Silver Lies Page 16

  "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."

  Susan held up a paper, crisscrossed with creases. "The missing ledger page! And folded inside the page I found…" She held up a small key.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  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.

  "The one he tore out is only half-filled." Susan’s fingers danced over the pages. "Each job has a number that Joe used for tracking the process and results. The last ten jobs are for ‘C.D.’"

  Inez hooked her reading glasses over her ears. Five C.D. entries appeared in the bound ledger. She looked a question at Susan.

  Susan continued, "Joe’s very methodical, so it wasn’t hard to follow which tracking numbers were which. Eight of C.D.’s samples show up in the assay notes. Of those, five are recorded in the bound ledger and three appear on the ledger page Joe tore out. I’d guess the last two jobs, which are entered on the torn page, were never processed. At least, they don’t appear in his assay notebooks.

  "The first five have a location. Fryer Hill. But the rest…" Susan shrugged. "No location mentioned. Well, to make a long story short, the Fryer Hill results are impressive, averaging nearly two hundred ounces of silver per ton. But the last three, with no location, came in over seven hundred!"

  Inez stared at Susan in disbelief. Figures like that would’ve been trumpeted from the rooftops.

  Susan nodded as if Inez had spoken aloud. "If this information had been recorded and made public, all of Leadville would be traipsing after C.D. and digging in his footprints. And Joe knew it."

  She pointed in the notebook, where Joe had underlined the numbers 743, 739, and 709. Under that, Joe had written in precise script: "Cut a deal with C.D."

  "It all comes back to C.D. Maybe we should go talk with that prospector, Chet Donnelly. Wasn’t he missing some sample bags?"

  Inez tapped the pencil against her lips and thought of the two bags of unassayed rocks in the saloon’s safe. All of a sudden, she was less anxious to track down Chet and hand over the samples. Less willing to break the last, concrete link between Chet Donnelly and Joe Rose.

  Finally, Inez set pencil to the paper. "Not yet. First, we talk to Nils Hansen. Then, we visit the City Recorder’s Office. We start tomorrow."

  999

  Tuesday morning, Inez and Susan advanced through the maze of sacks labeled "Breece Mine" to the counter of Jay G. Kelley and Company’s Assay Office.

  Inez nudged Susan, who said primly to the counterman, "Mr. Hansen, please."

  The counterman peered at Inez, recognition chasing surprise across his face. She pegged him as one of Nils’ companions at Joe’s funeral. He disappeared into the back, shouting, "Hansen, you’ve got visitors."

  Nils emerged, saw Inez, and stopped dead in his tracks. His aghast expression was easy to read; his tone merely confirmed his dismay. "Mrs. Stannert!" Catching sight of Susan, Nils controlled his voice, with obvious effort. "Miss Carothers."

  Inez smiled. She’d counted on Susan’s presence to defuse the situation and keep Nils on his best behavior. Inez nudged her friend. Susan jumped and said, "Mrs. Stannert has a question."

  Nils approached slowly. "She can’t talk for herself?" "She’s lost her voice." Susan thrust a strip of paper at him. "Here." He took the note gingerly. Inez had kept it brief: "Who bought your claim?"

  Inez watched as his fair Nordic complexion flushed from his stand-up collar through his blonde beard to his hair line. Nils crumpled the note and glared. Not at Inez, but at Susan. "Tell her to leave me alone! It don’t matter anymore. Harry Gallagher owns it now." He flung the paper in a waste can.

  Susan looked at Inez. Inez smiled sweetly at Nils before gliding toward the door with Susan at her heels. As they left, she heard the counterman say, "Two women! How do ya do it, Hansen?"

  999

  At the City Recorder’s Office, Susan presented the case that she and Inez had agreed to put forth. "I’m writing an article for The Independent on recent mining property transactions and thought it would be interesting to follow the activities of one person. Chet Donnelly, for instance, always seems to know where to dig. We just wondered, as a matter of public record, what property transactions he’s made. He’s, ah, difficult to find."

  The city recorder extracted a small leather tobacco pouch and a pipe from his waistcoat. "Yep, Chet Donnelly’s been in and out of the office a lot this year. A busy man. When he’s not in his cups, that is."

  He grinned lopsidedly around the pipe stem. "You ladies know how it goes. Fella stakes a claim, sinks a shaft, if it looks good he takes samples to an assayer." He scratched a match with a fingernail and lit his pipe. "If it assays good, he gets the claim surveyed and recorded. That seals legal ownership. Of the surface, anyways. Legally, though, whoever finds the mineral first, owns it. So, even if you’ve recorded, someone with more men, moving faster, can dig right under your feet and beat you to the silver. Nowadays, when fellas like Chet make a strike, their best bet is to sell out or join a consolidated. Chet likes to sell and move on. Keeps him in liquor, I guess."

  "Recording a claim means listing the location, doesn’t it?" Susan pressed. "Suppose someone wanted to record a claim but not tell the world where it was."

  He dropped the still smoking match into a tin mug. "If a fella found something promising late in the season, he might stake but not file. If the claim is in the middle of nowhere under twenty feet of snow, his secret’s probably safe until spring." The recorder puffed on his pipe, sending smoke signals into the still air. "But let’s see what we can find on Mr. Donnelly."

  After two dusty hours, a picture of Chet’s recent activities emerged.

  "He’s almost cleared off of Fryer Hill." The city recorder referred to the claim records they’d retrieved. "Sold five claims in that area, just this fall alone. Three bordered Gallagher’s Silver Mountain Consolidated. Old Harry, he’s got that side of the hill almost sewed up. There’s one bit that, far as I know, hasn’t changed hands."

  He shuffled through the records. "Yep. That’s Chet and the twins. Zeke and Zed. They must be holding out for a higher price."

  Inez whispered, "Chet was in Roaring Forks area. Anything recorded from there?"

  The recorder shook his head. "Kinda makes you wonder, doesn’t it?" He drew on the dead pipe, then tapped the ash into the tin mug. "If I had the time, I’d go buy Chet a few beers and get him talking about his summer. Or," he grinned, "I’d go buy a few beers for his assayer."

  "How about Nils Hansen?" Inez whispered. "He sold a claim last fall."

  "Doesn’t ring a bell. If he only made a couple transactions, it’d be like looking for a needle in a haystack."

  Inez removed her reading glasses. So Chet’s the "holdout" Harry and Cooper were discussing. And there’s no record of Chet’s bonanza, except in Joe’s notes. Could Chet have killed Joe to keep his find a secret until spring?

  She envisioned Chet, reeling down State at his worst. Meaner than a mad bear and roaring drunk.

  Men have killed for less.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Dusk did not come slowly; it slammed down like a fist. People didn’t tarry on the streets. Most hurried home or to other places offering a drink, a meal, and some form of human companionship. No matter how meager the comfort, it was better than being caught outside in the dark where the cold pressed hard as iron.

  Inez, walking as fast as the rest, stopped outside a window display of hats, fans, and other feminine accoutrements. The sign overhead, swinging slightly in near dark, announced: "Elisabeth T. Hoffman. Dressmaking and Millinery. By appointment only."

  The previous day had fired her with a new resolve to set things right without delay. In the relative silence of the saloon office, Inez had reviewed Joe’s books, missing ledger page in hand, and verified that Chet Donnelly’s two ore samples were the only unfin
ished work. Once they were returned, she would have fulfilled her obligation to Emma.

  It should have brought a sense of closure. Instead, Inez felt irritable, as if there was an itch she could not reach. Joe was dead and so was Nigel. The loan papers were missing. Yet everyone wants me to just let things be.

  She focused on the light flickering from the upstairs shop window. If I’m going to get something for the Silver Soiree, I’d better speak with Mrs. Hoffman tonight.

  Once inside the building, Inez shook out the hem of her snow-crusted skirts and ascended the stairs to the shop. A murmur of women’s voices grew louder until she heard a contralto drawl: "I don’t give a damn what you think, Mrs. Hoffman. I’m paying the bill."

  Cat DuBois?

  On the other side of the door, Mrs. Hoffman snapped, "It’s completely inappropriate. It’s worse than vulgar."

  "To whom?" Cat sounded amused. "The gentlemen will approve. They’re the only ones who matter."

  Gritting her teeth, Inez twisted the knob and entered.

  Elisabeth Hoffman stood against one wall, measuring tape draped about her narrow shoulders, arms tightly crossed. Cat DuBois stood at the opposite end of the room, arms also crossed. Between them, Angel stood motionless on the dress-maker’s platform. A silver and cream evening dress hugged her from torso to toe, shimmering in the lamp light and accentuating her coffee-colored skin.

  Upon seeing Inez, a flicker of surprise crossed Angel’s face. The emotion passed, leaving her expression as remote as if she stood on a distant mountaintop.

  Cat swung toward the open door. "Well, well, Mrs. Stannert. Good. I could use an unbiased opinion. This dress," she waved her closed fan at Angel, "is for the Silver Soiree." Her green eyes glinted. "I don’t imagine you’ll be there, given that the extended absence of your oh-so charming husband leaves you without an escort."

  Inez bit back an acerbic reply. I won’t give her the satisfaction. Instead, she turned to the dressmaker. "I’ll come back tomorrow."

  "Please wait." Mrs. Hoffman sounded desperate. "We’re almost finished."

  Cat watched Inez with the gaze of a feline predator scenting something tantalizing but not quite definable in the air. "Well, well," she murmured. "So you are going. Saloonkeepers and Cyprians. The respectable women will be absolutely horrified."