Murder in Dogleg City (11 page)

“
She is unaccompanied at
the moment, I believe,” the butler replied.

“
How about Marcelline?”
Ira asked. She was a particular favorite of his, a lithe,
blond-haired beauty who was blessed with the ability to bend and
twist her body in all sorts of intriguing ways.

Thaddeus winced slightly at Ira's
question. “Sad to say, Mister Ira, Marcelline is with a guest at
the moment. If you'd care to wait—”

A man who bedded down with whores,
even the most high-class ones, didn't have any business getting
upset with the idea of them being with other men. Ira knew that,
but he felt a flash of annoyance, anyway. It was more a matter of
impatience than fastidiousness. When he wanted something, he didn't
like to wait for it, and it had been a while since he'd visited
Marcelline.

“
Or perhaps if you'd
prefer the company of one of the other young ladies—” Thaddeus
continued.

Ira shook his head. “I'll wait,” he
said. “Bring me something to drink in the parlor.
Cognac.”

“
Of course, sir,” Thaddeus
murmured.

The two young men went into the
elegantly furnished parlor, which was lit by two crystal
chandeliers that cast their warm glow over plush red curtains,
walls covered with brocaded paper, several spindly-legged tables,
and a number of heavy, comfortable divans and armchairs. A massive
stone fireplace with a gleaming mahogany mantle took up almost one
entire wall of the room, and a pianoforte sat against the other
wall. No one had ever played the musical instrument while Ira was
here, but he presumed it was for more than just show.

Several attractive young women in
various forms of skimpy attire that left little of their beauty to
the imagination lounged around the parlor. One of them, a tall,
slender, but well-endowed redhead stood up when Ira and Laird
entered the room and came over to them. “Laird,” she said as she
held out both hands, “it's so good to see you again.”

Laird took her hands, then pulled her
into his arms and kissed her. He smacked her bottom through the
thin, translucent shift she wore, and that prompted a laugh from
her as they broke the kiss.

“
I think you're glad to
see me, too,” she said.

“
More than you
know.”

“
Oh—” Jessica giggled. “I
doubt that.”

Laird put an arm around her shoulders
and turned her toward the foyer and the winding staircase that led
up to the second floor where the girls' rooms were located. He
looked back at his companion and said, “I'll see you later,
Ira.”

Ira nodded somewhat gloomily and said,
“I'll be here.” Laird was going off to have his fun, and he was
stuck waiting for Marcelline. The wait might well be worth it, but
it still bothered him.

One of the other girls approached him
when Laird and Jessica were gone. She was a brunette, pretty enough
but already developing the hardness around her eyes and mouth that
all whores got if they stayed in the business long enough. With
some it didn't really take very long.

“
I'd be glad to go
upstairs with you, Mister Breedlove,” she offered.

Ira shook his head. “No, that's all
right . . .” His voice trailed off as he couldn't recall her
name.

“
Susan.”

“
That's right. Susan. I'll
wait for Marcelline.”

“
She don't have . . . I
mean, she doesn't have anything I don't have, Mister
Breedlove.”

Other than breeding and class, or at
least what passed for same in such an environment, thought Ira.
Still, he put a polite smile on his face as he shook his head and
said, “I don't think so, but thank you anyway.”

Susan was about to say something else,
opening her mouth and revealing teeth that were starting to go bad,
when Thaddeus bustled into the parlor carrying a silver tray with a
snifter of cognac on it.

“
You run along and leave
Mister Ira alone,” he told the brown-haired whore sharply. Susan
glared daggers at him but turned and sashayed back to the divan
where she joined two other girls in waiting for the next
customer.

Thaddeus handed the snifter to
Ira.

“
There you go, sir,” he
said.

“
Thanks.” Ira took a coin
from his coat pocket and tossed it to the servant, who plucked it
deftly from the air. Thaddeus, Marcelline had told Ira once, was a
runaway slave from Louisiana who had made his way upriver to St.
Louis and pretended to be a freedman. He had phony manumission
papers he had gotten hold of somehow, and since he was able to
read, a skill not many blacks had, he had taught himself how to
speak like an educated man, too. Ira wasn't sure how Thaddeus had
wound up working for Rose Delacroix, the woman who owned the
Birdcage, nor did he care.

The butler tucked the coin away, held
the silver tray at his side, and nodded. “I shall inform you as
soon as Miss Marcelline is available, sir,” he said.

Ira nodded, and Thaddeus turned and
left the parlor. Ira took a sip of the cognac and appreciated the
liquor's fine, smooth bite. Marcelline had introduced him to
cognac, and there was nothing to compare with it in the saloons of
Wolf Creek.

The whores out there in the settlement
on the Kansas plains didn't compare, either. Out there a man had to
settle for rotgut whiskey that might well have been brewed with
rattlesnake heads and black powder in it, along with plain-faced or
even downright ugly soiled doves who pulled up their skirts and lay
there as unresponsive as a sack of flour while a man took care of
his business. That was fine for a young cowboy who only cared about
losing his innocence, but Ira preferred a woman who was more
skilled in the amatory arts.

From time to time, Ira thought that a
man who opened a saloon providing good liquor and a better class of
prostitute would make a lot of money in a place like Wolf Creek. He
had toyed with the idea of doing just that when his father finally
made him come home.

But the reality of the situation was
that cognac and women like Marcelline would be wasted on the
denizens of Wolf Creek. They were too crude to fully appreciate
either one. If he ever opened a saloon, he would give those
frontiersmen exactly what they deserved, no more, no
less.

The best things in life, he would save
for himself.

Susan was at his elbow again, he
realized as he sipped the liquor. “Marcelline's gonna—going to be
upstairs for quite a while, I'll bet,” the brunette said. “That
fella who went with her was bellowing about how he'd been saving up
his lovin' for a long, long time.”

Ira was irritated because he knew
Susan was just trying to cajole him into giving her his business,
instead of Marcelline. “I don't mind waiting,” he snapped, even
though he did mind. He minded a lot.

“
She might even need to
take a bath when she's done with him,” Susan went on. “He stunk to
high heaven. Of course, you might not care about that.”

Ira knew he shouldn't give in to his
curiosity, but he asked, “What sort of man was he?” Gentlemen
patronized the Birdcage, for the most part, but the brothel
wouldn't turn away any man who had the money to afford the
price.

“
He was a big man, with a
beard and long, tangled hair,” Susan said. “He wore buckskins and a
hat with a brim out to here.” She indicated the dimensions of the
wide brim with her hands. “He had a pair of revolvers stuck behind
his belt, and the biggest knife I've ever seen in a sheath with
fringe on it.”

“
Sounds like a fur
trapper,” Ira commented. That was a dying business, but he had seen
some of the old mountain men from time to time, both back in Wolf
Creek and here in St. Louis. Actually, they were more common here
in St. Louis because the fur companies had their headquarters here
and the trappers would bring in loads of pelts to sell.

Susan said, “I think he must have
been. He stank of death, I know that.”

That was a dramatic thing to say,
thought Ira. He didn't know whether to believe Susan or not. She
was capable of making up this yarn on the spot, just to try to
steal a customer from Marcelline. More than likely, the gent who'd
taken Marcelline upstairs was some mild-mannered
businessman.

That thought had just crossed Ira's
mind when a gravelly voice roared like a wounded grizzly bear,
“Come back here, you damned whore!”

All eyes in the parlor turned toward
the foyer as a frightened scream followed hard on the heels of the
angry bellow. A young woman with long blond hair streaming down her
back fled down the staircase, as naked as the day she was born.
Close behind her loomed a massive figure, giving chase.

The man towered several inches over
six feet and had shoulders seemingly as broad as an ax handle. He
was bare from the waist up, revealing a thickly muscled chest
covered with a rusty red pelt. His beard and the tangled thatch of
hair on his head were the same rusty shade. He wore only a pair of
buckskin trousers and had a piece of rope tied around his waist as
a belt. A fringed sheath hung from that rope, and the bone handle
of a knife jutted up from it.

Ira started toward the
foyer. He knew the blonde; in fact, she was the one he was waiting
for. His lips formed the name
Marcelline
.

She was almost at the bottom of the
stairs when her pursuer caught her. His ham-like hand reached out
and grabbed Marcelline's long hair. She cried out again as he
jerked back. Her feet went out from under her and she fell on the
stairs, landing heavily.

“
Marcelline!” Ira shouted
as he reached the arched door between the parlor and the
foyer.

The big man's head turned toward him.
The lips under that forest of red hair curved in a cruel smile.
“Stay back, you damned dandy,” the man said, “or I'll twist your
head right off your shoulders. They call me Cougar, and it's my
night to howl!”

Marcelline's tumble had stunned her.
She moaned weakly as the giant trapper wrapped his fingers around
her arm and hauled her to her feet as if she were weightless. She
muttered, “No—no—”

“
I done bought and paid
for your time, gal,” Cougar said. “You'll do whatever I want with
no complaints. A whore ain't got no business bein' so dadblasted
persnickety!”

Ira's pulse hammered inside his skull.
He wanted to help Marcelline, but the brute that had hold of her
was huge and clearly vicious. Didn't Rose Delacroix employ men to
deal with situations like this?

Thaddeus appeared through a door on
the other side of the foyer and pointed a sawed-off shotgun at
Cougar. “Release the young woman!” he ordered. “If you don't, I'll
have no choice but to fire.”

Cougar's eyes, set deep in pits of
leathery gristle, opened wider for a second. No man could stare
down the twin barrels of a shotgun without feeling some fear. But
then it went away and he laughed.

“
Go ahead and shoot,” he
taunted Thaddeus. “But if you pull them triggers, you'll splatter
the whore all over these stairs, too.”

Ira's hope for Marcelline's rescue
fell as he realized the trapper was right. The buckshot would be
equally deadly to her.

As it turned out, though, Thaddeus was
just trying to delay Cougar until help arrived. A big man in wool
trousers and a homespun shirt came running up behind him, and
another man about the same size appeared at the top of the stairs.
They were the Birdcage's real bodyguards and bouncers.

The man at the top of the stairs
carried a leather, shot-filled sap. The other clutched a short,
stout club. They charged at Cougar from both directions at the same
time.

Cougar dealt with the closer threat by
shoving Marcelline bodily into the man below him on the stairs.
They collided, their feet tangled, and they went down in a welter
of flailing limbs. Cougar turned to meet the charge of the man
coming from above. Moving with surprising speed for a man of his
bulk, the trapper bent at the waist as the bouncer swung the sap at
his head. The blow missed him, and he drove himself up a step,
lowering a shoulder and ramming it into the mid-section of the
off-balance bouncer.

With a roar of effort, Cougar
straightened and lifted the man off his feet. Twisting, the trapper
levered the bouncer up and over the banister that ran along the
edge of the curving staircase. The man let out a yell of alarm that
was cut off sharply as he crashed down on his back, landing on the
foyer's hardwood floor.

The first bouncer thrust Marcelline's
nude, limp form off of him and struggled to get his feet under him
again. Just as he came upright, Cougar pivoted toward him and
kicked him in the face. The trapper's feet were bare, but that
didn't make much difference. Ira thought the sole of Cougar's foot
looked to be as thick as if it were made of boot
leather.

The kick sent the bouncer flying
backward. Thaddeus scrambled to get out of the way, but he was too
late. The bouncer rammed into him and knocked him off his feet. As
Thaddeus sat down hard, the shotgun in his hands went off with a
deafening boom. The double load of buckshot chewed a gaping hole in
the fancy, flowery wallpaper and the wall boards underneath. If
anybody had been on the other side of that wall, they had probably
caught some of the buckshot, too, Ira thought.