The Quiet Gun - Edge Series 1 (12 page)

Dalton Springs continued to be held in the grip of an eerie silence and as he neared the house of the fine looking new widow the only sounds he heard beyond his own footfalls were subdued ones from the premises of Jake Slocum directly across the street. The undertaker doing whatever was necessary to finish his final chores at the end of this unusually busy day for him in a town that surely would not normally be so ominously quiet on a Saturday night at supper time.

Kitty Raine called his name, her voice soft and rasping and he saw her pale face against the dark bulk of the back of the house into which her mourning dress merged. She beckoned eagerly and whispered:

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‘You did perfectly right, Mr Edge. I meant to tell you to come the back way. If people saw me letting you into the house, well . . . ‘ She led the way from the cluttered yard into a room that darkened as she closed the door to cut off the moonlight. ‘Wait until I

. . . ‘

She struck a match, touched the flame to the wick of a lamp and set the chimney back in place. Edge looked around a small, square, neat and clean kitchen dominated by a cooking range in which no fire burned. But the absence of cooking smells was no cause for disappointment and his stomach started to growl immediately he saw the dishes of cold cuts, bread, butter and pickles arrayed on the centrally placed table. He removed his hat and she took it along with his carpetbag and smiled brightly as she urged:

‘Please eat your fill, Mr Edge. I can tell there’s nothing in the world you’d like better right now.’

‘There’s no arguing with that, Mrs Raine.’ He sat on the chair in front of the place setting, choosing not to read a
double entendre
into her invitation. Used serving spoons to load food on to the plate and was briefly relieved he had washed up before he came to the house.

But hunger transcended all other considerations until after he had swallowed a couple of mouthfuls of tender roast pork. Then he looked up at where she stood across the small room: chose to think it was by accident rather than design that her stance emphasised the gentle but decidedly present feminine curves of her body.

‘Is it good?’ she asked.

‘The food is real good, Mrs Raine.’ His expression remained neutral while he purposely made a response that was not open to misinterpretation.

‘Call me Kitty, please. And your given name is what?’

‘I’m a one name man.’

‘Just plain Edge?’

‘You got it.’

Either she abruptly realised that she was standing provocatively and was embarrassed by her unwitting wantonness or she was entirely guileless as she placed his 76

bag on the floor, straightened up and came to sit down opposite him: began to finger his hat as if it were made of pleasant to touch silk.

‘You’re nobody’s fool, are you, Edge?’ she said bluntly.

‘I try not to be.’

‘The way I hear you took care of your differences with that card cheat . . ? I really liked that.’

‘I let Kress land me in jail. That was a kind of foolish thing to do.’

She shook her head and waved a dismissive hand and he sensed there was impatient irritation hidden just beneath the woman’s obvious eagerness to convey approval of him. Then noticed for the first time she no longer wore the gold wedding band on the third finger of her left hand.

‘I understand that was no more than bad luck. I was referring to the manner in which you handled the matter this morning - to recover what was stolen from you.’

‘I’m getting the idea there’s a point you want to make, Kitty?’

She nodded, smiled fleetingly then frowned again. ‘You’re a little short of money, isn’t that so?’

‘I guess I haven’t made any secret of that around Dalton Springs.’

‘I can ease that situation for you.’

He met the eager gaze she fixed upon his face with a half smile as he said: ‘I’m always ready to listen to a proposition from a pretty woman.’

She pointedly ignored the possible twin meanings of his response and injected a hard glitter into her eyes as she announced: ‘I want you to kill Luke Shannon. And the people with him, if they get in your way.’

Edge thought that if maybe he had not just swallowed another mouthful of cold meat he would likely have choked on it. He continued to peer levelly into her big, suddenly innocent looking eyes that showed not the slightest trace of discomfiture about the enormity of what she had just said.

‘You do?’

She nodded. ‘I’m willing to pay you five hundred dollars if you will do that for me.’

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‘You are?’

Her little girl artlessness abruptly went and there was deep hatred in her beautiful face when she countered: ‘He killed my husband! As you well know?’

‘I was there in the jailhouse when it happened.’

‘So isn’t it natural I should want my revenge against that cold blooded murderer?’

Kitty Raine’s rasping earnestness did not fully mask her mounting impatience with the man who continued to eat, his impassively set features offering no clue to how he was going to react to her murderous proposition

She sighed, set down his hat and clasped her hands together on the table in front of her. ‘But that’s not all of it, Edge.’

It was as if she felt compelled by his seeming indifference to add more weight to her reason for the deadly request. ‘I was very fond of my husband, I swear. And I loved him deeply when I married him. But that was seven years ago when we were both young. And foolish I’m sure. We probably couldn’t be sure of our own minds back then, maybe?’

He shrugged in response to her insistent quizzical look.

Then she suddenly scowled and blurted: ‘You haven’t been in town long, but you must have heard tittle-tattle about me?’

‘A short time ago I heard the local undertaker say he figured you’re bound for hell when you die, lady.’

A scowl cut deeper lines into her near perfect face. ‘Yes, that’s certainly what Jake Slocum and a lot of others have said! And if the breaking of one particular commandment means that has to happen, then it’s where I’ll go, sure enough. Because for the last six months of my husband’s life I didn’t stay faithful to him. Because I found true love with another man.’

Edge set down his fork beside the knife on the empty plate, picked up a final piece of buttered bread and chewed on it before he said evenly: ‘So it could be said that Shannon did you a favour?’

Anger flared fiercely red across her face, marring her pale beauty more than any other emotion so far. But she quickly repaired the surface damage as she clenched her hands together more tightly and defended shrilly: ‘I never wanted for Phil to die! I never 78

ever wished for that to happen.’ She looked abashed for the first time then managed to moderate her tone. ‘But now he’s gone I couldn’t bear for the man I truly love to be killed, too.’

‘Is that what Shannon’s waiting here in town to do?’

‘What? I don’t understand what you mean?’

‘Is he here to kill the man you committed adultery with?’

‘No! I mean . . . I have absolutely no idea why that murderer came back to Dalton Springs. But the way things are going it’s likely to end with him killing the only man who means anything to me now Phil’s dead.’

‘Which man is that?’

The fires of anger flared in her eyes again. ‘It seems to me that is nobody’s business but our own. With Phil dead we’re free to do as we please. But I think we should wait for a decent interval of time to pass before we let it be known that – ‘

She broke off as Edge rose from the table, reached across and picked up his Stetson and told her:

‘I can see your problem, lady. As clearly as I saw you at a window of this house this morning: signalling your fond farewell to a feller riding with the posse.’

She caught her breath and wrenched her hands apart, folded them into fists and pressed their heels against the tabletop, worried her lower lip with her top teeth as she peered anxiously at the undemonstrative Edge.

He said: ‘The posse could come riding back to town any time. And Shannon is as likely as not to start a shoot out, I guess. But it’s none of my business.’

‘I’m willing to pay you five hundred dollars to make it your business!’ she insisted. ‘I told you that plainly enough.’

‘Much obliged, but no thanks.’

‘Then you can get the hell out of my house!’ she snarled as she stood up violently enough to almost tip her chair over backwards. ‘You’re just like all the other deadbeats in this town. Scared of your own lousy shadow! I guess it didn’t take any guts at all to shoot a man as far away as Kress was! And shoot him in the
back!’

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Fear abruptly displaced anger in her pale blue eyes as she realised she may have gone too far. But Edge remained as calm as ever as he corrected what she had said earlier.

‘You offered to pay me five hundred dollars to kill a man, lady. I’m no hired killer.’

Her confidence returned. ‘I told you, get out of my house and – ‘

Edge put on his hat, raised his hands slightly in a fleeting gesture of surrender and backed away from the table as he said: ‘Whatever you say, lady. But for that five hundred bucks I’m prepared to do my best to keep John McCall from getting gunned down by Luke Shannon.’

Her mouth dropped open. Then she managed to recover her composure sufficiently to inject a false note of chagrin into her voice when she demanded: ‘Who said anything about John McCall?’

‘I couldn’t keep from overhearing some gossip about the sheriff in the saloon last night. Him and a woman. So of all the men in the posse I figure he’s the most likely to be the one you’ve been – ‘

‘All right, all right, damn you!’ She looked almost ugly with another scowl as she rasped: ‘So you’re not a coward. And I was wrong to call you that. But you have to be crazy if you think you can stop a man like Shannon from doing anything he damn well pleases unless you kill him stone cold dead!’

‘Two fifty now. The rest when I bring your gentleman friend back here safe and sound?’

‘Then what?’ Anxious interest glinted in her expressive eyes.

‘The only thing in life that has a sure fire copper bottomed guarantee is that we’re all going to die at the end of it, lady. I’ll do what I can to bring McCall back to you alive. Then it’s up to him to stay that way after he finds out about the situation here in Dalton Springs.’

‘How will you make sure John gets back here in one piece?’ Her interest heightened by the moment.

‘The same way you tried to play house with him when your husband – and McCall’s deputy – was alive.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

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‘Secretly.’

She mulled it over for a few moments, teeth worrying her lower lip again, unconvinced. ‘How can I be sure you won’t take my two hundred and fifty dollars and then just ride off with it?’

‘I guess you just have to trust me.’

She vented an unladylike snort that poured unmitigated scorn on his simplistic response. ‘Can you give me a good reason why I should?’

‘I’ll give you three. First, it was you came to me. Second, I’m your last resort. Third is the strongest as far as I’m concerned. I need that second two hundred and fifty bucks as much as I need the first. If you want, you’re welcome to check that with Cyril Casey, president of the bank here in town.’

She commenced another quiet period of weighing up the pros and cons, her teeth working first on her lower lip and then nibbling the upper one this time. When it began to look as if reaching a decision was going to take some time, Edge tipped his hat to her, retrieved his carpetbag and turned toward the door that gave on to the back yard of the house.

‘All right!’ she announced irritably. ‘Wait here! I’ll get you the money.’

She went through another door that gave on to what he guessed was the parlour because of vague shapes of the furniture he could see in the low level of light in there. Through the lace curtain hung at the window in the far wall he had a restricted and indistinct view of the main street and the side street along which the posse had ridden this morning, Slocum’s premises on the north west corner, a feed and seed store opposite. Kitty Raine’s footfalls slowly climbed a stairway and the house was silent for a minute or so before she came down again. When she re-entered the kitchen she held some bills in a fist for long enough to signal continued reluctance to trust him. Then she said something under her breath and tossed the money down on the table. A mixture of denominations, all in less than mint condition.

‘There you are! It’s a lot to me. Twice that much is a small fortune. Most of what’s left of my father’s inheritance to me. John and I planned to use it for . . . Anyway, it’s an awful lot of trust.’