Disgust welled up in me, but I tempered it with, “You love your mother that much, do you?”
“Tolerate her, is more like it.” Phil began cracking eggs. “You’ve seen how she is. Could you love a woman like that?”
“She gave birth to you.”
“So? From as far back as I can remember, she’s treated me as if I can’t pull up my britches without her help. She treated my father the same way. Now he’s dead, thanks to her.” Phil was building a head of steam. “She’s never satisfied, that woman. We have a prosperous ranch, or it would be if she didn’t spend money faster than we make it. Until the silver came along, we were lucky to break even most years.”
“You don’t live in a sod house,” I reminded him.
“Sure, we live high on the hog, mainly because of her. She always has to have the best. The best clothes. The best furniture. The best buggy. None of that comes cheap. I haven’t even mentioned her jewelry.”
I had noticed that Gertrude was partial to necklaces and bracelets, some studded with diamonds.
“You make it sound as if I should love her just because she’s my mother. But a parent has to earn love, just like everyone else, and my mother hasn’t earned mine. To be perfectly frank, Mr. Stark, I loathe her. I loathe her with every fiber of my being.”
Inwardly, I smiled. He had a flair, I’ll grant him that. I was curious how far he would take it.
“She is to blame for you sitting there holding that revolver on me,” Phil said while fluffing the yolks and whites. “If anyone deserves to die, it’s her, not me.”
“You think so, do you?”
Phil turned, his face alight with hope. “I know so. Which is why I want to make you an offer.”
“How do you mean?” As if I could not guess.
“How would you like ten thousand dollars?”
“My fee is a thousand.”
“But surely you wouldn’t mind making ten times that amount? No one in their right mind would. All you have to do to earn it is kill my mother.”
There. He had gotten it out. I pretended to ponder.
“No one need ever know. It would just be between you and me.” Phil’s enthusiasm was a wonder to behold. “I’ll pay you half in advance and half when she is six feet under.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not? What do you have to lose? You’re planning to kill her anyway, aren’t you? For what she did to the Butchers? Then why not get paid for doing it? It makes sense to me.”
“You have that much money handy?”
Phil thought he had me. He showed more teeth than a politician giving a speech. “No, but I can get it in, say, a week to ten days. What do you say?”
“Ten thousand dollars is a lot of money,” I admitted. “But with your mother dead, you’ll have the ranch and the silver all to yourself.”
That gave him pause. “So?”
“So you stand to be able to pay me a great deal more than ten thousand.” I let him consider that a few moments. “Killing her would be the greatest favor anyone ever did for you. It should be worth a lot.”
“How much?” Phil bleakly asked.
I pulled an amount out of thin air. “Fifty thousand would suit me. I could retire on that much.” Which was true.
Phil appeared to have swallowed a cactus. He blinked and sputtered, “Fifty thousand it is, then. Under the same terms. Half in advance and the rest when my mother is in her coffin.”
“Be sure you don’t burn my meal,” I said.
“What?” Phil turned back to the stove, and swore. He darted to a cupboard for a plate and filled it to overflowing with the eggs and sizzling strips of bacon. He brought them over, then scurried to fill a cup to the brim with hot coffee.
“Don’t forget my toast.”
“What about the soup?” Phil asked, nodding at the large pot. The water wasn’t boiling yet.
“Let it heat up more,” I said. I slid the Remington into my holster and motioned for him to sit across from me. He was being so reasonable, I couldn’t see him trying to jump me.
As carefully as if he were sitting on broken glass, Phil eased down in the chair. “I must say, you are not at all how I expected.”
“Is that so?” I said with my mouth crammed with eggs.
“My mother made it sound as if you were a coldhearted cutthroat who could never be trusted. But she was willing to spend money anyway to hire you. She would do anything to get her hands on that silver.”
He had blundered and did not realize it. I swallowed and remarked, “So she talked it over with you before she hired me?”
Phil sat back. “Why, yes, I suppose she did, at that. Although she did not give me a say in whether we did. It was her decision and hers alone. Just as it was her decision and hers alone to shoot you in the back, giving you no chance to defend yourself. Despicable. Truly despicable.”
“That she shot me in the back or that she didn’t kill me?”
His laugh was more akin to a bark. “I’m glad she failed. Her mistake is my gain. If she had shot you in the head, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”
I forked a piece of bacon into my mouth. It was thick with fat and dripping with juice, exactly how I liked it.
“May I ask you a question?” Phil ventured.
Absorbed in the bacon, I grunted.
“How will you do it? Kill her, I mean? Will it be quick and painless or will she suffer? Were it me, I would stake her out like the Comanches do and skin her alive.”
“Your own mother?” I said. And to think, he had the gall to call me coldhearted! Talk about a kettle calling a pot black.
“What difference does that make? You’ve killed women, haven’t you? Mother said you had. That’s why she sought you out in particular. She said that only someone as ruthless as you were reputed to be could kill someone as nice as Hannah Butcher, or as sweet as her daughters, Sissy and Daisy.”
Suddenly I lost my appetite. I considered jamming the fork into one of his eyes but stuck with my original notion.
“I could never murder anyone but my mother,” Phil blathered on. “I hate her that much.”
“I try to keep my personal feelings out of my work,” I said. Although, since the attack on the cabin, that wasn’t true.
“How much longer will you keep at it? Your work, I mean?”
“None of your business,” I growled. I was tired of playacting, tired of toying with him like a cat toyed with a mouse.
Alarm furrowed Phil’s features. “Why are you mad? Is it something I said? If so, I apologize.”
“I don’t know what gave you that idea.” I stood and walked to the stove. The water in the pot was beginning to bubble. Another minute or two and it would be hot enough.
“Good. We should be friends, the two of us. We are partners, after all, in the sense that we are plotting a crime together.”
I touched the pot handles. They were wood, not metal, and posed no problem.
Phil did not know when to shut up. “I wish I could see her face when you do it. Would you let me? I would be willing to pay extra for the privilege. A hundred dollars, just to see her face. No! Make it a thousand!” He laughed viciously. “Won’t she be surprised? I daresay it will be the shock of her life.”
“Death usually is,” I said. The water was boiling nicely.
“What an exciting life you must live. Vastly more exciting than being a nursemaid to a bunch of cows.”
“It has been kind of exciting around here of late,” I mentioned as I lifted the pot a few inches.
“Hasn’t it, though? It will almost be a shame to have everything back to normal. Maybe then those Texas Rangers will stop snooping around. They worry me. Do they worry you?”
I walked toward the table holding the pot in front of me. Some sloshed over the rim and nearly splashed my hand.