She passed the cheroot back and said, “It’s like the old joke about asking two farmers about the weather and getting three forecasts. As I wired your boss, a known crook from the Flint Hills has been lurking just over the next rise, whilst others tell of a mystery woman and her daughter, maidservant, or whatever off in some other draw. I’ve been trying to pin things tighter. But it’s been mostly tales told by a friend of a friend who heard it in other parts from some stranger at a bar.”
Longarm sighed and said, “I sure ain’t in any position to complain right now, but to tell the truth, we thought there was more to your wire than whispers on the wind.”
She sighed and said, “I’m glad you like this position too. Your boss wanted to know if any other jurisdictions had anything at all to report about the possible whereabouts and future plans of that deadly little lesbian with the big gun. I know scattered bits and pieces may or may not be true. But where else might she and her gang be found than somewhere near a heap of gossip about them?”
Longarm took a thoughtful drag of three-for-a-nickel smoke and said, “I know it’s better scouting a faint trail than no trail at all. What makes you suggest Miss Medusa is a lesbian if you can’t say for certain she’s anywhere near?”
Pat nibbled his collarbone and said, “Doesn’t that seem plain from the few hard facts we have about her so far? Each time she’s struck, she’s recruited three or four local gun waddies and a wayward girl. I know they say a woman left alone at some remote cabin with a change of ponies might attract less attention. I can tell you as a woman that’s not true in cow country. I know they say that two women riding in the distance might attract less attention from a posse after male bank robbers. I know that at least once Medusa tried to leave a dead girl with her butchered gang as a ringer. But consider what those young, pretty, and not overly bright country girls would be attracted to. We know that sooner or later Medusa Le Mat turns on anyone who could possibly pick her out of a crowd. We read. But time after time she’s gotten an ignorant whore or runaway to follow her like a faithful dog, even after she’s gunned the men they were riding with. Then consider how many a soiled dove or discontented gal might feel about mean old men and add it up.”
Longarm did, and said he followed her drift, but wasn’t clear on how many pretty young gals might follow the persuasion of Lesbos.
A gal who might well have given more thought to the matter assured him, “More than most men think. How are two such chums apt to be found out? Do old maids rooming together get knocked up? Is anyone likely to be scandalized by two good friends kissing now and again, seeing the two of them are silly females?”
She took the cheroot away from him and snuffed it out on her side of the bed as she continued. “You were just talking about the practical side of such notions for a man. Consider how even a woman of natural tastes has to worry about nosy neighbors, boastful lovers, and the risks of begetting a bastard child.”
He muttered, “Jesus, you do know how to take care of yourself, I hope!”
She said, “No woman with a lick of sense goes to bed with a man like you unless she does. I was only talking about the reasons many a girl with less education might have for running away with an exciting lesbian lover.”
He decided, “That would sure explain the blind trust she seems to inspire in her female dupes. Her male suckers may just be after money, or for all we know, she’s got a door that swings both ways. I’ve been told lots of folk don’t really care who they go to bed with.”
Pat insisted, “Medusa Le Mat has to be pure lesbian, or she convinces her lesbian lovers she is. They’d never be so devoted to her if they didn’t think she liked them best.”
Longarm nodded and said, “That makes a heap of sense, and we sure make a swell team. For whether or not I’m better read on forensic evidence, you sure know more than me about womankind. So we ought to be able to catch Miss Medusa Le Mat if she’s really within miles of that bank just across the way!”
Pat rolled off to rise from the bed in the dark in just her thin silk chemise. She strode over to the window in her boots to lean her elbows on the sill and peer out into the night, exclaiming, “I knew it! You’d have a clean shot at that bank’s front entrance from here!”
Longarm sat up and replied, “I knew that when I hired this room. You sure make it tough to study on bank robbing when your pretty rump is thrust a man’s way like so, no offense!”
To which she coyly replied with an arch glance over a bare shoulder, “I was hoping you might notice. I’ve never done it hanging half out a window like this, have you?”
He rose, both ways, and moved over to lift the lace hem of her silk chemise from her smooth firm fanny as he soberly assured her he was willing to try anything that didn’t hurt.
Chapter 9
Undersheriff Brennan slipped out from under Longarm and down the back stairs just after midnight. She was walking funny. She got to her office and lockup in time to extract a complete statement from the sleepless Fred Mannix in exchange for coffee, tobacco, and an understanding smile.
Longarm had put it together pretty well. But Mannix had strangled his wife in bed after an all-night argument about another woman. Then he’d dragged her into his study, left her there all day, and lured the innocent delivery boy to the scene of his first crime to commit another. Longarm had been right about a killer who was new at the game arranging their clothes after he’d emptied his revolver into both of them in that one fusillade everyone had heard. Of course, it wouldn’t have been discreet to sneak out of his hotel room with old Pat. So he got close to six hours sleep, and had chop suey for breakfast before he went over to the bank.
He’d timed it just right. A potbellied gent with long skinny arms and legs that made him resemble a daddy long-legs in a snuff-colored suit, was just opening up as Longarm joined him on the walk out front. There were times to work in secret and times you wanted a banker to level with you. So Longarm identified himself, but asked the banker, a Mr. Gordon Guthrie, not to spread it around.
The odd-looking but friendly enough Guthrie invited Longarm in, then locked the front door again before leading him into a back office. Longarm didn’t ask why. He knew everyone working there would have his or her own key, and regular banking hours hadn’t started yet.
Guthrie sat Longarm down at one side of his glass-topped desk, and offered him a handsome Havana Perfecto from a fancy case as he said Undersheriff Brennan had already warned them there could be a robbery in the offing.
Longarm asked Guthrie what they were planning to do about it as the banker lit them both up. Guthrie shook out the match, leaned back in his swivel chair, and blew some expensive smoke up toward the pressed-tin ceiling before he replied, “Nothing right now. We don’t have more than fifteen hundred dollars in cash on the premises this morning.”
Longarm enjoyed a drag of his own and replied, “Do tell? No offense, but it says out front, in gilt letters, that this bank has over eight million dollars in assets.”
Guthrie nodded and said, “Sure we do, in our main vaults in Kansas City. We keep as little portable wealth as possible out here in this country branch, for reasons you and Undersheriff Brennan recently refreshed my mind about.”
He waved the tip of his cigar expansively and elaborated. “We take in savings and cash checks in modest denominations most of the month. The only time money changes hands in large amounts here in Minnipeta Junction would be on or about the end of the month, when folks pay off their help and their bills. We seldom cash a check for more than a hundred dollars, but come the end of the month, we have to keep at least twenty grand on hand here.”
Longarm didn’t need the calendar on one wall to tell him they had about a week’s leeway. He asked how all that working capital moved across the prairie between the Junction and the main branch in the big city.