Longarm nodded and answered easily, "We noticed all them old hens sipping tea on that front veranda in the cool shades of the gloaming. We've established I walked that librarian home from her new job more than once. Are you asking whether she likes to get on top like some folks I know?"
The young widow he knew well indeed seemed flustered. "Custis! Don't talk that way in broad daylight! I know you didn't spend the night with her, as I was told. I read all about it in the Rocky Mountain News!"
Longarm laughed incredulously and replied, "The time I left a library gal alone and chaste as ever was in the newspapers? Well, I never. I've told them reporters to quit making up tall tales about me lest they get me killed the way they did poor Jim Hickok. Where did it say I'd made a play for that new gal in town?"
The gal he'd been going to town with longer laughed despite it all and declared, "You big oaf! I meant that front-page story about you investigating the mysterious deaths by fire in your own neighborhood. I mean, if you were helping them put out the fire at four A.M., you could hardly have been where those ever-so-helpful friends of mine told me you were, could you?"
To which Longarm could only modestly reply, "I was asleep in my very own bedding when the fire engines woke me up and I done what I had to. Where did your own pals tell you I was spending my lonesome night?"
She sighed. "They were just jealous of another poor widow woman's good fortune, I suppose. Am I forgiven, Custis?"
He chuckled fondly and said, "Sure. You forgave me for that gal who slings hash at the Golden Dragon, didn't you?"
She started to say something meaner, sighed again, and told him she'd be expecting him that evening for a late supper, after things got sort of quiet up along Sherman Street. Then she snapped her buggy whip coyly, and drove on before he could tell her he wasn't certain he'd be free for the evening.
He figured he would be, unless he got lucky. But it seemed sort of reckless to commit oneself to a late supper before knowing who one might or might not meet at noon for dinner.
He went on to serve the federal warrant his superiors at the Federal Building had wanted him to. There was only a little cussing and no real physical danger involved in hauling a rich mining man into federal court on a claim filed under false pretense. But a man had to think ahead if he didn't aim to be saddled with even less interesting chores, and so, seeing the morning was well worn down by the time he'd caught up with that mining man in his private club, Longarm ambled over to a drinking establishment open to the public. It was handy to his office and famous for the swell free lunches they served with moderately priced drinks.
Like many more respectable saloons in towns even smaller than Denver, the Denver Parthenon had side entrances and private rooms toward the back for more discriminating gents and all womankind. So Longarm wasn't too surprised to be told by a swamper, as he was stuffing his face with beer and pickled pig's knuckles at the main bar, that some lady wanted to see him in one of their Private chambers. That was what they called the cubbyholes stuffed with small tables and firmly padded benches.
Hanging on to his beer schooner, but swallowing all the free lunch in his mouth, Longarm followed the swamper back towards the crappers, tipped a whole dime once he'd been shown the right door, and went on in to find himself staring down in Some confusion at the severely uniformed Miss Morgana Floyd, head matron of the orphan asylum out Arvada way. As if to prove that Mother Nature tended to share her favors fairly, the somewhat younger petite brunette, who'd also told Longarm not to darken her door, was built way smaller across the hips than the Capitol Hill widow woman, and Longarm recalled her breastworks as a tad perkier, if smaller. Though if push came to shove, that widow woman had a prettier face to admire, especially while she was doing all the work on top. But little Morgana was a kissable head-turner in her own right.
Longarm didn't try to kiss her as he straddled a bentwood chair across the table from her. He saw she'd already ordered herself a glass of cider with a straw. He still asked if she'd eaten yet, but the petite brunette shook her head. "I have to get back to the dry-goods store and my buckboard. I only took advantage of this run into town to see if I could catch you here alone for a change."
Longarm sipped some beer suds without answering.
Everyone who knew where he worked had a pretty good notion where he lunched a good part of the time. Morgana sighed and said, "I'm sorry. That was catty of me. But darn it, Custis, a friend I trusted did say you were still seeing that widow lady up on Capitol Hill!"
Longarm resisted the impulse to reach for a smoke as he replied, "if your spies were jawing about a certain widow woman who never done 'em no harm, I ain't been up to her place for quite some time, as a matter of fact."
This was true, as far as it went, and women seemed able to tell when a man was really fibbing. So Morgana nodded and said, "I should have known those other girls were jealous of me. What gave their vicious plot away was the way they overdid the tall tales they told about you. I mean, what would even someone like you be doing with a librarian west of Curtis Street and a wealthy Capitol Hill widow at the same time?"
Longarm couldn't resist answering, "I dunno. Sounds like fun!"
The frisky brunette with her own notions of fun laughed easily and said, "I'll bet you would, if you had the chance. But then I read in the Post how you'd been involved in that rooming house with some Mexican lovely, as your friend Reporter Crawford described her. So I naturally had to wonder how you could have been sparking all those other girls if you were over there in your own neighborhood at four in the morning. You should have seen them trying to squirm out of that when I confronted them with the morning papers!"
Longarm shrugged and said, "I only met Rosalinda Lopez over by that fire. They had no call to say I found her all that lovely as I was questioning her while she was handcuffed to a blamed fire engine!"
Morgana smiled, and reached across the table for his free hand. "I read how you'd cleared her as a suspect in that nasty arson-murder case, darling. Then, as I just said, certain so-called friends went too far. One of them told me you'd checked into the Wazee Hotel with that pretty senorita. I confess I believed her at first, recalling the time you took me there, to save us a long wet ride on that rainy evening, you said."
Longarm was starting to grow weary of the game and so, as gently as he could manage, he said, "Look here, Miss Morgana, whether I was in the Wazee Hotel with you or any gal willing to go there with me is no beeswax of a lady who told me better than ten days ago not to darken her door again. But for the sake of another lady I have no call to leave open to gossip, I checked Rosalinda Lopez into a hotel I could get a good rate from because the poor little gal had been burnt out and had no place else to go. If your pals had been watching closer, they could have told you I never even went up to her new quarters with her. You're commencing to steam me with some squat about a kid I've never even swapped spit with!"
Morgana, who'd exchanged more than that with Longarm, squeezed his big paw harder and assured him she'd already figured that much out for herself. "I know you'll think it was awful of me, Custis. But when I found out where that Rosalinda Lopez was working, I made it my business to make friends with her by sort of bumping into her a few times at the market down the street. Once we got to talking, it was easy enough to-"
"You're right, I don't like it," Longarm said. "Did you get her to tell you how I'd had her name tattooed on my chest, along with two lovebirds and a floral wreath around the whole shebang?"