And in the midst of all this ferment, a single pistol shot sounded, low and popping, like the explosion of a Fourth of July firecracker.
A man grunted loudly in pain. That and the report ended the budding melee, parted the crowd in a fashion that was almost biblical. Quincannon saw a number of things in that instant. He saw the two bouncers drive Bonnifield to the floor and disarm him. He saw Lily rush away from her faro bank, Jeffrey Gaunt do the same from his table. He saw Sabina running toward him. He saw Lady One-Eye seated at her poker table, one hand on the green baize and the other at the bodice of her dress. And in the cleared space where the mass of people had fallen back on both sides, he saw the victim of the gunshot lying supine and motionless, blood staining his vest at heart level.
“It’s Jack!” Lily shrieked. “Oh, no, it’s Jack!”
6
Sabina
Sabina rushed up just as Lily Dumont flung herself to her knees beside the inert form of Jack O’Diamonds, laid her flame-colored head against his chest. When she lifted it again, her eyes were wet with tears. “He’s not breathing,” she wailed, “he’s dead.”
Lady One-Eye, Sabina saw, was standing stock-still next to her table, her body stiff, her mouth clamped tight. Her good eye blazed with cold fire, but her set expression seemed void of sorrow, anger, even shock. Her brother, bunched among the miners and sports staring down at the dead man, showed no emotion of any kind; his face was as blank as a piece of slate. There had been no love lost between him and Jack O’Diamonds, Sabina thought, the two men barely on speaking terms, at least in public. Because of Diamond’s affair with Lily Dumont, or for some other reason?
Amos McFinn was bellowing to his bouncers to seal off the front and rear entrances, keep everybody inside the hall. To an extent, fortunately, this had already been done. One of the bouncers, a massive fellow with the bulging biceps of a blacksmith, had taken up a post at the front entrance and was not allowing anyone to leave or enter. The others rushed to obey their employer’s command.
Lily drew back from her lover’s body, and two of the men moved to help her to her feet. Immediately she shook a clenched fist at Glen Bonnifield, who was down on one knee a few feet away. “You did it! Damn you, Glen, you killed him!”
Bonnifield appeared dazed from his scuffle with the bouncers; if he heard her he made no reply. One of the miners held the Peacemaker Bonnifield had drawn at Lily’s faro bank. John stepped over to him, took the weapon and felt and then sniffed the barrel.
“Not with this, he didn’t,” he said. “It hasn’t been fired.”
McFinn came dancing up, his eyes as wide as a toad’s. “Then who did shoot him?” he demanded. “Quincannon, did you see who pulled the trigger?”
John admitted that he hadn’t. He glanced at Sabina; she responded with a slight shake of her head.
“Did anyone see who fired that shot?” the little man roared.
No one had. Or at least no one would own up to having witnessed the shooting.
Lady One-Eye had hobbled down off the platform, pushed her way through the crowd, and was pointing her cane at the remains of Jack O’Diamonds. “Look there,” she said. “Some blackguard not only murdered my husband, he stole Jack’s diamond stickpin.”
She sounded more upset over the loss of his stickpin than she did over the loss of his life.
Sheriff Hezekiah Thorpe was a man in his early fifties, with a tawny soup-strainer mustache and an efficient, no-nonsense manner. He took charge as soon as he and two of his deputies arrived with the man McFinn had dispatched to bring them.
The answers to a few terse questions allowed him to separate the principal players in the drama from the extras and onlookers, none of whom had been allowed to leave the hall. No one admitted to having witnessed the shooting. Thorpe and his deputies searched the men, Quincannon included, and then the rest of the assembled patrons and employees. Four hideout pistols were the result, but not one of those had been fired, either. Nor was the murder weapon anywhere to be found on the premises.
The sheriff and one of the deputies herded Sabina, John, and the other principals into McFinn’s private quarters at the rear. The single exception was Glen Bonnifield. One of the bouncers had fetched him a crack on the head with a billy club in order to subdue him after he drew his Peacemaker, and Bonnifield still had not regained his wits. He was being administered to by a town doctor.
Suspense crackled among the small group. Lily Dumont continued to shed tears — genuine tears, Sabina judged — and Lady One-Eye once again wore her stoic poker face. But it was plain that neither she nor Lily, nor the equally stoic Jeffrey Gaunt, were pleased to learn that a pair of San Francisco detectives had been operating undercover in their midst, the reasons for which having yet to be divulged. The recent widow kept casting glacial looks at Sabina (who had shed her itchy Saint Louis Rose wig once her true identity was revealed), the looks a measure of her resentment at having been duped by a disguised woman investigator who was also her equal at the poker table. McFinn was still in a lather. He kept glaring at John with open hostility, as if John were somehow responsible for the death of Jack O’Diamonds in his establishment.
They had met Thorpe on their arrival in Grass Valley; it was always wise for private inquiry agents hired to operate undercover in foreign territory to make themselves known to the local constabulary, in order to avoid any potential conflict. The sheriff had been friendly enough then, but the friendliness was in abeyance now. There was an edge to his voice as he said, “Can you sort out for us what took place here tonight, Mr. Quincannon?”
“He couldn’t sort out a handful of poker chips,” McFinn snapped. His habitual nervousness had given way to outrage. “Neither him nor his lady partner. I hired them to keep disaster from my door and they failed miserably. The publicity from this will give the bluenoses all the ammunition they need to close the Gold Nugget down. I’ll be ruined—”
“Amos, hold your tongue.”
“I still say Glen Bonnifield shot poor Jack,” Lily said before John could respond. “He hated him, he made no bones about that. And last night... I was told by a neighbor that shots were fired at my cottage. That must have been Glen, too, after Jack.”
“Diamond was at your cottage last night?”
“No. I wasn’t there, either, when it happened. But Glen must’ve thought we’d gone there together.”
“Why would he shoot at an empty cottage?”
John said carefully, “It may be that he was hiding outside and mistook a shadow for a man.” He cast a glance at Sabina as he spoke, not that she needed to be warned to keep silent. She knew as well as he did that declaring he was a mistaken target would serve no purpose except to vex the sheriff. He had, after all, entered Lily’s home illegally; and he had also failed to report the shooting.
Thorpe asked him, “So then you also think Bonnifield killed Jack Diamond?”
“No. I suspect it was Bonnifield who fired those shots last night, but he had nothing to do with what happened here.”
“How do you know he didn’t?”
“You examined his weapon, just as I did. He must have cleaned it after using it last night — it hadn’t been fired tonight. Also, the report of a Peacemaker is loud, booming. The shot that folded Jack O’Diamonds was low and popping, like that of a firecracker.”