Training Ivy [How The West Was Done 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (11 page)

Ivy doubted that. Her father had always wished to have a son and was extremely disappointed her mother had produced four daughters. But she forced herself to mouth, “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” taking his hand in her gloved one.

Rodney Shortridge, however, was a different matter. He started to rise, thought better of it, and signaled an assistant for another round. He did ask Ivy, though, “Would the lady care for a drink?”

Neil started to say, “No, we’re just—”

But Ivy cut him off. “That sounds lovely. What are you drinking?” She took a seat between the two men.

“Forty rod!” declared Shortridge. “It’s only twenty-five cents a glass, which fits in with my budget lately. It’s guaranteed to kill at forty rods’ distance!”

“All right,” Ivy said. “I’ll have that, then.”

Neil sat his lanky frame in a chair opposite her. “Now, Ivy, I don’t think your father would—”

“Are there problems at the Cow Palace?” Ivy got right to the matter while Neil shot her a warning glare.

Ivy didn’t care. She was angry. Neil had shown her how to operate the telegraph machine that morning in the depot office. But the entire time she’d been distracted by a couple of large red suck marks on his neck. He had tried to hide them by donning a particularly foppish neckerchief, but he must not have been accustomed to tying a scarf, for the knot slid loose, baring the glaring red marks.

He definitely hadn’t had those marks last night when they sat for the photograph!

She had tried to concentrate on tapping the telegraph key, but all she could think was, who was sucking on Neil’s neck? She hadn’t heard him leave the house, and her second-story bedroom was over the front door. He must have snuck some woman into the house—but then, the only sounds she’d heard after retiring were Neil and Harley talking in the kitchen.

It “got her Irish up” to think of some she-devil licking her beau’s neck. The worst part was, Neil had just asked if he could court her—just hours before necking with some harridan. This thought gnawed at her stomach, made her unable to eat, and now she was drinking “forty rod” at one o’clock in the afternoon. Neil had obviously not been very serious about his intentions. He couldn’t even last one hour without kissing another woman!

She had sent her sister Liberty a message that she hoped said,

ARRIVED SAFE IN LARAMIE. FATHER WELL. WILL NOT RETURN HYDE PARK. IVY. PS KISS STORMALONG FOR ME.

Stormalong was their Newfoundland dog, and she meant much more to Ivy than any heartless, worthless man ever could! How she wished she could take that enormous bundle of fur in her arms now. She was pathetic, pining for a man she’d only known twenty-four hours! She would show Neil. She would throw herself at Harland Park, who was an army captain, after all. She had planned to court both of them simultaneously, anyway, to discover who had the truer intentions. That question had obviously already been answered.

Shortridge seemed confused for a few moments, and then a flash of enlightenment spread over his face. “The Cow Palace, yah! Well, as you know, Neil, I’ve been sinking into a hopeless mire ever since Minerva passed. Oh, thank you kindly, Bob.” Shortridge gulped half his mug of forty rod without wincing. “So the ranch has fallen into some disarray. My wife passed,” he told Ivy, “in the most incomprehensible manner. A rattlesnake shot her!”

Ivy smiled. “A rattlesnake?”

“Yah! Ace Moyer, who owns this groggery, was the one who figured it out. He was on his way to see me at the Cow Palace to discuss how many beeves he’d need for his menu. He came racing into my hacienda, shrieking that a snake had shot Minerva!”

Ivy inquired, “So her body was right next to the snake, which was holding a shotgun?”

“Yah! No! Yah!”

Neil explained patiently, “Actually, Ivy, there
was
no body at first. I’m sure the rattlesnake thing was all a fantasy. Sure, we found a snake coiled around her rifle, pressed against the trigger. But we found the actual
body
—Rodney, you don’t want to discuss this!”

Neil was right. Rodney’s face was already lower than his shoulders and on its way to becoming one with the tabletop.

Ivy took a sip of the forty rod and choked. A few drops of the vile stuff came back up into her nostrils, her eyes watered, and she had to take her handkerchief from her reticule. Neil stood, came to her side of the table, and patted her ineffectively on the back.

“Now, now,” he said, annoyingly. “I warned you about that stuff. It’s made of pure combustibles, not fit for man or beast.”

Defiantly, Ivy raised the mug and forced another couple of swallows down. The liquid stayed down this time, burning a hole in her stomach. “Stop that!” she snapped. “I’m perfectly capable of holding my liquor.” She could barely see through her watery eyes, but it looked as if Shortridge was about to keel completely. “Rodney? About your—”

Rodney pounded a fist on the tabletop. “These damned ape-men, I tell you! They’ll be the ruination of us all!”

McCormack said mildly, “Shortridge has been going on about these skeletons discovered in France.”

Rodney bawled, “Along with bones of extinct critters, tools, and skulls! Reindeer antlers, I tell you!”

“Yes?” Ivy said politely. “And what does this have to do with—”

“I found a skull once!” Rodney proclaimed. “A bison skull was sitting right outside my hacienda door not long after Minerva was found in that pile of manure! Bob! More forty rod!”

Ivy lifted Neil’s hand from her shoulder and tossed it away in irritation. Swallowing more of the acerbic whiskey, she turned to McCormack as the most logical fellow in the room. “So the snake didn’t shoot her? She was smothered by shit?”

McCormack chuckled, probably not accustomed to women saying “shit.” Or perhaps not accustomed to women at all. “Why, yes. It was decided she’d fallen into the manure pile, perhaps
after
being shot—by the snake or not, we don’t really know—and suffocated to death when a hand dumped a load of manure on top of her. Now, Rodney. Can you hand me your tobacco? I’ve got a yen for tobacco.”

But Rodney was caught up in the drama of his blubbering. His mouth all askew, he clung to the tabletop as if it were a mountain of morality he had to climb. “A skull…with earrings attached! Oh, bury me now on the lone prairie…
Those damned ape-men!
Oh, the lack of humanity!”

McCormack rose and went to shake Shortridge by the shoulders. Shortridge lashed out with both hands as though shooing away a swarm of bees. “I ain’t got no tobacco, McCormack! Why do you keep bugging me about that? I don’t even smoke tobacco.”

“Because. You’ve got it sticking out of your pocket right here.” McCormack lifted a tobacco pouch from Shortridge’s waistcoat pocket. Satisfied, he sat down opposite his friend and removed a pipe from his own pocket. When he withdrew the tobacco plug from the pouch, that’s when Ivy saw it.

The pouch. Missing its drawstring. And there was a picture of a bison on the label.

A drawstring could easily have been used to strangle old Gentry.

Neil must have noticed at the same time, for he stepped in front of Bob and whisked the jug of forty rod from his paw. That brought Shortridge back to life, and he sat erect with blazing yet bleary eyes.

“What you want to go and do that for, Tempest?”

Neil held the jug up high as a temptation. “I’ll give it to you when you tell me where you got that pouch of tobacco. The one that’s in your pocket.”

Shortridge patted his torso with curiosity. Ivy had to pick up the pouch and deposit it directly in front of Shortridge, where he stared at it as though it were an ape-man femur. “I ain’t never seen that before in my life!”

“It was in your pocket,” said McCormack, chomping on his pipe stem.

“All right,” Shortridge admitted. “It was in my pocket, maybe. Are you accusing me of pinching that tobacco off someone else? I don’t even smoke tobacco.”

Neil waggled the jug enticingly in the air. “Perhaps you can tell me. Where’d your ring go?” Shortridge scrunched up his face in mystification. “The one that was on your finger until recently, depicting the brand of your ranch, a
C
and a
P
intertwined.”

Ivy noticed a white band around Rodney’s left middle finger, demonstrating that he’d recently worn a ring for quite a while.

“My
ring?
” cried Shortridge. He attempted to stand then, stumbling back against the wooden chair. “What’s my ring got to do with anything?” He made a swipe for the jug, but Neil withheld it.

“Just tell us,” Neil said evenly, “and you can have your firewater.”

“I don’t know!” Shortridge bawled. “I lost…I woke up one morning and it was gone!
You
remember, McCormack! It was that night that Hewson put the lampshade on his head and we had that fandango, only there weren’t enough women, so Nichols and Oliver put on those gowns, and I got clobbered over the head with that shoe-polishing contraption!”

Ivy hated herself a little for being proud of Neil when he unhooked a pair of bracelets from his gun belt and in a flash had clicked them onto Shortridge’s wrists. He had to put the jug down to do so, and Shortridge took that opportunity to lunge for it, but his hands were locked behind his back, and he leaned comically like a flagpole.

“What are you doing, Neil?” Shortridge wailed. “Why are you handcuffing me?”

“You’re arrested for the murder of Whit Gentry.”

“That can’t be!” McCormack protested. “We were sitting right here all day yesterday. Until closing time. Con Moyer can vouch for that.”

Neil was manfully dragging Shortridge toward the door after pocketing the tobacco pouch. He did look stern and forbidding the way he shoved that buffoon about. Ivy was ashamed that this manly attitude elevated his image in her mind. Of course, she was still angry about the suck marks on his neck. But he did look rather masterful in his leather waistcoat, a six-shooter at each hip.

Ivy admired the rounded globes of his ass as he hauled the oiled murderer away, and she loathed herself for it. She should be able to separate his physical beauty from the fact that he couldn’t even wait two hours for her before he’d sneaked a woman into the house—or
Lupe
, the maid! He must have been canoodling with Lupe. That explained why she hadn’t heard any doors opening. Or any female voices, for that matter.

Ooh!
Neil had been taking advantage of a poor Spanish
maid!

“Excuse me, Ace.”

At the door, a limping fellow touched the brim of his hat to Neil. “You taking in Shortridge?”

“Yep, for murdering Gentry. Say, can you verify something? He claims he was here all damned day yesterday.”

“I was!” Shortridge protested. “Vouch for me, Ace!”

“Ah, I can’t say as I know, Neil,” said Ace. “I was gone all day myself. Up at Dale Creek Bridge. But Shortridge is here, as you know, pretty much the entire day and night long. Might as well charge you rent, you odiferous scoundrel!”

“Your brother can vouch for me!” Shortridge wailed. “Where’s Con? He was here!”

But even this conversation was interrupted by a larger silhouette of a fellow attempting to get in the door.

It was Harley, who tried to squeeze himself between Neil and the murderer, but he was looking directly at Ivy. “Come quickly, Ivy. I’ve just been over at McClure Brothers, the undertakers. I want you as a witness when I develop these photographs of Gentry.”

“Certainly!” Ivy shot Neil a haughty, offended glare as they all squeezed out the door. He looked at her quizzically. She realized he probably had no idea what she was angry about, so she added, “I need to get out of here. Hell was raked to furnish this groggery with unstable killers and reprobates. I could use some
civilized
company.”

Harley looked quizzical, too, but allowed her to take his arm and stalk away haughtily.

“Unbelievable.”

Ivy looked from the print of Neil’s “extra” over to the glass negative of the dead man’s eye. Then back to Neil’s “extra,” because she was probably sneaking glances at Neil’s erection.

Harley couldn’t blame her. He had spent many a pleasurable moment gazing at that print, and it wasn’t to admire the fellow in the derby hat.

Now, Harley asked, “What do you see in this print?”

Ivy looked up at Harley with wide, astonished eyes. “I see three people. Except, there were only two people standing there last night.”

“Exactly. And what do you notice about this third fellow?”

“Well, he’s shorter than Neil. Wider. And he’s wearing a derby.”

“Right. Now, what do you notice in this image of Gentry’s eyeball?”

He should not have forced a lady to look at an image of a dead man’s pupil, but Ivy was such a spirited, inquisitive woman. She would have demanded to see the image anyway. “It looks like the head and shoulders of a man, only it’s just a silhouette.” She held a magnifying glass to her eye while Harley dangled the plate in front of the kitchen window.

“Anything else?”