True to the Law (14 page)

“Your grandparents?”

She shook her head. “The fire burned for days, and it was days after that before we could return. I wasn’t allowed to help my father search. He made me stay with parishioners whose homes were spared while he went back again and again to look for their bodies.”

“Did he find them?”

“He said he did. I think it might be the only time my father lied to me. We had a service, a burial. We mourned. Two weeks later, he sent me to Mrs. Henry Winston’s Academy for the Advancement of Education and Refinement of Young Ladies. I was eight.” She stopped abruptly and looked down at her hands.

Cobb recognized the signs of someone who was done talking, of someone who was perhaps regretting having said so much. He did not press, and after a long silence that neither of them was inclined to fill, he rose and let himself out, touching her ever so lightly on the shoulder as he passed.

Chapter Five

Cobb sat alone at dinner. No one asked to join him, and he did not offer an invitation. He had waited as long as he could, watching for her from his hotel window, but restlessness and a dislike for his own company finally drove him downstairs. Hunger was never a factor.

He did justice to his meal because to do otherwise would have caused comment in the kitchen. Renee came by his table several times, ostensibly to bring more coffee and inquire after the tenderness of the mutton chops, but each time she gave him a thorough eye, measuring his mood as much as what was left of his meal.

He wondered why he had expected to see Gertrude Morrow this evening. It probably no longer mattered that they had parted on easy terms last night. She had had considerable time since then to reflect on his behavior—and her own. He could not imagine anything good coming of that.

If he presented himself at her back door tonight, it was quite possible she would greet him from behind a shotgun, and it was no flight of fancy that his thoughts went in that direction. She owned a shotgun. He saw it when she directed him to hang his coat and hat by the door. It was mounted on a rack above the hooks, and it looked as if it had been cared for properly, moving parts oiled and the maple stock polished. He had no desire to discover at the point of the barrel whether she knew how to use the gun. Here, he leaned on the side of caution. If she had it, she probably had a reason for it, and any reason at all dictated that she learn how to use it.

That she had not come to the hotel tonight meant that he had to revise his thinking. He had hoped he might use this evening to secure an invitation from her for dinner in her home. After last night, he wryly acknowledged to himself that it was perhaps too optimistic, even if he was far and away more interested in proving her innocence than her guilt. Mackey’s allegation hung overhead regardless of whether he believed it and having access to her home was the surest way he would find something . . . or not.

“Will you have dessert?” asked Renee.

Cobb’s head came up slowly, and he stared at Renee blankly, unsure why she was standing at his table. Had she spoken to him? Or had he just been listening to his own thoughts?

“Bread pudding.” When he didn’t say anything, she added. “That’s the dessert tonight. Bread pudding.”

“Oh.” He shook his head. “None for me. Thank you.”

Renee picked up his plate. “More coffee? A beer?”

“Coffee.”

“You goin’ to be in the saloon later?”

“I haven’t decided.”

“Word is that you lost your shirt last night.”

“
Almost
,” he corrected. “Almost lost my shirt.” At a kitchen table, he reminded himself. Not a poker table. “If that’s the word, then I suspect it’s Ted Rush who’s saying it.”

“Sure. I don’t figure it takes long for visitors to learn that Ted’s got more stories than the Good Book’s got chapters.”

“I’ve already heard a fair sampling.”

“Don’t fool yourself, Mr. Bridger. There’s no such thing as a fair sampling where Ted is concerned.”

Cobb’s smile was polite, but cool. He held up his empty cup. “I’d be pleased to get that coffee.”

Renee’s eyes swiveled from Cobb’s face to his cup. Flustered, her apple cheeks turned a deeper shade of rose. “Sure. Right away.” She started to go, hesitated, and after a moment’s indecision, squared her shoulders.

Cobb’s brows lifted. Unable to imagine what she wanted to say to him, he waited.

“I couldn’t help but notice that you’re at sixes and sevens tonight, Mr. Bridger, and I thought you might be grieving your losses or maybe pining after Miss Morrow since she ain’t come by, but if it’s neither one of those, or even if it is, there’s nothing like a walk to clear your head and put your mind at ease. If you need another reason, you could walk me home. I’d be obliged.”

Renee’s little speech, for all that it came at him like a shotgun blast, was surprisingly coherent. She wasn’t wrong about the walk, and if he was with her, he couldn’t very well end up somewhere he shouldn’t. Like Gertrude Morrow’s.

Cobb consulted his pocket watch. “When will you be done?”

“I have a couple of hours of chores left. Mrs. Sterling wants me to sweep up real good and give the chairs a shine, but I don’t work in the saloon tonight.”

“All right. I’ll walk you home.”

“I’ll find you when I’m done.”

“That’s fine.” He pointed to his cup again. “Coffee?”

“Oh, yes. Of course.” Remembering herself, her smile faltered. “I’m going now.” The wash of color left in her cheeks was already brightening as she hurried away.

It did not take long for fresh coffee to arrive at his table, but it was Mrs. Sterling who brought it.

“Renee says you’re walking her home,” she said while she poured. “Is there a misunderstanding?”

Cobb waited until Mrs. Sterling withdrew the pot before he answered. He didn’t think she would pour hot coffee in his lap, but again, caution was the wiser course. “No misunderstanding. I want to go for a walk, and she said she’d be obliged for the escort home.”

“Won’t be much of a walk, Mr. Bridger. Unless you have it in your mind to take your constitutional by way of the cemetery or the creek, the Harrisons don’t live but a stone’s throw from here.”

“I had a different impression. I don’t know what Miss Harrison has in mind.”

Mrs. Sterling snorted. “Then you’re the only one who doesn’t. You better mind yourself, Mr. Bridger. Folks will start thinking you aren’t fit to be our marshal if a little gal like Renee can lead you around by the nose.”

Cobb came very close to spilling his coffee. He set the cup down. “Mrs. Sterling,” he said carefully. “I will cheerfully allow Miss Harrison to lead me anywhere she likes if it will end this talk about me being marshal.”

“What’s wrong with being marshal?”

Whatever he expected, it was not that Mrs. Sterling would take offense. Cobb could hardly make the point to her that her husband had been murdered doing his job. “Nothing,” he said. “I respect the position, but that doesn’t mean I want it. I don’t.”

“That’s neither here nor there. Do you respect duty, Mr. Bridger? Because I’m thinking you have one.”

“A duty? To whom? I’m just passing through, Mrs. Sterling.”

“Dallying, some folks would say.”

“I thought you agreed with Walt that I’m good for the saloon.”

“Well, I’m having second thoughts about that.” She bent her head and looked at him over the rim of her spectacles. “Now, if you weren’t just passing through, maybe I could take a different view. Not with Renee, mind you, but I could be persuaded that your intentions regarding Miss Tru Morrow might just be honorable.”

Mrs. Sterling smiled sweetly, if not sincerely. “Just something to think about, Mr. Bridger, when you’re taking your walk.”

Cobb watched her go. He did not trust her to not turn and take another snipe at him. The last time he was the target of so much advice and moral instruction he had been in the farmhouse in Lima, surrounded by his family and enough pumpkin pie to make the comments almost palatable. Cobb thought he should have had dessert.

* * *

Renee buttoned her coat as she approached the table where Cobb was playing poker. No one but Jem Davis looked at her as she sidled up to Cobb. Jem had already folded. Everyone else was studying their cards or studying Cobb Bridger.

She cleared her throat. “I’m finished now.”

Cobb nodded but didn’t glance up. “Jem’s going to walk you home, Miss Harrison. My luck is building up a head of steam. I’m not putting that engine on a sidetrack.”

Jem started to rise, but Renee said, “I can wait,” and he sat down again.

Cobb folded his cards, placed them face down on the table, and tossed three bills in the pot. “See and raise,” he said. His face was virtually without expression when he finally looked at Renee. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he told her. “It could be a while, and you don’t want to be the cause of my luck turning.”

Renee protested. “It wouldn’t be my fault.”

“Maybe not, but I’d hold you responsible just the same. Gambling invites superstition.”

Jem nodded. He had a broad, open face and a crooked smile that made him seem even younger than his twenty-four years. “You know that’s true, Renee. Remember when Mr. Burdick used to come in here? He always sat in the same chair. Not at the same table. In the same
chair
. See?” He stood again and pointed to the deep gouge in the seat of the chair he’d just vacated. “This one. Uriah swore by it, but it’s never done any good by me.” He pushed it in under the table and grinned at Renee. “C’mon, gal. You let me see you home, and maybe I’ll think my luck’s improving.”

Renee’s tightly clamped jaw loosened a bit. “Get your coat.” Chin up, she turned sharply and marched out.

Jem yanked his coat off the back of his chair, jammed on his hat, and loped after her.

Terry McCormick was chuckling when he looked up from his cards. “That was a fine thing you did there, Cobb, providing for Jem to walk her home. The boy can hardly look anywhere else when she’s around, and she looks every place he isn’t. They’re a pair.”

“Sure enough,” Ted Rush said. “They’re sweet on each other but only one of them knows it. Reminds me of the time I almost asked Marjorie Stockinglass to marry me. Came about as close as a man can to putting the question to her, but I held back on account of Mrs. Rush.”

“Your mother?” asked Cobb.

“My wife.”

Shaking his head, Cobb let Ted’s gleeful cackling roll off him. The lesson here was not to comment on one of Ted’s stories. Ever. Judging by the grins that met him as he looked around the table, it was a lesson everyone else had learned.

* * *

It was almost midnight when the game broke up. Cobb walked out of the saloon with the mayor. It was no pretext that he wanted to stretch his legs. The confinement of the hotel and saloon was wearing. Tomorrow, he decided, he would rent a horse from Ransom’s Livery and go riding. In the meantime, he asked Terry to point him in the direction of the cemetery.

A three-quarter moon on the wane helped Cobb find his way in the dark. He walked among the grave markers, unable to read any of them, but finding that he needed the peace of the place to order his thoughts.

Miss Morrow was lying. He’d had trouble understanding that last night, but he was clearer about it now. What made detection more difficult was that she was also lying to herself. It was perhaps a harsher judgment than she deserved. The lie was in the form of denial, and Cobb didn’t know what would bring her around to the truth of it. He didn’t even know if it was necessary for her to admit the truth, but there
was
a man. More important, in his view, was the possibility that she was lying to herself about the theft. It could be that if she had taken something from the Mackeys, she believed she had every right to it. She would not consider that theft. Few people in that same circumstance would.

That led Cobb back to the conversation in her kitchen. She mentioned that there had been a brooch. Could it really be as simple as that? A Mackey family heirloom? It was certainly possible that a piece of jewelry owned by Charlotte Mackey could be worth more than he’d earn in a lifetime. Neither did he discount the sentimental value of such an object to the family.

Cobb could understand her connection to the brooch, if indeed it was a brooch he was looking for. Here he cautioned himself to go slowly. It would be a mistake to let supposition run far ahead of the evidence. She hadn’t told him if the brooch had been found that tragic night, and he had not asked. It may well have been destroyed in the fire. The fact that it had belonged to Mrs. Mackey made it a lead worth following.

And that led him back to the matter of Miss Morrow’s broken heart and the identity of the man she denied even existed. She did not strike him as someone nursing romantic wounds, but then he hadn’t been in Bitter Springs to witness her arrival. Mrs. Sterling had. How much trust could he put in someone else’s observation?

Gertrude Morrow. Gertrude struck him as a cold, reserved name. It didn’t suit her. He’d heard Jenny Phillips call her Tru. Earlier this evening, Mrs. Sterling had referred to her in that same way. It was a better fit.

“Tru.” He said it softly, testing the sound, wanting to know the shape of it on his lips. He liked it. He liked her.

That admission was not new to him. The truth was, he had liked her from the moment of their first meeting, not a chance encounter at all, but a maneuver he had planned with some care. She, on the other hand, seemed to be without guile. It was hardly any wonder that Mrs. Sterling felt duty bound to offer her protection. Cobb felt something like that himself. Not that Tru would thank him for it. She practically bristled with righteous indignation if she thought her competency was being challenged. It was another thing he liked about her.

Her prickles didn’t bother him. In some odd way they made her more real, more alive, than other women of his acquaintance. He had enough experience with society mavens and their daughters in the course of his work to know he wasn’t interested in the thin veneer of civility they often affected. There were exceptions, of course. There always were, and in those cases his encounters were better than merely pleasant, but he never thought of forever with any one of them. Neither did they.