The Book of Murdock (16 page)

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Authors: Loren D. Estleman

BOOK: The Book of Murdock
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“
I fail to
see why you won't tell me what he told you,” Freemason said. “You said yourself he didn't care so long as you kept it from his wife.”
I said, “Because I can doesn't mean I should.”
“But you're not a priest.”
“I avoid discussions of the relative merits and deficiencies of other denominations. However, I hold the seal of the confessional to be the mainstay of the Roman Catholic Church.”
“I think you're forgetting I belong to the board that employs you.”
“If you want to put it on that basis, it's my Christian duty to spare you the ordeal of dismissing me. I'll submit my resignation.”
“Let's not go off half-cocked, Brother. You must understand my concerns are professional as well as personal. If you know something about Cherry's behavior during the time he was representing me, it's only natural I'd press you for details.”
We were in the sheepman's paneled study, where we'd retired after delivering Luther Cherry's body to the undertaking parlor that held the contract with the town council in cases of death by misadventure. Freemason had sent one of the line riders to ranch headquarters for a wagon to carry the remains. At the same time he'd sent the other man to Wichita Falls to report the incident to Captain Jordan at Texas Rangers headquarters. That day's Overland stage had come and gone, but a good man on a horse would overtake and pass it. Thought of the Overland reminded me of something I'd forgotten.
“Your interests are no more personal than Cherry's,” I said. “I can tell you of a thing I saw yesterday morning at the freight office.” I recounted the lawyer's argument with the clerk over the rate required to send a special delivery letter to St. Louis.
“Unpleasant, but hardly unusual,” Freemason said. “The rates are outrageous, but they're the price of free enterprise. Still, everyone has the right to complain.”
“Nevertheless, he paid the amount, refusing the lower rate for regular delivery because it would take a few days longer. He made change from a pocketbook.”
“That's what it's for. It's also called a change purse.”
“Perhaps things are different in Texas, but where I come from, a man who goes to that length to corral every penny is considered parsimonious.”
“They're not different. I don't use one myself, lest the men I do business with get the impression I'm hard up for cash. Cherry was cheese-paring; I admire that in someone I appoint to help handle my affairs. I fail to see why he should be condemned for it.”
I looked humble, or made the effort. “It's not my place to save or condemn. I merely mentioned the episode because he was so quick to decide in favor of paying more for the sake of expediency. He said the letter was for his wife. Surely there was nothing in it so urgent it couldn't wait a few more days.”
“I begin to understand you.” He frowned, drumming his slim, well-kept fingers on a leaf of his towering desk. “It strikes me someone should ask the clerk in the freight office about the address on the envelope.”
“He'd be violating the law if he disclosed it.”
He didn't appear to be listening. “You raise the suggestion that Cherry was the squirrel chewing holes in my wall, providing details of my business arrangements to some factotum in St. Louis, who forwarded them on to that gang of pirates.”
“I wouldn't bear false witness.”
“With good reason. Cherry was new to Owen. My problem predates his arrival by months.”
“You told me he'd been active in the firm that represents you a long time before you retained him personally. That would put him in possession of a great deal of privileged information.”
Fielo, the aged manservant, knocked and entered, carrying a tea set on a tray. His master asked him if Mrs. Freemason had returned from her errands.
“Not yet, sir. Shall I pour?”
“No. Set it down and return to your other duties. Let me know when she's back.”
When the door drew shut, Freemason looked at me.
“This isn't a discussion to be conducted over tea. Where do you stand on spirits?”
“I wouldn't presume. I'm told they're an ecclesiastical invention.”
“Good man.” He stood and used a key attached to his watch chain to unlock the hidden wall cabinet. I pretended curiosity, as if I hadn't seen it before. “Colleen thinks the old man is a drinker on the sly,” he said. “I haven't seen any evidence myself, but she's far more attuned to the domestic arrangements than I, and her attention to detail is impressive. She has a man's brain. I think that's what attracted me to her. She maintains all the books on the ranch. If something were to happen to me, I'm quite certain she could manage the place quite well on her own.”
“You must trust her very much.”
“A wise man told me you can trust no one or trust everyone and take the same chances. I prefer to err on the side of conservatism.” He poured from the bottle of Hermitage. “I was instrumental in preventing Colleen from serving a jail sentence in Waco. She dealt cards there, which is a profession admirably suited to accounting. Between the morning she was freed and the day I proposed marriage, I had her thoroughly investigated by the Pinkertons, who confirmed everything she'd disclosed to me about her past and a number of things she neglected to mention. I'm a businessman, Brother, not a gambler. I never enter into a proposition until I've studied it from all sides and isolated the risk.”
Turning from the cabinet, he held out one of the cut-crystal glasses. When I reached for it, his free hand lashed
out and enclosed my wrist in his iron grip. It was my gun hand.
“That's a pistoleer's weapon you carry,” he said. “It's been well kept. In order to complete the performance, if you armed yourself at all you'd lug around some ancient cap-and-ball cannon with rust on the cylinder; but that wouldn't do if you were forced to use it. That's the flaw in any masquerade: To put it over properly one must become what one appears, rendering the exercise useless.” He smiled in his neat beard. “Wouldn't you agree, Marshal?”
“Deputy,” I corrected.
“I'm not political enough for a presidential appointment. Where'd I tip my hand?”
“Where didn't you? Your choice of weapons, that history you concocted for yourself, your deportment in general. If I let go of your wrist, will you agree to keep that hand in plain sight?”
I nodded. I'd considered throwing my drink in his face to distract him while I went for the scabbard, but I hated to waste good sipping whiskey. He released his grip, poured for himself, and sat down.
“A careful way of speaking and a veil of humility can't obscure the habits of a lifetime,” he said. “This morning when you came to the church door, you glanced up and down the street and scanned the rooftops before you stepped outside. I doubt you were even aware you did it. A man who's spent most of his life shut in with his mother feels no reason to take such precautions. Mind you, I suspected you before
that. You have a whiff of brimstone about you. They haven't developed a soap pious enough to scrub it off.”
I drank. “I was pretty certain you'd had someone go through my things. I never said I'd been shut in with my mother or even that I had one. That was all in a letter I brought with me when I came.”
“It never left the parsonage, only the salient details. I told you I don't invest without investigation. My wife won't remember, but she once made reference to a former acquaintance in law enforcement who had the look of a starved wolf. That's the first impression I had of you, after disregarding the sackcloth and ashes and that collar. Excellent suggestion, that. Few people look beyond a thing so obvious.”
“Thank you. It almost makes up for the heat rash.”
“None of this was sufficient to leap to any conclusions, of course. Then I remembered reading of the conspicuous death of a deputy U.S. marshal of some reputation up in Montana Territory. Your choice of firearms settled the matter. Legends don't overlook such crumbs. You really ought to have left it behind.”
“I hadn't time to break in a new one and keep up with my Bible studies.”
“At least you're not the kind that clings to a lie in the face of all evidence. It's refreshing.”
“I don't ride a horse back into a burning stable.”
“I wish we'd had this conversation Sunday. It would have saved me postage to Denver. Poor Cherry was right: The rates are confiscatory.”
“I ran into Fielo at the freight office. I'd guessed he was there to track down Brother Bernard.”
Freemason rolled liquor on his tongue and swallowed. “Really, I thought what happened between your Judge Blackthorne and me went to rest with the Grant administration. I wouldn't have expected him to carry a grudge.”
“Grudges aren't like mule packs. The bigger they are, the longer you can carry them.”
“Still, he's an old political infighter. He knows when it's time to cut your losses and get back to business.”
“A lot of lawyers lost their case because they thought they could predict him.” My mouth was dry, but I resisted raising my glass because my hand might shake. I was close to an explanation of why I was in Texas.
“Just what is he after? In ten years I've done nothing that would place me in his power. Or is it your mission to adjust that situation? I believe you said something a few moments ago about bearing false witness.”
I shot from the hip. “Nothing like that. The law's his lasso. He'll take a couple of dallies on it, but he won't break it. Some new evidence has come to light to make that old grudge a little easier to carry.”
Fielo knocked, came in at his master's invitation, and reported that Mrs. Freemason had returned. Freemason nodded and dismissed him. When we were alone again, the rancher sat back for the first time and steepled his hands. I knew then I'd misfired.
“No new evidence can reverse a presidential pardon,” he said. “Blackthorne didn't tell you anything about our history. I'd thought you were remarkably circumspect for a man of action. What's your real purpose? I can have you locked up as an impostor, on suspicion of your intentions.
With all this banditry about, and when information comes back from Denver casting doubt on the existence of a preacher named Sebastian, no one will question your incarceration for weeks.”
“I've been in jail before.” I was making time to think. Whatever was in the Judge's mind, it would collapse under its own weight while I was behind bars, and with no way to get in touch with him, I'd be stuck counting stones in the walls while the Blue Bandannas were free to hare around shooting cowhands and shotgun messengers and generally breaking the peace. I drank, no tremors, and set aside my glass. “Until I came here, I didn't even know you and Blackthorne had a history. The first time I saw your name was when I read it on your telegram inviting Brother Bernard to serve as pastor. I was sent to investigate the panhandle robberies.”
“That's a tale. Every one of them took place outside his jurisdiction.”
“Strictly speaking, his jurisdiction covers all crimes against the United States. Two of the robberies involved the mail. Also he's concerned that left to its own devices this band will eventually expand their depredations to Montana Territory. He'd rather fight them on the High Plains than in Virginia City.”
“He said that?”
“He did.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I wasn't required to.”
“I don't believe you.”
“Let's talk about something else, then. For what crime were you pardoned by President Grant?”
He checked that without blinking. “You said you knew nothing about my connection with Blackthorne until you came here. Who told you?”
I was busy saying nothing when Colleen Freemason entered without knocking. Clearly she'd been listening outside the door. “I told him, Richard.”
She was dressed fetchingly in a straw hat with a curled brim and feathers, a trim tweed suit over a plain shirtwaist, black-and-ivory patent-leather pumps, and black felt gloves with ivory buttons. Her cheeks were flushed from the wind. As she was naturally high-colored, she might have stepped out of a Renaissance painting and come there by way of a Victorian dress shop. She was staring at me; accusingly or not, I could never tell.
“Indeed,” Freemason said. “The past becomes the present. That wasn't our arrangement.”
“Nothing's changed. I made the same error you did. I assumed he was here to try to snare you in some way. From what I just overheard, you told him more than I did.”
I turned my attention from her, which was always a chore. “Since you did, you might as well tell me the rest. I've been floundering in the dark since before I left Helena.”
Freemason frowned, then pulled his hands apart and placed them on the arms of his chair. His mouth opened; Colleen stepped close and placed a gloved hand on his shoulder.
“The past is not the present.” She was still looking at me. “We've made our home here. We've obeyed the law, and Richard has assisted it. You're the one who's sailing under false colors. We owe you nothing.”
“A pretty speech,” said her husband. “I'd be more impressed if you'd
told
me his colors were false. Have you taken up where you left off?”
She snatched away her hand as if he'd bitten it.
I anted in. “She made it clear the last time we spoke in this room there'd be none of that. I swore my business here had nothing to do with you and Blackthorne and asked her to keep the secret. Too many people knew already, and there was no telling what someone else might guess if your attitude toward me was any different from what was expected between a church director and his parson. Not wanting to see a man murdered in the course of his work and having serious feelings for him aren't the same thing.”
“We both have secrets, Richard. We agreed we weren't each other's confessor.”
“A fine match.” He swirled the contents of his glass, then tossed them back like any hand fresh off the trail. Then he got up to refill.
“Pour me one as well.” Colleen stripped off her gloves and drew the pin from her hat.
 
 
“I keep coming
back to why those bandits were waiting for us,” I said when we were all seated. “Until now, they've made no mistakes. Their sources have been too good.”
Freemason still looked sour, and it had only a little to do with what had happened near his ranch. “Everyone puts a foot wrong sometimes. I married a woman I can't trust.”
“I don't care. You're forgetting I'm not really a minister. One mistake is possible, but this was also the first time
they've struck this close to Owen. Their avoiding it is what brought me here in the first place. They must have had a compelling reason to break that cardinal rule. Whenever something like that happens, I ask myself what recent change might have brought it about.”
“That would be you.” Colleen, informed of the day's events, sat upright in a chintz-covered chair, the only remotely feminine object in the room and obviously kept for her use. She held her glass at bodice level with the surface of the liquid as flat as a sheltered pond. “You're Owen's newest resident.”
“Just barely. Luther Cherry arrived just before me.”
“You keep harping on Cherry,” Freemason said. “He's dead.”
“Another mistake. He made a grab for his briefcase when it slid off his lap. He was under the gun at the time, and when you have someone in that position the shooter's nerves are right up there on top. Shooting him was a natural reaction on the part of the man with the Spencer.”
“Also disastrous, if you insist on believing that Cherry was their Trojan horse. That makes three mistakes. What are the odds of that happening, given their record so far?”
“Colleen's the cardplayer,” I said.
She shook her head and sipped. “I'd fold rather than bet against them. It was no accident.”
I said, “I think it was. Killing him, I mean. Everything else was planned. They weren't expecting a payroll wagon. That was just an excuse. Cherry was just settling in, and Freemason hadn't made it a secret he suspected he had a traitor in his employ. What better way to raise their man inside above
suspicion than to shoot him during an attempted robbery, right in front of his employer?”
“By God.” Freemason flushed deep copper, his glass hovering beneath his chin. “By God.”
“The man I'll call Spencer meant to wing him,” I went on, “but that's not an exact science when you're on horseback and your target's in motion. Either his aim was off or Cherry moved in the wrong direction. The bullet pierced a lung instead of just an arm.”
The sheepman remembered his drink and took a long draught. “Are frontier brigands capable of such Machiavellian measures?”
“The organized ones are,” I said. “We're up against a bigger operation than any of us thought. If I'm right about that special delivery letter Cherry sent to St. Louis, it means he had a contact there who forwarded privileged information on to whoever the Blue Bandannas report to in this area. Someone's out to break you, and he's going to a hell of a lot of expense to do it.”
“The cattle trade,” he said. “That fence-cutting bill has them scared. If they manage to destroy me, no one will ever enforce it, and there will be no sheep rancher safe in the state of Texas.”
I emptied my glass and set it down. “Cattlemen are too busy running their own spreads to act in concert. Maybe they've appointed someone, but whoever's behind the robberies has nothing else on his plate to distract him.”
“I'll trace that letter Cherry made so much fuss about.”
“You can do that. Chances are he sent it to someone at the legal firm you got him from, who can claim it was just
some unfinished business; certainly he'll have destroyed the evidence, and all we'll have is Cherry's lie that he was writing his wife.”
“Maybe his wife is the go-between.”
Both of us looked at Colleen, whose chin elevated an inch in defense of her theory.
“She isn't,” I said.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Because when he confessed to conspiring against Freemason, he asked me to say nothing of it to her.”

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