Katie Rose (34 page)

“What?”

“I was going to talk to you about this at the shop today. I just received notice that my room has to be vacated,” Lynette explained. “My landlady is very kind, but says she has a brother coming to visit and needs the use of my room. I was going to register at the boardinghouse, but it occurred to me that perhaps … we could share lodgings.”

“What a wonderful idea!” Emily’s eyes brightened as she turned the thought over in her mind. Lynette’s presence would soften Thomas’s objections to her remaining in the house. It would also appear more respectable, for a woman alone was always subject to rumor.

“I thought it might help both of us,” Lynette was saying. “I know the business isn’t entirely profitable yet. You could reduce my wages a bit, since I wouldn’t have to pay for the room, and I could help you here as well. If it didn’t work out, I could always go to the boardinghouse.”

Emily nodded. “I think it’s a grand idea. Why don’t you move your things in today? I’ll mind the shop. I’d feel better having someone keep an eye on the place after what happened last night”

Lynette smiled. “Thank you so much, Miss Potter. You’ve been so kind to me. I feel you’re almost like … a sister.”

Emily smiled, taking Lynette’s hand. It felt good to know someone else cared about her. And now she had a plan that would benefit everyone.

It had to work.

It was late in the day, and a lone customer was looking over the hats while Emily sorted through her notes. She added the details she had accumulated that morning to her casebook, then studied everything again, looking for some kind of pattern.

Why had her father hidden the will so meticulously? That was the thought that niggled constantly at Emily. The man had given a copy to Ewert, one that he was certain Emily would have. Why, then, did he go to all the trouble to wall up the original?

She’d come up with fourteen possible reasons, but none of them convinced her. John Potter was an intelligent man. If he did something so strange, he did it for a reason. Now Emily only had to figure it out.…

“Emily, I thought I told you I wanted you to move into the hotel.” Thomas’s voice shattered her reverie and she glanced up, quickly shutting the casebook. The single customer, hearing the tone in his voice, left quickly. Thomas looked forbidding as he put his hat down on top of the book and leaned slowly toward her.

“Thomas! What a nice surprise! I …”

Emily felt a knot form quickly in her throat. Swallowing hard, she backed up against the wall until her bustle prevented her from moving any farther.

“I can see that my words didn’t carry much weight
with you this morning. Funny, I sort of thought we had an understanding.” Thomas’s voice was cold and she could sense the anger inside him. “I don’t know if you saw the paper, but Bertie Evans is dead.”

“What?” Emily was stunned.

“Yes. Shot to death, on the train while she was going to her sister’s house. I came looking for you as soon as I heard. Imagine my surprise when I stopped by the hotel and was told at the desk that you hadn’t checked in.”

Emily looked up into steel blue eyes that promised retribution. “Thomas, I came up with another plan—”

“I’m not interested in any more of your plans,” he said sharply. His fist struck the counter and Emily squeaked like a frightened mouse. She’d never seen him this angry! “I told you I wanted you at the hotel. Dammit, do you have a death wish or something? Where the hell is your common sense?”

Emily faced him bravely, squinting through her spectacles. “Thomas, you have no right to bully me like this! You are being totally irrational! I appreciate your concern, and have taken appropriate measures to ensure my safety—”

“Emily, I don’t have the time or patience for this. I have no desire to find you dead. If you won’t listen to common sense, then I’ll walk out of here, and you won’t see me again. I’ll continue my own investigation, but I will refuse to act as your protector any longer. Now, what will it be?”

He’d spoken as calmly as if he had just asked about the price of eggs. Emily’s eyes widened. Just as
she started to protest, Lynette came in from the rear of the shop.

“Mr. Hall. How wonderful to see you again! I suppose Emily told you the good news about me moving in with her. I understand that you’ve been concerned about her situation. I’m sure you’ll be gratified to know that she will no longer be alone in that house.”

Thomas’s gaze swept from one woman to the other. Emily nodded, her hands outstretched, as if she were still trying to explain, but Lynette had smoothly done the talking for her. But instead of seeming relieved, Thomas picked up his hat and stormed out.

The door slammed behind him, rattling the shop windows. Emily sighed, then turned to Lynette in apology. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He’s not normally that rude.”

“He’s worried about you,” Lynette said with a smile. She turned her face away from Emily. “And I also think he’s very smitten with you. I wouldn’t be concerned about him walking out like that. My guess is that he’s just angry. Men don’t like to realize they can’t boss us around, you know.”

Emily nodded slowly. When Thomas calmed down, he’d understand that this was the best possible solution for everyone.

He’d have to.

There wasn’t enough whiskey in the world to get this woman off his mind.

Thomas stared into the amber depths of his
glass, cursing Emily Potter for the fiftieth time. He couldn’t believe her audacity, standing there and openly defying him after everything they’d been to each other.

What he couldn’t admit, even to her, was that he was afraid for her. Emily seemed drawn to danger the way most women were to perfume. It was as if she were galloping toward a brick wall and there was nothing he could do but watch.

Ordering another drink, he placed his hat and the book he was carrying on the bar. Glancing down in puzzlement, Thomas realized what he’d done. In his anger, he must have picked up Emily’s casebook along with his hat and taken it with him. Ruefully he flipped a few of the pages, reading the notes in her odd, crabbed hand.

He smiled reluctantly. She was brilliant. As he scanned her journal, he was astounded by the logic that glimmered on every page, the courage, the attention to detail, and the amazing deductions. They were all there, from the women on the stagecoach to the shopkeeper in town to the postal clerk who’d helped her. Emily catalogued people the way others did postage stamps, and her insights were mesmerizing.

Her skeletal outline of the case fascinated him as well. Every detail they’d discovered, every implication or suspicion, was neatly diagrammed. He could glance at the page and instantly see all of the tangled threads. Page after page attested to her genius, and he felt his outrage lessen with each notation.

She had a gift, a burning gift, that she was compelled to use. It was as simple as that. Thomas had to face facts. No lawman he’d ever met, no marshal or sheriff, possessed her uncanny ability to get to the heart of a matter. Although her talent put her in danger, she really couldn’t avoid it. Criminals did not want to be discovered. And to prevent Emily from sleuthing, he saw, would be like asking Mozart to stay the hell away from the piano.

On the last page there was a notation about the gold. He read it absently, looking over her calculations concerning the secret room and her entry about her disappointment upon finding nothing of value there. But it was her final paragraph that stopped him cold.

Thomas closed the book, feeling a jolt in his belly that he couldn’t attribute to the liquor. Something suspiciously moist stung his eyes. He could no longer hide from the truth, either. Emily knew that to succeed would lead to the ultimate failure, yet she doggedly pursued the case anyway.

Why?

Because she loved him. It was as simple and as complicated as that.

Thomas sighed. Somehow, from the moment he’d met her, he’d known it would come to this. Emily had peered through her magnifying glass and seen right into her heart. Using her unerring logic, she had deduced her own feelings, but had forgotten to take one thing into account: his own.

He rose, and picked up his hat and the casebook. A pretty, red-haired saloon girl approached him, giving him a saucy smile. Thomas saw that her low-cut dress exposed a generous white bosom, and that her apricot-colored mouth looked extremely kissable. She leaned closer, and the scent of her perfume enveloped him.

“Hi, honey. You look lonely. Want some company?”

He stared at her for a long moment, then asked, “Do you know Sherlock Holmes?”

The girl looked honestly puzzled. “No, but if you hum a few bars I’ll get the piano player to fake it. Why, does it mean something special to you?”

“Yes, it absolutely does.” Thomas grinned, handed
her a bill, then walked out of the bar. Hard as it was to believe, he understood now that his taste ran quite differently. It ran, in fact, toward a slender, stubborn, sometimes bespectacled woman with an incredible figure and a brain to match.

A woman who would give him a lifetime of trouble.

“Are you certain it was her?” Emily asked Darrel again. “You really saw Sung He?”

She was trembling with excitement. Lynette had gone to mind the shop, so Emily had had the whole morning to dream up this plot. Little did she know it would prove so fruitful so quickly. Emily shook Darrel so hard that the boy’s teeth rattled. He didn’t appear to mind, though. In fact, being one of Potter’s Irregulars was a job he seemed to enjoy far more than carting wood.

“Yes, I saw her! I know it’s her. She looked awful, though. Sick-like.”

“And you say she was in a tent full of men?”

Darrel’s head bobbed excitedly. “There were lots of ’em. Old men, young men. Cowboys. A few women, too. They was all smoking some stuff that made them sleepy. Some of them kept talking,
rambling and such, but none of them ’peared to be listenin’.”

“Was China Blue working there?”

“No. I think she was one of ’em. Like I said, she looked sick. She kept falling asleep, then would wake up fast, like this.” Darrel demonstrated, his head weaving down toward his shoulder, then snapping back up as if startled.

“I see.” Emily frowned thoughtfully. China Blue, an opium addict! This twist certainly explained a lot. Like why no one had seen her.

She patted Darrel’s head proudly, then placed a large coin in the boy’s hand. He beamed at her, and she reminded herself that once again she had Holmes to thank for this idea. Sending Darrel for information had turned out to be a stroke of sheer genius. No one suspected an adolescent boy of being an informant, and he was free to wander the Chinese encampment at his leisure.

Emily had decided to pursue this lead even more aggressively after Thomas stormed out on her. She didn’t know if he’d meant what he said about being through with her, and she couldn’t blame him if he did. The case grew darker by the moment, and the danger was drawing close. But why didn’t he understand that it was only by solving the crime that they could find happiness?

Another disturbing thought came to Emily as she envisioned Darrel finding China Blue amid the scoundrels and addicts. “She didn’t recognize you, did she? After all, she knew you from Shangri-La.”

Darrel shook his head furiously. “Naw. For a
minute, she looked right at me, but her eyes were almost shut. She couldn’t even stand.”

“That’s so sad. I wonder why she turned to drugs?”

“I think it’s because of what happened here.” The boy nodded thoughtfully, as if given to deductions himself.

“You mean the murders?”

“Yeah. I think she knows something and doesn’t want to think about it. Why else would she be like that? She worked hard when she was here. Did all the sheets, the girl’s dresses, pert’ near everything. Ma said she had the roughest job at the place, and I swear she did.”

“I see.” Emily thought he could be right. Witnessing a murder and waiting for the killer to find you would wear down a soul all right. Maybe enough to turn to opium. China Blue wouldn’t have been the first to hide in a pipe, and Emily was certain she wouldn’t be the last.

“Thanks, Darrel.” She patted him one last time and waited until he was gone before racing upstairs. Sitting at the dressing table, she applied dark kohl to make circles beneath her eyes. Next, she lightened her complexion with powder, changing her normally healthy color to pale white. She artfully tangled her hair and threw on some dirty clothes. A few more adjustments, then she turned to face the mirror.