Longarm looked disgusted and asked, “How would you like that, alphabetical or numerical? I just walked away from a public hearing in your town hall. So just about anyone in or about your fool town could have watched me walk away and noticed what a tempting target my back made!”
He made a sweeping gesture with his gun muzzle as he added, “Here comes half of ‘em now. Whoever fired on me from betwixt or from inside any houses in sight could have hidden his damned rifle and circled around to come over and ask me who I thought it was!”
Rothstein scowled and demanded, “See here, are you accusing anyone I know?”
To which Longarm could only reply, “Don’t get your bowels in an uproar. I never said it was you. Albeit I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it was some two-faced prick we both know!”
Chapter 16
Old Edward let him in and took his hat, but made him wait alone in the parlor for a long time before Constance Farnsworth came in in a Turkish bathrobe, glowing as if she’d just stepped out of her bath, to tell him he was early and ask him if he minded waiting no more than, say, half an hour for that supper.
As he rose politely to his feet, Longarm told her he couldn’t wait half a minute. He explained, “I just come by because I never got to tell you at the town hall I’d be too busy this evening, ma’am. I got orders to leave for Denver on your morning combination, and meanwhile, someone keeps shooting at me. That makes me dangerous company for any lady to sup with, and I’d sure like to know why. So from here, I aim to talk to another lady about a possible motive for at least one out of five killings. I don’t see how that Englishman, a gal pretending to be a sissy boy, Deputy Keen, or your poor maid Sarah could have shot Amos Payne for fooling with their wives. Neither Stanwyk nor Keen have ever been connected with any married gals in John Bull, and those two dead gals have even better excuses. Old Amos didn’t. So I have to see if I can find out who the married gal he was fooling with might have been.”
The local widow took his sleeve to sit him down beside her as she said, “I can tell you. From time to time I have tea in the kitchen with Mammy Palaver. She gathers mighty fine herbs for some … female complaints, and you’re not the only one who enjoys gossip.”
He grinned sheepishly and replied, “When we do it it’s called investigation. Another nice lady I know once told me I had a swell job to go with my nosy nature and authoritarian disposition.”
Widow Farnsworth arched a brow to ask, “Oh? Just how nice to you was this younger girl who found you so dominant, Custis?”
He didn’t tell her about another widow, a tad older than her, down Denver way. They all seemed sure any other woman in a man’s life had to be younger and prettier.
He said, “We were talking about more important gals. You say you know who the late Constable Payne might have been messing with?”
The pretty young widow shrugged her bare damp shoulders inside her fluffy robe and replied, “There was no might about it, according to the darkies. Prunella Thalman, the druggist’s spoiled wife, carried on with others as well, with her servants serving them refreshments in bed!”
Longarm whistled and asked, “Are we talking about the druggist who runs that undertaking business in his cellar?”
She nodded. “Karl Thalman. He took care of my poor Frank after that sudden heart stroke two years ago. That’s why I was sure poor Sarah was in good hands.”
Longarm grimaced and said, “So was Amos Payne, when his lover gal’s husband got to embalm him the other night! I’d as soon not talk about all that prodding and poking even a friendly undertaker has to do, seeing we’re all going to go through such treatment some day if we’re lucky enough to get buried decent.”
She blushed a mite as she murmured she could imagine what a less friendly undertaker could do with that big suction pump to the lover of his wife.
When he asked if the colored help thought the boss man knew what was going on under his own roof while he was at work, Constance told him she didn’t know. So he said he meant to go find out.
She followed him out to the foyer where his hat still hung. As he reached for it she shyly touched his sleeve again and pleaded with him to come back and tell her as soon as he knew anything.
He smiled wistfully down at her, hat in hand, and said, “There’s no saying how late that might be, if I find out anything. Whether I do or don’t, I hope you understand I have to get it on back to Denver in the morning.”
She sighed. “You told me. That doesn’t give us much time, does it? I’ll be waiting here, Custis, for as long as it takes, or until that damned train leaves in the cruel sunlight of reason!”
So he took her in his arms and kissed her. It seemed the only way to say so long, and she bumped and ground hello as she kissed him back. But he still busted loose and headed back down the slope. For she’d been right in more ways than one when she’d said they didn’t have too much time.
The drugstore was closed and shuttered for the night when Longarm got there. But he saw light from the cellar window to one side. So he circled around for the cellar entrance. They’d told him Thalman had to get that dead gal packed right for her long lonesome journey home.
But when he hunkered down by that barred window, he saw Sarah DuVal was not the body old Karl Thalman was working on with his pants down. The nice coffin Constance Farnsworth had paid for was across the cellar on a pair of sawhorses. The body on the embalming table was alive as well as naked as a jay. She seemed to be a colored gal in her teens who could move like she’d been at it for years.
Longarm stood up, strode on to the cellar entrance and lit a smoke to give them time to settle down a mite. He’d finished his long cheroot and was thinking about some discreet knocking when he heard some laughing from below and stepped clear as the sloping cellar doors popped open and the druggist cum undertaker helped the colored gal up the steps with a grab at her ass that made her giggle some more.
Then they spotted Longarm and froze in place, as if embarrassed, even though they’d both put their duds back on.
Longarm nodded casually and said, “Evening, Mister Thalman. I was just now coming to see if you were through with that French Sarah.”
Thalman tried to look professional as he stiffly replied that he and his assistant, Emma Lou, had just
