Disorder in the House [How the West Was Done 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (17 page)

“Not at all,” Cole said smoothly. He gripped her shoulder with his fossilized claws. “I’d be doing it because I expect certain favors in return from you.”

And he pressed his ugly, dry lips to hers.

* * * *

When Levi returned from escorting Liberty home, he mentioned to Garrett that he’d seen that mustachioed fellow from the pharmacy. The one Garrett had seen in his dream, laughing about Amherst College with Liberty’s father. He had passed him by in the road, and it had seemed to Levi that the fellow had wiggled his eyebrows knowingly. About what, neither one of them could figure. What did the fellow pretend to “know”?

So they spread out the talking board to find out more.

“I wonder if it’ll work with only two people,” Garrett mused. “What did Zeke say?”

Levi said, “That he supposed it would work with two people. Although it might be better if we had a third.”

Just then, as Garrett was lighting a couple of candles to create the proper atmosphere, there came a loud rapping. At first Garrett thought it was the spirits, rapping as they’d been doing during the séance at Vancouver House. He looked about the room, waiting for more raps.

“Hey!” The clownish voice of Ezekiel Vipham came from the front porch. “Let me in!”

Levi rose to open the door, shooting Garrett an exasperated look. “We could use a third, but he’s got to promise not to talk about his mother.”

Zeke fell into the room as though coming in from the arctic. “Hoo, boy!” He went to warm his hands at the wood stove. “I don’t suppose Liberty’s here, is she?”

Garrett said, “She had a dinner to attend at her father’s.”

“Right,” said Zeke. “I wasn’t invited. Simon thinks I somehow don’t create the proper atmosphere that would encourage people to do trade in Laramie. What does that even mean?”

“That he thinks you’re scaring off other merchants?”

Zeke spread his hands wide. “Why would I be scaring people away? I’m perfectly presentable in mixed company.”

Levi smirked. “Why, indeed, would you be scaring people away? It doesn’t behoove your business to be revolting people.”

Zeke grimaced. “He probably just wants Liberty there. After all, you’ve got to admit, she’s much easier on the eyes. Who wants to look across the table at a worn-out, balding fellow like me? Speaking of tables! I see you’ve got the talking board out. Shall we try it?” Without an invitation, Zeke sat himself at the table, and Levi poured him some whiskey to lubricate his thoughts.

Levi had a caveat, however. “Yes, we were going to try it. Just a warning, though. It won’t have anything to do with your mother.”

Zeke’s fingers were already fluttering over the wicker planchette. “Aw, why not? I need to find out more about this repugnant greengrocer who has overtaken Ma’s life.”

Garrett said soothingly, “That’s not as important right now. We need to know about this friend of Simon Hudson’s, the college buddy from Amherst. That’s our question, and we’re sticking with it.”

Levi added, “If we get any answers, you can ask about your mother afterward.”

Garrett thought Levi was being entirely too generous. He started the session by addressing his spirit guide. “Paddy, are you there?”

YES.

“What can you tell us about this college friend of Simon Hudson?”

The planchette spelled out AMHERST.

“Yes, we know,” said Garrett. “But why does he keep looking at us? What is his interest in us?”

GREEK LOVE.

Zeke guffawed. “Greek love, that’s a good one! Is your guide Paddy trying to tell us that Cole Waters is interested in other men? That’s rich! He’s come all the way to Laramie to sell glass when really all he’s interested in is bumfucking—”

“
Wait
.” Levi’s voice was authoritative, booming through the room. Loud enough to shut up Zeke, who waited. “You say this Amherst fellow’s name is
Cole Waters?
”

“Why, yes,” said Zeke uncertainly. “That’s his name, all right. The Waters Glass Company. Kind of has a ring to it, don’t you think? See, water is transparent, and so is glass. I thought it was a pretty flashy name, myself. But if he thinks he can come to town just to get his hands on my johnson, he’s got another thing—”

“Cole Waters.”
Levi shot Garrett a meaningful look, his eyes flashing with significance.

But Garrett failed to see the importance in the name. He shook his head blankly, questioning.

“Don’t you see?” Levi shouted, halfway standing from his chair. “The board, last time we used it! It said to ‘watch out for cold waters’!”

Land’s sake
. The meaning began to sink in to Garrett’s fluffy brain. “It was just a manual error!” he shouted.

“
Yes!
” bellowed Levi. “It meant to say, ‘Watch out for Cole Waters.’ Only the planchette must’ve moved onto a
D
instead of the
E
.”

Garrett snapped at Zeke, “Probably pushed aside by
your
stupid hands, you lummox. Worrying about your poor mother in the spirit world when you were busy flailing about, knocking the planchette aside with your bumbling fingers.”

Levi held out a calming hand. “All right, all right. Obviously, this Cole Waters jackass is going to do something to Liberty. But we need to know what. We can’t just run around making accusations—”

“Of what, we don’t even know,” Garrett added.

“And if he’s that interested in Greek love, why would he be doing something to Liberty anyway? All right. Let’s formulate our question.”

Garrett suggested, “How about this? Paddy, in what way does Liberty need protection from Cole Waters?”

The planchette sped to spell out DEFILE.

The table was practically knocked over in the men’s zeal to race out the door. Garrett had to barrel back to blow out the candles and to buckle on his gun belt as he hopped down the front stairs, taking them two at a time.

Liberty’s automatic, natural reaction was to push Cole away.

But he remained glued to her torso like a slick of oil on a muddied lake. He gripped her skull in his scummy fingers, forcing his loathsome mouth onto hers. As though this were a desirable way to seduce a woman! What was so damned attractive about forcing oneself upon a woman? Liberty had her hands full with two beaus—she didn’t need some hairy associate of her father’s getting all hot for her.

He was gripping her so forcefully it was difficult to even wrench her face away from his. Now he even stuck a boot behind her slipper and tripped her up! She fell back onto the settee, and he tumbled on top of her. Since he was much heavier than either Levi or Garrett—their beloved faces flashed across her mind then, as though taunting her with what she was missing at the moment—she was now hopelessly pinned. She felt like a writhing spider under a big boot, all her flailing limbs sticking out from under his ample body.

He clamped his mouth over hers, this time trying to slide a disgusting tongue like a cooked oyster into her mouth. Liberty hated oysters, and she hated this man even more, so she bit the tip of his tongue. She made sure not to bite hard enough to wind up with a nauseating specimen in her mouth, but it did the trick.

He pulled back a foot or so in order to shriek, “You damned bitch!” and belt her with the back of his hand across the face.

This enraged Liberty so thoroughly, she renewed her thrashing. “Leave me alone, you damned filthy bastard!” She hoped her father, Lupe the maid, or the cook Josefina might come running.

Now Cole had his hands around her throat. “Is this what you want? Do you want me to tell your father that your two beaus are more interested in each other than in you? Their careers will be ruined. And no one’s going to want you at all after I’m done with you.”

He must have been pressing his thumbs against her larynx, for she couldn’t even croak out any cuss words. So she spat in his face, the gob sticking to his nose. He let his guard down for a split second, releasing the pressure on her throat. Liberty’s legs were tangled in her damnable skirts, but she managed to squeeze an arm in front of his chest.

She didn’t have much room to punch, but the belt she managed to connect to his face was enough to injure his pride, if nothing else. “You twisted degenerate!” she shrieked. Her knee that she wrenched up was muffled by many layers of fabric—she had never wished so ardently that she would be allowed to wear men’s pants!—so she bit him.

Ah, the relief when he rolled off her and onto the floor! She didn’t pause to admire her teeth marks in his face but leaped to her feet and grabbed the first, and heaviest, thing she saw—an unopened bottle of whiskey.

She didn’t pause, either, to warn him or give him a chance to get out. Gripping the bottle around the neck in both fists, she bashed him over the head as he writhed on the carpet with his hand to his face. It made a dull thud that was very satisfying. She drew the bottle over her head, ready to strike again. The front door burst open, and Levi and Garrett raced in at full chisel.

It would have been humorous, how frantic they looked, if there weren’t a body on the floor. Levi’s hair stuck out every which way, as though he were the one running from an assailant. Garrett even had to grab onto the doorjamb to stop himself from continuing down the hallway, he was tearing so fast. Liberty didn’t make the connection that their arrival had anything to do with the perverse Cole. They must have been going like sixty over here on some other matter—another matter that involved drawing their pistols and leveling them at the prone Cole.

“Agh!”
Cole yelled as he writhed on the floor.

Levi advanced on the man, though it was clear that at the moment, Liberty had the upper hand. “Get up, you godforsaken louse!”

Garrett stood abreast of Liberty. “What did he do to you?”

“
Tried
to do is more like it,” she shot back. With his free hand, Garrett lowered the whiskey bottle she still brandished overhead. “Tried to kiss me, and maul me, and—ick!”

“That damned bitch bit me!” Cole was sitting up now but gazed in surprise at his bloody hand so probably didn’t see Levi’s pistol three feet from his head.

“Get
up
, you lowdown bushwhacker!” Levi bellowed. Pride rose in Liberty’s chest at the authority he put into his voice.

Liberty stepped forward and kicked the college alumnus in the thigh. Not as hard as she would’ve wished. But this was a society where Judge Lynch prevailed, after all. “He told me he was going to the city council to insinuate that you two were sodomites if I didn’t allow him to maul me.”

“Oh,
well!
” Rolling his eyes, it was Garrett’s turn to kick the glass salesman with his worn but sturdy Wellington boots. “What were you
thinking
, man?”

Levi must have had a more level head, for he shoved the pistol barrel right upside the wound in Cole’s face, using the leverage to assist the man to stand. “All right, here’s what’s happening. You’re going out that door, never to return. If I don’t hear that you bought a ticket on the next train east, I’m having you arrested for assault.”

Cole stared at him, dazed, for a split second, so Levi rattled the pistol against his face. “Go, man!” He pointed at the door. “Go! And I don’t want to hear a single word about the city council. There’s a train at eight in the morning. I suggest you use it!”

“Good God!” Cole blathered, but he headed toward the front door. “She was the one who acted all sluttish toward
me!
She was like an animal, like a hawk with talons, scratching me, biting me! Like an animal, I tell you!”

Garrett kicked Cole again in the bum, causing him to stagger forward and clutch at the door. “Let’s give this vermin a parole!” he suggested hotly.

Levi followed Cole onto the front stoop, the barrel jammed between his shoulder blades. “You’re not welcome in this town any longer, Waters.”

Waters still protested. “But it was
she
who assaulted
me!
I had no control—she was all over me!”

Apparently tiring of his lies, Levi shoved him violently with the pistol. Liberty really wanted to belt the louse again, but it was satisfying enough the way he stumbled over the step and fell to his knees. When he got up, his trousers were ripped, and blood trickled down his face where she’d bit him, so that would have to suffice.

But he wasn’t done yet.

Lupe and Josefina stood in the foyer now, too, and Zeke Vipham hotfooted it up Garfield Street as though he’d just heard about the melee. Cole Waters waved his arms wildly and proclaimed, “You can’t run me out of town like a common criminal! It is
you
who are the common criminals, with your groping and your—
Agh!
”

It was impossible to believe, but at that precise moment a glorious bald eagle soared down the road. It was clearly at least seven feet from wingtip to wingtip, and it floated carefree right down the middle of the road. A more stately and majestic bird could not have been imagined, even if it had not been gliding around in the dark, after sunset. Its white-crested head was fluffed out in apparent anger, though, its yellow eyes flashing with intent, and it glided lower and lower as it neared the house.