“Where’s the partner?”
The detective stayed quiet. When he finally spoke, anger lent his words a choking sound. “The man fell asleep and didn’t get off at the stop. He’s probably back in Chicago by now, handing in his Pinkerton badge.”
Cully lumbered out of the house, slamming his door. The noise echoed like a gunshot in the quiet, moonless night. Amazingly, Morrison jumped at the noise. Fred knew him as a cool, controlled man and became concerned. An overly emotional man didn’t think rationally and would be a danger to those he worked with on this case.
He moved very close and bit out his words near the detective’s ear. “You need to sleep and get ahold of yourself. “I’m taking you to my wife’s home. It’s empty and will be a good place for you to lay low tonight.”
Near like he was, Fred made out the tightening of Morrison’s jaw. Still, the man bobbed his head and didn’t argue.
The deputy now stood close to them. Using his controlled, lawman tone, Fred gave Cully his orders. “Get to the Beer Garden and find out it anyone knows where Hansen has been or has seen him with the girl.”
Cully tipped his chin to show he understood and turned to leave. His boss’s voice stopped him.
A sudden thought made Fred add one more command. “Oh, and if you see Stinson, ask him if Mr. Strong’s buggy horse was sweating or seemed to have gone far the day Hansen used the buggy.”
Fred could always rely on Cully ferreting out information in the tavern. He was a regular there, anyhow. If Fred had gone into the place, everyone would stay mum, he felt sure, since he never visited there.
Quietly hissing, “Come on,” Fred led the other man up the dark street. A cloud shifted, allowing the moonlight to seep through briefly. In that moment, he glimpsed Morrison’s slumped shoulders and knew that the man worried about his niece’s virtue as much as her safety.
One thing nagged at Fred’s mind. Who, he worried, had been so sure he wouldn’t catch the leader of the gang? After all, someone had to have hired the Pinkertons. Morrison and his niece didn’t come here out of some sense of kindness.
It seemed that someone didn’t trust him to succeed. Was it Strong or the mayor? It made sense that Strong would want to prove he’d orchestrated the capture of the ring leader.
Of course, that meant Strong wasn’t the ringleader even though clues were starting to point in his direction. Something from that scene in front of the bank today continued to nag at him. Ledbetter’s expression while Strong tried to stir up the men around him felt wrong. Like someone else had suddenly inhabited the meek lawyer’s body.
The two-story house stood in front of them. Fred led the detective around the building to the backdoor. Up two steps, they crossed the wide back porch. Fred had never noticed that Lilah ordered her back porch to be built larger than the front one. Obviously, she planned to sit outside where she could have privacy rather than in the front, like most people, to watch the comings and goings of her neighbors. He liked that about her.
Before he left the farm, Lilah gave him a key and asked him to move his things to her home. Using that key, Fred opened the backdoor and led Morrison into the kitchen. With eyes used to the darkness, Fred spotted the oil lamp. With the matches hung on the wall next to the stove, he lit the turned-up wick.
Holding the lamp in front of him, he moved back to the detective. Using a no-nonsense tone, Fred asked, “Who hired you to come back to Idyll Wood?”
Morrison’s lips thinned. “I can’t reveal my client.”
Eyes narrowed, Fred waited, staring with cold determination at the other man. Morrison’s shoulders sagged. “I shouldn’t be doing this. But, I’ll tell you.”
Pausing to give a long, drawn-out sigh, Morrison wearily filled Fred in on the client. “The woman from the brothel hired the Pinkertons. I don’t know if it was a revenge thing or she just needs to know the man is caught.”
Fred arched an eyebrow in the weak light of the lamp. “Which woman? There were several at the brothel that night.”
The detective weakly chuckled. “But not one of them could afford to hire a detective. At least, none of them except for Miss Lilah Levitt.”
Chapter 8
The Election
She couldn’t put it off. After all, there was no chamber pot. Lilah had already looked under the bed. And, by the weak glow of her candle, she’d searched the corners of the room to find it.
With a sigh, she fitted her feet into her boots. They flopped as Lilah moved since she didn’t see a need to bother with the button hook. After all, she would just dart outside to the convenience and then return to bed.
At least, she’d return to bed until Blossom began to cry her soft wails. Already, she’d been up three times during the night with the baby. The little one seemed to eat about every two hours.
Myra thought Blossom wasn’t able to hold much yet in her stomach so she would nurse often. Definitely, the baby girl ate more often than Samuel, Myra’s own baby. Lilah had seen that with her own eyes.
While it made her blush, she’d been with Myra to help when the kind woman nursed both babies at the same time. Lilah needed to learn about feeding an infant, Myra had said. Myra also needed a second set of hands when the tiny baby finished eating before Samuel.
Sure enough, Blossom quit nursing after
