes. But damn it, he couldn’t let tears soften him up; couldn’t discount her story, but couldn’t believe it, either. “I’ll tell you the reasons why your accusations don’t add up, and you tell me where I’m wrong,” he suggested heavily. “I need to have your story before I breathe a word of this to anyone or approach any of these men. All right?”

  It wasn’t a terribly complimentary offer, but she nodded.

  “Now, I’m not saying you didn’t overhear these men talking, and I’m not saying they didn’t make a try on my life,” he began, “but I’ve lived in Cripple a lot longer than you have and I know these fellows. Let’s start with Eberhardt, who’s too clumsy to be in on a heist, and certainly too dumb to be on Foxe’s payroll—if we go along with your assumption that Frazier’s behind this.”

  Which you obviously don’t, she thought bitterly. Yet it was his job to ask these probing questions, and it was her word against the testimony of men he’d known for years. “Wally’s dense, but that makes him the perfect follower. And who would suspect him?” Lyla replied.

  “I would’ve recognized his voice during the robbery.”

  “One man—the one who held the sack—didn’t talk,” she countered.

  Barry thought back to that fateful night and had to concede to this point. “That still doesn’t prove it was Eberhardt, but we don’t know who else it was, either. What about this Connor fellow? You act like you’ve seen him before.”

  Lyla rolled her eyes. “He propositioned me, on the way back from our lunch at Delmonico’s,” she said. “He was the gang leader—the shorter man who gave all the orders. I know that, because when he and Wally were quizzing me in the livery stable, I remembered those dark, nasty eyes.”

  The marshal sighed. As many drifters and shiftless men who passed through this boom town, he couldn’t possibly keep track of each one, but he wished he’d known Frazier Foxe had a brother in these parts. “So that leaves Rex Adams holding me to the wall with his gun?”

  “Aye,” she breathed, already knowing she couldn’t win this part of the argument.

  “Honey, Adams has six kids and a wife he’s crazy about,” Barry began matter-of-factly. “Why, he’s—he’s a deacon in the Presbyterian church! He was home with his family that night when I was getting up a posse—”

  “The thieves rode out ahead of you, remember?” Lyla challenged. “Wally and Rex had plenty of time to resume their usual places while you changed your clothes.”

  Barry shook his head. “Rex rode out with me, and—”

  “How many men shot at you?”

  “Two.”

  “Was Eberhardt in the stable when you went after your horses?”

  Thompson swallowed, thinking. “No, but—”

  “So there! Wally and Connor figured you’d follow their trail, and if they missed you Rex would be right alongside as a backup.” She crossed her arms smugly. The marshal couldn’t refute such facts unless he allowed his biases to overrule his reason.

  And Barry was stunned into almost falling for it, except— “But Adams was in church clothes—had just returned from Christmas Eve services when I got to his house. None of the thieves had on trousers, Lyla!”

  “And how long would it take to change them, once he rode back here ahead of you?” she protested.

  “Nope, sorry. I know every article of clothing my deputy owns, what with a wife and six kids to outfit on his salary,” Thompson declared. “And now that I think of it, the man who held me to the wall wasn’t wearing Rex’s ratty old coat, or his hat—”

  “He could’ve traded with someone!”

  “—and I would’ve recognized his walk, and his build, and his freckled face.”

  “The bandana and heavy clothing disguised all that!” Lyla hopped to her feet, ready to shake some sense into the marshal, except he looked haggard and incapable of fighting back. “So none of this makes sense to you?”

  Barry sighed and rubbed his temples. “The pieces just don’t fit, honey. And even though Frazier Foxe isn’t my favorite person, I can’t believe he’d murder me. He’s more likely to milk me for contributions to his mill, or his fine-arts funding—to get even for when the Flaxen Lassie turned out to be a bonanza and his new mine went bust. He’d rather see me broke than dead.”

  “Do you think I was in on it, then?”

  The pain in her periwinkle eyes anguished him, and he knew how ungrateful he must look to her by now. “No,” he said softly, “but I still need some answers—”

  “So where does that leave me?” She leaned on his desk, her eyes level with his. “Let’s say, since you’ve got no proof about who stole that jewelry, that I’m released from jail. I couldn’t possibly work at the Rose any—”

  “Victoria tried to bail you out. She’ll take you back.” Barry interrupted.

  “—because the customers couldn’t trust me,” she finished bitterly. “And until you catch the robbers, no one else will hire a suspected thief, either. I certainly won’t accept any more of Foxe’s generosity, and with Mick’s pension about gone, I can’t afford to move somewhere else and start over.”

  Lyla paused to lick her lips, praying her last plea would force Barry Thompson to prove he did indeed believe her—believe in her—enough that he’d offer the honorable lover’s solution. “I…I don’t have passage back to Ireland. Which seems my only remaining choice,” she said in a faltering voice. “Can’t expect anyone to lend me the money, so I guess I’ll have to sell myself—”

  “That’s enough of that talk.” The marshal gazed sadly at her, visions of the magnificent house and wedding he’d planned fading dismally. Where was the laughing, flirtatious Lyla he’d waltzed with at Matt’s reception? Had only thirty-some hours in jail soured her faith in him?

  She’d obviously spent her time planning for the worst. And without any proof to hang on somebody else, she would indeed be a victim of public contempt. This visit hadn’t saved her name at all; it had merely created a chasm between him, as the law, and Lyla, as the suspect he couldn’t clear. There was only one thing to do, and it involved a great deal of mutual trust—trust he fervently hoped he wasn’t misplacing, and trust he could only try to rekindle in her heart if his plan worked.

  Barry rose unsteadily, grimacing when the pain shot through his numbing leg. “I’m going to make you an offer, Lyla. It hurts to think you’d stoop to whoring before you’d ask for my help, but considering our positions on the robbery, I suppose I can understand that.”

  Frowning, she watched him shuffle awkwardly to the back room. What was he talking about? Mother of God, the man could barely support himself on those shaky legs and his face was a sickly green as he returned with his coat and—what was that bundle in his hand? Her mouth fell open as he slapped a pack of twenty-dollar bills onto the top of his desk.

  ‘It’s five hundred dollars,” he said in answer to her unspoken question. “And I’ll give you five hundred more—plenty to settle yourself elsewhere, or sail home, if you decide that’s what you have to do-when I come back to the office.”

  “Wh—where’re you going?” She gazed up at his pale face, at the body that lacked the strength to make it to the door, much less anywhere else.

  “To round up Rex and Eberhardt, and that other Foxe, if I can find him,” Thompson said in a strained voice. “But first answer me one question, and this stack of cash is yours.”

  Lyla stared, unable to take her gaze from the marshal’s pain-furrowed face. Her heart was pounding so loudly she thought he could hear it.

  He cleared his throat, hoping to God she’d give an answer he wanted. “Lyla, honey, why didn’t you tell me about that jewelry before we came back to Cripple?”

  It was indeed a five-hundred-dollar question, the question she knew would condemn her the moment she decided to keep her discovery a secret. “I…Barry, you were so sick, and so determined to stay at
the cabin until you could ride Buck into town. You didn’t need to be worrying about why the jewelry was in my shed, and wondering whether the thieves would come back and kill us for it after the blizzard cleared.”

  It was true enough. He hoped her honesty and fortitude didn’t desert her while he was arranging the next phase of this investigation. “All right, I’ll buy that,” he said in a voice that was getting wheezy. “And while I’m gone, you think through everything that’s happened since the reception. Much as I hate this, it’s come down to your word against whatever Adams and Eberhardt say when they get here.”

  Lyla nodded, dreading the denials that would surely ring around these walls when the deputy and the stable manager confronted her, with Thompson looking on as judge and jury.

  “And I guess you know how bad it’ll look for you—and for me—if you’re gone when I get back.”

  She let out a long sigh and nodded again.

  “All right, then.” Watching her sit down, Barry prepared himself for the ordeal of fetching Adams, Eberhardt, and the bag of jewelry without tipping them off as to what they’d be walking into when they came here. A fit man would have to talk his way through it with utmost finesse, and right now Thompson could only hope that if he got the men here, Lyla would be clever enough to catch them in their deception rather than snaring herself.

  He struggled with his coat as he limped to the front door, then turned to give her a feeble wave. Lord love her, those eyes took up her whole face, and her shirt buttons were about to pop from the rapid rise and fall of her chest. We’ll dance again, someday soon, in our wedding finery, he vowed as he stepped out onto the sidewalk. We’ll show this damn town—give those tongues something to wag about.

  Chapter 13

  Lyla shivered in the draft from the door and then reached for the packet of cash. Five hundred dollars. The bundle felt firm and cool; it whispered seductively when she riffled her thumb along its edge. This was more money than she’d ever seen at one time, yet the promise of receiving twice as much left her perplexed rather than exhilarated. To be sure, Thompson was testing her integrity. But was he paying her out of guilt, for letting her down after she saved his life? Or was this transaction as casual as the countless times he’d paid Princess Cherry Blossom? The same sort of whoring she’d alluded to while coaxing him to propose rather than to remain her one-time lover?