“Well, that’s good work, Charley. Did Mr. Carter call you in for that job?”
Charley nodded, grinning, Adam’s apple bobbing. “He come to my room over the saddle shop and knocked. Early this morning. First time ever he come around hisself.”
“Imagine that.”
“Said there was a mess needs cleaned up before customers come round. And I said, shore.”
Charley had some more beer.
“Charley, can you tell me anything about the robbery?”
Bony shoulders shrugged. “I wasn’t there.”
“Did you know about the bags of money in the safe?”
“What bags of money? Ain’t they always bags of money in the safe? It’s a bank safe.”
“You didn’t hear about a shipment of money through Wells Fargo?”
More beer as Charley thought that one over. “Wells and Fargo. That’s the stagecoaches.”
“Right. That’s the stagecoaches. You hear anything about shipping money with them?”
“No, sir.”
“Mr. Upton was killed last night, Charley.”
Charley’s mouth dropped. “Whaaat?”
“Somebody shot him and his body was found right back there.” York pointed in the direction of the alley.
The janitor shook his head and kept shaking it. “Oh, that’s terrible. That’s just plain terrible.”
“Did you like Mr. Upton?”
His head stopped shaking. “No, sir.”
“Why’s that?”
“He wasn’t a nice man. He would push me sometimes. Push me out of his way. I’m bigger than him and that was dumb. I coulda done something back to him. But I’m an easygoin’ feller. He called me slow! You think I’m slow, Sheriff?”
“Slower than some. Faster than others, I’d reckon.”
“That’s how I sees it. I hold down jobs all my life. Slow folk couldn’t do that. Ain’t no reason to push me out of the way and say mean things.”
“How did the other bank employees feel about Upton?”
“Oh, they just kinder put up with him. I heard one say he was a cold fish. But lately he was... I wouldn’t say nicer, but more easy to be around. He’s got a lady friend now. Men with lady friends is in better moods. Till they marry them, anyways.”
Charley had some more beer.
“How about Mr. Carter and Upton? Did they get along?”
“Far as it goes.”
“They weren’t close?”
“Close to what?”
“Friendly. Like father and son?”
“My father whipped me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Charley.”
“My ma loved me, though. She kilt my old man, with a shovel, and they come took her away. I was raised by a aunt. I guess I was close to her, the way you mean.”
“Were Carter and Upton that kind of close?”
“No, sir. Just a boss and somebody worked for him. But... you know, lately, come to think — they been more friendly. I seen them smile and laugh together, just last week. Is that the kind of close you mean?”
“Might be,” York said.
Charley finished his beer.
“You need me any more, Sheriff? I can make twenty cents this afternoon if I sweep out the saddle shop. Someday I’m gonna buy me one of them. I’m savin’ for one.”
“A saddle?”
“A horse. First things first, Sheriff.” Charley finished his beer, grinned, and said, “Thank you kindly,” and took his leave.
York sat drinking his coffee for a while. The strong stuff had been very hot when the bartender gave it to him, but York hadn’t touched it during his conversation with Charley. Like Goldilocks said, now it was just right.
He didn’t see her come over — not Goldilocks, but Rita Filley, who was suddenly just there, standing next to where he sat. She was wearing jeans and a yellow blouse and a red knotted kerchief at her slender neck, tooled cowboy boots too, a wardrobe right out of Willa Cullen’s closet. She looked very young, no paint on her at all. Lovely child.
“Like it?” she said, nodding to the coffee. “Made it myself.”
“You have skills that don’t show,” he told her.
“You don’t know the half of it.” She sat; she’d brought her own cup of coffee along. “You found a body behind my place, I hear.”
“I did.”
“You might have come in and told me about it. Last night. At the time?”
“I’m here now.”
“So you are. But like I said, you could have—”
“I wanted to keep a lid on the murdered man’s name, for just a little while.”
The big brown eyes studied him. “Why would you do that?”
“To see how the dead man’s boss reacted when I told him about it this morning.”
“How did he react?”
“Oh, he was broke up about it. Even pretended to wipe away tears.”
“Crocodile tears are the most common kind.” She sipped her coffee. “So, then — now I’m free to spread the sad word?”
“Spread away. The dead man’s Herbert Upton. The banker — or bank clerk, anyway.”
She frowned. “Oh dear.”
“A favorite customer?”
Staring into her coffee cup, she said, “No, he’d pretty much stopped coming here by the time I took over the place. But he used to be a regular, I understand. He and one of the girls here...”
“Pearl. I know her. Nice kid. Is she still working for you?”
Her eyes came up and met his. “That was... I guess it doesn’t hurt talking about it now. Pearl told Upton she stopped working here. But she’s still been coming in afternoons.”
That much the bank president hadn’t lied about, anyway.
Rita was saying, “Pearl’s a popular girl, and she wanted to put a little money away before they got married.”
“Build a little nest egg. Sleepin’ with strangers.”
“Not strangers. Regulars.”
“What if it got back to Upton?”
She shook her head. “It wouldn’t. It didn’t. Those men Pearl was still seeing, last thing they’d want was a fiancé to come steal her away, or shoot them or something. Damn.” She sighed. Shook her head. “I’ll have to tell her.”
He looked at the young woman who right now appeared nothing like someone who might be running a place like the Victory. “Would you do that?”
“Sure.”
York let out a relieved sigh. “Wasn’t lookin’ forward to that in the least.”
“You think I am?”
Chapter Ten
The Purgatory River, a tributary of the Pecos, was a real godsend to Trinidad, not only a source of water and trout but of the most beautiful scenery for miles. The banks were lined with lush conifers, with splashes of orange and red from seasonal trees, and the water was cold and clear, flowing down from canyons in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Just above the rocky, sandy shore, where the river was around ten feet across, the grassy slope made a fine place for a picnic on a pleasant, sunny, not quite cool late morning.
Willa had accepted Zachary Gauge’s request to go riding, and be shown “the sights” around Trinidad. Of course, in the immediate area, the sights were rather limited — range and cows, cows and range.
Eventually, if he proved horseman enough, she might take him into the hills and, atop buttes, point out how the blue-purple line of horizon went on forever as spiny desert shrubs and stubborn small trees wiggled in the wind. Would he see the beauty of those grassy plains, or discern only dust, thorns, and rock?
And if they made their way down, into those white-walled, blue-sky-ceilinged chambers, across a floor shared contradictorily by rock and green, would he see the stark majesty, or long for the man-made canyons of the city he left behind?