wore a dark suit that labeled him as a banker more than if he had that word stitched across his chest.
Putting a businesslike tone in his voice, Caleb said, “I’m looking for Dr. Holliday. I was told that—”
“Oh, yes,” the man said somewhat distastefully. “He’s been inquiring about renting the space over this bank. I believe his practice won’t be ready for customers for a little while, yet.”
“Do you know where I can find him?”
The man in the suit let out a sigh and started glancing around for somewhere else to be. “I don’t handle his affairs. If you’d like to leave a message for him, I can see that he gets it.”
Caleb may not have liked it, but he did know what was going through the banker’s mind. While he’d been going through the process of buying property down the street and getting the financing required to set up and maintain a saloon, Caleb had dealt with plenty of bankers. It had been a while, but he soon found himself easing back into that frame of mind. All he needed to do was to reduce everything around him into potential profits and losses while also imagining that his shoes were three sizes too small.
“I know you’ve got plenty to do,” Caleb said in a dreary, defeated tone that was almost a dead ringer for the banker’s, “but I need to talk to Mr. Holliday about a pay-out from one of his old partners. I have a large sum of money that Mr. Holliday requested and he seemed to want it pretty quick.”
The banker’s ears perked up at the sound of that, confirming Caleb’s suspicion that the man did have something to do with renting out the space that Doc was after. Still, there was a little bit of suspicion in the banker’s eyes that might not have been there if Caleb had been wearing a matching suit.
“Mr. Holliday mentioned something about putting down a deposit on some property,” Caleb added, hoping he wasn’t going a little too far.
Judging by the accommodating smile that appeared on the banker’s face, Caleb had gone just far enough.
“The address he gave me was Dr. Seegar’s house,” the banker said in a low voice. Turning to one of the nearby counters, he found a deposit slip and scribbled something on the back of it. Handing the slip over to Caleb, he said, “I believe it’s just under a mile along Ross Street.”
Caleb read what the banker had written and found an address.
“That’s where I was supposed to send any inquiries or papers regarding the space upstairs. Do you think he’ll be completing the process?”
“Of renting that space?” Caleb asked. “Of course. I wouldn’t be surprised if he put down a bigger deposit after he gets the money I’m delivering.”
If the banker seemed at all concerned about the information he’d given, that went away once he heard those words spoken in Caleb’s confident tone. “Splendid! I’ll start getting the final contracts drawn up.”
Tapping the slip to his temple in a quick salute, Caleb said, “I’ll tell him the good news. Good day to you, sir.”
“And to you.”
[14]
The Seegar home was easy enough to find. Unfortunately, when Caleb knocked on the door, nobody answered. After knocking a few more times, he peeked into the closest window and swore under his breath at the utter stillness inside the well-maintained house. Just as he was about to give up, Caleb heard a shot crack through the air. His first instinct was to duck and look around for who’d fired at him. When he heard the next shot, he realized that nobody at all was firing at him. In fact, the shots were coming from somewhere behind the house.
Doing his best to step as lightly as possible. Caleb climbed down from the Seegars’ porch and worked his way around the house. Out back, there was a little patch of land containing a few trees and a small garden. One of the trees was big enough to hold a swing from a thick branch as well as the first traces of a tree house.
Standing amid the domestic trappings, Doc looked more than a little out of place with his sleeves rolled up and a smoking pistol in his hand. His arm hung at his side as though the weight of the pistol was enough to drag it down. His back was to the house, and he looked toward the end of the property, which was sectioned off by a sturdy fence.
Casually, Doc lifted the gun, extended his arm, and pivoted around to take aim at Caleb. When he saw who was approaching, he pointed the gun away from Caleb but didn’t lower his arm. “It’s not proper to sneak up on a man.”
“With all the gunshots going off lately,” Caleb said as he held his open hands in front of him. “I wasn’t too concerned with being proper.”
Doc chuckled once under his breath before lowering his arm and turning away from the house. There were several bottles lined up on the fence. When Doc squeezed his trigger, one of the bottles exploded into a shower of glass shards.
“Is there something you need?” Doc asked.
Caleb walked forward and stood next to Doc. The dentist was still impeccably groomed and had his blond hair neatly parted. He was even dressed in the imported clothes that had become one of his calling cards. But there was something odd about the shoulder holster strapped around his slender frame and under his gray silk vest. The diamond stickpin was in place as well, not too far from where the holster hung against his side.
“I had a word with Orville Deagle a few nights ago,” Caleb said.
“Really? I don’t suppose you were spared the nastiness of meeting his two dimwitted nephews as well?”
“They were along.”
In a flicker of motion, Doc’s arm snapped up, and he brought his pistol up to fire. The shot cracked through the air, but only a single chip was taken from the neck of one of the bottles.
“Better you than me,” Doc said.
“Actually, your name did come up in the conversation.”
“Ah.” Doc sighed as he lowered his arm, let it hang for a moment, and then snapped it up to take another shot. This time, the bottles remained completely untouched. “The plot thickens.”
“It sure does. They told me that you rounded up witnesses to lie for me when Ben Mays came around asking about the shooting.”
As Doc lowered his arm and rolled his head about to work a kink from his neck, he said, “
“Will you stop that and listen?” Caleb snarled. “They threatened to change their story, and I’m pretty sure Mays wouldn’t mind seeing me hang once he gets a halfway decent excuse.”
Doc turned to face Caleb properly while opening the cylinder of his pistol. The gun was a Navy model Colt and appeared to be in fine condition. Emptying the spent shells, Doc let his hands do their work while his eyes remained fixed on Caleb. “Mays keeps some pretty unsavory company. He also can’t stand gambling and drunkards. That puts saloon owners pretty low on his list.”
“Great, Doc. That makes me feel a whole lot better.”
“Don’t fret too much about it,” Doc added with a wink. “I’m not too high on that list myself.”
Despite the worries filling Caleb’s mind, he couldn’t help but laugh at Doc’s easygoing wit. When spoken in his comforting Georgia drawl, matters just didn’t seem as grave as they had been a few moments before.
“One of those nephews came by my saloon with the town law,” Caleb said.
“Sheriff Hopper is in this? He doesn’t have as big a problem with gambling.”
“I know. He didn’t seem too concerned, but that doesn’t mean this is over. Somehow, that miner and those other two got it in their heads that I’m the one to solve their financial woes.”
Fishing out bullets from his vest pocket, Doc fit them into the pistol and snapped the cylinder shut. He then slipped the Colt back into his shoulder holster and positioned his feet so that he was standing sideways in relation to the fence. “If you had their financial woes, you might be getting a little desperate yourself.”
“What’s that mean?”
