A Lady Never Trifles with Thieves (3 page)

Her response was so long in coming I’d ceased to expect one. “Have you ever been married?”

“No, ma’am.”

Her hint of a smile was that of a wistful martyr. “Only after a woman has been wed for a while can she understand what is meant by the bonds of holy matrimony.”

Abelia muttered under her breath. I sincerely doubted it was “amen.”

“I appreciate the courtesy you’ve shown me, Mrs. LeBruton. Should anyone inquire, I have never had the pleasure of making your acquaintance.”

The brittle reserve vanished from her lovely porcelain features. She slumped against the pillows. “Thank you. Perhaps someday we will meet under less trying circumstances.”

“I truly hope we do.”

I gently closed the door behind me, though I damn well wanted to slam it hard enough to rattle the window-panes. Why in God’s name would any woman stay shackled to a man that beat her? Did Penelope believe the rice powder caked under her eyes hid his monogram? Is that why she hadn’t bothered to blame clumsiness for her injuries?

That’s how Janey Lou Bakker always explained it when she’d slunk into the mercantile in Fort Smith with a split lip or her eyes blackened and nigh swollen shut.

“My man Harley says I’m surefooted as a hog on ice,” she said so many times she should have embroidered it on her dressfront to save wind. “Law, I cain’t scratch my head and fry sidemeat what it don’t portend a calamity.”

Townsfolk shook their heads and murmured that Harley would kill her someday. He did, and a vigilante posse hanged him for it, the night after they served as pallbearers at Janey Lou’s funeral.

Abelia slipped from the bedchamber like a wraith. She held a finger to her lips and pointed to an adjacent door. I followed her down the backstairs to the kitchen.

The room smelled of cinnamon, yeast rolls, and a ham baking in its own pot liquor. Bunched herbs were pinned to the white cotton curtains above a spacious, granite sink and the hand-pump that served it. Glass-paned cupboards boasted everyday dishes enough to serve an army. Solid-doored cabinets below the counters would hold all the needed pots, pans, kettles, and tins.

“I been caretaking Miz Penny since she was twelve year old,” Abelia said. “Her daddy owns a steamship line out San Francisco way. Rich as King Midas and didn’t get that way being kind.”

She paused, then muttered, “That dear, sweet girl jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. I told her and told her, LeBruton was cut of the same cloth as her father, but would she listen? Ain’t her fault she don’t know what love is. Mine and her mama’s is all she’s ever had.”

With a grunt, Abelia whisked an envelope from the butcher-block worktable. Prying up a stove lid, she flung the envelope into the fire. The clank of the lid resettling in its groove was as irrevocable as a gunshot.

When she turned, her eyes were red-veined, but dry. “If it’s the lastest thing I do on this earth, I’ll get Miz Penny away from that son of Satan she married.”

“Was that her note to Mr. Shulteis?”

“Oh, you’re a quick one, I’ll give you that.” Abelia fetched a glass from a cabinet. “Miz Penny didn’t have no choice but write it.” Lemonade was dispensed from a jug stored in the icebox. I whimpered at the sight of it.

“When she told Mr. Rendal she’d had enough of his bedding every slut that cocked a hip at him, he slapped her.” The glass banged the table in front of me. “He said he’d married Miz Penny for her money and that she’d do as she was told, or he’d have his friend the judge declare her insane and lock her up in an asylum.”

Hatred radiated from the old woman’s very pores. She knew how easily Rendal LeBruton—or any husband—could dispose of a troublesome wife, then quietly divorce her and take her wealth as his own. It didn’t happen every day, but often enough to be common knowledge.

I sipped at the cold, lemony-sweet ambrosia, though I wanted to gulp it in a single swallow. Declining a plate of molasses cookies, I asked, “Then why did you burn the note, Abelia?”

“Because Miz Penny can’t lie worth spit. This way, she don’t have to. For all she knows, it went to that shyster, like she was told.”

“But her husband is bound to find out it didn’t. I can’t act as Shulteis’s agent knowing his client believes she’s fired him. What happens if Shulteis serves LeBruton with notice of the dissolution? Fulton has put the cart before the horse, when the respondent was a known philanderer.”

The last remark prompted a mental smite to the forehead. On the eve of our first collaboration, Won Li said Shulteis was rumored to have warned a captain of industry that his wife and sister-in-law were importing a tarnished Charleston belle to prove his adulterous inclinations.

The wronged wife was Shulteis’s client, but the lawyer had political ambitions. Knowing whose side the bread was buttered on, and which gender has voting rights, Shulteis spared the man embarrassment and ensured his loyalty. A quiet, uncontested divorce was later obtained in another state.

Hiring me to secure evidence of LeBruton’s alienated affections indicated that LeBruton’s sphere of influence and personal wealth was negligible.

Abelia’s hand delved her dress pocket. A money clip with quarter-folded banknotes materialized in her outstretched palm.

“I got nine dollars saved up that says you’ll help me fix things so’s Master LeBruton don’t find out about Miz Penny showing him the door, before it’s too late to stop his evil schemin’. There’s more money—lots more—to come once the dust settles and Miz Penny is free of him.”

“Oh, Abelia…” I dragged a stool over and sat down, suddenly too heartsick to stand. “Put your money away. Better yet, take it to the depot and buy Mrs. LeBruton a train ticket away from here. A divorce can’t be granted in secret.”

“Huh. Just ’cause I’m a nigger don’t mean I’m ignorant, missy. There’s a heap of talking that goes on over the back fence. I’m telling you, if we’re real careful, it can be done.”

She crossed her arms at her chest. “First, do what you was hired for—prove that man is laying with other women.” She snorted. “Shouldn’t take more’n an hour.”

“All right. Then what?”

“Tell Shulteis that Mr. Rendal’s fixin’ to spirit Miz Penny away and steal her money. Being a lawyer, he’s liable to know how to kibosh that notion. There’s a fat fee in it for him, too, if he keeps his mouth shut and does a little sidewinding in our favor.”

“But—”

“Will you hush up and
listen?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You can also tell him that I’ll be seventy-three year old, come October, and I’d sooner hang for killing a lawyer as to die in my sleep.”

I grinned. Devil take the agency’s percentage. The look on Fulton’s face when I delivered Abelia’s message would be payment enough.

“What about the legal notice?” I asked. “Any suit filed with the court is public record and must be published in the newspaper.”

“Nobody ever told me that.” Scowling, Abelia tilted her head to one side. “Are you for certain-sure? No insult meant, but the hem of your skirts ain’t been let down to the ground for too many years.”

“Oh, I’m certain, all right. Because Denver is the county seat, it must be published here.”

Abelia clucked her tongue. “It’d be foolish to disbelieve you, but that’s a sprag in the wagon wheel.”

More like a sinkhole. Legend had it, a fire back in ’63 and the Cherry Creek flood a year later almost wiped Denver City off the map, but neither stilled William Byers’s printing press for long. Special editions of the
Rocky Mountain News
hit the streets within hours of those disasters.

“I’ll pray on it real hard,” Abelia said. “If faith can move a mountain, I reckon it can show us the road around one, too.” The
bong
of the grandfather clock echoed from the foyer. Abelia gasped and tugged at my sleeve. “Lawsy mercy, if you’re still here when that man gets home, our goose is cooked, girl.”

She hustled me through the front kitchen and into the back. The sunny, whitewashed room was filled with racks of drying linens and unmentionables that smelled of soap and unslaked lime. Flat-and fluting irons of myriad sizes and weights rested on a tin-plated shelf above a small woodstove.

“Now don’t you come back here again,” Abelia said.

“Miz Penny, she ain’t allowed no company. Ain’t allowed out of the house neither, unless Mr. Rendal’s with her.”

I started. “Then how did she make and keep an appointment with J. Fulton Shulteis?”

“The doctor treatin’ Miz Penny for barrenness is two doors down and a floor up from the lawyer. That’s ’bout the onliest place she can go without that man doggin’ her heels.”

My fist throttled my reticule’s drawstring neck. Some people wouldn’t recognize a blessing if it tapped a shoulder and said “Howdy-do.” Babies aren’t splints or breathing pots of bee balm. Bearing one to heal a fractured marriage was an abomination.

Abelia’s palm at my back hastened my exodus out onto a planked stoop. “I shop every other morning ’tween nine and ten at Cheesman’s Drug Store whilst His Nibs gets duded up to do nothing the livelong day.”

The screen door patted shut against the jamb. “Meet me there come Thursday. I expect to hear something besides ‘Good mornin’, Abelia’ when you do.”

I was through the back gate and striding down the alleyway before I realized Abelia never had asked my name.

I
t is a fact of life that the greater hurry one is in to go somewhere, the less likely a means of transportation other than shoe leather will avail itself.

On the off-chance Fulton might still be in his office, I headed for Larimer Street as fast as my tired limbs would take me. Holding my reticule like a shield, I wove around hoards of lollygaggers with naught better to do than get in my way.

There ought to be a law.

Percy stepped out the door just as I rounded the corner. He fumbled with the key, his head bent, muttering at the lock as though inanimate objects must be cajoled to ensure cooperation. Papa had been a great one to speechify everything from wagon jacks to Rochester lamps, but his comments were colored the most exquisite shade of blue my ears had yet absorbed.

“Percy, thank goodness you’re still here.”

He whirled. Papers flew from his arms like snowbirds taking wing. Bowler askew, his spectacles hanging from one ear, he bellowed, “Now look what you’ve done.”

“Me?” I knelt to scoop up the foolscap littering the boardwalk. “Ye gods, you’re jumpier than froglegs in hot fat.”

He righted his hat and eyeglasses, then squatted down beside me. “Please spare me the backwoods colloquialisms. I’ve heard quite enough of them for one day.”

“I apologize, Percy. I truly didn’t intend to startle you so fierce.”

He stood. “Whatever your intentions, it’s been an extremely trying day, and as you can see, I have reams of work ahead of me this evening.”

“Then I won’t bother you another second. I’ll call on Mr. Shulteis tomorrow morning.”

“He will be in court tomorrow and very probably the next.”

The image of Penelope LeBruton, the wounded angel imprisoned in a gossamer cage, shimmered behind my eyes. It wasn’t a matter of if her husband would make good his threat, but when. “One question is all I need ask, Percy. Surely he can find time for that.”

He shrugged and started away. “The trial is in Leadville, Miss Sawyer. He left the city on the noon stage.”

I assume my expression fell to the depths of woebe-gone, for Percy shifted his weight as though recalling his mother’s instructions on gentlemanly behavior. In a tone as solemn as an undertaker’s, he said, “Might I in some way be of assistance.”

Eager as he was to please his employer, Percy was book smart, but he lacked the aptitude for creative thinking. His type, I believed, was better suited for the accounting profession or government work.

In any event, I wasn’t comfortable divulging the complications of the LeBruton case. Trustworthy or not, Percy hadn’t read law long enough to familiarize himself with its intricacies, which afforded no help to me at all.

He could forward a letter to Fulton, but it would probably reach Leadville an hour after the attorney quit that city. What a telegram gained in speed, it sacrificed in discretion. Avoiding specifics would render my message unintelligible. “Now that I think about it,” I said, “maybe you can be of assistance.”

It was obviously not the hoped-for response, but I continued, “That is, if you’d loan me a book on territorial law pertaining to bills of divorcement.” I tilted my head. “Unless you’d rather assist me in my research, it being on behalf of one of Fulton’s clients and all.” A dreamy sigh escaped my lips. “What a delightful evening that would be. Just the two of us. Alone. Together.”

Blushing to the roots of his sandy hair, Percy could not fit the key in the office’s door lock fast enough. He reexited a moment later with three leather-bound, gilt-embossed volumes, which he foisted into my waiting arms.

The books were as heavy as flagstones and pinched my corset’s whalebone stays. Five long, sweltering blocks separated me from my Champa Street office—a fact of which Percy was undoubtedly aware and would celebrate with a cup of milky tea, his pinky finger raised in salute.

I simpered, “I can always count on you, Percy. Why, if I wasn’t a lady, I swear, I’d kiss you smack on the lips.”

He ducked behind a wall of papers. “Egads, woman. Restrain yourself!”

Two teamsters dodged around him, chuckling. One said, “Whoo-ee. If’n that pretty gal took a shine to me, danged if I’d fight her off.”

Percy looked at them, then me, with equal disdain. “Well, I
never.”

The second man drawled, “We done figgered that already, son.”

Before the law clerk dissolved to a puddle of embarrassment, I said, “Oh, mind your own business,” to the men, then aimed a sweet smile at Percy. “Thank you very much for your help. The next time I see Fulton, I’ll certainly put in a good word for you.”

“As relating this incident would do nothing to further my career, I would prefer my employer remain ignorant of it.”

Our eyes met. “Then it will be our little secret,” I said. He knew I’d use it to finagle another favor someday. Such is the nature of commerce.

The ceaseless wind batted my hat and fed me sips of grit and soot as I made my way up Larimer. Or down it. Or specifically, in a due northeasterly direction, until I reached the corner of H, where I turned due south-southeast.

Had the city’s founders possessed a thimbleful of horse sense—or sobriety—the folly of platting streets to intersect with the banks of Cherry Creek, rather than in accordance with a compass, might have occurred to them. As it had not, the entire metropolis was laid out antigoggling to the mountains, the sun, the moon—any and all topo-graphic and celestial landmarks humankind has relied upon for navigation since the dawn of time.

Although Arkansas was graven on my soul and flavored my speech, Colorado in general and Denver City in particular had stolen my heart, as it had tens of thousands of gold-fevered come-heres who’d sallied west to make a fortune and found a home. I only wished the damnfool first arrivals had squared longitude with latitude like the rest of the world.

The smell of spilt beer and bodies several days removed from a bath wafted from every fifth or sixth doorway. Disembodied conversations and laughter chased out onto the street as well. Thankfully, it was too early in the evening for much gunplay.

Clattering away on a vacant lot between an auction-and-storage concern and a brothel were Aloysius Q. Dablemont and his steam-driven rainmaking machine. The balding, portly climatologist stood on a soapbox, his bowler aloft, telling the dozen or so folks gathered round that last night’s mizzling rain was a mere sample of his contraption’s wares. A pure-de-frog strangler was within his realm, but they cost extra and must be paid for in advance.

Further on, two mangy curs trotted behind an ice wagon, lapping at the water dripping under its doors. From the opposite direction came a dray heaped with offal. The dogs yelped and stutter-stepped. Their bone-sharp heads swiveled from one conveyance to the other.

The horns of their dilemma reminded me of my own. A legal means of snipping Mrs. LeBruton’s bonds of unholy matrimony could be as close as a page in the god-awful heavy books hugged to my bosom. If not, there was more up my leg-o’-mutton sleeve besides my arm.

It was resurrecting Papa for his appointment tomorrow with Misters McCoyne and Whitelaw that had me flummoxed. Men of their station and prestige would not be dissuaded by excuses, nor would they confide in Joe B. Sawyer’s able female assistant. Currying the carriage trade was vital to the agency’s prosperity. The rent, expenses, and Sawyer Investigations’ future could not be staked on crumbs tossed by J. Fulton Shulteis.

Before the appointed hour, what if I positioned Won Li behind a screen? Selling McCoyne and Whitelaw on the pretense that secrecy was crucial to covert investigations would take some fast, fancy talking. I’d emphasize the general knowledge that Wells, Fargo employed undercover operatives. So did the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. It stood to reason that stealth was a higher priority for a small concern like ours.

The hitch in that grand scheme was Won Li’s adamant refusal to cooperate. Even if his faculties deserted him for a nonce and he agreed, the odds of him feigning a low-country Arkansas accent were equal to passing myself off as a deposed Hungarian princess.

I hated like sixty to admit it, but the only device left to me was the truth. That is, the shade of lavender that had come to simulate the truth for having told it to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who’d sought a personal audience with the agency’s namesake.

The banker and the stamping mill owner would not be amused when informed that Papa’s arrival in the city had been unavoidably delayed. Lo, it proximated gospel enough to pinch my soul whenever I thought it, much less said it aloud.

How ironic, being acclimated to him being abroad as much as he was home, my mind was still a storehouse of things tagged
Don’t forget to tell Papa
and
Wait’ll Papa hears this
or
sees that.
Bittersweet would be the day it became habit to take two plates from the cupboard instead of three.

Harp not on that string, I thought, quoting Shakespeare. Sagacious advice, and like most admonitions, a whole lot easier to say than heed.

A horse’s familiar nicker reached my ears. Izzy, my father’s Morgan gelding, was harnessed to our buggy, pulled up alongside the boardwalk. Having spent most of his life as a saddle-mount, his disdain at being relegated to part-time dray horse was pronounced.

No driver with a pigtail coiled under a gray felt Stetson occupied the buggy’s seat. My heart tripped a beat. Seldom did Won Li wander afield. The neighborhood ran to seedy, and the Chinese were no better admired in Denver City than they were in Ft. Smith—or, to my knowledge, anywhere in the U.S. of A. It behooved him to wait with his chin tucked and hat brim pulled down like a bona fide, red-blooded American.

Why folks resented the Hop Alley denizens’ cheap labor I couldn’t comprehend, as few, if any, detractors would work as long and hard for the same coin.

Also a country mile short of endearing were the Occidentals’ strange garb, singsong lingo, and peculiar customs. Conventional wisdom decreed that Chinese men lived in filth, feasted on rodents, gambled to excess, worshipped false idols, smoked opium, and lusted for white women. By contrast, Caucasians were pillars of hygiene, eschewed squirrels and beaver as entrees, were prudent gamblers and devout Christians whose lungs were as chaste as their fleshly desires. What mostly tied people’s goat was the Asian proclivity for bowing, scraping, and all the while smiling like incumbent politicians. Won Li was an exception, but it seems that happy-go-luckiness can be construed as mockery and punished accordingly.

Fearing it had, my eyes fell on a tall, burly gent buttressing the agency’s door frame. This time, it wasn’t anxiety that put the skitter in my pulse. From our first meeting, city constable Jack O’Shaughnessy had sundry effects on my physiognomy. I wasn’t prone to swoons, but that sly, mustachioed grin of his limbered my knees.

Jack was ten years my senior and a tick or two shy of handsome, as his features were hewn rugged by travail. He was of excellent character, however, and possessed of a ready humor.

The latter presented itself the night he and other members of the police force stormed Madame Felicity’s sporting house. I was engaged in a high-kicking, petticoat-swirling cancan when Officer O’Shaughnessy swung me down from the bar to provide escort to a horse-drawn paddy wagon.

Into his ear, I’d whispered, “Please don’t give me away, but I’m really not a dancer.”

He’d grinned and drawled back, “Believe me, ma’am, I noticed that right off.”

After J. Fulton Shulteis restored my good name, Jack began dropping by the office, claiming an eagerness to make Papa’s acquaintance. When it became apparent I was the Sawyer in whom Jack was most interested, I informed him that romance was at the bottom on my list of ambitions.

“Happy to hear it,” he’d said. “I’m not the marrying kind, either.”

That took me aback, though by all rights, I should have been relieved. A woman of lesser gumption and greater arrogance might have felt insulted by his abrupt, categorical, unchivalrous, and seemingly intransigent immunity to her feminine wiles.

“Boon companions we’ll be, then,” I said. “Friendship without the onus of courtship.”

“Yep. No entanglements, no expectations.” He crooked a brow. “As long as one doesn’t lead to the other.”

“There’s no reason to think it might, seeing as how we have this understanding between us.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And we aren’t attracted to each other—well, not in
that
way. You know, how men and women usually are—giddy and breathless and wrought-up in each other’s company.”

Bent knuckles stroked my cheek, a caress all the more tender for his large, rough-skinned hands. “I can’t speak for you,” he’d drawled, “but as you can see, darlin’, I’m not the least bit giddy or breathless.”

Leaning into his touch, had I been a cat, I’d have purred. “Nor am I. Which is as it should be, between…er, friends.”

“Ummhmm.” He licked his lips, hovering inches from mine, but as I stretched upward on tiptoes, he’d pulled back. “I wouldn’t want you any other way.”

It was then I knew that lying with a straight face was but one of many things Jack O’Shaughnessy and I had in common.

Friendship swelled inside me as I traversed the few remaining steps to the agency’s entrance. Jack grinned and doffed his narrow-brimmed hat. Rather than his dark wool, brass-buttoned uniform, he was dressed in striped trousers, a black frock coat, starched white shirt, and a string tie. A lilt of bay rum sweetened the air.