The Outrage - Edge Series 3 (30 page)

‘Right, Vic!’ Lacy agreed emphatically.

‘And as far as I’m concerned,’ Meeker went on, ‘like Max pointed out, we got one of the killers locked up right here. And the other one’s dead. If you want to poke around and try to tie-in the Kellner killing to the women’s murders to earn the money Devlin’s holding for you go right ahead, mister.’

‘No sweat,’ Edge murmured and set down his empty cup on the desk. Then he raised a hand in farewell and went through the door, unsure whether the shabbily garbed, weary looking lawman slumped in the chair had expressed a firmly held conviction or was too confused to consider any alternative solution to his dilemma.

He unhitched the grey and led the animal across the intersection, the four connecting streets still free of traffic at this early hour. Then as he re-tied the reins to the rail out front of the hotel entrance he took note that the other Quinn horse – the piebald on which he had brought Kellner’s body to town – was hitched outside Winter’s premises. In the lobby of the grand, that was furnished with three sagging armchairs and a pair of dusty potted plants and had a half dozen insipid prints of mythological animal scenes hung on the age stained walls there was a smell of breakfast cooking. He found the aroma appealing but not compulsively so as he approached the alcove across from the foot of the elegantly curved staircase. Here the diminutive, smartly groomed and garbed Owen Wexler sat behind the reception desk. The pinch featured, almost totally bald man was reading a well-thumbed dime novel and looked up without enthusiasm when Edge drew near.

‘Can I help you?’ The self-important little man seemed to make a conscious effort not to add
sir
to the greeting.

‘Like to know if Mrs Cassidy is still in the hotel, feller?’

‘Yes, the lady is still a guest with us.’

‘What’s her room number?’

‘We have a strict rule here at the Grand Hotel. No gentleman is ever allowed in a lady’s room and
vice versa.
Unless they are married, of course,’

Edge leaned forward and placed both his hands, fingers splayed, on the desktop as he said in a faintly menacing tone: ‘I’m hardly ever a gentleman.’

Owen Wexler arched his body away from the far more heavily built Edge and then took an awkward step back, looking terrified.

A stretched second later his short and stout wife announced firmly from midway down the stairs: ‘And to my way of thinking, Mr Edge, Alice Cassidy is most certainly no lady. But rules are rules. I’ll be pleased to ask if she is prepared to see you. But even if she does agree I will insist that she must come downstairs into a public room of the hotel. Which, as a regular guest at the Grand, Mrs Cassidy will know very well I will do.’ She turned and started back up the stairway while her husband displayed a self-satisfied smirk, relishing a share of the triumph that, if it were an end result, would belong entirely to his wife. Edge asked him: ‘You mind if I offer you a word of advice?’

‘Yes, sir . . . I mean no, sir - I don’t mind,’ he stuttered and no vestige of the smile remained as he came close to trembling.

‘If a feller starts to count his chickens before they hatch he’s likely not to take account of the occasional really bad egg.’ He turned to go to the foot of the stairs and climbed two of them.

‘I give you fair warning, mister: Elizabeth’s rules are not to be taken lightly!’ Wexler claimed shrilly as he scrambled out from behind the desk and scurried after Edge. At the head of the stairway two narrow landings branched off in opposite directions. To the left, beyond four flanking doors was a right angle turn and he could hear the unseen, short of stature but heavily built Elizabeth Wexler as she strode purposefully along the threadbare carpet covering the creaking floorboards. And he reached the turn just as she came to a halt, a fisted hand raised to thud on the numbered door panel.

She dropped her hand and wrenched her head around to glower at him, her beady eyes glittering with high anger from out of her florid face as she snapped: ‘Didn’t you hear me tell you to wait downstairs, mister?’

Edge made no response as he advanced on her while she resolutely stood her ground, the determination to have her way hardening by the moment. He halted two feet in front of her and said evenly as the irate woman’s anxious husband stepped around the turn in the landing: ‘I plan to talk with Alice Cassidy, lady. On a subject that I guess you’d call delicate. Me, I don’t give a damn if we yell it from the rooftops so the whole of Springdale can hear. But she’d prefer it to be in private is my guess.’

‘The rule is – ‘

‘I know the rule. But your husband’s here now. And I’ll be happy to have him as a chaperone. You can stay, too, if Mrs Cassidy don’t object.’

He leaned forward and was about to thud his raised fist on the door but it swung open and the obviously hungover, bleary-eyed, sour-faced Alice Cassidy squinted out at the crowded landing. Her bulky frame was wrapped in a once fine but now long past its best scarlet robe of silk trimmed with white lace. She was bare footed.

‘What’s all this damn noise out here?’ she demanded huskily.

Elizabeth Wexler jerked her head toward Edge. ‘He says he wants to talk to you. I’ve told him about the no man in a lady’s room rule but he seems determined to ignore it.’

Edge tipped his hat to the least attractive woman he had seen in a long time and received a personal, finely honed scowl in response.

‘Now if you’ll get yourself decently dressed and come down I’ll allow you the use of my sitting room to discuss whatever it is that - ‘ Elizabeth Wexler began to offer. Alice Cassidy held Edge’s questioning gaze as she broke in on the other woman to claim:

‘I don’t know anything about the Quinn murders!’

He countered: ‘But I figure you know a few things about the Quinn daughter when she was alive?’

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean? You get out of here, mister.’ She continued to keep a firm grip on the door but despite her rising anger with the trio on the landing she made no attempt to slam it closed. ‘When I room at the Grand I always abide by the house rules. So I think you should do like Mrs Wexler says.’

Edge said evenly: ‘You don’t have any problem with obeying that particular rule do you, lady? Because you’re not interested in entertaining men in your room, right? You’d much rather have a like minded – ‘

‘Elizabeth!’ Owen Wexler blurted.

His wife snarled: ‘Look, miser, I’ve just about had enough of this. Either you go downstairs this instant or I’ll arrange to have you forcibly removed!’

Her increasingly agitated husband took several fast backward steps; clearly anxious his wife would demand that he eject the intruder.

Edge looked hard into the dissipated face of the woman on the threshold of the room and told her coldly: ‘I need to talk to you, lady. I don’t care where but it has to be soon.’

Alice Cassidy remained adamant for stretched seconds and then relented but continued to tacitly hate him with her scornful eyes before she switched her gaze to the purple tinged features of Mrs Wexler. ‘Look, I suppose this really has to be settled sooner or later, Elizabeth. And you can surely tell by the way it’s started out that me and this Yankee are certainly not going to get up to anything untoward in my room?’

‘Rules are rules!’ The short and stout, intensely angry woman folded her arms across her bulky bosom.

Her husband said tentatively: ‘Dear, I really do think the most serious thing that could happen if we let them alone together is that Mrs Cassidy will do serious harm to Edge.’ He smiled to stress that he was only joking about this unlikely prospect. His wife uttered a sound of disdain for his attempt to lighten the situation. ‘Owen, you will remain outside this door until their business is concluded! And if you hear the least thing that worries you, call down to me at once. And I’ll see to it that the sheriff or Max Lacy gets over here real fast.’

‘I’m not sure, Elizabeth.’

‘I am absolutely certain!’ She pushed past him along the landing toward the turn and he anxiously watched her out of sight then wrenched his head around when Alice Cassidy snapped: ‘And I’m certain of one thing, Owen!’

‘You are, Alice?’ He swallowed hard and kept switching his nervous attention from her to the corner of the landing and back again.

‘It’s a certainty that if anything said in this room between me and this interfering busybody of a Yankee is spread around town, then I’ll know who it was did the spreading. And what remains of you will be able to be spread, Owen. Very thinly, like red currant jelly on a fresh baked waffle – if you get my meaning?’

‘That’s not fair, Mrs Cassidy!’ he protested. ‘It could be that he’ll shoot his mouth off after you and him are through talking and – ‘

Edge broke in: ‘I reckon that if you go and stand around the turn in the landing, feller, you won’t be able to hear a word that’s spoken in this room. Unless the lady starts to kill me. Or have her wicked way with me. And if she tries either I’ll holler out real loud so you’ll be sure to know about it – one way or the other.’

‘God, life can really be a bitch sometimes!’ Wexler groaned, spun around and moved off in the direction his wife had taken.

‘Yeah,’ Edge agreed evenly. ‘And if a feller’s luck really turns bad he ends up married to one.’

CHAPTER • 19

________________________________________________________________

IF EDGE had not already known something about Alice Cassidy’s colourful past, as
soon as he stepped across the threshold of the room she permanently rented at the Grand he saw he could have made an educated guess that the belligerently hungover woman had once lived in a cathouse.

For the brightly sunlit room was certainly like no other he had ever seen in a regular hotel. The walls, rugs, bed coverings, drapes and lamp chimneys were predominantly scarlet and the woodwork of the elaborately upholstered furniture was embellished with an array of ornate carvings. Particularly the brass studded bedhead that was decorated with scenes of cavorting cherubs that looked at a cursory glance like they were engaged in erotic acts only considered acceptable in polite society if the modelling was classed as fine art. And to Edge’s way of thinking these figures were not in that category.

But, already uneasy because of the reason he was here, he did not take the time to look too closely at the room’s décor. Instead he concentrated on Alice Cassidy who had bustled across to a triple mirrored dresser adjacent to the window. Here she sat down firmly on a plush high backed chair and began to brush vigorously at her long blonde hair with one hand while she unscrewed the tops off small colourful jars and bottles with the other.

‘I don’t normally receive visitors at this hour of the morning, you know,’ she complained as she worked rapidly to make herself look more presentable. ‘And certainly never in this state of undress and dishevelled appearance at any time of day or night. But obviously I had no choice in your case.’

‘What you look like doesn’t bother me, lady. What counts is what you can tell me.’

‘Well, it bothers me!’ Her tone became harshly sarcastic. ‘And I’m sure I can’t think of a single thing I can say that would be of interest to a sophisticated northern man of the world such as you.’

He said flatly: ‘You’re not like most other women, isn’t that so?’

He moved to stand beside the bed from where he could see part of his own reflection in the largest of the three mirrors on the dresser and watch her ravaged face between each movement of her hand with the tarnished silver-backed hairbrush.

‘I certainly like to consider myself unique,’ she retorted sardonically. He took out the makings. ‘Was it running a cathouse that turned you against men?’

‘What?’ She had understood the question, did not pretend to be shocked by its implication and clearly was trying to buy some thinking time.

‘I guess you aren’t going to deny that you were madam of one of the most successful bordellos in New Orleans? And made enough money at it so you could buy that spread south of Springdale and play games out there instead of having to work it as a ranch?’

‘How the hell can I deny it?’ She began to brush her hair more briskly and grimaced or muttered an oath each time it tangled and her head was jerked painfully to the side.

‘Everyone for miles around here knows that.’

‘The girls at the house went with men.’

She laughed scornfully. ‘I took you for a man of the world. Haven’t you ever been inside a house of ill repute, Yankee? That’s precisely the reason the girls are there. Or maybe up north the men don’t – ‘

‘I was stating the obvious, not asking a question,’ he cut in as he finished rolling the cigarette. ‘Here’s another one – you never went with – ‘