He went out on the street and headed back toward the church, where most everyone else in town was still gathered.
When he got as far as the newspaper office, he turned in to see how Inky Potts felt about their earlier conversation.
She came right over to the counter, type stick in hand, to sort of whisper, even though they were alone, "I just heard some railroad man murdered Preacher Shearer and his squaw and that you'd shot it out with their killer! Is that true?"
Longarm said, "I ain't sure. I got the distinct impression Bergman was waiting for me in the church next door, with a gun. The preacher and his housekeeper were killed with a big fancy knife. After that I can't figure out how anybody connected with anybody could have known I was going to bum a ride up from Denver aboard a rattler Gus Bergman had already been assigned to police. There was a lady involved as well, and I just can't for the life of me figure out how my meeting up with her could have been ... Hold on! I just remembered something. She wasn't aboard the train when I got on. She came aboard after me! If they had her trailing me... Lord have mercy if a man can't get his brain cells stampeding in every direction if he fails to ride herd on 'em! Have you had time to dig through the morgue for me yet?"
Inky gulped and murmured, "No. I'm paid to work here. But I've been over your list of questions, and they don't look too hard to answer, if you'd care to tell me what sense they make."
He said, "I don't have time to read all the fine print on each and every issue of the Riverside News going all the way back to the last election. So I've asked you to dig out just the columns that might answer what we call key questions. I need them recent obituaries more than anything else, if you're pressed for time."
She hesitated.
He said, "I'm pressed for time, too, Miss Inky. I like to strike when the iron is hot, and the iron could be cooling a heap, even as we talk."
She reached in a pocket of her smock for a note she'd obviously composed ahead of time and gave it to him, murmuring, "Come to this address at high noon. Mr. Tanner has ordered me, directly, not to tell you anything about the way he may choose to run his own newspaper, on pain of instant unemployment. But we are talking about murder, and I guess a girl has the right to see who she wants during her own lunch hour, as long as her boss never finds out!"
So Longarm put the slip of paper away and left looking innocent. He got back to the church to find the crowd even bigger. He saw Pony Bodie and some others there, wearing guns in spite of the city ordinance passed by the ladies who ran the same.
He asked how come and Pony Bodie said, "We're fixing to posse up. Didn't you know somebody murdered the preacher and his old squaw? I just heard you were there. Wasn't that you as shot the railroad man they just carried over to the undertaker's root cellar?"
Longarm said, "You heard right about me. You're the second one who called that fat housekeeper a squaw. She'd have preferred weya if she was Lakota. I take it you all mean squaw in the sense of an unofficious but cozy situation?"
The beanpole snickered and said, "Everybody knew how cozy they was. I mean, sure, nobody ever caught them in the act. But what else would a preacher man with no wife or lady friends be doing with a squaw sharing his bed and board?"
Longarm suggested the poor old gal might have been dusting the furniture and cooking his meals for him when they weren't tearing at each other's duds. Then he went to jaw with more sensible young gents.
Nobody had uncovered any new evidence in the manse. But, by then they'd of course discovered the dirty drawings and some amazing devices made of India rubber in the cellar under the church. Longarm agreed it was sort of shocking to picture prim and proper church-goers singing hymns upstairs whilst double-gaited owlhoot riders were carrying on so wild right under them.
Longarm said he'd read about Canaanites in olden times who'd run a whorehouse smack in their temple, recruiting wives and daughters of their parish to whore with strangers for temple offerings.
The deputy he told this to said he'd always wondered how come the Lord had favored the Children of Israel over them dad-blasted Canaanites.
Longarm consulted his pocket watch as he considered all the mean things folk were capable of around churches. He saw it was going on eleven-thirty and allowed he had other chores to tend.
One involved some straight draft and a ham and cheese on rye before he decided it was safe to slip away from the center of town while so many others were busy eating.
Inky Potts seemed to live above a carriage house in cramped but private quarters up under the shingles. When she let him in, he saw she'd washed her hands and face, albeit there was still printer's ink under her nails, and she'd changed into a calico pinafore or had it on all the time under that shapeless smock.
Her shape was mighty handsome in calico with her waist cinched in like so. He didn't ask why her mousy brown but luxurious hair hung down her back to her shapely derriere. He thought it was just as well she had a job that kept her on her feet more than most women when he saw she meant to serve glazed doughnuts with chocolate milk.
As she carried the tray over, she indicated where he was to sit on the edge of a made-up cot and said, "Take off your jacket and gun, at least, and try to look guilty if anyone bursts in on us. I'd rather have Mr. Tanner think we were secret lovers than have him fire me for going against his orders!"
Longarm asked who was most likely to bust in on them as he shucked his jacket and gun belt to hang them up with his hat.
Inky said, "You wouldn't be here if I really expected to be caught with you. But a girl has to plan ahead if she means to make her way in a man's world."
Longarm told her she reminded him of a hobo gal he'd been talking to about conditions there in Wyoming Territory. As he sat down on the cot beside her, she started going into Women's Suffrage being a snare and a delusion. But he cut her off with, "I could have told you how much fun it is to bring home the bacon, Lord willing and the creeks don't rise. But that ain't what I come for, no offense. Did you get me those obituaries, at least?"
She pressed glazed doughnuts and a tall glass of chocolate milk on him as she replied, "That was easy. We enjoy a healthy climate here in Wyoming Territory, and no more than four local residents have died at all, and only one has been buried in that churchyard across from the undersheriff's house."
She inhaled some doughnut and chocolate milk while he was asking her who they might be talking about.
She said, "Mr. Nathan Hemmings, age seventy-two, with hog farming as his main occupation and pneumonia listed as the cause of death. I know it's been warm since the middle of May, but he caught a case of walking pneumonia last winter and couldn't seem to shake it before it killed him just before the Fourth of July. Is there any point to all this, Deputy Long?"
Longarm said, "Call me Custis, seeing we're secret lovers. The point may be that our hog farmer ain't been in his grave as long as most in yonder churchyard. By dying so recent he missed the spring thaw entire."
She pondered his words, grimaced, and said, "Please, ah, Custis, not while I'm eating! I know they embalmed him and all, but he's been down there long enough to... You don't suspect he's not down there, do you?"
Longarm chuckled and told her, "That's about the only notion I've yet to consider. I'll take your word we're talking about an elderly victim of walking pneumonia who never murdered nobody and vice versa."
She said she'd brought the one tally of election results he'd asked for, adding it had been deep in the files where she doubted anybody else would ever look. He said he'd read it later. Then he took a deep breath and told her, "Miss Inky, you've been a big help and I know you don't owe me more. But I don't know who else to turn to. I know it's asking way more of you than I should. But I don't know any other gal in town I could ask, so-"