“Howard didn’t do it. He loved Mildred Powell. I mean he loved her in a pure childlike way. He told me so himself.”
She looked past him at a fern in the bay window as she added in a sort of peevish way, “He had this way of telling you the same thing, over and over, no matter how many times you told him that was enough. I’m sure I’d have known had he been hankering after any woman in the way they accused him of hankering after that Sunday school teacher.”
“Somebody more than hankered for her,” Longarm pointed out, gently adding, “You don’t sound as if you thought too highly of the victim, no offense.”
Rose Burnside grimaced and said, “If she led poor Howard on enough to drive him that wild, she might have had what happened to her coming! Have you any idea what it’s like to be teased and teased all the time you were growing up?”
Longarm said, “I can imagine it some. We ain’t talking about your kid brother’s teasings, are we, Miss Rose?”
She started to cry some more. Longarm moved over beside her to put a comforting arm around her heaving shoulders as she sobbed, “Look at the Chinaman’s big sister! Has your mother’s Chinee got around to you yet, Rose, Rose, everybody knows?”
Longarm gently assured her, “I have it on good authority that the condition ain’t caused by Oriental ancestry, Miss Rose.”
She sobbed, “Didn’t you think I knew that? Didn’t you think we all knew none of us had done anything to deserve Howard? My other brother left home for Texas at fourteen. Lord only knows where our poor mother ran off to after our father died. But I can understand how bearing the shame alone became just too much for her.”
Longarm shook his head, patted her shoulder, and quietly told her, “No, you can’t. You stayed on, and took care of him when there was nobody else. They told me you’d had the county declare him your ward, Miss Rose. You didn’t have to. You could have wiggled out of it and left him to the mercy of the state. But you never did, and I can’t hardly be the only one who thinks you did a proud thing. Like I said, I had to ask, and they had to tell me.”
She stopped shaking, but still looked mighty grim as she heaved a vast sigh and decided, “What’s done is done and it’s almost over at last. Would it spoil the saintly image you have of me, ah, Custis, if I confessed I’m sort of relieved about not having to worry about poor Howard anymore?”
He smiled thinly and assured her, “You’re just being more honest than some saints, Miss Rose. Like everyone’s said, you done proud by your unfortunate kid brother, and at least now you’ll be free to get on with your life. I understand you have a homestead out to the edge of town?”
She shrugged and said, “Forty acres, sixteen red duroc hogs, and a mule for sale. I’m selling my pony, Grassy. But I’m changing his name to something sensible as I sell out, mount up, and move on. Do I have to tell you who named a fourteen-hands paint Grassy or why?”
Longarm said, “Well, he might have noticed the new pony liked to eat grass. I follow your drift about moving on to make a new start, Miss Rose. Small-town gossip can be too bothersome to bother fighting, and I’ll have to allow your family left you with a hard row to hoe.”
She didn’t argue. He hadn’t expected her to. He went on to say, “You’re still young and pretty. You wouldn’t be lying if you told the folks down the road apiece that you had no kin left for any of them to speculate on. You’ll be free to settle down and start another family with mayhaps more luck next time.”
She whirled on him, red-rimmed eyes blazing, demanding, “Are you out of your mind? Do you think I’d be mad enough to marry up and risk bringing another drooling idiot like Howard into this cruel world? I thought we’d just agreed it’s over, all over. I’ll never ever have to assure anyone that my leering baby brother is really harmless again! I’ll never ever have anybody pointing me out as the sister who was shielding a sex fiend when the county wanted to put him away! I’ll be free, free at last of pissed-in pants and sniggering laughter from behind lace curtains as I pass!”
Mrs. Forbes came back into her front parlor, nodding slightly at Longarm as she asked if they needed any more coffee. Neither of them had tasted her first servings of cake and coffee. So Longarm allowed he was just about through with his interview, and got to his feet.
As he helped Rose Burnside to her own feet, she acted confused and said she’d expected him to ask her more about her brother’s alleged crime. He said, “I would if only I could get you to say he done it, Miss Rose. Since you seem so sure he never did, and since neither of us was there, I reckon it’s a Mexican standoff betwixt us and I’ll just have to go interview somebody else.”
The coroner’s wife shot him a grateful look and calmly told the girl, “They’ve loaded your brother’s remains aboard the hearse, Miss Burnside. Speaking from some experience in such matters, if I were you I’d join them later at the funeral parlor.”
But Rose Burnside barely excused herself and tore back through the house to chase after her kid brother’s cut- up cadaver.
Mrs. Forbes sighed and said, “Poor thing. They won’t even be able to compose his features until the rigor passes, hopefully in a few more hours. They say he was all the family she had. So I suppose she must have been very fond of him, despite the way he acted.”
Longarm nodded soberly and replied, “I know that’s what they say. Would you tell your husband and Nurse Calder I’ll talk to them some more at the hearing this evening? I was about to leave on some late afternoon chores when I wound up talking to Miss Rose just now.”
She said she’d be proud to, and showed Longarm out the front door. As he legged it toward the courthouse square, a familiar voice hailed him and he saw that printer from his boardinghouse, Preston, standing in a doorway with an older gent.
The gilt lettering on the plate-glass window to one side of them identified the establishment as the Pawnee Junction Advertiser. So Longarm crossed over to see if he could save himself some time at the library he’d been headed for.
Preston introduced him to his boss, the editor and publisher of the weekly paper. The older man, who said Longarm ought to just call him Jake, like everyone else, said they were sticking the last type for their Monday edition and asked if Longarm had any statement to make about his pending showdown with Two-Gun Porky Shaw.
To which Longarm could only reply, “I don’t recall inviting Porky Shaw to any showdown. Are you saying he’d
