Silver Lies (27 page)

She grabbed Cooke’s arm, tried to speak. All that came out was a croak. "Nigel!"

Cooke’s dismay increased visibly. He glanced at Sands as his shaking hands tried to cap the small vial.

Inez tried to sit up.

"Easy." The reverend applied gentle pressure to her shoulder to keep her down. Her head pillowed onto something soft. The distant buzzing sharpened and grew. The ceiling wavered, shading to gray. She moaned. Coughed. Pain spiked her throat.

Reverend Sands turned to the bank manager. "Get Doc. And the marshal."

Cooke nodded, then looked at Inez. His eyes reflected panic. "Please lie still, Mrs. Stannert."

After he’d left, Inez tried again to sit up. Sands made as if to stop her.

"No! I must see!" she croaked. The words sent agony shooting up her neck.

Sands settled back on his heels.

She struggled to sit amid a tangle of cloak, skirts, and petticoats. Then she saw what held her clothes.

A knife skewered a dead rat through her skirts into the floor.

Her stomach twisted. She grabbed a handful of wool and yanked. The fabric parted around the sharp blade like butter.

Free to move, she barely had time to turn away before retching on the carpet.

Reverend Sands waited until she was done. Then, he said gently, "A blow to the head can do that."

He offered her two crumpled handkerchiefs. Both streaked with blood.

Inez gingerly touched the back of her head. She looked at the wet glove, then down at her splattered dress.
So much blood.

"We tried to clean you up." The reverend moved closer and placed a comforting arm around her shoulders. "Thank God you’re all right."

She felt his fingers gently touch her hair, exploring the wound. "You’ll recover. Which is more than I can say for Nigel Hollingsworth."

Sands looked long and hard at the rat, still pinned to the floor. In a single swift movement, he stood, wrenched out the knife, grabbed the rat by the tail, and threw it into a dark corner. He turned toward her, knife in hand.

"You realize you’re lucky. You got a warning. If he’d wanted to kill you, he would’ve used this." Sands held up the knife. "As he did on Nigel. Not that." He pointed with the blade to a fist-sized globe at her feet, reflecting shattered light from its crystal facets. Nigel’s paperweight.

Sands dropped the knife to the carpet and returned to her side. Squatting, he searched her face. "Did you see who it was?"

She shook her head. Then, as the room spun around, wished she hadn’t.

Sands hastily put an arm around her shoulders. Concern marked his features. "Don’t move. Don’t talk. From the looks of it, you were nearly strangled. I’ll get Miss Carothers or Mrs. Rose to stay with you. I’ll come by later, after the morning service."

Hazy questions surfaced in her pain-filled mind.
What are you doing here? On a Sunday morning, with the bank manager, who’s a Quaker and no member of the church?
She opened her mouth. No sound escaped.

Far away, a door banged open. Footsteps and voices approached, Marshal Hollis’ nasal twang a counterpoint to Doc’s limping gait.

Inez closed her eyes, wishing she were anywhere but sitting on the carpet, covered with blood and vomit, with Nigel’s body lying in mute accusation behind her.

999

"Inez. Can you hear me?"

Inez stirred, feeling flannel at her fingertips, a roaring pain in her head and neck. She opened her eyes to the familiar lace curtains of her bedroom, Susan Carothers perched on a rocking chair by the bed.

"Oh thank goodness. You looked at death’s door when Doc and the marshal brought you in. I was so worried. But Doc said you’re going to be okay. Maybe I shouldn’t have awakened you, but…"

Something about Susan’s posture reminded of Inez of a race horse at the starting line—straining forward, ready to leap at the drop. Susan pawed through her reticule, searching.

Inez heard Doc expounding in her parlor.
Probably drinking my brandy as well.

"I looked at Joe’s notebooks and went to the Recorder’s Office. I’ll tell you more later, but I have to show you what I found in the notebooks."

A full twenty-four hours later, Inez fumbled with the buttons of her day dress. She finally left the top two undone to spare her swollen neck. Battling waves of dizziness, she opened the bedroom door.

In the parlor, Susan looked up from her book, then jumped to her feet. "You should be in bed! Doc didn’t think you’d be up for another day, at least."

"Bank," croaked Inez. "Joe’s papers."

"Papers? Oh, Joe’s loan! That’s why you went to the bank to meet…ah well."

Inez mimed writing, using her palm for paper.

"I’ll get them. You sit down." Susan rustled out of the room.

Inez collapsed on the sofa. Susan reappeared with a sheet of stationery, a stubby pencil, an ink bottle, and a pen. Inez cleared the parlor table, dipped the pen’s steel nib, and wrote: "Mr. Cooke, The bearer of this note is acting on my behalf for Mrs. Joseph Rose. Any information you have concerning Mr. Rose’s loan—"

A knock sent Susan scurrying to the front door.

"No need to disturb Mrs. Stannert. How is she?" Reverend Sands’ voice melted Inez’s concentration.

Pushing aside the note, Inez stood and slowly walked to the entry hall.

"Mrs. Stannert." Reverend Sands whisked off his hat and smiled with a warmth that reminded her of summer.

"She should be convalescing," Susan interposed hastily.

"It’s all right," Inez whispered. "Come in."

Susan wavered, then finally pulled the door wide. "I’ll fix some tea. Reverend, please don’t tax her."

"I wouldn’t dream of it." The reverend took Inez’s arm solicitously and guided her to the loveseat. "Although I’m happy to see you up, I’m also concerned. You should rest."

"Enough. Rest." Inez was glad that her skirts masked her unsteady gait.

Sands grasped the piano stool. "May I?" At her slight nod, he rolled it close. He sat, pulling a much-thumbed pocket Bible from his black frock coat.

"I’m not here to quote scripture. Marshal Hollis wants to ask you about Nigel’s death. Doc and I talked him out of it, said we’d relay questions that couldn’t wait. Then, I arm-wrestled Doc for the role of messenger."

He riffled the Bible pages like a deck of cards. "Just nod or shake your head if it’s too painful to talk. Did anyone besides you and Nigel know about your meeting?"

She remembered. Nigel in the saloon, shouting date, time, and place from the surging crowd.

Inez lowered her aching head into her hands.
That’s half of Leadville.

"Nigel. Came to the Queen," she whispered. She remembered the marshal’s shifty eyes, his sudden departure. "Hollis heard. He was there."

Sands leaned closer. "Who else?"

"Abe. Useless. A big crowd. The opera was just over."

Could I have prevented his death?
Awash with guilt, she stared at the reverend’s Bible. The gold cross on the cover was cracked, the gold leaf flaking off. He riffled the pages again, thinking.

"You were meeting about Rose’s loan?"

"Nigel…had loan papers."

His hands stilled. "Nigel had the papers? Did you see them?"

"On his desk."

The reverend shook his head. "There was nothing in the office concerning Joe Rose." He rolled back the stool to stand. "We looked."

"We?" Her lips formed the word. She no longer had a voice for it.

"The bank manager and I. And Marshal Hollis."

Inez’s gaze fell on her half-composed note to Morris Cooke. She crumpled it up, leaned back, and closed her eyes.

"Reverend Sands, you promised not to tire her." Susan appeared with Inez’s modest tea set.

Sands retrieved the crumpled note and smoothed it out. A sharp look from those gray eyes followed. "Mrs. Stannert, were you intending to pursue this? After what happened yesterday? I don’t think that’s wise. Do you?" He looked over at Susan. "Miss Carothers, were you planning to play Pinkerton along with Mrs. Stannert?"

The china cups chattered against their saucers as she plunked down the tea service. "If we don’t pursue this, Emma will be penniless."

The Reverend rubbed the nape of his neck and muttered.

"What," demanded Susan.

"I said ‘a conspiracy of women.’ I see you’ll not be dissuaded by common sense." He debated a moment. "It appears I have no choice. Although I’d hoped to bring the news to Mrs. Rose first." He walked to the piano and turned, speaking as if he was making an announcement from the pulpit. "Through the efforts of the church, in particular through a generous benefactor who wishes to remain anonymous, the bank loan has been paid in full."

999

After Reverend Sands had left, Susan circled a spoon in her lukewarm tea and asked, "What do we do, Inez? Let it go at that? "

Using the stubby pencil, Inez wrote, "If we do, someone in Leadville gets away with murder. Do you still have Joe’s records and that key?"

Susan jumped up and returned with Joe’s assay notebooks, his ledger book and the key. Inez examined the key. The length of her little finger, it was too small for a door or a normal-size padlock or strongbox. Its grip was cut in the shape of an ornate horseshoe

"I don’t know what to make of the horseshoe design. For good luck, maybe?" Susan twisted a strand of hair. "Could it be to Joe’s desk?"

Inez visualized Joe’s desk drawers, then wrote, "Possibly."

"Well, it’s something to check. Now, we hit pay dirt with the ledger and the notebooks." Susan held up the loose ledger page. "This is the missing page: forty-seven. In the ledger, the forty-seven is really forty-nine, with a bit of the nine rubbed out. Look." She flipped the bound ledger page. The printed number on the back was fifty.