Training Ivy [How The West Was Done 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (5 page)

This seemed to please her, for she smiled knowingly and at last glanced toward the luckless Neil, who was pacing back and forth in irritation with his bundle of tea. “Neil? Harley here has got to be part of the mystery Caleb was mentioning! How often does one run across peaches in Dakota Territory, much less twice in one day?”

Neil shook his package angrily. “Yes, but what does an Indian have to do with it? I tell you, Ivy. Caleb is loco. He’s been in the desert so long he knows all the lizards by their first names.”

“Indian?” Harley asked. “Why? Was there some prophecy that an Indian would arrive with peaches?” Prophecies fascinated him. Harley had steeped himself in Eastern mysticism and had seen the effect prophecies had on people. The more strongly they believed in them, so it seemed, the more likely they were to come true.

“Yes!” Ivy said with shining eyes. “His exact words were ‘an Indian will find the peaches he’s been looking for.’ You were looking for peaches, although Neil is right. You’re hardly an Indian.”

Harley cocked a hip with confidence. “Does being in the British Indian Army count? I was stationed in Gujarat for two years. That’s where I learned to speak Sindhi, Persian, and Arabic.”

A slow, knowing grin spread over Ivy’s face. Her fingers reached to the crumpled paper on the counter and felt around for a peach pit, which she rolled about in her hand. “Sure, why not? You’ve been to India. I’m sure we just assumed it was an Indian from around here, but the Far East India, why not?”

They shared a warm, secret glance that was ruined when Neil shouted, “Enough is enough! Ivy, listen. I’m taking you to the telegraph office to wire your sister, as we promised your father. Is this the only item you needed in town? You must be dying to bathe. Your father has the biggest bathtub in town, you’ll be glad to know. I can send for his laundress to clean anything you need cleaned.”

“Why, thank you, Neil. That’s very thoughtful of you.”

Neil shot Harley a defiant glare, jerking his head in a terse nod as though to say, “There! I won
that
hand!” Harley narrowed his eyes at the dashing head of security. The two men stood for several long seconds in a showdown of wills, as though about to pounce.

Perhaps Ivy noticed it, for she took Neil’s arm and said soothingly, “I only need to find some soap, although I’m sure Father has some in his house.” She looked to Harley from under her lashes, as though accustomed to playing the sly flirt. “You’ll be by Vancouver House later on, won’t you, Harley?”

Harley opened his mouth to reply, but a strange interruption took place then. The pharmacy’s front door banged open—at first everyone assumed it was the incessant wind—and a gangly fellow who would probably be bald in a few years blew into the room.

He was all agog about something, and when he spied Ivy, he blared out, “It happened! I ran all the way here to tell you!”

Ivy let go of Neil’s arm and approached the gangly guy. “What happened, Zeke? Because the prediction about the Indian and the peaches has already come true! That man standing right there is living proof of that.”

Zeke gripped Ivy’s arm as though to keep her from blowing away. “It has? Well, get set for this!” With wide eyes, Zeke scanned the room, impressing every single jar of boiled dove’s eggs with his importance. When he spoke, it was with the voice of a spirit from beyond the grave.
“A large amount of water has fallen from the sky.”

Everyone swiveled their heads and frowned at the lone sooty window, trying to see the rainclouds.

Chang said, “What? It hasn’t rained for over a week.”

Zeke looked at Chang. “Oh, hey, Chang. Thanks for that tea, by the way. It really works wonders. No, what I’m referring to is Whit Gentry!”

Neil frowned. “Gentry? He owns the ranch next to mine. How did a large amount of water fall on him?” He looked at a wall. “An overhead boiler burst?”

Zeke snapped his fingers. “Nope! He was walking down by the livery just now when—you know the second story, populated by prairie flower ladies? Well, one of them opened up a window and decided to dump out her bathwater! Yup! Swoosh, all over poor ol’ Whit.”

Harley chuckled. “Well, that definitely sounds like a prophecy come true, all right.”

Zeke continued, “But that’s not all. Ol’ Whit Gentry keeled right on over!”

Harley said, “Prostitute’s bathwater will do that every time.”

But Zeke was adamant. “I’m telling you, he’s dead! He’s so dead there’s not enough of him left to snore.”

The group raced down Thornburgh Avenue.

Faster than the wind Ivy ran—faster than the tumbling shrubs that chased her.

Neil was by far the swiftest runner, and as he pulled ahead, he huffed, “How on earth could a bathtub full of water have killed a man?”

Zeke gasped. “Unless she threw the bathtub down on top of him?”

This was beyond exhilarating! This was exactly the sort of adventure Ivy had been longing for. For months—years, really, if one counted the time spent languishing in her mother’s sad, sickly house in Hyde Park. Perhaps it was her overexuberance to finally participate in life, but Ivy raced almost as fast as Neil. As she jogged, she admired his long, muscular legs and how the sinews of his arms actually flowed under the sleeves of his cotton shirt, cuffs rolled up to his elbows. Here was a man who could protect a gal—and much more.

“I’ve got to meet this Caleb fellow.” Harley jogged next to her, being burlier and more suited to wrestling than sprinting.

“I’d like to meet him, too,” Ivy agreed.

Harley had a devilish glint in his fiery eyes. “I should go check on those men grading, but this dead body sounds much more interesting.”

Ivy added, “Items have been flung about in Neil’s vicinity lately. I believe he must be the conductor of all this psychic activity.”

Harley scrunched his brow. “I do believe that. He seems like a conductive fellow.”

Ivy let out a whoop of happiness. She’d only just arrived in town, and already she’d met two men worthy of her interest. She’d gone ten years in Hyde Park without meeting a vibrant, lusty man. It was true what she’d heard. Men of the Far West were much more alive than the stultified mummies back East. It must be the good hard living, the fresh air, and the difficult physical labor that did it.

In Laramie City, men roped cows, built fences, and graded railroads. Back East, men congratulated themselves if they lifted a gin fizz. They slowly eroded into their pasty, pudding-like bodies until they became blobs of blancmange, discussing finance. That was what had ultimately been Ivy’s downfall in her wedding planning. Imagining being married to a blood pudding encased in a tuxedo had sent her shrieking to the train station.

There not being much to do in Laramie City other than drink, gamble, and hover over dead bodies, the scene of the crime was bustling. All of the calico queens from the second story had come downstairs in their finery, or lack of it. Ivy saw that apparently white petticoats had replaced the formerly fashionable red, and some were bustled at the small of the back. One prairie flower wore an intriguing swan-bill corset, which Ivy longed to ask about. The taller shape of it gave an enviable hourglass silhouette to the voluptuous gal.

Ivy was glad when Neil ignored these women, peeling them away from their arguments over the body without a glance at their displayed charms. Perhaps it had something to do with the “prick tea” that Harley had seemed to be making a gag about.

“Now who’s the one who dumped the bathwater on poor Whit?” Neil shouted as Ivy and Harley shouldered their way through the press of people.

The hooker told her story—basically, that she was sick and tired of people using her bathwater, it was filled with sludge, and she was in a huff by the time she’d caught an actual cat perched on the edge of the tub, pissing. So she’d hauled it to the window to dump and start from scratch. The tub had slipped from her grip.

“This is Harland Park, the Indian looking for the peaches,” Ivy told a large-eyed Zeke. “He’s been to India, and he went into Chang’s looking for—ah, for therapeutic peach pits.”

“Amazing,” breathed Zeke as Harley squatted next to the body.

Ivy squatted down, too. Poor ol’ Whit Gentry, apparently a rancher of some kind, was laid out flat on his back with a hand on his stomach, as though already being processed by the undertaker. Of course he was soaking wet through and through, his slouch hat having been knocked off by the impact of the tin bathtub, which sat ten feet away after having bounced off his head. With his eyes wide open and no other indication of skullduggery, the logical conclusion was that the tub’s wallop had bashed him dead.

“A sheer accident,” Ivy said assertively.

“Not entirely.” Kneeling now in the dirt, Harley gingerly moved aside the jaunty scarf tied in a knot around poor old Gentry’s neck. Red welts circled his otherwise browned neck. “Looks like he was strangled, doesn’t it? And look here.” Harley pointed to Gentry’s forehead, where a strange indentation marked him. The odd shape was still in the stages of turning black and green from the bruising of whatever had struck him.

“A part of the tub?” Ivy inquired.

“Could be,” Harley retorted in his rich British lilt. Ivy could listen to him recite from the Bible with his full and resonant voice, like an actor’s. “But the mark around the neck indicates he was strangled. Can you look about for anything that might’ve done it? Piece of rope, a reata?”

“Zeke, help me look,” Ivy said as Neil waved a dismissive arm at the crowd.

“Back off, back off! And don’t touch that bathtub!” he shouted. He jammed his hands onto his hips and glared down at Harley. “You too, you spoony cove! Get away from my dead body.”

Harley uncoiled his strong, sinewy frame, manfully standing to return Neil’s glare. “
Your
dead body shows marks indicative of strangulation.”

Ivy grabbed ahold of Neil’s arm. “And look at that odd mark on his forehead.” She went to check the bathtub, to see if any part of it matched up with the shape, which seemed to be a large
C
with a bit of a tail to it.

Zeke was asking the ladies and assorted gentlemen, “Did anyone actually see Mr. Gentry walking under the window? Getting hit by the bathtub?”

A merchant said he’d seen Mr. Gentry being hit by the tub, but once it happened, he’d become so full of mirth he’d run upstairs to join in the laughter of what was obviously an intentional joke. A couple more men said the same thing, but no one had seen any strangulation going on.

Ivy reported to Neil, “There’s nothing on the tub that matches his forehead.”

Zeke interjected, “Water will fall from the sky and an everlasting imprint will be made. That was Caleb’s prophecy! There’s an imprint on his forehead!”

Neil slapped Zeke across the chest with the back of his hand. “Will you
stow it
with your goddamned prophecies? This is apparently a murder, not a goddamned spirit rapping!”

“Actually,” Harley intoned, “a séance might not be out of order in this situation. I’ve been looking into this whole spiritualism movement for a while now. All of Caleb’s prophecies have come true and seem to be interconnected. Neil here seems to be the conductor, the channel that is drawing all of this activity and information to us. If we could get this Caleb fellow to come into town and meet with us, a spiritual ‘sitting’ might reveal more details.”

Neil protested, “I’ll conduct an orchestra before I’ll be a channel for any such spoony bullshit! And that Caleb invert—I’m telling you, he’s studying to be a half-wit. No, leave me out of this spiritual blather. I’m just going to get a couple coves to take Gentry to the death-hunter’s and then ride out to find his wife.”

“Death-hunter’s?” Harley inquired.

“Yes—you know! The undertaker’s!” Neil snapped irritably.

Harley frowned. “I know what you meant. You just speak like a goddamned Australian convict. A chum, eh? A flash cove who’s been bang up to the mark?”

Neil laughed nervously. “Everyone talks like that in Australia. Hey, Charlie! I need you and Wade to bring Gentry here over to McClure Brothers.”

Harley muttered confidentially to Ivy, “I speak eighteen languages, and I know my dialects. And your head of security is an escaped convict, probably from Tasmania.”

Ivy said, “And how do you know he ‘escaped’?”

“Why else would he come to America? Most Australians are more interested in mining for the gold they’ve been discovering right on their own continent.”

Ivy didn’t like that these two vibrant, hale men seemed to loathe each other. She’d been looking forward to courting both of them and choosing between them. Now it appeared that whichever one she settled on would be murdered by the loser. “Now, Harley. Whatever deed he committed has been paid in full, or they wouldn’t have let him out. Oh, what is this?”

A departing hooker had been standing on a gauntlet, a beautifully fringed and beaded glove that had been stamped into the dirt. Gingerly lifting it, Ivy shook it out, and a length of twisted rope fell onto the ground. Only a foot long or so, the rope was thin and terminated at both ends with a large glass trade bead.

Harley squatted down next to her. He looked at the rope. Then at Gentry’s neck. Then at the rope. “This could be what was used to strangle him.”