Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace

by Patricia Marcantonio

  On the other side of the room, a blanket had been tacked over a doorway leading to a small kitchen with a wood stove, table, and one chair. On a shelf were plates, coffee mugs, canned fruit, and rusted tins of flour, coffee, and sugar.

  “A wretched life,” he said.

  “Considering the hidden money, Mattie Morgan was probably saving to leave town,” Felicity said. “Lamentably, she waited too long.”

  When they stepped outside, the ground rumbled with the noontime explosions at the mines.

  “Most of the girls of the line sleep at this time of day. We’re going to wake a few.” Pike knocked hard at the crib next to Mattie Morgan’s. KITTY was painted above the door. “Wake up. This is Sheriff Tom Pike.”

  Kitty didn’t immediately answer, so Pike slammed his fist on the door. From the other side came banging and feet stomping on the floor. A reedy woman with stringy black hair opened up and put her hand to her eyes to keep out the sunshine. Her skin was cragged as wood from a fallen aspen tree. No gauging her age on account of those many nights with men, Felicity thought. The woman’s squinting eyes settled on Pike’s badge.

  “Christ almighty, Sheriff.” Kitty wore a torn nightgown. Yawning, she let them in, scratching her upper leg. “Whatever you’re here about, I didn’t do it.”

  “Someone killed Mattie Morgan last night behind the blacksmith’s.”

  Kitty stopped scratching and collapsed on the bed. “Poor old Mattie.”

  “Sit up, Kitty.”

  She did, and drew up her legs to her chest. She stared knives at Felicity. “And who’s this? She some Salvation Army camp angel here to save my soul?”

  “No one of importance, just a person who’s interested in Mattie Morgan,” Felicity said.

  “You see Mattie last night?” Pike sat on a rickety chair across from Kitty.

  “No, sir.”

  Felicity turned to the wall to the left. Someone snored in the room next door. The girls could probably catch every sound they cared to listen to through the thin walls. “Did you hear Mattie moving around in her room last night?” she asked Kitty, to Pike’s chagrin.

  “Yeah. She entertained a customer until about midnight.”

  “Recognize the man’s voice?”

  Kitty shook her head no.

  “You hear Mattie call the customer by name?” Pike said.

  Another no. “Too busy with my own clients to worry about hers.”

  “When did the man leave?” the sheriff asked.

  “He finished his business in short order. Mattie took off a little after that. Almost done, Sheriff? Need to get me some sleep. Tonight is Friday, a busy time on the line.”

  “A little longer. Did Mattie or the other girls ever talk about a man who threatened them with a knife?” the sheriff said.

  Another headshake, although one quick as a hummingbird’s flight. Kitty’s eyes flicked around the room and away from the sheriff’s face. Her foot shook under the nightgown. From the woman’s movements, Felicity expected she was lying. She looked over at Pike, who appeared to be thinking the same thing.

  “Tell me the truth. Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I promise to keep this between you and me. Oh, she won’t say anything, either.” He pointed to Felicity.

  Kitty whispered. “Two toughs from a gang out of Helena been bullying some of the girls. They say they’ll protect us, but they just want to take our money. If we refuse, they promised to give us a good scar so we can’t charge as much.”

  “Their names?”

  “Hank Ransom, or so I heard. Can’t miss him. Tall as you. A big man with lots of hair and a mustache black as a raven at midnight. He’s keeping company with another fella who reminds me of a human skull.”

  “They threaten you? You can make a complaint, you know, and we’ll take them before Judge Howard.”

  “They didn’t touch me. I did see them pull a knife on another girl in back of the Lost Horse Saloon the other night. Don’t want to make no complaint, Sheriff. They’ll kill me dead.”

  “I’ll protect you.”

  “You couldn’t even protect ol’ Mattie.”

  Pike sighed. “You’re right. I should have.”

  He didn’t fake his response, Felicity was sure. Here was an honorable man.

  Pike got to his feet. “Thanks, Kitty. Until we arrest this killer, I want you and the other girls to be careful. Don’t go out late at night by yourselves.”

  Kitty yawned. “Poor Mattie girl. Never did have much luck. Think I can have her new hat, Sheriff?”

  “We’ll see. Get some sleep.”

  For the rest of the afternoon, Felicity watched Pike interview most of the girls who lived in the nearby shacks. They echoed Kitty’s statements. No violent customers carrying knives. Answering with a sizable amount of reluctance, a few did mention threats from the big man fitting Hank Ransom’s description. One girl said Ransom and his companion called themselves the Midline Gang. None of the girls, however, was willing to testify against the men, all saying they wanted to live one more day.

  Outside the last shack, Pike smiled at last. “We may have gotten a lead on our killer.”

  But not the one I seek, Felicity thought. Despite the prostitutes’ comments about this Midline Gang, the similarities of the wounds on the victims in Placer to those in London could not be explained away.

  “Sheriff.”

  “Call me Tom. Since you’ve made yourself my unofficial deputy.”

  “Then Tom, how about that dinner? I’m starving.”

  “I’m surprised you have an appetite left after all you’ve heard.”

  “Good or bad, knowledge always makes me hungry.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Felicity held out her mug for more coffee. The American brew tasted stronger than the English version. Eye-opening strong. She wanted the lift. Although she had been on the case for one week, impatience made her nerves shift to the top of her skin. Every sound caused her to flinch.

  That morning Felicity had received a telegram from the London physician she had hired to care for her friend Jackson Davies. The doctor reported that he was progressing but recovery would be slow. Felicity had already written Davies telling him about the trip to America, that she had started her investigation, and was most encouraged. She had hated to deceive him but didn’t want him to relapse.

  Sipping the strong coffee, she knew she had to step up her inquiry, because if this was the killer from England, he would soon kill victim number three.

  Felicity and Pike sat in a small place called Bell’s Café off the town’s main street. On their way there, a school bell sounded far off, and Pike’s eyes lowered. Most telling.

  The food was simple and plentiful, and she was indeed hungry.

  “Your mind is on something other than Placer.” Pike stirred sugar into his coffee.

  If he could read thoughts as he claimed, she had to be careful. “Just homesick for English tea.”

  He laughed.

  “What?”

  “I’m not saying you’re lying entirely, but I wouldn’t want to play poker with you. You’d bluff on each hand and win every pot.”

  She smiled. “I have no idea what that means.”

  “No matter.”

  “You’re not married, are you, Tom?” Felicity said abruptly.

  He choked on the coffee.

  “Clearly, the question disturbs you.” She scooted her chair in for a better look at him. “From your gentle treatment of the women we talked with today, I deduce you were taught to respect women. You’ve been in love, but something went wrong and there was no marriage. Your intended was probably a schoolteacher. When the school bell sounded, sorrow shaded your face.”

  “Son of a …”

  “Too close to the truth?”

  “Felicity Carrol of England, you’re the most exasperating woman in either country, I’m willing to bet.”

  “I like to consider myself determined.”

  He wiped his mouth with a napkin and folded
his hands. “I was engaged to a schoolteacher. Three months before we were going to enter the church, she left. She decided she didn’t like the rugged life here in Placer. She moved to Chicago, last I heard.”

  “I’m sorry. My curse is that I sometimes say what’s on my mind before people want to hear it. One other thing.”

  “Oh no.”

  “When Helen and I arrived on the stagecoach, the first thing I noticed about you was how you stared at every male passenger. In fact, every man you pass on the street. Who are you looking for, Tom?” She was quite familiar with searching for a man.

  He sat back in the chair. “Somebody tell you about me?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I’m looking for the son of a bitch who killed my father.”

  “He was a sheriff, also. Robert Lowery told me that.”

  “John Pike was not only a good lawman but a good pa. He was the one who taught me to respect women and the law.”

  “What happened to him?”

  Pike looked out the window. “It was a nice spring day like this. I walked to the courthouse carrying his lunch in a tin pail. Fried chicken and a piece of corn bread.” He turned his face toward hers. “At the corner of Main Avenue, I saw him wavering in the middle of the street. His big Colt hit the ground first. Fingers of red opened over his chest. Pa went to his knees and fell over on his side. Two men had robbed the Bank of Placer and shot him. They rode right past me.”

  “My God. You saw their faces.”

  “They are seared into my head like a brand on cattle. One had wild eyes and a smashed nose. The other man’s eyes were lifeless as a rusted blade and his right cheek bled from where my pa had grazed him with a bullet, or so said witnesses later. I ran to my father and took him in my arms.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “He told me he loved me. Then his eyes turned hollow as a glass figurine. I was eleven.”

  An image came to Felicity of a similar scene. In their London house, she had held her dying father. But he had made no such declaration of love to his daughter. Instead, he had pulled his hand away from hers.

  “What’d you do, Tom?”

  “Joined a posse headed by my pa’s deputy and friend Roo Spitzer. We dogged the killers’ trail for two days only to lose it. I came back, and we buried my pa on the hill.”

  “And you never gave up the search.”

  “Never.”

  “You were just a boy.”

  “I became a man. Like my fiancé, my ma had left years before. Not having their own kids, Roo and his wife took me in and loved me as if I were their own. But every day, I practiced with Pa’s gun. An hour on each hand. I paid an old Paiute Indian to teach me how to read trails and worked three jobs to save money to offer a reward for information about the men who shot my pa.”

  “And did you?”

  “When I was seventeen, I tracked down one of the two robbers. I learned their names were Sam Ace and Mike Highland. A little of the wildness had left Highland’s eyes when I caught up with him tending bar in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Refusing to surrender or tell me the whereabouts of his partner, Highland drew his weapon. I killed him.”

  “And you’re still looking for Sam Ace. That’s why you search every man’s face. Seeking that one singular one.”

  “I believe he’ll return to Placer one day. Just an unexplainable feeling, like the kind I get when I know someone’s cheating at cards or lying. What keeps me going is the image of Sam Ace making the big swing with boots kicking air.”

  When he spoke the narrative, he had no emotion. After all this time, he had become the teller of his own story. But he still sought vengeance.

  “What, no smart remark?” he said.

  She shook her head but felt guilty she had lied to him about her real reason for coming to Placer. She wanted to trust him, but not yet.

  He grinned nervously. “That’s the most I’ve talked about my pa’s death in a while.”

  “I’m glad you told me.”

  Then, as if to not talk any more about his father, Pike glanced toward the café’s kitchen. “What’d you put in my coffee, Josiah? Mine tailings?”

  A voice shot back. “Then don’t drink the coffee, dammit.” In the kitchen, Josiah Brown chopped onions and cried with a face as doughy as raw biscuits. The broad-chested man yanked off a dirty apron and tramped outside. Pike put two dollars on the counter.

  “Come on. This man might have words we want to hear,” the sheriff told Felicity, who bristled at following orders but did so because it might aid her investigation.

  They went through the front door of the café and round to the back. The eatery was located on the eastern boundary of the Red District. “This is a good place for news about illegal doings about town,” Pike said.

  Josiah Brown stood against the wall smoking a cheap cigar. “Gosh almighty. Don’t you ever take a day of rest, Pike?”

  “Nah. What have you heard about the Midline Gang?”

  The cook eyed Felicity. “Who’s she? Your sister?”

  “I’m his unofficial deputy,” Felicity added.

  The cook tossed away his cigar. “Ha-ha. Funny.”

  “Tell me, Josiah,” Pike said.

  “You ain’t getting nothing from me. You put me in a bad humor. I don’t even want my penny smoke.”

  “Josiah, who got you out of prison six months ago?”

  “You did.”

  “Who got you this job?”

  “You did,” the cook answered with reluctance.

  “Why?”

  Brown kicked dirt. “So’s I can tell you what I hear around Placer.”

  Pike withdrew a more expensive cigar from his vest pocket and handed it to Brown, who lit up with a match from behind his ear. “Tell me about the Midline Gang.”

  One side of his mouth broke into a grin. “They come to town to control the painted ladies.”

  “One of them a big man with a black mustache?”

  “Yup. His friend always wears a green plaid vest.” Brown took a long puff and whistled out the smoke.

  Pike tapped Brown’s boot, waiting for more information.

  “Good smoke, Sheriff. Makes a man feel well off even if he ain’t.”

  “They carry knives?” Felicity said.

  “Can’t say. But they got guns.”

  “Where can I find these two gentlemen?” Pike said.

  “Anywhere there’re soiled doves and gambling cards.”

  A woman with a face red as her hair stuck her head out the door. “Josiah, finish that stogie and come back here! A passel of customers walked in. Prove you ain’t worthless as I think you are.” She went back inside.

  “I’ll be right in, you harpy from hell,” Brown yelled. “Can’t believe I married her,” he told Felicity and Pike.

  “Do you believe those Midline brutes killed the girls of the line?” Felicity asked.

  Brown shook his large head. “I’m betting no, ma’am. They’re businessmen. They don’t want to waste all the good talent.”

  Pike handed him another cigar and five dollars. Felicity gave him a gold piece.

  “Come back anytime, ma’am,” Brown said. “Pike, don’t need to see you so soon.”

  Felicity and Pike headed to Main Avenue. “I must say, your method of investigation is quite exciting, Sheriff.”

  “Glad you approve.”

  “You do realize one man killed both women.”

  Pike slowed. “When Big Lil died, I thought the murder a one-time occurrence, like a flash flood in a drought. But with Mattie’s death, I might have to agree with you, much as it pains me.”

  A few yards away from the courthouse, Pike stopped. A man with white hair stood in front of the doors.

  “What is it?” Felicity asked.

  “Mayor Jonathan Reiger,” the sheriff spat.

  “Not one of your favorites, I gather.”

  “Reiger owns the largest mercantile in town, as well as a bank, restaurant, and hotel.”

&
nbsp; “Why don’t you like him?”

  “Prostitution, the bars, and gambling palaces are the biggest sources of crime in town. But they also attract lots of people and their money to Placer. Reiger and the other city commissioners own a lot of businesses. In the Red District, the mayor alone runs three saloons and a gambling house. So they want me and my deputies to keep the peace without costing them or the town too much cash.”

  “Despicable.”

  “No, just politics and commerce. I do suspect Reiger’s padding his income with illegal activities, but I can’t come up with any proof.”

  They stopped in front of the courthouse. “Mr. Mayor.” Pike greeted him with forced politeness.

  The mayor leaned on a cane topped by a carved silver head of a bear. A man of compact build, he had broken veins in his cheeks that gave his face a perpetual flush. His white hair was neatly trimmed and his pricey suit was pressed to a shine. “I’d like a word with you about these killings, Sheriff.”

  “I didn’t think you wanted to say howdy. But first, may I present Miss Felicity Carrol. She’s a writer from England. Mayor Jonathan Reiger.”

  “Mr. Mayor.” Felicity curtsied because of his title. It occurred to her that this was the first time she had done so since arriving in America. Curtsies were just so … English.

  “Charmed.” Reiger took her hand and kissed it. “Maybe we should talk later, Tom.”

  “Really, I should be going. A pleasure to meet you, Mayor. Sheriff.” Felicity curtsied again and headed off but turned a corner and headed back to the courthouse. She wanted to hear what the mayor had to say about the murders, if anything.

  The men remained where they stood. She hid behind one corner of the building.

  “Are these killers local men?” The mayor puckered his thin lips.

  “Don’t know,” Pike said.

  The mayor tapped the top of his cane against his right palm. “You don’t sound too confident about finding this criminal, Tom.” He spoke with an inflated resonance as if his words rolled around in his chest before tumbling out of his mouth.

  “The killer will be arrested, tried, and hanged, Mr. Mayor. You have my word. How’s that for confidence?”

  “I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but I do trust your skills. Otherwise, we may have to elect a new town sheriff.”