The Outrage - Edge Series 3 (31 page)

She scowled at his reflection. ‘It was my house, mister. Mine and Noah’s. The girls worked for us so I never needed to peddle what I sit on in order to get eating money and to buy some of life’s little luxuries.’

Edge lit the cigarette and added the dead match to several others mixed with the ash and stubs of a half dozen slender cigars in the ashtray on the nightstand then reminded: ‘I said it wasn’t a question, lady.’

She banged down the brush, scooped some cream from a jar and began to massage it vigorously into her thickly fleshed cheeks, paying particular attention to the dark, puffy areas under her large eyes. ‘I’ve just about had enough of this, Edge. Why don’t you get the hell out of my room and go about the business you’ve been hired for? You’ve got no call to be wasting my time sounding off with a whole bunch of innuendoes that –

Edge knew she was right and finally allowed to himself that it was a crazy waste of time to pussyfoot around the distasteful subject with a former whorehouse madam. ‘Okay, lady, here’s a question: Nancy Quinn was a lesbian, isn’t that so?’

‘Rumours!’ She vented a hollow laugh. ‘So many Goddamn rumours! If this one horse town didn’t have so much malicious gossip to keep it going it would just roll over and die.’ She began to apply cream to the skin of her neck. ‘Turn into a real ghost town instead of the lousy pretend one with a bunch of ghouls living in it which it is now! So: they say that the dead girl preferred to enjoy the company of others of her own sex instead of men? What if that was true? What does it have to do with me?’ She half turned to look at him directly instead of at his reflected image in the mirror, her large blue eyes expressing deep scorn.

‘You knew her.’

‘What if I did? And it’s damn obvious that I did. This being such a small town and the Quinns being such a well-known local family. Yes, of course I knew the girl. I sometimes had a cup of coffee at Nancy’s café. And her and her folks would occasionally happen to be eating in the hotel restaurant downstairs at the same time as me. So what of it?’

Edge rasped: ‘Okay, let’s stop beating about bushes – and you can read whatever the hell you like into that, lady.’

‘So say straight out what’s on your dirty mind, damnit!’ she challenged.

‘No sweat,’ he lied. ‘You’re the same as Nancy Quinn was? You’re a lesbian?’

‘I repeat, mister: so what? It’s my business. And it’s damn personal business. But one thing I will tell you. I sure as hell never rode out to that house and killed her and her mother after I’d had my wicked way with Nancy.’ Her tone and expression became more contemptuous. ‘Or I guess some like you would say my
perverted
way with her?’

‘You and her were the only two women like that in Springdale?’

She sighed and let the sudden urge to high anger drain out of her statuesque form as she stared back into the mirror and used a square of soft cloth to remove the excess cream from her face that was beginning to look vaguely handsome again. ‘It’s not exactly commonplace to find women like us in this kind of country town. And nobody chooses to be this way, mister: I can assure you of that. Not in Springdale or anywhere else. Nancy could no more help what she was than I can. No more than you can change from what passes for being normal in such matters, as you can surely understand?’

‘Tell me about it, lady?’ He sat down on one of the overstuffed red velour covered chairs, ill-at-ease with himself from the effort of talking around and then directly about what to him was an abnormal subject.

‘Tell you about sex?’ She attempted to sound scathing but could not successfully fake anything after the strain she had endured in containing her strong emotions for so long. And the laugh she vented sounded more hollow than before. ‘Surely a man of your age and type knows about sex? The power it has to control and direct the actions of men and women?’

‘I’m normal, lady.’ He was increasingly aware that his caustic attitude toward Alice Cassidy had more to do with his own discomfiture with what the woman was rather than simply the kind she was.

‘Then you should thank God for your good fortune,’ she snarled then moderated her tone. ‘And find it in your heart to pity the likes of poor young Nancy Quinn: even if you can’t bring yourself to spare any compassion for an old hag like me. I’m going to have a drink. And I don’t mean coffee. Do you want one?’

‘All I want from you is the truth about – ‘

‘So sit there and listen and you’ll get what you came here for. Just like Nancy Quinn did.’

‘Fine.’ He could not recall if he had ever felt so unlike his normal self and so helplessly out of his depth as he did here and now.

She delved into a lower drawer of the dresser and brought out a half full bottle that was the same high-class brand of liquor as Nick Quinn had kept. Along with a tall stemmed fine crystal wine goblet. She poured herself a generous measure, sank half of it, topped it up and replaced the stopper. Left the bottle on the dresser but held on to the glass as she turned her chair around so that she faced him. With her back to the window so that her face was not in the full glare of direct sunlight he could see how far the hair brushing and application of the skin cream had gone to make her look less ravaged by the most recent effects of her dissolute life-style

‘First I want you to know I never lured that unfortunately young lady into anything she wasn’t already involved with. And I also want to make it clear that our kind, contrary to what you and most people like you may think, are no more promiscuous than you are. We don’t spend our every waking hour hunting for likely conquests.’

‘Whatever you say.’ He was smoking the cigarette too fast.

‘I’ve said it and whatever I say is the truth. And that is the first truth, mister. It so happens that at the time Nancy came to see me I was already having a very satisfactory friendship with somebody and we were completely faithful to each other. Noah apart, of course. Noah and me . . ? We have got what we have got and most of the time it suits us fine.’ She shook her head and took a few moments to collect her thoughts. ‘Look, we got out of the whorehouse business some years ago and decided to settle on the place down the trail because Springdale seemed like a nice little town filled with nice people who weren’t likely to know about our past.’ She shrugged and scowled. ‘But you have to live in a place for awhile to find out what it’s truly like. And I soon found out the people here are as prim and proper as they look on the outside. But underneath . . . ‘

He made a half hearted attempt to be more amicable in order to steer her back toward the point of his presence. ‘Mrs Cassidy, I – ‘

She held up her free hand, took a drink and nodded. ‘All right, all right. That is of no interest to you. Suffice it to say I formed a friendship with somebody – a woman – who you would term as like minded to me. And for all the time that we’ve been together, as far as the two of us were aware, nothing was known of our special friendship. Until Nancy Quinn came to see me at the ranch. And said she suspected what was happening. And that she thought she was the same as my friend and me.’

She took just a sip of the drink. ‘It’s not too difficult to keep such things secret in a town like this, despite how Springdale thrives on rumour mongering. Provided one is careful. I would think that most people hereabouts have not the least idea of what a lesbian is - that such a way of life exists.’ She shook her head ruefully. ‘I’m a lesbian, which I freely admit to you now. But that does not mean I exclusively enjoy female company. That’s another common mistake of the uninitiated. They can’t seem to understand that while it’s perfectly natural for ordinary men and women to enjoy socialising with both sexes, it’s also possible for me and my kind to be the same. And I am married, damnit!’

‘I’m not here to talk about your problems,’ Edge reminded, getting more impatient by the moment to have done with the exchange and leave this room and this woman.

‘You are, damnit! And in my opinion your hard-nosed attitude means you’ve got a mighty big problem of your own. How you don’t give a cuss for anybody else’s way of . . . ‘

She sighed out of the impulse to futile anger. ‘But I’d like you to know I enjoy the company of men just as much as women: as you saw for yourself out at the place yesterday? It’s important to me for you to understand that. If not for me right here and now then for some others like me you could come across in the future. Men as well as women?’

He crushed out the cigarette among the mess of cigar butts piled in the porcelain ashtray and allowed: ‘No sweat.’

‘I’m not sure I believe you.’

‘Does it really matter whether you do or don’t, lady? You’ve made your point. But I can’t tell you if it’ll make any difference to me an hour from now or this time next year.’

She shrugged her broad shoulders, finished her drink and reached for the bottle but immediately withdrew her hand. ‘Anyway, to get back to what you came here for. Nancy Quinn rode out to see me at the ranch toward the end of last year.’

‘Round about Christmas?’

‘A week or so before, maybe. The wretched girl was in a terrible state of mind. Because she’d been going through a really bad time while she tried to work out just what kind of person she truly was. And in the process of doing that she had got herself a reputation for being a good time girl. Which she wasn’t. She was actually . . . ‘

‘Still a virgin,’ Edge finished the sentence.

Alice Cassidy forced another hollow laugh. ‘My, you really are a man of the world, aren’t you? Know all of the correct terms?’

‘We’re not talking about what I know, lady,’ he said, his apparent attitude as manufactured as her own. ‘It sounds like the girl came to you for advice?’

‘That’s exactly why Nancy came to see me.’

‘And what did you tell her?’

‘I said it would be very silly and ultimately futile to ignore her natural instincts. My advice to her was that she should do whatever nature had ordained. But I warned it would be difficult for her in a small country town like Springdale. Told her I knew of no one other than my friend and myself who were inclined as she was. And neither of us were . . . ‘ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, poor Nancy was truly grateful for the opportunity to discuss her problem with a sympathetic listener. She couldn’t thank me enough. But for some time afterwards it appeared she had turned her back on the way of life it seemed she had been destined for. She even found herself a steady beau and there was some talk of marriage. Then she came to see me again.’

‘The night before she was murdered?’

She was suddenly uneasy as she nodded. ‘That’s right. She came here to the hotel. Did somebody see her come here or leave? Please, how did you know she visited me that night? I suppose it’s the reason I pulled a gun on you out at the place yesterday. I’d had a few to drink because I’d been so worried you might try to implicate me in what happened to the Quinn women. Like everyone else in Springdale I knew about the letter Nick Quinn wrote you. And I’ve been hitting the bottle more than usual since the murders.’ She was getting more nervous with each word she spoke and this time was unable to stop herself pouring another bourbon, her movements almost robotic.

Edge said as the liquor splashed into the glass: ‘Nobody saw her as far as I know. I just made a guess after something your sister said about you. Tell me about the girl coming here.’

She did so, slowly and concisely without seeming to miss anything out. And what she said served to put the flesh of actual details on to the skeleton of events Edge already knew of or had assumed. She did not embellish any of the bald facts or move away from the point to show herself in a better light. Nor make excuses for Nancy Quinn. As soon as she was through he rose from the comfortable chair and went to the door of the elaborately decorated and furnished room where the air suddenly smelled cloyingly sweet in his nostrils.

‘That’s all there is to it?’ She sounded petulantly disappointed. He turned to look back at the slightly drunken woman who now, as she sat hunched in the chair with a glass clutched in her hand, appeared to be only marginally more attractive than she did when he first entered the room. ‘As far as you are concerned, Mrs Cassidy. I’m obliged to you for being so frank with me. It can’t have been easy.’

‘Nor for you either, I think? This business has shocked you, hasn’t it?’ She expressed the faint flicker of a knowing smile.

Edge made a non-committal gesture and she brightened the smile. And now in half profile he saw there was an indication of the kind of beauty the woman had once possessed before the ravaging effects of her over-indulgent way of life and the inevitable passage of time had taken their toll.

‘I think it is quite something, Mr Yankee Edge,’ she said, expressing a small degree of triumph but without any hint of malice. ‘I’d guess that it’s been one hell of a long time since any woman said anything to you that shocked you – the kind of man you are?’

‘The kind I used to be, lady,’ he said and wondered if he made the rueful correction because she had briefly reminded him of her more attractive sister who was considerably younger than her – and him. ‘And I sure can’t argue with you.’

‘You see that in my family it isn’t only Sarah the schoolma’am who can teach a thing or two to the unworldly?’

He stepped out on to the landing as she smiled and mockingly toasted him: raised the glass to her full lips that were pale because they had not yet been given their daily application of scarlet colouring. Then as he closed the door he heard a sharp intake of breath and swung his head, expecting to see Owen Wexler caught in the act of eavesdropping. But it was a startled woman who had halted six feet away and now said huskily: ‘You gave me quite a fright, young man.’