The Wedding Chase (54 page)

But Emily had never granted that permission. Ewert Smith, the lawyer, was astonished when she wrote back stating that she intended to occupy the house. Emily refolded the letter and put it back in her valise. She couldn’t pass up this opportunity. She would investigate the crime, find out exactly how her father and his companion were killed, who had done the deed, and why. Even if she hadn’t known him as a daughter should, didn’t she owe him that much? A nervous tremor went through her as she thought of the danger involved since the murderer was still at large, but she dismissed it quickly. Holmes never let such considerations stop him. Looking down at her sleeve, she touched the place where the black band circled her arm beneath her coat, in memory of the great sleuth. Now that Sherlock Holmes’s creator had brought about the demise of the world’s first consulting detective, she was determined to become the second.

The stagecoach lurched, and a wooden cherry zigrough, zagged across the floor. Dr. Watson bounded after the errant decoration, skidding out of Emily’s reach, and the two women beside her squealed in shock and dismay. Emily murmured an apology and tried to capture the cat, but Watson, free at last, had no intention of returning to the carpetbag. The women withdrew as far as they could within the dim interior of the coach, but the tiny feline had already disappeared beneath the older woman’s skirts.

“Excuse me, ma’am.” The preacher lifted his hat to her, and then seemingly as part of the same motion used it to scoop up the cat when he ventured out of his hiding place. Emily exhaled in relief although the overweight woman drew her lips tightly together as if tasting something sour, eyeing the kitten as if he were a rodent. Dr. Watson peeked out of the Stetson indignantly, but made no further protest. As Emily lifted him out of the hat, her hands briefly touched the preacher’s, and a warm tingle raced across her skin. She swallowed hard to regain her composure.

“Thank you, sir. I’m so sorry, he’s usually very good.”

The woman only snorted in her direction, then turned toward her young companion with a meaningful lift of her brows. The preacher, seeming to sense that trouble was brewing, intervened quickly. “I couldn’t help noticing your periodical. Are you a great reader?”

Emily nodded. “Yes. It was a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story.”

“Ah. A mystery. So you’re an armchair sleuth.”

“Exactly.” Emily waited for the disapproval such a confession usually brought, but to her surprise, he seemed genuinely interested. Encouraged, she continued. “I’ve read all of his stories. I thought ‘The Speckled Band’ the best, but ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ remains a close second.”

“I agree. I enjoyed ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip,’ but thought the action in ‘The Speckled Band’ much more appealing.” He extended his hand, his smile genuine. “I’m Reverend Thomas Hall. Please call me Thomas.”

“Miss Emily Potter.” Emily took the offered hand, once again feeling the odd energy spark through her. Goodness, what was wrong with her! Forcing herself to remember her mission, she let her eyes travel over the preacher. Anyone could be a suspect in this case. She couldn’t forget that, no matter how upstanding he might appear to be. She studied the man without letting go of him, even bringing her magnifying glass out of her pocket and up to her eyes with her other hand to examine him from his chestnut hair to his worn boots.

His eyes were truly magnificent. Startlingly blue, they seemed to return her gaze and look right through her, twinkling with amusement. Emily blinked—how easily she was distracted! She must get back to the work at hand. He was tanned, unlike the priests she knew in Boston, but that wasn’t surprising for a traveling preacher. The stubble of a black beard was beginning to show, which didn’t hide his square-cut chin or firm mouth. His hands were as if used to hard work, and his body was muscular, firm, and well proportioned. He clutched a worn prayer book, but it didn’t look natural in his hand. There was something … about his posture, a readiness that was unusual for a simple man of God. Her glass paused as he withdrew his hand from hers. There was a black stain just inside his thumb. Puzzled, Emily brought her fingers up to her nose, as if to cover a yawn, and sniffed. A faint trace of manly cologne remained, along with something else….

It was just as she thought. Gunpowder. He should be holding a pistol instead of a Bible.

“Did I pass inspection?” The preacher, far from being angry, seemed to find the whole thing terribly funny. His smile was devilishly appealing as he surveyed her with obvious amusement. The other passengers, particularly the females, didn’t share his sense of humor and withdrew even farther from her.

“One should approach everything with as scientific a view as possible,” Emily stated, undaunted. A very unusual preacher indeed. It was worth thinking about later. “Observations must be recorded, then verified with facts,” she continued. “I am simply a believer in modern methods. The study of criminology, although new, is fascinating.”

“Is that so?” The preacher smiled.

“Yes. Why Dave Mather, the notorious gunman, claimed to be a descendant of a Puritan clergyman, and he certainly looked like one. So did Ben Thompson and Pat Garrett, both of whom were outlaws before turning to law enforcement. You see, Mr. Hall, one can never trust appearances.” She turned her glass toward the women beside her and peered at them like a Cyclops.

“I beg your pardon, miss! What do you think you’re doing?” The older woman puffed indignantly.

“I’m examining your cuffs and boots,” Emily explained, as if surprised at the question. “My mother and I ran a millinery shop in Boston. There I applied Holmes’s theories of deduction. By examining our customers’ clothes, hands, and knees, I could tell whether they were rich or poor, if they drank or had gas laid in the house. I deduced that one of our customers was a married woman having an affair, and that a girl had an addiction to snuff.”

The two women gasped, then tucked their boots self-consciously under their dresses, while the businessman glanced down at his linen cuffs.

“The nerve of you, missy!” The older woman scolded. “I’ve never seen anything so rude! Why, young people today …” She sent her companion a pointed look, while the latter stared at Emily in disbelief.

“For example,” Emily said, leaning forward in excitement to be able to talk about her work, “I observe that you are in mourning, but I deduce that you are not entirely sorry to have lost your late spouse. You have had some problems finding a husband for your daughter, and think that the West might provide an answer. Your husband left you with some money, but it won’t last forever, and you need to secure your means. Hence, this trip.” Emily sat back in her seat, satisfied.

The younger woman gasped, and looked at Emily as if she were a witch. The older one’s face turned white and she stammered, “Someone must have told you this! I demand to know—”

“It is all perfectly obvious.” Emily sighed, as if explaining something to a child. “You are still wearing widow’s weeds, which indicates that your loss was fairly recent, and probably a close relation. You are traveling without a husband, which suggests it is his loss that you are mourning. Yet you have been to a sunny clime lately, as indicated by the slight tint to your skin, which is not your natural complexion. I can see beneath the lace of your sleeve that you are normally very fair. This leads me to believe that you have traveled for pleasure, which one might not do if one were seriously agrieved.”

“But … my search for a husband?” The younger woman questioned nervously.

“There is a newspaper sticking out of your bag with the personal column marked It has become common for western miners and cowboys to advertise for mail-order brides, and some of them are using the newspapers to do so. And you are not wearing a wedding ring. I deduced, given these facts, that you are interested in attracting a westerner for the purpose of marriage.”

The two women sat aghast, their mouths hanging open, as astonished as if Emily had begun to remove her clothes. Unaware of their consternation, Emily turned to the businessman, intending to subject him to her deductive reasoning. But at that moment the carriage jolted, sending her glass flying. The preacher it deftly—then seemed reluctant to return it, perhaps because the older woman had turned an interesting shade of purple. After a moment, he placed the glass in Emily’s outstretched hand, then indicated the bumpy road outside the window. “Maybe you should put it away. It will probably get broken with the way the coach is swaying.”

“I suppose,” Emily responded. The motion did make it difficult to continue her observations. Reluctantly, she put the magnifying glass back inside her pocket for the time being.

The ladies breathed a collective sigh of relief, and even the businessman appeared happier. The cowboy alone seemed unperturbed, continuing to sleep with his back against the seat. The tension in the coach remained palpable, however. The businessman spoke up conversationally, now that he wasn’t about to be dissected like an insect.

“So, miss, are you planning to stay in Denver?”

Emily nodded. “My father left me a property on the outskirts of town. It’s a nice house from what the attorney’s letter says. Shangri-La, it’s called.”

“What?” The cowboy glanced up from under his Stetson, suddenly awake. “Did you say Shangri-La?”

“Yes,” Emily answered, surprised at his interest. “It is described as a white-columned mansion, much like the old plantation houses. It even has indoor plumbing.” She gave them a superior smile. “That’s all the thing in Boston, you know.”

The women looked puzzled, while the men glanced at each other, appalled. It must have been the mention of plumbing, Emily realized belatedly. Some people were sensitive to that kind of talk. The cowboy smirked and looked at Emily with new attention. The businessman cleared his throat. “That house is … not a place for a lady,” he finished lamely. “Surely someone has told you of the killings? And”—he lowered his voice—“the ghost?”

Emily nodded eagerly. “Yes, of course. That was my primary interest. My father and his female companion were killed there. I want to investigate the murders and learn everything I can about them. And of course, there is no such thing as ghosts.” She retrieved her notebook from her bag, pushing Dr. Watson’s curious head back down again. “Now, you can probably help me. I was going to wait until I got to town to start interrogations, but as they say, there’s no time like the present.”

The preacher choked down a laugh, while the other passengers appeared shocked. As the stagecoach rumbled into Denver, everyone was silent, and Emily quickly recorded her observations. She was satisfied with the women, the businessman afforded little data, and the cowboy was simply a cowboy. It soon became apparent that her most interesting suspect was Thomas Hall. He had gunpowder stains on his hands, smelled nothing like Father Murphy from Boston (who always seemed to carry the odors of incense and wine), and was physically more compelling than any man she’d ever met. She was almost tempted to hold up the glass again. He was very handsome and likable, but she couldn’t let that interfere with her investigation of him or admit that her interest was in anything other than the case at hand. For as every great detective knew, emotion was deadly to logic. Thomas Hall was simply an element that warranted further scrutiny.

The stagecoach finally stopped in the center of town. Thomas waited as the passengers moved reverently aside to allow him to pass first. Outside, a cowboy, obviously more than a little worse for drink, tipped his hat politely, his eye marking the white collar of Thomas’s black shirt and the Bible he held. An elderly businessman dressed in a good wool suit nodded cordially, while a young woman passing by blushed and hid her face behind a lace kerchief.

Thomas accepted their deference with a forced smile. He helped the others disembark from the coach, wishing to God that he could go into the saloon and have a shot of whiskey to warm his bones. But now he was supposed to be the preacher,

Thomas Hall, and he couldn’t afford any missteps. Especially in front of Emily Potter.

She appeared at the stagecoach door almost as soon as he formed the thought, one hand clutching the bag with the cat in it, in her other hand a book. He smiled to himself as he recalled her antics with the magnifying glass. The women on the coach had been close to starting a mutiny, but Emily had seemed oblivious to everything but her own objectives. He had to admire the way she’d handled those women, and her obvious intelligence, but there was an undeniable naïveté about her. God only knew what she would have said to the businessman if given the chance. He reminded himself to be careful around her, for Emily was no fool. In spite of his own good sense, Thomas found himself admiring her.

The object of his thoughts was looking around as if to get her bearings. This time he surreptitiously subjected Emily to as thorough an appraisal as she’d given him. Prim and proper, dressed in a simple dove gray dress with purple plush at the sleeves, a pretty veiled bonnet trimmed with feathers, and suede gloves, she was the epitome of a spinster, a women determined to be alone. In spite of himself, he tried to do what she had done by examining her sleeves and boots, but they revealed nothing to him. Instead, as she bent over to pick up her case, his eyes wandered over her figure, which hinted at being magnificent. She straightened, and he noticed that her face held a promise of beauty, her chestnut hair was splendid, and her mouth was downright kissable. There was a vulnerability about her, a sensitivity to life that he’d already sensed from their brief exchange.

Thomas’s thoughts drifted back to the innocent brush of their fingers when he handed her the cat, and her firm hand-clasp when her formally introduced himself. A hot rush of sensation had swept through him at the simple contact, a sensuality so compelling that it momentarily caught him off guard. He couldn’t remember ever touching a woman who evoked that kind of emotion so quickly. Her reaction told him he wasn’t imagining it, that she had felt the same thing and was just as confused.

He continued to smile, but the warmth had gone out of him. Emily Potter might enjoy mysteries, but she had no idea about the one she was about to walk into. Nor that he, the Reverend Thomas Hall, would play a major role in the plot.