She didn’t sound interested. She snuggled closer and said, “I wish both of them were dead and buried, so you wouldn’t have to leave in the morning. Oh, Custis, so soon?”
He kissed her again and said, “I ain’t kissing you because I’m horny. I’m kissing you because you just gave me a grand notion.”
CHAPTER 14
Billy Vail gave Longarm more like general hell when he showed up in Denver at last, empty-handed. Vail said, “Longarm, it has been established that we can’t win ‘em all. But I’ve never seen you give up so soon. You didn’t even go to Montana or Utah after the cuss, and we agreed he was heading for one or the other on the old Overland Trail.”
“The trail only goes to Salt Lake, not Virginia City,” Longarm said, “and young Slade never meant to go to neither. We just got slickered by a slick and cunning killer, not a lunatic. Do you want to tag along and share the credit for the arrest?”
“Sure, if you can prove Joseph Slade is here in Denver. Can you?” Vail asked.
“Not a hundred percent, before I find him. But I expect to before this day is over. Coming, boss?”
Vail glanced out the window before he said, “It’s too hot out to chase a hunch. But I’ll listen to your hunch. Where do you mean to start?”
“The Banes house, where the killing all started. It ain’t far. I may need you, if them army gents are still sore at me.”
Vail shook his head. “They ain’t. They gave up on the stakeout right after they got word Slade had shot up Fort Halleck, up north. As for that stupid Colonel Walthers, I used the arrest warrant he swore out on you to prove how stupid he was to an old drinking pal in the War Department. So he won’t bother you no more if he wants to keep his oak leaves. There’s nobody over at the Banes house right now but the killer’s elder sister.”
Longarm said, “I’d best have a word with her, then,” and left alone.
Billy had been right about the heat outside. Longarm was sorry he’d had to change back into his tobacco-brown tweeds and shoestring tie as he walked even that far with the noonday sun beating down on him.
When he got to the house, and Flora Banes Slade came to her door, he could tell from the feather duster in one hand and the thin poplin duster she had on that, despite the heat, he’d caught the house-proud little gal hard at housekeeping. The duster she wore was oversized and shapeless, but he could still see more of her shape than she might have wanted him to, thanks to the way the thin poplin clung to damp bare skin.
She looked surprised if not dismayed to see him. She waved him in with her feather duster, saying, “Come in. I hope you don’t have news too grim about my poor brother. You wouldn’t be back this soon if you hadn’t caught him, I know. But please tell me you took him alive, at least.”
He removed his Stetson and waited until she’d led him into her parlor and seated him on her sofa before he told her, “I never caught up with him, dead or alive. That’s likely because he was never in any of the places I was led to look for him. I don’t like to boast. But it has been my experience that when I can’t cut a fugitive’s trail he just can’t be out ahead of me. So I come back to where the trail started to start looking better. I may as well begin by informing you, formally, that the federal search warrant made out by the Denver District Court to them army men is still in force until such time as your brother is found on or about these premises.”
She laughed weakly. “Good heavens, I told them and all the other lawmen who’ve tramped through this house that they were welcome to poke about all they liked, with or without a warrant. But before you begin, I’d better serve you some coffee and cake. For you’ll surely be here some time if you expect to find Joseph in this house at this late date!”
He thanked her for the offer but said it was too hot for such a notion. She rose anyway and said, “Speak for yourself. If you don’t need some coffee to clear your head right now, I do. This heat must be getting to my poor head. I don’t understand one thing you’ve said so far.”
She moved back to her kitchen, leaving him to stare at the four walls a spell. He was dying for a smoke, but he saw no ashtrays in sight and he doubted she shared his scientific theory that tobacco ash was hard on carpet beetles.
He could see she’d laundered her lace curtains and gone over the wallpaper with a sponge since his last visit. But there were still cleaner patches, mostly oval in design, where less tidy stuff had once hung on the walls. He was still thinking about that when she came back in with a silver service on a silver tray and put it down on the small teak table near the sofa.
As she took her own seat in the plush chair across from him he saw she’d filled two cups despite his disinclination. She asked if he preferred cream or sugar and he said neither. So she picked up her own cup and leaned back, toying with the buttons of her duster with her free hand as she smiled and said, “I like mine strong and black, too. Now, what was it you were saying about my poor little brother?”
“I don’t want nobody accusing me of tricking ‘em later. So I’d best tell you, now, that on my way from the Union Depot to my office in the federal building I saw fit to stop at the county hall of records and the main post office just a few doors away. I have found that, even when folk don’t leave a trail on the hard soil of summer, you can often get a line on them by following the paper trail we all leave filed here and there.”
She was working on another button, lower down, as she said, “I hope my brother’s school records and such verified everything I told you about him.”
Longarm nodded and said, “He was more pathetic than even you or your neighbors may have been willing to tell a stranger. He was so lackluster in school that a kindly teacher had his head examined. The doctor’s report was in with his poor report cards and such. It says he seemed to be stunted in growth, with poor hand and eye coordination. His brain just made it to what they writ down as dull-normal.”
She nodded and opened another button as she said, “Everyone knew he was touched in the head, poor thing.”
Longarm shook his own head. “That ain’t what the doc put down. He put your brother down as a slow learner without much ambition or imagination. He never put down a thing about the kid being loco. How come you want to show me your tits again, ma’am? We established the last time you did it that you’re a gal, and not a lunatic boy pretending to be his own sister.”
She hastily regathered the front of her duster as she protested, “I wasn’t trying to prove anything but how hot and stuffy it is in here right now. That other time was to show you the bruise Joseph gave me when he beat me.”
Longarm nodded. “I’ll take your word on the fight you must have had with him, ma’am. You were both about the same size and weight, so it was likely an even match. But we’re getting way ahead of the story. I’d best start from the beginning, now that I’ve been pawing through old city and county records, instead of chasing shadows along a trail that ain’t been used enough to matter for years.”
She leaned forward to pour more coffee in her own cup as she warned him his was getting cold. He ignored that to tell her, “In the beginning, there was a Pappa Slade, a Mamma Slade, and two little Slades, a boy and a girl, living between here and Evans Grammar School. The boy, like I just said, was puny and dim of wit and ambition. His older sister was smarter and a lot more energetic, even if her main ambition was to one day have her very own house to keep, sort of compulsed and overly tidy.”