The Great West Detective Agency (9 page)

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laudette laughed joyously as Lucas swung her around to sit in his lap.

“You're my good luck charm,” he said, trying to give her cheek a kiss. She avoided his lips by a fraction of an inch.

“You behave. I've got work to do.” She looked toward the bar, where Lefty scowled at her. “Do you want another drink? If I don't bring something back, Lefty's not going to let me serve you anymore.”

“Drinks for everyone at the table,” Lucas said. “Bring a bottle.”

Claudette pulled back and looked at him critically before saying in a soft voice, “You're not drunk, but you want the others to be?”

“You're a pretty girl and smart, too,” he said, letting her climb free of his lap. He tried to swat her behind but she moved too fast for that. As she went to fetch the bottle, Lucas turned back to the cards. “Whose deal?”

The gambler to his left picked up the cards, fanned them out on the table, then scooped them up and began shuffling. Lucas saw how the man's dexterous control put the best cards on the bottom of the deck. When he put the deck onto the table for Lucas to cut, he grinned and winked. The gambler proposed an alliance, for this hand at least, which would bring a pile of money Lucas's way through dealing off the bottom of the deck. The intent was for Lucas to win and then split the take later.

There were few things Lucas valued more than his skill at cards. He had the skill to stack the deck and make any hand pop up that he wanted—but he refused to cheat in such a fashion. Or lose. He did it through skill of reading his opponents and judging the cards.

“My cut, eh?”

He was supposed to split the deck. The other gambler would simply move the cut back to the way it was, but doing so with a great flourish and a little deception returned the deck to the way it had been prior to the cut. Determined not to be a part of such cheating, Lucas split the deck into three sections, moved them around and then built it back before pushing it to the gambler. He had put the high-value cards originally on the bottom somewhere in the middle, out of reach for the card sharp.

He smiled as the gambler shot him a black look. The deal went down and Lucas folded. It didn't surprise him that the card cheat also folded what might otherwise have been a big pot for both of them. Lucas paid no attention as the gambler shoved his chair back and left. This only gave him a better view of the stage as Carmela finished her last performance of the night. Little Otto stood beside the stage, looking up at her. Lucas thought she might have given him a big, knowing wink but her act included come-ons for about everyone in her audience.

She turned, kicked up her skirts, and then dashed offstage laughing.

“Why not admit she's not interested in you, not the way I am?” Claudette whispered in his ear, then followed the words with her darting tongue.

A thrill of expectation passed through Lucas. He needed to romance Claudette to restore some measure of his confidence, and it would be easy enough since she was already willing. But his mind kept wandering, not to Carmela but to Amanda Baldridge. The mystery of why she came to a detective agency to find the dog gnawed at him. She had continued the hunt herself, but was Dunbar part of the searchers she had enlisted? A man like Dunbar couldn't be used that easily, and somehow Lucas doubted Amanda had gone to him rather than the other way around. She was a lovely woman, and batting her long eyelashes certainly set a red-blooded man's heart racing a bit faster, but Jubal Dunbar valued power. Was he also a man who indulged in a woman's charms outside marriage?

“What do you know of Jubal Dunbar's wife?” Lucas looked back over his shoulder, his lips close to Claudette's.

“Who's that?”

Claudette's question was sharper than he'd expected.

“You fooling around with her because you can't get Carmela?”

“Nothing of the sort, my dear,” he said. Claudette backed away from him. At the table the remaining players grew restive since he was interrupting their inexorable loss. “I wondered if he had a wife and cheated on her.”

“You have business with him?” The pretty waiter girl looked at the others at the table. “Is he one of them?”

“No, not at all. Forget it. You're the light of my life and all that matters to me.”

“Liar,” she said, slapping him on the shoulder. “But I like it. Don't stop lying to me. Nobody else ever tries to sweet-talk me.”

“Their loss, my gain.”

“You gonna play? If not, let somebody else get into the chair.”

Lucas turned to the players, nodded solemnly, then raked in his winnings. He had done what he could here. The gambler who left might return since the men remaining hadn't realized what had happened. Both professionals had lost, after all.

“May luck be with you, gentlemen.” He stuffed the chips and greenbacks into his coat pocket and pushed back.

“I can't just go off with you now, Lucas,” Claudette said. “Lefty keeps me here till the cows come home.”

“He's sweet on you.”

“Lefty? Don't joke, Lucas. He doesn't like anyone or anything but making money.”

Pointing out the sour look the barkeep gave him wouldn't convince Claudette of such a romantic connection. He looked at the empty stage and wondered how the world worked in such a strange fashion. He had put Little Otto and Carmela together, even as he wanted the singer for himself. Claudette ignored Lefty's obvious glances while hanging on to Lucas's arm as they made their way through the crowded Emerald City. Everyone sought another's arms and ignored what was at hand. It made no sense.

And what of Amanda Baldridge? Did she share Dunbar's bed to find her dog? Only, from everything he heard, piecing together all that happened and Little Otto's snippets of rumor, the dog belonged to someone else. Amanda and Dunbar both sought Tovarich, but neither was the legitimate owner.

“Why would a puppy dog be worth so much?”

“You want a dog?” Claudette stared at him as if he had opened a new eye in the middle of his forehead. “I can give you something more to fill up your bed—all night long.”

“But you certainly would want a bone, my dear.”

“Damned right!”

From across the saloon, Lefty roared for her to get back to work. Claudette looked up at Lucas, then quickly, passionately kissed him before rushing back to work.

The taste of her lips on his was like a heady liquor. Her perfume was—not the scent he had noticed on whoever had tracked him earlier. The long cape hid the person's body, but the longer he thought about it, the more certain he was that it had hidden a woman. A woman using a perfume that was familiar, but one which he could not identify. He had encountered it before, but where danced just beyond his ability to remember.

He stepped into the cold night and felt as if he had been slapped. Only his lips remained warm from the aftermath of Claudette's kiss. He looked around. Denver was alive this night, and he felt the city's energy flowing through him. Coming to decisions helped. He had only a slim chance with Carmela and had moved on with his affections, though Claudette was a stopgap. Neither of them had real emotions in the mix as they sought a moment's respite from life.

His gambling had gone well, and he had more money in his pocket than at any time over the past year. Amanda's contribution to his poke helped make that bulge even larger. He began walking aimlessly, his mind slipping off the tracks and running wild. Lucas appreciated such times. At the poker table, his intensity sometimes annoyed the other players, but he always gave his complete attention to the game. This was a mental holiday for him and allowed new thoughts to poke up that he might otherwise never encounter.

Not realizing where his steps led, he stopped and stared at the front of the Great West Detective Agency office. It was as deserted as the first time he had blundered inside, getting away from the outraged rancher and his hired hands. He turned to walk on, then saw an envelope thrust between the door and frame. Lucas looked around. The people in the street were all intent on some destination and paid him no heed. With a quick move, he took the envelope and held it up.

The envelope carried no address, but it wasn't sealed. Moving under a gaslight, he pulled out the flap and peered inside at the letter inside. Again he looked around, but this time he hesitated and stared hard at a man and woman down the street, pressed together but not looking at each other. Their attention was focused on the plate glass window of a watch shop, closed at this time of night but perfect for watching those behind them without being too obvious.

Moving around the light, he saw that he could make out the couple's shadowy faces, meaning they could also watch him. His hand moved to his pocket, but he had to push aside a couple dozen high-value poker chips before getting to his pistol. He stared at the two, trying to make out more details. They might be the man and the woman he had seen before in front of the detective agency office, but he didn't think so, although the woman did most of the talking and the man only listened. The man was taller, as was the woman. Then they both walked away without so much as a backward glance in his direction.

Lucas pushed aside what was becoming a growing nervousness on his part. If he hadn't gotten involved with Amanda Baldridge, he wouldn't jump at every shadow or be suspicious of anyone even looking in his direction. That would teach him to fall under a lovely woman's spell—and to take her considerable amount of money offered for an improbable job.

He held up the letter written in a crabbed, perfect hand. Every letter looked as if it had been drawn painstakingly. A quick scan of the page told of a telegram offering a job, a question of where the Great West Detective Agency staff was, and finally a resolution to persevere until personal contact had been made. The letter had been signed by Raymond and Felicia Northcott.

From running his finger over the cheap paper, he suspected this had been supplied by a lesser hotel. The ink had been smeared in places, showing the author lacked a roller blotter to prevent ink smudges. He pressed his finger into a word, then looked. Dry. The letter had been written sometime earlier. With deft moves, he replaced the letter in the envelope and the envelope in the door.

Trying to remain nonchalant, he went to the rear of the building and tried the back door. It remained locked, the way he'd left it when he had first sought refuge inside. Lucas dropped to his knees, fished out the slender picks, and quickly opened the door again. He stepped into the small storage room, then closed and locked the door behind him.

The office seemed mustier from being closed. This spurred him on, knowing he wasn't going to be surprised by the detective agency's owner. He stepped into the main office and hesitated, taking a deep whiff. The elusive scent he had detected when the mysterious woman had been spying on him matched that in the office. It was faint, more than a distant shout from over the horizon, but his sense of smell hadn't been completely ruined by long nights in saloons filled with cigar smoke, the stench of spilled beer, and vomit mixed in with sawdust.

Somehow the Great West Detective Agency tied in with a woman spying on him.

He settled into the desk chair and began working on the locked desk drawers, hoping to find—what? Lucas had no good idea, but curiosity drove him to paw through files painstakingly compiled and with detailed reports. From what he could tell, one man had written all the reports. The owner of the agency worked alone. The volume of reports, though, suggested a reason why the Northcotts had been solicited. The agency was bursting with work, and the owner needed help running the office while he was in the field.

Lucas leaned back and considered that. In the field meant far afield or the office would have been opened in the past few days. He touched the pocket bulging with money. It hadn't been that long ago he had taken money from Amanda to find her puppy—or someone's puppy. He continued rooting around in the files, holding some sheets up to catch a slant of pale yellow illumination coming from the gaslight out in the street.