Rebecca Hagan Lee - [Borrowed Brides 02] (3 page)

“Maybe. Maybe not. I ain’t takin’ no chances. I’ve seen her kind before,” Harris commented. “Cold-hearted murderess.” He motioned for David to step forward as he turned the key in the lock and swung the heavy iron door open. “You can come back during business hours. A few hours in a jail cell will probably do her good. Help reform her.”

Narrowing his dark gaze at the deputy in a scathing look, David stepped through the opening.

“You’re leavin’ your coat,” Harris pointed out.

David glanced to where his coat lay on the floor next to her cot. “She can keep it.”

“But it’s cold out there. The wind is biting.”

“I don’t have far to go,” David reminded him. “I’ll manage without it for now.”

Even as he said the words, David planned to return. His jacket gave him an excuse. It was foolish, and he knew it, but despite his experience with duplicitous women, David felt drawn to the jail and the exasperating woman locked inside it. The look she’d given him just wasn’t that of a murderess. He was convinced of it. And he knew what it was like to be misjudged.

He paused outside the cell, glancing back at Tessa. She remained seated on the cot, the line of her back impossibly rigid. “Will she be all right?”

“Sure. She’s got the place to herself. For today.”

David suddenly realized the jail was empty except for Tessa Roarke. “Where is everyone?”

Harris chuckled. “We let all the drunks go home before breakfast. Saves the citizens the cost of feedin’ ’em. She won’t have to worry about company until the saloons fill up again. Then I don’t know what we’ll do. Can’t put anybody in with her, and we do lots of business on Friday nights.” There were only three cells in the entire jail.

“I’ll find someplace for her to stay,” David promised.

“How you gonna manage that? She’s a damn murderess.”

“She’s an
alleged
murderess,” David snapped at the deputy. “And I don’t know how I’ll manage, but I’ll find a place for her to stay.”

The lawman looked skeptical.

David couldn’t blame him. He found it hard to believe his own words. Nothing made sense. He had plenty of cases to keep him busy. Business cases. Deeds, wills, contracts, and land plats were stacked on his desk awaiting attention. They were all clean, uncomplicated, predictable cases. But this…

“Mr. Alexander?” Her soft voice reached him as he opened the door.

“Yes?”

“Can you get me out?” She paused. “Coalie needs me.”

David inhaled deeply. He was crazy to take her on as a client. This whole night had been crazy. David hoped he was still sleeping. If he was lucky, he’d wake up soon and realize this had all been a fascinating dream.

Returning to his office after lunch, still somewhat distracted by his thoughts on the case he was hoping to build, David nearly stumbled over something lodged in the doorway.

“Ouch!” The grunt of pain came from the dirty bundle curled up on the threshold. A wooden box full of soiled rags, brushes, and boot black sat beside it.

“What the devil…?” David looked down.

A face appeared. It belonged to Coalie.

“What are you doing out here?” David said, bending down to help the child to his feet. Unlocking the door, David ushered Coalie inside the room, just as Greeley, too long confined, scrambled through the open door in a blur of orange stripes. “I’ll have the stove going in a minute. You need something hot to drink.” David turned his attention to the stove. Coalie hovered near the door, wooden box in hand.

David stoked the embers, then added more coal. “Come on in and get warm. You can tell me what you were doing on my doorstep.” David shrugged off the new coat he’d purchased at the mercantile after leaving the jail.

“I was waitin’ for ya.” Coalie inched forward, closer to the stove, and set his shoeshine box down. “I seen ya goin’ in and outta the saloons all mornin’.”

David filled the coffee pot and set it on the stove. A few drops of water trailed down the side and sizzled on the iron surface. “I thought I caught a glimpse of you trailing me.” David pulled his leather desk chair closer to the warmth, then shoved the straight-backed visitor’s chair in Coalie’s direction. “I lost you at the funeral home.”

“Ya didn’t lose me, exactly. I came back here to wait for ya.” Coalie paused. “Don’t like dead bodies. They give me the willies.”

David nodded in complete understanding. His first clue. David scratched the boy off his mental list of suspects. Coalie couldn’t have murdered Arnie by himself, and with his fear of the dead, it was unlikely that he’d helped someone else.

“Can’t say that I blame you,” David agreed. He didn’t care for funeral parlors much himself. He hadn’t liked questioning the undertaker or inspecting the gaping slash across Arnie Mason’s throat.

“Did ya get Tessa outta the jail yet?” Coalie sat down.

“Not yet.”

“Then what’d ya do in the saloon?” Coalie got up and sniffed the air around David’s chair. “Ya don’t smell like old Clayburn. Ya don’t smell drunk.” He said the words warily.

“I asked questions,” David admitted.

“Anybody can do that,” Coalie told him. “It’s gettin’ the answers that matters.”

Greeley meowed loudly outside the door. David got up and let him in. The cat padded around the floor, weaving his way around David’s legs. David bent to pick him up. “You don’t seem to have a high opinion of my abilities,” he commented, petting the ugly orange cat. “Why did you come to my office to get me last night?”

“Heard it was yer job, gettin’ people outta jail,” the boy replied matter-of-factly. “When I saw who it was on Tessa’s bed, I come runnin’. I figured she’d need help.”

David eyed Coalie with new awareness. He was wise beyond his years. Too wise. “I think you’re absolutely right.” David set the orange tom on the floor. Greeley brushed against his ankles, then headed back to his favorite spot on the windowsill in the spare bedroom.

“Then we got us a deal?” Coalie gazed up at him. “Ya gonna help her?”

“First I want to know what Tessa Roarke is to you. Is she your sister? Is your last name Roarke, too?”

Coalie thought for a moment. “Nah. My name’s Donegal. Coalie Donegal.”

“Is Tessa your mother?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “She takes care of me,” he answered vaguely. “Are you gonna help her?”

“I’ll try.” David nodded in affirmation, then walked back to stand in front of Coalie’s chair.

Coalie stood to face him. “There’s just one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“We ain’t got the money to pay ya.”

“Don’t worry about it.” David shrugged.

‘Tessa and me don’t take charity.” Coalie straightened to his full height. “But I’ll work for ya. To pay for Tessa.”

David thought for a moment. The little boy looked at him so proudly, David had to take him seriously. “I could use a helping hand to run errands, do a few chores, keep an eye on the place…that sort of thing.”

Coalie looked around the office, taking in the stacks of books and papers scattered across the desk and table.

“I’ll give you a key to the back door and a bed of your own,” David said, “but there will be rules to follow. I expect you to go to school like the other children in town. And you’ll do your chores in the mornings and after school.” David had learned that Coalie lived with Tessa Roarke, and with Tessa in jail, Coalie had no place to stay.

David stretched his tired muscles and ran his long, lean fingers through the silky strands of his ink-black hair. He was a fool—and probably would be served right when Coalie and Tessa skipped out in the middle of the night. But he was willing to take a chance. And in the meantime Coalie was a vital link to Tessa Roarke. Maybe his only link.

David stuck out his hand. “Do we have a deal?”

Coalie stared at the large outstretched hand, then at the face of the man offering it. “What about my shoeshine business?”

“You can continue in your free time if you want to,” David told him, “but only after your schoolwork and chores are done. And only if you agree to stay away from the saloons.”

Coalie nodded, having apparently decided to trust him. He placed his hand in David’s. “You sure do have a lot of rules, but it’s a deal.”

David studied the small hand. It was caked with dirt, red from cold, and roughened from hard work. Black half-moons marked the fingernails. If he had his way, no child would have to work for a living. But David recognized pride when he saw it. He took the boy’s hand and gripped it firmly. “I’m pleased to meet you, Coalie.”

Coalie shook his hand in reply.

“Come on,” David prompted. “I’ll show you your new room.”

By David’s standards the room was tiny. It was smaller than his sleeping quarters at the office and much smaller than his room in the bachelors’ wing at the ranch. The room was barely large enough to hold a narrow bed, a dresser, and a washstand, but Coalie’s big green eyes lit up in wonder at the size of the room and the furnishings. He walked around, reverently touching the down coverlet and the quilt folded at the foot of the bed. Walking over to the window looking out on the back alley, he fingered the checked fabric of the curtains.

Coalie glanced at the windowsill and grinned at the orange tomcat, showing David an uneven smile where permanent teeth were filling the gaps left by baby teeth.

“I hope you like cats,” David said. “Horace Greeley has the run of the place.” David affectionately scratched Greeley’s head. The cat bumped at his hand, rumbling his pleasure.

“I don’t mind ’em at all,” Coalie replied.

David placed his hand on Coalie’s shoulder. “Good. Follow me. I’ll get your key.” David led the way back down the hallway, walked to his desk, and removed a key from the top drawer. “This is for you,” he told Coalie. “It unlocks the back door.”

Coalie carefully pocketed the key.

“That’s settled, then,” David said. “Now I need to find Tessa a place to stay.”

“She always stays with me,” Coalie said. “We stay together.”

“Not this time,” David replied. “I’m a bachelor. Tessa can’t stay here with me. She’ll have to have a room of her own, someplace other than the Satin Slipper.”

He looked down at Coalie. “I guess you know Myra Brennan at the Satin Slipper has already given Tessa’s room to someone else?”

“Yep.”

“Then we need to check the hotel and the boardinghouses about a room, and we should stop in at the mercantile.” It occurred to David that he’d begun to think of her as Tessa rather than Miss Roarke. He’d have to remember to call her Miss Roarke in public.

“Why? The mercantile don’t have rooms to let.”

“I know. But it has clothes—dresses. Tessa’s going to need something to wear home from the jail. Her saloon dress is ruined, so I thought we’d buy her another dress. A different type of dress.”

“Can we get a green one?”

David grinned at Coalie. “Maybe. Is green your favorite color?”

“Nah.” Coalie waited while David pulled on his new coat. “I like red. Tessa likes green.”

Horace Greeley ambled from the spare bedroom and trotted along at David’s heels. Coalie followed both of them out the front door, where Greeley began an exploration of the alley. Coalie picked up his pace until he was walking abreast of David Alexander down Main Street toward the mercantile.

David ruffled the boy’s hair. “So you think a green dress will please her?”

“No doubt about it,” Coalie answered. “But I don’t think any of the people in town’ll be willing to let Tessa stay with them. She’s gonna have to stay with us.” He looked up at David. “And I ain’t at all sure what she’ll say about yer cat.”

* * *

An hour later they entered the jail. Coalie sat quietly while David discussed Tessa’s situation with the sheriff.

“You can’t release her into my custody. She’s an unmarried female. What about her reputation?” David fought to keep his voice at a conversational level as he shoved the legal document back across the sheriff’s scarred oak desk.

“I don’t have a choice, Mr. Alexander, and neither do you.” Sheriff Bradley was perhaps forty-five, but his white hair, his weathered face, and the determined glint in his eyes made him look like an ancient warrior. “The hotel won’t take her, and the boardinghouse won’t neither. You said so yourself. Do you have any better ideas? I can’t take her home with me. My wife wouldn’t stand for it if I brought a soiled dove into the house. What do you want me to do with her? Send her to Fort Laramie? Or Cheyenne? She’s charged with killin’ a man. I can’t let her go, and I can’t keep her here with a bunch of rowdies. That’d be askin’ for trouble.” The sheriff fixed his gaze on David. “You’re the only one who can put her up.”

David glared at the man. “You know how people talk. If she stays with me, her reputation will be shredded overnight.”

“She’s a saloon girl,” the sheriff stated bluntly. “If she ever had a reputation, it’s shot to hell by now. Besides, you’re representing her. I don’t think staying with you until this mess is resolved will do her any more harm. Might even help.”

David raised an eyebrow. He was from a prominent family, but he was also one-half Cherokee Indian. He seriously doubted that living, even briefly, with a man of mixed blood would help Tessa Roarke’s reputation.

“Well,” Sheriff Bradley repeated, “it can’t do her any more damage. Besides, there’s the boy. You said he’d be staying with you. He can chaperone.”

David glanced to where Coalie sat next to the potbellied stove, holding the brown-wrapped packages and balancing a hatbox on his knees. “An eight- or nine-year-old boy is not a suitable chaperone.”

The sheriff smiled. “You’d be surprised. Well, I guess you’re just gonna have to chance it. ’Cause I don’t have a choice.” He took the ring of keys from the drawer of his desk. “Do you want her or not?”

David knew when to admit defeat. “I’ll take her.”

“Well, then, she’s yours. Temporarily, anyhow.” The sheriff grinned. “Let’s go get her.”

* * *

Tessa looked up as the sheriff turned the key in the lock and swung the iron door open.