A Lady Never Trifles with Thieves (11 page)

“I see. Well, that explains why the destination remains a mystery, doesn’t it?
Had
you addressed it, a man blessed with your powers of recall would remember that detail, now wouldn’t you?”

His nod was wary. “Prob’ly.”

“Forgive me. I know you’re eager to rest and have your dinner, but I’ve never been this close to a bona fide hero before. The police must have been ecstatic when you told them about the package and described the man who sent it.”

The postmaster averted his eyes to a basket of incoming mail. He thumbed through the envelopes, as though counting them, then drawled, “They brung him to me.”

I leaned forward, my head angled to one side. “Sorry, I didn’t quite hear you.”

“The constables, they brought the feller here. Took him to the depot first. Told the agent, same as they did me, that seeing as how the stolen jewels were nowhere to be found, they figured he’d posted them out of the city.”

I gasped. “Goodness sakes alive. Was the brute in shackles and leg-irons?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am. The cops weren’t taking any chances on that greaser getting loose.”

“Greaser?” The derogatory term for Mexican was commonly heard, but not common to my vocabulary. “Vittorio Ciccone is Italian.”

“Don’t care what the breed is. If they aren’t white, they don’t belong here. I say, ship ’em all back where they came from.”

His spew was all the more chilling for its matter-of-fact delivery. Those I’d heard voice similar opinions with podium-pounding fervor triggered contempt, but not revulsion.

I moved to the door, pausing for him to unlock it. A notice-board on the near wall was shingled in church social announcements, wanted posters, and handbills of myriad sizes, descriptions, and misspellings. Almost obscured by a half-sheet advertising Christmas sleigh-rides was a bold-printed reward offered for information regarding “…any and all jewelry purloined from the households of Garret McCoyne and/or Avery Whitelaw.”

Tapping the notice with my forefinger, I inquired, “Was this posted before or after Ciccone’s arrest?”

“Bef—” The postmaster swung open the door. “Good day, ma’am.”

Won Li’s fork pecked the rim of my plate. “Eat your vegetables.”

I grimaced but speared a chunk of steamed carrot. The nameless dish he’d prepared for supper was a palette of colorful vegetables, pineapple, and melon on a bed of rice, drizzled with fresh lemon. The light, delicious fare piled like cairn rocks in my stomach.

“You are not yourself tonight, Joby.”

I sighed. “I’ve had worse days, but there was nothing about this one to recommend it.”

He removed our plates from the table. His empty one went into the granite dishpan. Mine was scraped into a small crockery bowl to be reborn as soup tomorrow evening.

“Sending those telegrams was a waste of money.” I picked at a small hole in the tablecloth. “Even if we had it to spare, I should have demanded an advance from J. Fulton Shulteis.”

“Did you know you would be sending them when he hired you?”

I shook my head.

“Then it is not spilled milk you are crying over. It is milk from a cow you did not own two days ago.”

I gave him a look as nasty as the headache beginning to throb at my temple. “Consistent with the barnyard metaphors, it’s also failing to acquire a second basket in which to put Penelope LeBruton’s eggs that worries me.”

He dried his hands on a sack-towel. “There are several responses as yet to be received?”

“Yes, but…” Call it optimism or pragmatism, whenever Won Li’s supply dwarfed mine, it knocked the stuffing out of an excellent tale of woe. “I was so
certain
Penelope wasn’t the first lonely heart he’d bamboozled. She’s accustomed to being catered to, but she’s afraid, not stupid. More afraid of what Rendal will do if she tries to escape and fails than of enduring whatever fate dictates if she stays.”

“Stick fast to the devil she knows,” Won Li said. “A common misconception.”

“Especially when, from what Abelia told me, Penelope’s father treated her like chattel, too.”

The water Won Li poured from the kettle into the dishpan would have scalded the hair off a hog. In winter, he walked barefoot in the snow for miles.
Chi,
he called it. Papa said it was plumb unnatural but wished he had a spot of it.

My forehead beaded just watching the steam billow around Won Li. Wadding my hair into a mussy bun, I said, “When LeBruton courted Penelope, charm couldn’t have been enough to gain acceptance in her social circle. He had to appear to be a financial equal. Trouble is, even the appearance of wealth isn’t cheap.”

Won Li agreed. “The proceeds from one victim, he invested in capturing the trust and love of the next.”

“That was my supposition.” Hair falling to my shoulders, I stood and rolled up my sleeves to help with the dishes. There weren’t many. My patron was as frugal with pots and pans as he was with supper ingredients.

He clucked his tongue. “It is sad to think your Casanova won and wed every woman he romanced.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. What attracts a woman to a man and vice versa is too subjective to define, much less anticipate. For that reason alone, some of LeBruton’s advances must have been rebuffed by their objects.”

“You are certain of that.”

“Absolutely.”

“As certain as you are that
all
the telegrams you sent constitute a waste of money?”

Two precepts applied to Won Li’s brand of logic. It flouted the geometric principle that the closest distance between two points was a straight line, and it was virtually infallible.

Had a railroad spike not been inserting itself a fraction above my cheekbone, I’d have foreseen the intellectual trap he was laying. I’d also have laughed and thanked him for balancing my perspective.

Nodding an acknowledgment exacted enough punishment. I fished the tableware and utensils from the rinse-pan, placed them on a towel to drain, then walked as though needles spiked the path to the davenport.

Outside the window, crickets and birdsong pierced the quietude. A vile taste spilled from my throat into my mouth. I covered my eyes with my forearm against the blinding twilight. Cephalalgia wasn’t a chronic affliction, but if given a choice, I’d sooner be shot in the head than suffer a bout of it.

The chair Won Li carefully moved alongside the sofa thumped and creaked like a lumber wagon. With the utmost gentleness, he laid a cool, wet towel across my brow.

The Chinese believe when they die, God reaches down and pulls them to heaven by their pigtails. The ultimate punishment one can exact is to cut off a Chinaman’s transport to paradise. Though I’d never scoff at or scorn Won Li’s religious convictions, I believed just as strenuously, if heaven existed, his ascension was assured, irrespective of hairstyle.

Lifting my hand from the cushion, his thumb and index finger encircled my wrist. The gentle, languid massage gradually descended to each fine bone and knuckle and corresponding aspects of my palm.

As my breathing slowed, the agony at my temple receded but stubbornly refused to wave the proverbial white flag. I knew if a muscle twitched, it would drive the spike deeper.

Won Li’s attentions moved to the weblike purlicue between my thumb and forefinger. He applied pressure in increasing increments, as though my hand were a bull’s nose, and his fingertips, a brass ring.

A white-hot flash of pain seared my head. As it waned, the throbbing, nauseating, sensory torture melted away. Fear of a relapse held me still and mute for several minutes. Won Li’s technique had never backfired, but anyone who’d ever experienced such a malady was loath to tempt fate.

“Better?” he asked.

I peeked from under the towel and smiled at him.

“Bliss. Thank you, Won Li.”

“Rest then, while I brew a pot of strong, black coffee.”

I nodded. The stimulant was a necessary final element of the treatment. Then as soon as he entered the kitchen, I rallied myself into a sitting position. The only side effect of his sorcery was a mild physical and mental lethargy. Had I reclosed my eyes, I’d have fallen asleep in seconds.

A slight tingle remained where Won Li had employed his miraculous curative. Who would guess that pinching the hand a certain way would affect a completely different area of the body? Let alone that the line between pain relief and pain infliction was a miniscule increase in pressure?

Tracing the site on my own hand, I thought back to the bruise on Hubert Abercrombie’s on the night of the murder. Laying a finger against the webbed skin, I closed my fist around it, as if climbing a rope.

I supposed that hauling up one’s body weight could contuse the same general area. But if so, wouldn’t bruises be present on both hands? My mind was too muzzy to vouchsafe an answer.

The room tilted when I stood, but leveled itself in short order. Won Li was snipping a rose stem to fit a bud vase on the tray he’d prepared for me. And to think I’d accused Penelope LeBruton of being pampered.

The scissor blades snicked shut. He scowled and said, “If I told you to jump from a bridge, you would rush to climb Pike’s Peak instead.”

“If that’s true, I’m becoming too predictable. Next thing, you’ll complain about being bored.”

“Hah. The meaning of the word is unknown to me.”

I bent to sniff the rose’s perfume. How sweet it smelled and how wicked its thorns, particularly when blown out a slender, cane pipe.

“Can anemia provoke severe headaches like mine?”

“Yes.” Won Li spread my lips apart with his fingers, like a prospective buyer examines a horse. “Your gums are pink, as are your inner eyelids, thus the headaches you suffer are not from thin blood.”

I held up my hand. “Hypothetically, if I
were
anemic, would the pressure you applied leave a bruise?”

“It is possible.” He pondered a moment. “More possible, I would think, if you were older. The young are resilient. With age comes delicacy and a slowness to heal.”

I stared at the
L
formed by my thumb and forefinger. The jailor’s voice resounded in my ears.
Folks are plenty riled about him strangling a woman with child. They’re saying a noose around that dago’s neck’d square things a tad.

At the time of her death, Belinda Abercrombie was pregnant?

A
train derailment between Golden and Denver City shuttled the Abercrombie murder and Ciccone’s arrest off the front page of Friday’s edition of the
Rocky Mountain News.

It had yet to be determined whether a faulty rail or the engineer highballing down a steep slope had sent the locomotive and cars skidding sideward through the trees. A woodcut illustration of the wreckage resembled a giant carpenter’s hinged rule smoldering in a pine forest.

The list of dead and injured included no familiar names. I cast the rest of the paper aside, unread.

“What’s the matter with me, Papa?” I asked the empty chair across from me. “I can’t sit still. I can’t concentrate on anything, other than my inability to concentrate. I’d fear I was going stark, raving mad if I thought those who are realize in advance that the mania is upon them.”

No phantom voice offered advice or answers. I’d have welcomed either, but my expectations were as low as my mood. Though I loved my father as fiercely as any daughter could, he’d seldom been within earshot when I’d needed him most.

Kneeling to refold the newspaper, I muttered, “And death hasn’t improved your hearing a whit.”

Ever since I wakened that morning, a prickly sensation, like a subcutaneous rash, had held hostage my normal serenity and good humor. I’d expected some unease, due to today’s publication of the dissolution notice Won Li had translated and placed. I hadn’t anticipated the squirmy discomfort common to roosting on a tick-infested log.

There was also, I admitted, a void with Jack O’Shaughnessy’s name on it. Our parting was inevitable, I supposed, but I regretted the anger precipitating it.

Except that, too, was inevitable, I thought as I laid the somewhat creased, but current, newspaper on Papa’s desk. Just as I triggered the white knight-protector in Jack, the willful child in me was incensed by his criticisms, limitations, and ultimatums.

“Oil and water,” I said, lopping off the tip of a fresh cigar. I champed the vile thing between my teeth and struck a lucifer on the lamp base. Applying flame and puffing myself green in the face, I then tamped out the ember in the ash receptacle and coughed my fool head off. Papa simply must quit smoking, or it’d be the death of me.

For strictly medicinal purposes, I took a nip off the pint of Old Cabin. The whiskey blazed a path from my tonsils to my toes, but I didn’t choke this time. Albeit reluctantly, I managed to suppress the impulse to test a second swallow for potability in the interest of scientific research.

A wise decision, except it left naught to occupy my mind, or hands, until Won Li arrived in the buggy to fetch me home. The monotonous hours ahead stretched further than the horizon.

Moments later, I set out for J. Fulton Shulteis’s office. The mission I’d divined was bona fide, perhaps urgent. At the very least, it would demonstrate Sawyer Investigations’ conscientious attention to detail.

My pace was brisk, and my gaze held as level as a debutante correcting her posture by means of a book balanced atop her head. Which isn’t to say peripheral vision didn’t survey every bay horse, uniformed constable, and broad-shouldered man of taller than average height.

Avoidance was the objective. A recurring tautening at my midsection testified to the fact that all of the above frequented the city streets in droves. I had no acquaintanceship with the O’Shaughnessy imposters, but their sheer number seemed a freak of nature.

While mulling over this anthropological curiosity, I paused before crossing Lawrence Street for two lads and a glossy-coated dog herding a litter of pigs. Blissfully ignorant of what the immediate future held in store, the shoats jogged along, snorting and swiveling their heads like dignitaries at a Fourth of July parade.

In retrospect, sight of Hubert Abercrombie and Garret McCoyne conversing in front of the bank across the street would have escaped notice had the pigs not penned me at the corner.

Their discourse was punctuated by gestures and nods. Abercrombie’s pallor was ghostly, even at a distance, but weak blood didn’t hinder chuckling at one of McCoyne’s remarks.

Oh, how I wished for a thirty-foot-long ear-trumpet to eavesdrop on the parley. They faced each other, so sneaking up for a listen was out of the question. I told myself the topic of discussion could be anything, including the weather. The observation was as effective at tamping my curiosity as spitting on a forest fire.

Starting across Lawrence, I rejected the barbershop west of the bank as a hideaway. The bastion of tonsorial artistry was as forbidden to females as a gentleman’s club. To the east was a glover and fur dealer. Just as I conjured an excuse for availing myself of the store’s alley entrance so I could peel an ear out the open front door, Avilla strode through it and joined her father and McCoyne.

Other than a dark green dress, she demonstrated no outward indication of unrelieved sorrow. To her credit, I admitted grudgingly. Avilla might have been somewhat fond of her stepmother, but sinking into depression at Belinda’s death would be hypocritical. From what Elise had said, the two women tolerated each other. I surmised they might be rivals for Hubert’s affection.

By the time I reached Shulteis’s office, my imagination had Hubert and Garret McCoyne as coconspirators in the jewelry thefts and murder. Percy’s sourpussed expression was a fetid breath of reality.

“Has Fulton returned from Leadville?”

“He has.”

“Is he with a client?”

“No, but you don’t have an appointment.”

I rolled my eyes. “Must we iterate this ridiculous exchange every time I come here?”

“We must, until you extend the courtesy of securing a proper appointment.”

“You are nothing if not consistent, Percy.” I grinned.

“Fortunately, so am I.”

The crack of his knee on the drawer coincided with me scuttling into Fulton’s office. The attorney’s feet were splayed on the desk, and he was sleeping like Father Machebeuf in the confessional.

A sharp rap with an honorary gavel to his shoe sole put an end to that nonsense. Arms aflail like broken wings, Fulton caterwauled remarks denouncing the legitimacy of anyone who’d whack a gout-sufferer’s foot with a hammer.

A rap is not a whack and a gavel’s shape merely resembles a hammer, but intuition advised against making those distinctions.

Instead, I suggested a medicinal tea brewed from gout-wort leaves, nettle juice, and dried self-heal, known botanically as prunella vulgaris. Ingested four to six times per day, it should relieve, if not cure, what ailed him.

The remedy was not one of Won Li’s but Dr. Nicholas Culpeper’s, an English herbalist, apothecary, and astrologer. Culpeper died from tuberculosis in 1654 at the tender age of thirty-eight. As luck would have it, the disease was one of the few for which he had yet to concoct a treatment.

While Fulton tenderly massaged his foot, I asked whether dear Percy had delivered the message regarding the LeBruton case. The attorney said he had, but he perceived no need to contact Penelope in the foreseeable future. In the interest of brevity, my report on the status of the dissolution neglected mention of the distillate of camphor oil I’d given Abelia. Nor did I dun Fulton for the telegrams. He hadn’t authorized the expense, thus I couldn’t expect reimbursement.

When I got to the part about publishing the notice in Hop Alley’s newspaper, Fulton laughed uproariously. “Brilliant.
Brilliant.
Do tell that ingenious father of yours that I couldn’t have circumvented the law any better myself.”

My mouth opened, then shut again. Better to bask in the spirit of the compliment than protest the object of it. I asked, “Then there’s no question of legality?”

“Not unless Rendal LeBruton raises one.”

I tilted my head. “I reviewed your law books thoroughly. There’s no stipulation to notices being written in English.”

“That isn’t the contention.” Fulton grimaced as he forced his gout-swollen foot back into a half-boot. “If I represented the respondent, I’d contest that newspaper’s abidance with the definition of a publication of general circulation. If a judge agreed, it’s immaterial whether it was written in Latin, Greek, and a smattering of Gullah.”

My grip tightened on the back of the visitor’s chair I stood behind. I’d been so smug about the language oversight I’d disregarded circulation numbers. Common sense said a newspaper legible to a fraction of a county’s population didn’t meet “general” standards.

“Then we’ll simply have to trust that LeBruton doesn’t learn of it until the decree is granted.”

The attorney tut-tutted. “Which he could appeal, citing the aforestated premise.”

Except he wouldn’t. Why bother, when LeBruton could bribe his judicial pal to declare Penelope insane and ship her off to the nearest—or farthest—asylum?

Dejection and apprehension tussled for sway as I emigrated from the law office to the LeBruton home. What I expected to find, or accomplish, I had no idea. Signalling Abelia to apprise her of Shulteis’s warning would dash hope and reignite desperation.

Other than water dripping from the ferns hanging from the veranda’s ceiling, the house looked the same as it had on my first visit—whether peaceful or sinister was a matter of supposition. Like the granny-woman who lived near us in Ft. Smith would say, “You don’t judge a church by its steeple.”

After being shut up for most of the afternoon, the agency was an oven with furniture when I returned. Bending to stop the door with a brick, I saw a sealed envelope jutting from under the bottom rail.
JOBY
was hand-lettered on it, in ink. Holding it up to the light merely revealed the dimensions of the note inside.

I tapped the envelope on a thumbnail. “A new client could have left it. Or Abelia. Possibly, McCoyne, or even one of the Abercrombies—a thank-you note, for the cake.”

Who was I kidding? I didn’t recall seeing his handwriting before, but, “It’s from Jack. You know darned well it is.”

“It is traditional for mail to be read, not conversed with.”

I spun around. Won Li stood in the door, hands clasped in front of him. “Is it not?”

“Then you read it. If it’s from Jack O’Shaughnessy, throw it away.”

His mouth tucked when I handed him the Arkansas toothpick I used for a letter-opener. Utilizing a Bowie-style knife to slit paper was akin to hunting quail with a cannon, but a woman alone can’t be too careful.

Won Li angled his arm, the sheet of stationery suspended over the ash can. “It is an apology.”

I needn’t ask from whom. To say I wavered would be an understatement. Mutual amends for mutual wrongdoing wouldn’t resolve anything, except yesterday’s argument. No, in truth, it wouldn’t accomplish that, either. Harsh words were but symptoms of the conflict between us. Swapping “I’m sorry’s” did not a partnership make, and neither of us would be content with anything less.

I took the paper from Won Li, wadded it in a ball, and dropped it in the receptacle. “Jack and I are too different. Let’s leave it at that.”

Won Li bowed an agreement, though he didn’t, for a scant second. Silent capitulation brooked no hardship for him. He knew I’d contradict myself before the buggy traveled two blocks from the office.

We’d put nearly three behind us when I said, “I was with Jack when he was summoned to the Abercrombie house. I saw that poor woman dead on the floor. I interviewed her husband, stepdaughter, and servants. Is it so unreasonable for me to want to see the man charged with the crime?”

Silence.

“Want to know why
I
think Jack was furious about me visiting Ciccone at the jail?”

Silence.

“I’ll
tell you why. Maybe the mayor, chief of police, and everybody else have convinced themselves that Ciccone is guilty, but I think Jack has his doubts.”

I snorted.
“I’m
certainly beginning to. I can’t imagine why Jack wouldn’t.”

Won Li said, “You think very much alike.”

“That’s right.” I pressed two fingers together. “Peas in a pod.”

“I see…”

“For instance, if Ciccone burglarized the McCoynes, Whitelaws, and Abercrombies, murdering Belinda to make good an escape, why did he mail the spoils,
then
try to pawn a piece for train fare? If he had money for postage, why not spend it on his getaway?”

“Are you certain he paid postage to ship the parcel?”

“Of course, he—” I groaned. “Cash on delivery. Sending it C.O.D. wouldn’t have cost him a red cent.”

“No,” Won Li allowed, “but selling even one item of stolen jewelry in the town in which it was stolen was unwise to the extreme.”

I sat up straighter in the seat. “Then you agree? Ciccone may be innocent?”

“If stupidity were proof of innocence, we would have little need for prisons.”

“But if Ciccone is as wily and experienced at burglary as one must presume, why was he too penniless to buy himself a train ticket?”

I held up a hand. “And what about this. Why would a young, muscular man strangle a woman with a string of pearls? Why not a forearm to the throat? Assuming he crept up behind her, a quick half-twist to the head would have snapped her spine.”