A Lady Never Trifles with Thieves (8 page)

“My wife is virtually inconsolable,” McCoyne said.

“She’s been under a doctor’s care since the robbery. I have the resources to buy the woman her own blasted jewelry store, but oh, no. Nothing will do but recovering what was lost.”

What a coldhearted twit. Had it never occurred to him that at least
his
wife was still drawing breath? Whitelaw’s plea had evoked a modicum of sympathy. McCoyne’s spawned contempt.

To him, I inquired, “If your wife’s trove was so valuable, why wasn’t it locked in a safe?”

“It should have been.” He looked at Whitelaw. “We each have them, but our wives developed inexcusable habits of removing pieces to wear, then ’forgetting’ to return them afterward.”

Whitelaw stammered, “Margaret and I never dreamed a thief would climb in a second-floor window. Not with four children and a houseful of servants!”

McCoyne’s question usurped my own. “Then why go to the expense of installing a vault?” He waved a dismissal. “Such is the constables’ favorite riddle. My wife has yet to manufacture a rational answer.”

My gaze fell to the envelope. U.S. Deputy Marshals for the Western District of Arkansas patrolled a seventy-four-thousand-square-mile area to earn a two-dollar fee, plus mileage, for each outlaw arrested. Papa would have had to fill a jail cheek-to-jowl for that kind of money.

“So, you want to hire the agency to catch the burglar and return your property.”

“Well, I won’t speak for Avery, but whether or not the thief is apprehended makes scant difference to me.” McCoyne harrumphed. “Not that I wouldn’t like to see him in leg-irons. If I had to choose, however, restoring my wife’s jewelry collection takes precedence over identifying and punishing the guilty party.”

“Really.” Intuition’s internal hum grew louder. I looked him straight in the eye. “I find your attitude a mite peculiar. Most robbery victims would choose the opposite.”

The banker reddened. “The police are paid to arrest criminals. They spend little, if any, time searching for stolen goods, be it livestock or precious gems.”

“Will you help us, Miss Sawyer?” Avery said. “Along with the bank draft is a list and description of the missing jewelry to aid your search. If your father requires a larger retainer, we’ll pay whatever he asks.”

Though I had no idea where to begin, or how to go about it, tracking down two pillow slips full of baubles wasn’t the same as trifling with thieves, much less killers. On that point, Jack O’Shaughnessy, my bullheaded Irish white knight, would have to agree.

He wouldn’t. He’d argue against the compromise in a most strenuous manner. Assuming I ever saw him again.

I picked up the envelope. The wax seal was etched with Garret McCoyne’s copperplate initials. A hundred dollars. Lord only knew when, or if, my fingers would close around that amount of money again.

Whitelaw would be grateful for my efforts, whether the brooch and other geegaws were returned in whole, or part. McCoyne would be a tyrant to work for. He wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than complete success. If that.

If you have an ounce of caring for me, don’t go out looking for the devil’s own.

I won’t, I promised Jack silently. I’ll settle for having one as a client.

T
he funeral for Belinda Abercrombie consisted of a parlor service, followed by the Episcopalian custom of a second requiem at the graveside.

I chose to attend only the latter. It struck me as disrespectful to pay homage to the deceased, her husband, and stepdaughter and simultaneously scrutinize the mourners by invading the privacy of the Abercrombie home.

It was true as well that others even more desirous of relative invisibility than I also had a lesser chance of rating notice at the cemetery.

I joined the tag end of the processional, then hastened from the buggy to meld with the stream of people walking slowly toward the open grave. Beside it was a skirted platform where the casket would rest during the service.

As funerals are the apogee of chivalrous behavior, fading into the background wasn’t a matter of discreet sidles and reverse trajectories. A bird’s-eye view of my circumambulations must have resembled the L-shaped movements of a chessboard’s knight. At long last, I stationed myself on the fringes beside a dwarf spice bush. Blotting perspiration from my face and neck with a hankie was not only compulsory but it also disguised my roving eyes.

By my estimate, the attendance was close to a hundred people. City officials and the cream of Denver City society milled with Abercrombie Department Store clerks and the requisite ghouls a violent death always attracted.

Being a member of none of those groups, I couldn’t identify many attendants by name. Their height and lack thereof, haberdashery, and parasols deployed for shade didn’t aid the process one iota. Clothing and demeanor were relied on to segregate the acquaintances from employees and the morbidly curious.

And the authorities. Or authority, as it were. I’d expected to see Jack or Hopkins or both, but it was the third, unmet constable from the murder scene who’d materialized on the other side of the shrub.

He was younger than I remembered. Sandy-haired, barrel-chested and dressed in street clothes. I smiled. He didn’t return it.

Jules brought Hubert Abercrombie to the grave site in a wheeled chair. The widower acknowledged no one, staring ahead as though in a trance. Avilla walked alongside, holding her father’s hand. A heavy veil obscured her face, but her posture was slumped and her step as leaden as a woman thrice her age.

Pallbearers wearing black sashes carried the rosewood casket to the platform. Garret McCoyne was the only one I recognized through a sudden blur of tears.

The most detestable kind of resentment roiled up inside me and fouled my mouth. I was blind to the mourners and deaf to the minister’s Scripture reading.

What manner of fairness was there in the likes of Belinda Abercrombie being laid to rest in a gleaming coffin with fancy brass handles and corner braces? At his own peril, Joseph Beckworth Sawyer had rid The Nations of blackguards, killers, and all manner of human predators, while raising a child from infancy to adulthood, only to go to the ground swaddled in a dusty, moth-riddled blanket.

No preacher had read Psalm 121 over Papa. No army of mourners gathered round clutching roses to place on his grave. There was no one to weep and pray for a fine, brave, loving man’s immortal soul, save his heartbroken daughter and the middle-aged Chinaman who loved Joe B. Sawyer like a brother.

Waves of grief swelled and washed over me. The harder I tried not to cry, the thicker and faster the tears coursed down my cheeks. I squinted up at the sky, telling myself that Papa was in a better place, but damn me for selfish, I wanted him back in the here and now.

Control was slow to come and slippery to hold on to, but I listened to the minister’s final prayer asking the Lord for the strength and the wisdom to celebrate a life well lived, rather than dwell on Belinda’s passage from it.

Jules pushed Hubert nearer the casket. The widower rose from his seat and murmured softly over it, his hand caressing the polished wood. A bouquet of white lilies and peach roses was laid upon it, then he bent and kissed the lid.

I looked away before I dissolved into tears again. The male onlookers stood as rigid as the granite monuments surrounding us. If women were blessed with one freedom, it was to let their sorrow show on the outside, instead of bottling it up like carbonated soda in a lidded shaker.

A glimpse of shorn, carrot-orange hair had me blinking to clear my vision. Its owner’s coal scuttle bonnet was flapping in the breeze, granting peeks at the fiery strands at her brow. I couldn’t see the man beside her for a taller, portly gent standing slightly behind him.

Pushing up on the balls of my feet and craning my neck brought a new impediment into view—namely, the statuesque figure of Elise Estabrook. I backpedaled a step before she saw me. The tactic completely obliterated the woman I believed to be Gertrude Hiss, but as the mourners moved to file past the bier, an opening revealed a jump-seat wagonette drawn by matched palominos.

Great Caesar’s ghost. Why couldn’t I have been born a twin, as the granny-woman predicted? Like most only children, I’d wished for a playmate almost as often as for a blameable surrogate when schemes went awry. Had Mama begat me in duplicate, the need to be two places at once wouldn’t have posed a dilemma.

The wagonette’s driver was a grizzled codger whose dark sack coat added a touch of formality to his dungarees and checkered shirt. To my left, the bonneted woman was easing from the queue, preparing to insinuate herself with a group about to cattycorner across the lawn in the opposite direction.

The constable was surveying the assemblage in a general manner. I presumed he’d been assigned to detect a burglar in its midst, as though the thief would attend dressed in the black cowled cape and trousers portrayed in the morning newspaper’s illustration.

There wasn’t time to explain the significance of the gold-colored team, which I was certain the constable had no knowledge of. With a final glance at the departing bonnet, I tugged on the cop’s sleeve.

“I know Gertrude Hiss is wanted for questioning in the Abercrombie case,” I said.

He nodded.

“See the people over there leaving the service? I think the woman in the gray bonnet is her. There’s every chance Sam Merck is with her.”

“You
think
so, eh?” He grinned. “Lieutenant O’Shaughnessy warned me about you, Miss Sawyer. Said you were as clever as they come.”

I twisted the fabric of his coat sleeve, rather than the enticingly plump lobe of his jug-ear. “This is not a trick. I am a private detective. I have no authority to detain anyone for any reason. If you allow the Abercrombies’ cook and, possibly, the gardener to sashay off to the train depot, the next thing Lieutenant O’Shaughnessy will hear is my screaming, vitriolic report of your complete and total incompetence.”

The constable blanched so pale his freckles evaporated. “Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.” He wrenched his sleeve from my grip. “If that’s who they are, I’ll nab ’em, right quick.”

While he rushed off in one direction, I hastened in the other. Some people had paused for chitchat en route to their buggies. The majority was scattering like shotgun pellets.

The wagonette driver was poised to giddap the team as soon as a male passenger climbed into the rig’s boxy cab and took his seat. I couldn’t run. To do so would be an unforgivable insult. Limbs churning like pistons, I waved at the driver, as if hailing a hack for a ride.

He looked over his shoulder and spoke to his passenger. Keep talking, I pleaded. Do palaver at length on the rudeness of leaving an unescorted woman to fend for herself at the cemetery after a funeral service.

A few yards separated us when the driver faced around. His expression was sheepish as he apologized, then said, “I’m already hired, ma’am. If’n you’d care to wait, I can come back for you, soon as I’m able.”

“That’s very kind of you, but it’s your horses that captured my eye. I simply had to hurry over for a closer look at such magnificent animals.”

“They’re pretty things, all right. I’ve tried to buy ’em a dozen times, but the owner won’t sell.” He turned. “Will ya, Mr. LeBruton?”

My heart stopped, then careered to my boots. The man in back leaned forward, a smile gleaming white in contrast to his Vandyke beard. “I should, in light of the exorbitant sum Mr. Orman charges to board them.”

His smile widened. “But as you can see, miss, the team matches my wife’s beautiful spun-gold hair.”

Huddled in the corner of the rig, Penelope LeBruton stared at me through a flocked veil with such an expression of terror that I felt as though a pillow had been clamped over my face. Wrenching my eyes from her, I stammered, “Yes, yes, they do. Perfectly.”

LeBruton’s gaze meandered the length of me, tarrying at my bosom, cinched waist, and the curve of my hips. I’d been unclothed for purposes of bathing countless times in my life, but never had I felt more naked. Vulnerable. Assaulted.

Any skepticism I’d entertained regarding the slander visited on his character withered like smoke from a snuffled candle. Nothing short of sudden death would prevent me from releasing his wife from marital imprisonment.

LeBruton said, “Are you certain you aren’t in need of a ride, miss? I believe room can be made for you and we’d be happy to escort you home. Wouldn’t we, sweetheart?”

The Chinese word for
crisis
combines the symbols for both risk and opportunity. It sickened me that the risk I was about to take endangered Penelope, not me, but there was no help for it.

“I have my own buggy, thank you,” I said, “but as you are such a connoisseur of horseflesh, may I be so bold to ask if you’d take a look at my Morgan and appraise his worth?”

The driver grunted. Under his breath, he said, “You’re askin’
him
’stead of me?”

LeBruton crooned, “I’d be delighted to be of assistance, Miss…”

“Sawyer.”

He introduced himself and his wife, then folded bodily to exit the wagonette. Over his bowed back, I telegraphed to Penelope a visual promise that her secret was safe with me. I believe she nodded in comprehension, but she was trembling so incessantly, I couldn’t be sure.

LeBruton took my arm for the brief stroll to the buggy. His fingertips kneaded my skin and underlying muscle in a manner I supposed was intended to reduce me to a quivering mass of unbridled lust.

Once beyond earshot, I interrupted his soliloquy on my beauty and grace to say, “I cozened you away from your rig under false pretenses.”

“Oh?” Lasciviousness glowed in his hazel eyes. “And what might those entail, Miss Sawyer?”

“I am an employee of Sawyer Investigations, Mr. LeBruton. The agency has been contracted to look into the recent rash of home burglaries.”

Damned if the scoundrel’s interest didn’t flourish with the admission. “Beauty and derring-do? How marvelously exotic.”

I went on, “Last night, upon discovering the murder of Belinda Abercrombie, the manservant stopped a buggy drawn by a team identical to yours. No doubt you’ll agree, paired palominos are not common.”

LeBruton stiffened. His hand slid from my arm. “Mine are stabled at Orman’s livery. I wouldn’t condone it, but quite possibly Thaddeus hires them out on occasion.”

“Do you own the wagonette?”

“No.”

“Do you own a buggy?”

“No.”

“Then you rent whatever conveyance is required, depending on circumstances.”

A shrug served as his response.

“How shrewd, Mr. LeBruton. Letting, rather than owning, gives the impression of a fleet at your disposal, doesn’t it? You can avail yourself of a buckboard for a trot around the park, a cabriolet for the theater, and, on somber occasions such as today, hire a wagonette and driver.

“I shan’t think the arrangement is terribly convenient for your wife, though, is it? Silly to walk to the livery, to hire a rig for the day. How would she know beforehand if any were available to let?”

Had Penelope ever tried, I was certain Orman was paid to tell her all were hired out. At any given time, it might even be true. Though I might be giving LeBruton more credit than he deserved, it followed that rail agents had been similarly bribed—perhaps warned that Penelope’s mind was dangerously unsound.

Hostility replaced every nuance of LeBruton’s joie de vivre. “I bid you good day, miss.”

“As you wish. I assume you’d rather answer a constable’s questions than mine. Of course, there’s also the matter of the woman accompanying you last night being a brunette, not a spun-gold blonde.”

LeBruton whirled around. “What is it you want?”

“Confirmation that you and a female companion were hailed by Abercrombies’ manservant, then you reported the murder to the police.”

He bulled up, his lips pressed tightly closed.

“Did you or did you not make the report?”

No response.

“Fine. You give me no choice but to ask your wife if you were home all last evening.”

“Go ahead. Penelope says what I tell her to say.”

My laugh was as bitter as gall. “Thank you, Mr. LeBruton. That’s precisely the reaction I was after.”

His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Word to the wise, sir. Liars always volunteer more information than necessary. In the future, I’d limit mine to
yes
and
no,
if I were you.”