Longarm 243: Longarm and the Debt of Honor (10 page)

“Can I offer you a brandy?” the lady suggested, adopting the role of hostess in the house.

“No, thanks.”

“Would you be offended if I had one alone?”

Longarm felt a rush of heat into his cheeks. He was acting boorish, wasn't he? Shit, he didn't know who was supposed to do what in a situation like this. The place didn't belong to either one of them. And Longarm was the one staying here. But Eleanor—Mrs. Fitzpatrick, dammit—was the one who more or less could claim squatter's rights as lady friend of the owner. But on the other hand . . .

Longarm gave up worrying about it. He bounced quickly to his feet and said, “Allow me,” heading for the brandy decanter and glasses, even though they were beside the big chair where Mrs. Fitzpatrick was sitting, all the way across the room from Longarm. But then, hell, it wasn't all that big a room.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick sat upright and proper where she was, and allowed him to pour for her. She smiled—and her fingers lightly brushed against his—as she accepted the small crystal snifter from him.

The lady bent her face delicately close to the rim of the glass and inhaled softly, then dipped the tip of her tongue into the amber liquid. Longarm almost got the shivers, watching her. There was something about the moist, pink tip of her tongue that . . .

“Is there something wrong?” she asked, her head still low but her eyes now peering up at him from beneath an overhang of hair on her forehead. The effect of that particular view was intense. Damn, but this was an almighty fine-looking female.

Longarm realized he was staring. Well dammit, he couldn't help it and wasn't fixing to apologize. Nor explain either. He was sure Mrs. Fitzpatrick received her fair share of admiring looks and then some. “No, ma'am,” he said, and retreated to the loveseat once again.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick sipped at her brandy slowly, seeming in no hurry to explain her presence. Well, Longarm wasn't in any hurry either. He wouldn't mind if she chose to sit there in silence the rest of the evening.

Or at least, he wouldn't mind looking at her a spell longer. He wasn't so sure about that a moment later, though, when he noticed a gap in the front of her dress.

There was a button loose. Maybe two of them. If a woman undid a couple buttons at her throat, Longarm would figure that that was deliberate and react accordingly. But this was obviously by mischance. The buttons that were undone were at her belly, not her throat. And the plain truth was that Eleanor Fitzpatrick probably was able to see her own belly only when she was naked and pulled those magnificent tits apart so she could look down beneath them. With clothes on, there was no way she could see the upper part of her own stomach, not without a mirror, like the fat man who didn't have any idea what his own pecker looked like after not seeing it for years and years.

The loose or missing buttons in this case wouldn't have been very distracting, except for the way the cloth of the dress gapped open so that Longarm could see the soft, pale skin of the lady's belly.

There was something vulnerable and sensual and just plain arousing about this secretive look where a man oughtn't to see.

Arousing? Longarm damn well thought so. And duly aroused, he responded with a hard-on that threatened the integrity of the buttons at his fly. He quickly shifted position on the loveseat so he was slewed kind of sideways. To make extra sure his embarrassment didn't reveal itself, he crossed one leg over the other to make double damn sure the bulge in his britches couldn't be spotted from the chair where Mrs. Fitzpatrick was innocently enjoying her brandy.

Longarm found himself wishing the damned woman would drink up and leave so he could . . . no, that wouldn't work either. If she rose to leave, he would have to stand up too. And what the hell would he do then? Grin and shrug? Tell Norm's woman he was sorry to bother her but would she mind helping him get rid of this little problem he seemed to be having? Her leaving would be worse than her sitting there with her skin exposed.

What he needed was to think about something else. Sure. Just look elsewhere. In a minute or two the hard-on would die a natural death, and he could stand up and move around again. Go get his traveling bottle out of the bedroom, maybe, and help himself to a shot of good rye whiskey. He hadn't wanted a drink earlier, but now he thought a stout shot would be a helluva good idea. In fact, now he kind of thought he needed one. Who would have thought that two lousy buttons would put so much skin on display.

Pretty skin too. Pink and pale and perfect. A tiny wrinkle or two when she leaned forward. Then flat and smooth again whenever she sat upright.

Damn, he wished the woman would quit moving around so much. Why couldn't she sit still while she drank her damn brandy!

Longarm was overheating. Starting to sweat. He could feel it beading up on his forehead and trickling down his cheek onto his neck. He wished . . . he wished he could tear his eyes away from Mrs. Fitzpatrick's stomach, that was what he wished. That and certain other things too. He wished....

“I suppose you are wondering why I sneaked in again this evening,” the lady said as she finally emptied the brandy snifter.

Longarm tried to speak. The sound that came out more closely resembled a croak than any identifiable word. He coughed, cleared his throat, and tried again. “Yes, of course.”

“After you left my store this afternoon, Longarm, I happened to think of something. I don't know if it will do you any good. Probably not, I suppose. That is, I am sure it was entirely innocent. But, well, I happened to observe something, something involving young Dinky, that was, shall we say, unusual.”

“Yes, ma'am?” Longarm still had his hard-on. But it wasn't quite so insistent now. Horniness was important, but an attempt on his life was one of the few things of even greater importance to him. His attention was successfully diverted back onto business now, and the tent pole that had been straining his buttons began now to subside back to the size and consistency of a loosely cased sausage. Better. Much better. If he had to stand up now, he could probably do so without suffering terminal mortification in front of Norm's woman.

“Like I say, it is probably nothing at all,” she said. “But you did tell me I should speak with you if I remembered anything, did you not?”

He couldn't exactly recall right now if he'd said any such thing to her, but it was the sort of thing one normally said, so he supposed that was accurate enough. He nodded and waited for her to go on, noting as he did so that after she'd returned her empty glass to the tray, she'd turned in the chair a little, and now the dress was not gaping open quite so much. Longarm wasn't sure if he should be glad about that or not. He supposed that, in fairness to Norm, he ought to be pleased. More or less.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick frowned, and her eyes focused somewhere off in the distance in deep thought. “This would have been, oh, yesterday afternoon sometime? Yesterday evening? I can't be sure of the exact time. Is that important?”

“I can't say if it is or isn't,” Longarm told her, not bothering to add that he hadn't yet the least idea of what she was talking about, so of course he couldn't know if any of it was significant or not.

“No, I suppose not,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick agreed. “At any rate, it was some time yesterday, definitely after lunch. I always close my shop between the hours of noon and two P.M. I am certain it was after I re-opened in the afternoon.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Longarm said patiently.

“I stepped out back. To take something out to the trash, you see. And I noticed Dinky down the alley. He was talking with someone there. They were nearly a block away, but I think it might have been Luke Baldwin he was talking with. There is nothing unusual about that, of course. Dinky talks—I mean to say talked—with everyone. What I remember noticing, though, is that the person Dinky was speaking with handed him a package. Which is not unusual either. I believe I already told you practically everyone in town has given Dinky castoffs and hand-me-downs of one sort or another. I've done that myself many times. But what struck me this afternoon when I got to thinking about yesterday is that this package Dinky received was about the size and shape of a pistol. Except it was wrapped in cloth, of course. I mean, I could not actually see what was in the bundle, if you see what I mean. I certainly could not swear to what the object was. I mean . . . oh dear.” She paused and gave him a wide-eyed look. “Am I making a fool of myself, Marshal?”

“No, ma'am, you are not.”

“Good. Because I certainly do not mean to cast any suspicions on Mr. Baldwin. He seems ever so nice a man. It is just, well, you did say I should pass along anything that occurred to me. I thought it might be best if I simply told you and let you decide if it means anything or not.”

“You did the right thing, Mrs. Fitzpatrick,” Longarm assured her.

She smiled and said, “Eleanor. Please call me Eleanor, Marshal.”

“Yes, ma'am.” He noted, rather unhappily, that she'd turned in the chair just a little and now the damned buttons were gaping open again. He could feel a rising interest once more somewhere a little south of his gut.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick‘s—Eleanor's—smile brightened. She leaned forward to retrieve her glass and asked, “Could I have another very small one before I have to go, please?”

Longarm groaned softly under his breath. Just how in hell was he supposed to stand up and walk over there in front of her in this embarrassing state?

Longarm stood and brushed the crumbs off his vest and britches. He tossed his napkin down and added a coin to pay for the meal. “I've enjoyed talking with you this morning, gents, but I'd best be on my way now. Been daylight out there long enough without me getting anything done.” He'd been having breakfast with the mayor and several of Crow's Point's leading businessmen. As was usual, the tone of the conversation had been that of helpful concern. If there was anything they could do, anything at all ...

“Remember now,” Mayor Chesman admonished.

“Yes, sir, I know. I can count on you and the rest of the folks hereabouts. Believe me, I appreciate it,” Longarm said. And indeed he did. He fingered his chin absently, as if only then discovering the beard stubble there, although he'd deliberately neglected to shave when he arose this morning. “One thing you gents could do for me,” he said.

“Name it,” a smith named Jones offered.

“You could point me to where I might find a shave and a trim.” His hair could have gone a week longer before it needed cutting, but what the hell.

“That's an easy decision. Only one barber in town,” Jones said. “His name is Baldwin. Luke Baldwin. Nice fella too, you'll like him.”

Longarm nodded. He wasn't convinced that he was going to like their Mr. Baldwin, but Longarm was certainly eager to make the gentleman's acquaintance after what Eleanor Fitzpatrick had said last night.

One of the other gents at the breakfast table gave Longarm directions to the barbershop. Longarm thanked them all again, and reclaimed his Stetson off the rack by the door on his way out into the bright morning sunshine.

He felt pretty good, everything considered. Although, after the way he'd been worked up for a while there last night, it was a pure wonder he hadn't soiled his drawers by squirting off in a wet dream. That Eleanor was a handful. And considerably more than a mouthful. And one of the things that made her so damned desirable was that she didn't seem to have the least idea that she was so almighty sexy and desirable. That was a rare quality in a handsome woman. Most of them knew it and traded on it, although some were less obvious about it than others.

Longarm just plain liked Eleanor Fitzpatrick's style. He surely did. He stood on the sidewalk for a moment to light a cheroot and get his bearings, then headed down the street toward where they'd said he could find Luke Baldwin's barbershop.

There were several customers ahead of him, so Longarm deposited his hat on a rack, selected a recent copy of the
Hirt County Courier
from a pile of reading matter, and settled in to wait his turn in the chair. He was in no hurry at all, and in fact was pleased with an opportunity to bury his nose in the folds of the newspaper while he quite shamelessly eavesdropped on the chatter between the barber and the man he was shaving.

The talk touched briefly on the subject of poor Dinky Dinklemann—neither Baldwin nor the customer could fathom that one—then turned onto subjects of greater importance. Like the amount of moisture in the fields after the recent hot spell and whether the corn crop would fill out this year. Longarm couldn't claim to be much interested in that, so he returned his full attention to the newspaper.

The
Courier
, it seemed, was published in Jasonville, the farm town that was soon to become county seat. Longarm gathered that either Crow's Point had no newspaper of its own, or that the
Courier
used to be based in Crow's Point, but had already moved along to the new county seat. It was a shame, a town declining like this one was, but that sort of thing happened all the time. And in the mining country, unlike out here on the plains, whole towns could up and disappear practically in the blink of an eye. Crow's Point had made its run. It really didn't have all that much to bitch about now.

“You're next, mister.”

Longarm looked up. The men who'd been ahead of him were all gone, and there were a couple of later arrivals waiting for Baldwin to finish with Longarm. Longarm had been wool-gathering for a bit there. About Eleanor Fitzpatrick, actually. He knew better than that. But he'd done it aplenty last night while he was trying to get to sleep and now found himself doing it again. Damned if he didn't, kind of envy his old friend Norm. Except for that one small fact about Norm being locked up in the jail, of course. But as for his relationship with Eleanor, well, that was something to make a man puff out his chest and count himself among the downright lucky ones.