Karen Mercury (16 page)

“Of course not! None of them died, for one. And they took it willingly and not nearly in the quantities that Josephine apparently ingested. It scours the insides. I saw Josephine’s entire pelvis oozing blood. Then she vomited blood as well. There’s a test for it, Tempest. Something involving a rabbit’s skin.”

Neil polished off his whiskey and sighed. “I thought of that already. There’s a pharmacist here in town—he’s quite good, really—who can probably figure out if Spanish fly killed Josephine.”

Chess and Fidelia cast each other uncomfortable glances. “Yes,” admitted Chess. “I know that fellow. I don’t think he likes me very much.”

Neil frowned. “You’ve already met Chang? You’ve only been in Laramie two days.”

Chess nodded. “He thinks I owe him a tiger.”

Neil nodded too, not questioning the tiger. “All right, then. I won’t bring up your name, just tell him I want the girl’s body tested, however he does it.” He stood. “If we find evidence of Spanish fly, that’ll be enough to arrest this Bullet Bob cove. I doubt he’s skipping town if he’s as addled and soaked as you say he is, and he’s got that play going on at the Oddfellows Hall.”

Everyone else stood, and Fidelia asked, “Marshal Tempest, maybe you can clear up something I’ve been wondering. Can you come into the parlor?”

Looking amused, Neil followed the girl to the parlor, where she pointed to the eerie framed photograph of the Bucket of Blood bar. “Do you know why Chess’s sister Liberty has this photograph? And who is that woman? If anyone would know, it would be you.”

Neil’s face glazed over fondly as he gazed at the photograph. “I believe Liberty has it to remind her that there are more things in heaven and earth than we have dreamed of.”

No one in the room seemed to breathe, waiting for Neil to explain. He was obviously drawing it out for the sheer pleasure of it. Finally it was Fidelia who asked, “Is that woman a ghost?”

Neil shrugged. “If that’s what you want to call it. Let’s just say she had been dead for quite a while when my partner Harley took that photograph.” He smiled smugly.

Fidelia pressed on. “What do
you
call it? A spook? Specter? Phantom?”

Neil said, “She was a spirit. Harley experimented with different aspects of spirit photography. This isn’t the strangest thing that he came up with, though.”

Fidelia turned to Spenser. “I wonder if Harley could photograph Ulrich.”

“Who’s Ulrich?” asked Neil, but luckily just then the front door slammed shut, and everyone looked at the foyer.

A dashing fellow with flashing eyes and a livid scar across his face appeared. He was nearly wide enough to fill the doorway.
He could give Chess a run for his money in the bondage arena
. Spenser felt guilt that his cock swelled to be in the masculine presence of this virile fellow. Spenser was aware that he liked men to be domineering and overbearing, but this chap reminded him of the quirt from Freund’s he had stashed away in his trunk in the foyer.

“Harley,” said Neil. “We were just talking about you. They were admiring your photograph of Minerva Shortridge.”

“Clairvoyance at work again, I see,” Harley said happily. “Hate to bust in, Neil, but you need to come to the Cactus Club. Some oiled jackass accused Rusty Pipes of poisoning him, so he chased Rusty down Second Street and into that hornet’s nest that’s been hanging by the Keystone Hall forever.”

Neil sighed but headed for the front door. “Rusty Pipes. Why haven’t you fired that cove yet?”

“Poison?” Chess inquired. “Could this be related to our situation?”

“I doubt it,” said Harley. “Rusty’s the cook at the Cactus Club. The cove was just irate because he ate some bad chili.”

Neil clapped on his Stetson and introduced the trio to his partner. He told Chess very seriously, “I want you to keep these two here at Albuquerque House. None of that crappy Frontier Hotel business, not until we sort out this Spanish fly affair. Liberty, Levi, and Garrett won’t be back from South Pass for a couple weeks, anyway.”

“No problem,” said Chess. “I’ll take a ride out to Serendipity Ranch soon. See what I’ve gotten myself into.”

Spenser meandered to the front parlor window while the two relatives said a few things about cows. It had been a long, exhausting day, but Spenser didn’t want it to end. He watched as Harley stood on the bottom step of the front porch stairs with legs crossed, lighting a pipe under a hanging lantern. When the front door slammed and Neil joined Harley, instead of immediately riding away on their mounts to confront Rusty Pipes’s accuser, Neil stood on the step with Harley.

“So you heard the marshal,” Chess said gruffly to Fidelia. “You’re staying here until we can run in that creepy Bullet Bob.”

“That’s fine,” Fidelia answered lightly. “I feel much more protected being with you and Spenser, anyway. I’m a good cook, having taken care of my brother for so many years, so you won’t be stuck with Rusty Pipes’s chili.”

Spenser was aroused when Harley held the pipe out to one side and took Neil’s chin in his hand. He planted a solid kiss on the marshal, and their jaws worked as they licked each other’s tongues. Spenser’s cock erected as he watched Harley, clearly the dominant one, grab Neil by the waist and jam him close, hip to hip. Their jawbones, their throats, worked with such virility. Spenser’s mouth watered at the sight of a few tufts of Harley’s chest hair peeking from the neck of his shirt. Spenser’s cock lengthened and he nearly stopped breathing when Neil bent at the knees to take an enormous slurp from Harley’s robust throat.

Spenser wished he could be so bold as to take Chess’s jaw in his palm like that and lap at his delicious mouth. He would never dare. It was Chess’s place to make every move first.

“We can have Fidelia light the stove,” said Chess, coming up close behind him. “I’m sure you’re aching to get that white paint off your skin, and there’s a fantastic bathtub down here—
mon Dieu.
” The last was a whisper, as Chess evidently caught sight of his brother-in-law smooching the well-built Harley. He panted onto Spenser’s shoulder.

Spenser shuddered sensuously and said, “That’s a fine sight. And Neil’s married to another sister of yours?”

“Ivy,” Chess breathed. “I’m beginning to think my sisters are more European in their way of thinking.”

“Yes,” said Spenser. “Didn’t Alameda mention something about us meeting her ‘husbands’?”

“I thought that was just a slip of her tongue. I thought she misspoke.” Chess walked a hand up Spenser’s thigh to grip his throbbing cock in his palm. The two men practically breathed steam on the parlor window. It was incredibly erotic to watch the two masculine toughs locking horns like that, and Spenser felt no need to pretend otherwise. Apparently, Rusty Pipes being bitten by a thousand hornets, or the irate diner chasing Rusty down Second Street with a dinner fork, was not enough to distract the two he-men from their groping of each other.

It obviously stimulated Chess as well. He squeezed Spenser’s ass almost gently, but his thumb rubbing Spenser’s sensitive, taut cockhead seemed to have one aim—to make Spenser shoot in his trousers. Chess even took an obscene bite from the side of Spenser’s neck, as Neil was doing to Harley, licking his jugular vein.

Spenser rubbed Chess’s hair. He fingered the thong that held it in a pigtail at the back of his neck. How he wanted to run his fingers through that thick hair! But it didn’t suit their roles, with Chess as the dominant one who called all the shots. “It makes you hot to be watched, doesn’t it?” Spenser asked.

“Of course,” Chess muttered against Spenser’s throat. “Who doesn’t like being admired?”

“But right now it’s making you hot being the watcher.”

Chess paused for a brief second. Outside on the steps, Neil and Harley finally detached and walked to their separate mounts. Chess was evidently thinking about this interesting turn of events—the idea that
he
would enjoy being the viewer, the passive one.

“I suppose so,” Chess eventually said in a very small voice, now licking Spenser’s neck like a cat.

A rush of power surged through Spenser, and he finally dared to slip the thong from Chess’s hair. But other fingers were assisting him, and he let Fidelia slide the leather strip out of Chess’s pigtail.

Spenser hadn’t spoken intimately to Fidelia since their frigging encounter in this very parlor. When Ulrich’s spirit had bashed Chess with that ski, the ensuing stew that erupted had occupied everyone’s minds. He guessed she had enjoyed it when Chess had handled her titties, for slathering his brutish fingers all over her bursting breasts had seemed to do the trick. It had sent her over that cliff into a whopping orgasm that would’ve gone on for longer had not her brother’s ghost shown up to do some damage.

Then, the time Chess had been bumfucking him in the back room at Freund’s. Not only had Fidelia watched from her hiding spot, it had inflamed her enough to allow Chess to ride her like a stallion later on, apparently doing something to Chang’s tiger.

So Spenser knew that Fidelia enjoyed watching the two of them together. Finally spearing his fingers through Chess’s thick mane of hair, he spread the locks so they flowed over Chess’s shoulders, giving him an entirely different look from the powerful, masterful libertine he’d been up till now. He even tilted Chess’s chin so they looked each other in the eyes. Chess did have a wary, maybe even worried look. It shocked Spenser to realize they were both the same height. He hadn’t noticed before—he was usually in a subservient position.

Now, Spenser dared to unbutton the top few buttons of Chess’s shirt and slide his hand over the meaty pectoral he had admired so much. A rush of power and joy surged through Spenser when he pinched Chess’s nipple and he saw the ecstatic flinch in his face. Spenser had flinched himself that way many times, he knew, and now Chess even turned his face aside in the submissive manner Spenser was so accustomed to doing himself.

Now Spenser knew why Chess enjoyed having such dominant power. It was a satisfying way to turn the tables, exerting control like this.

“
Everything
excites me,” Chess now admitted, a bit sheepish for the first time since Spenser had met him. The Chess he knew would’ve been proudly proclaiming this fact.

“I can tell,” said Spenser salaciously, sliding the shirt from Chess’s shoulders and tossing it carelessly to the floor. Like Chess had done with
his
clothing in his hotel room. “You were terribly bad in London,” he said, striding to his trunk in the foyer and quickly unbuckling it.

When Spenser turned to face the parlor again, Chess was shrugging casually. As though he really did
not
look like Zeus standing there shirtless in his denim pants, his beefy pectorals all pumped up. Chess toyed with imaginary cufflinks at his wrists. “I did what every young man does on a Grand Tour.”

Fidelia spoke up. “Only your tour lasted several years. And you’re not so young anymore.”

Spenser’s pulse quickened as he prepared for Chess to punish the barmaid for speaking so freely. But Chess turned to Fidelia and said mildly, “Yes. I was a selfish, lazy, hedonistic bastard. That’s all very true.” He ceased to fiddle with his cufflinks and placed his hands at his sides, looking Spenser boldly in the face. “I should be punished for being such a selfish bastard.”

Spenser nearly lost all reason then. Chess was issuing him a challenge and at the same time making himself vulnerable to a position he had rarely—if ever—been in. Spenser’s cock plumped so lewdly against his thigh, he knew the slightest touch would bring him off. “Of course you should be punished.”

Breathing deeply to gain his senses, he brandished the quirt and came forward. To his utter surprise, Fidelia grabbed ahold of Chess’s wrists and held them tight behind his neck. It looked as though that saucy lass was binding Chess’s wrists with his own pigtail thong. How inventive she was! As Spenser had done, Chess nominally struggled with this bondage, but his thick cock bulging the crotch of the denims let Spenser know that was all for show.

He did look exquisite with his hair softly falling about his shoulders, and now Spenser tweaked his taut nipples. Chess squeezed his eyes shut in tolerance and even bit his lip. “You’ve been a terrible, awful bastard,” Spenser said in a low voice. “This perky barmaid and I will demonstrate to you what happens when an impudent buck is allowed to run roughshod over others, showing no respect for them.”

“I realize that,” said Chess obediently.

Spenser tried to be brutal when he unbuckled Chess’s gun belt and dropped it to the carpet. He tried to curl his upper lip in a bastardly impression when he yanked apart the denim buttons at Chess’s crotch. Chess didn’t flinch, perhaps being accustomed to this sort of abuse—only, from the other side of things. Spenser shoved the starchy fabric down around Chess’s knees, and when Chess’s stiff erection bounced up eagerly, Spenser slapped it.

“This makes you hard, does it? Does it excite you to know what an awful bastard you’ve been? I can slap your cock and you can’t do a thing about it.” It was a satisfying feeling, the sting of the hot, shiny cock against his hand when he spanked it.
Slap!
Spenser snatched Chess’s necktie from the carpet and knotted it around the cock at the base, as Chess had done to him with the stupid damned handkerchief.