Four Furlongs

by C. K. Crigger

  I physically felt Gratton’s attentive stare sharpen the second the words came out of my mouth. Drat! It was too darn akin to the broom story I’d told to account for my own bruises. Probably, in fact, what had given me the idea.

  “In other words,” Grat said, oh, so dryly, “you overcame the man and tied him up.”

  “Yes.” I smiled at him.

  We were silent, me reliving the battle—with some pride, I must say—and Monk and Grat with twin flummoxed expressions on their faces.

  After a moment, my uncle stirred, giving his hash another flip. “Why put the tablecloth over his head?”

  “He hadn’t gone upstairs yet. If I hadn’t walked in on him, he would’ve found Neva there, sleeping in my bed. It’s important for you to know he wasn’t looking for her, or maybe just peripherally. He seemed to think we have something of his. Something else, I mean. Or perhaps something of Mrs. O’Dell’s.”

  I paused. Whatever he’d been looking for wasn’t his—or hers—at all, I thought. The man who’d stopped me seemed to prove as much.

  “Yeah?” Grat asked. “What was he looking for, then? And why did the girl come here?” Without thinking, he took a swallow of the coffee Monk had poured for him. His face twisted.

  I preferred water, with a chip of ice in it. My mouth was crackly dry, so I got up to run the tap. “Neva trusts me and wanted my help. I don’t know why Mr. Duchene broke in or what he was looking for.” The story was becoming more complicated by the moment.

  I spent a moment with the ice block and pick. “As to why I put the cloth over his head,” I said, “it’s no big secret. I didn’t want him to see Neva when she came downstairs. That’s all.”

  “Well, it sure enough discombobulated the man.” Monk gazed around as though he’d find the girl hiding under the sofa like a clump of dust and dog hair. “Where is Neva now?”

  “I took her where she’d be safe.”

  He eyed me sternly. “And where is that?”

  I felt a curious reluctance to tell. I’d never accuse Monk or Grat of blabbing a client’s business to anyone, but they didn’t seem to take Neva’s dilemma seriously. Or her fear for the horse.

  Or not yet. I expect they would when I got around to telling them about the “message” I’d received on the way home.

  I threw up my hands. “What difference does it make? Suffice it to say, she’s where she won’t be tied up and beaten.”

  “Tied up?” Grat glared at nothing. “Who—”

  “Yes. Tied up. By the very same grandfather who I left in like condition on the office floor. Served him right, too. Oh, Grat, Monk. You should’ve seen her poor raw wrists and her bruises. The one’s you could see, at any rate. She had—has—others. Neva really is a brave, strong girl. She deserves our help. All of our help, not just my poor efforts.”

  Muttering to himself, Monk brought the hash, still in the skillet, and some leftover gravy to the table, inviting us to dig in. We had a tomato, too, a big one, brought in to ripen before autumn’s first killing frost, and a loaf of fresh bread. My adventures of the day, I discovered, had made me hungry, and my mouth had already healed enough to making eating a pleasure. Well, except for a slight sting as juice from the tomato settled into my split lip.

  We ate in silence until the only thing left on the table were dirty dishes and a few crumbs.

  Grat pushed back his chair. “So, China, you’re sure Duchene was looking for something? Not just curious or trying a bit of petty thievery?”

  “Given the circumstances, you tell me. You’re the detective.” Perhaps I said this a bit too emphatically because I earned myself a sharp stare.

  “And he didn’t mention the missing horse?”

  “Not a word.”

  His left eyebrow arched in question. “I’d give a dollar to ask him why he didn’t.”

  “Me, too.” My agreement was heartfelt.

  Monk cleared his throat. “Sorry. If I’d had more time to think about it, I probably would’ve kept the old man here till I could get some sense out of him. And you, lambie. But you weren’t here, and he was choking and wheezing something fierce. Didn’t want him dying on the premises, if you want to know the truth. It’d cause all kinds of a stink.”

  Grat and I nodded, and without even thinking, I said, “I’ll wager he was putting on an act. The other man implied—”

  That was as far as I got.

  Grat, as though wishing to snatch himself bald-headed, scrubbed fingers through his thick dark hair. “What other man?” he demanded.

  18

  I’d planned all along to tell Monk and Gratton about the man on the street, but this was too abrupt. I’d meant to work my way into the story.

  Me and my big mouth.

  “Yes, what other man?” Monk echoed Grat’s question. “Are you telling us someone else was here? Did Duchene have a partner? How—”

  “No. Not here.” To give myself a little time, I got up and started clearing the table. I’d taken one load to the sink when Grat stopped me by the simple expedient of grabbing my wrist and holding it when I reached for his empty cup.

  Truthfully? I didn’t mind. Gratton has nice hands, warm and firm and dry. Sort of comforting, ordinarily, although for some reason this time I felt a kind of tingle.

  “So you met up with someone other than this Duchene character. Who?” he demanded. “Where?”

  “When?” Monk asked.

  “You two should try writing a column in the Spokesman-Review.” I tried, maybe not too successfully, to make light of the incident. “All those simple little interrogator questions.”

  “Tell us everything, sw ... China,” Grat demanded, “not just a few handpicked parts.”

  “Sit down, niece,” Monk said in evident agreement with Gratton, “and answer.”

  I did sit. I did answer. And I was actually glad Grat kept holding my hand. When I’d told about the man—not much to it really, the interlude had happened so fast—I faced yet another barrage of questions.

  Monk’s were perhaps the most practical, although Grat, being the man of action he is, were more to the point.

  “Did you have your pistol on you?” He’d given me a derringer not long ago, which was a pretty little pistol, but not especially accurate. Between the three of us, we’d decided the .32 was a better choice.

  “Yes.” Heat rose in my cheeks. “I couldn’t get to it. I told you. I was on the ground.”

  “He didn’t hit you?” Monk asked to make sure. I’d already told them he hadn’t.

  “No. He didn’t hit me. Just tripped me somehow so I fell. But—”

  “But?” Grat urged.

  “He was very intimidating. You have no idea.” I couldn’t meet their eyes.

  “Oh, I think I have,” Monk said. “Don’t forget, I saw you when you came in. You were determined not to show it, but lambie, you looked damn scared.”

  “Of course I was scared,” I burst out. “And I hate being scared. I hate men looming over me and wearing masks. Most of all, I hate being manhandled and talked down to. I hate ...”

  “Whoa,” Grat cut in. “What do you mean, manhandled. I thought he didn’t hurt you.”

  “Well—” I stopped. There’d be bruises on my upper arms when I undressed tonight, but I’d never in this world allow either Gratton or Monk a glimpse of them. “I mean he was just—”

  “Yeah. Intimidating.”

  From the way the two men looked at each other, they clearly weren’t buying all my story.

  “He was saying ‘give it back,’ eh, but not like he was looking for the horse,” my uncle said thoughtfully, going back over one of the things in my report.

  “Not unless they expected to find him in our office.” I’m afraid I sounded a bit tart. “And even he didn’t seem that stupid.”

  The corner of Grat’s mouth turned up in a grin.

  “And don’t forget he brought Neva into it, too,” I reminded them. “ ‘The message for you,’ he said, ‘is no more nosin
g around. This is the only warning you get. You don’t, you’ll be sorry.’ Then he said, ‘Tell the girl to give back what she took and do as she’s told. She don’t, she’ll be sorry.’

  “That’s as word perfect as I can remember, so he definitely wasn’t talking about Mercury. It sounds to me like whatever is missing has to be small and easily transportable, don’t you think?”

  “Yes. And he believes Neva has it,” Monk said.

  “Or maybe he suspects China does.” Grat wasn’t smiling now. “Otherwise, Duchene wouldn’t have been grubbing through the office and reading the mail.”

  Monk agreed. “Lambie,” he said to me, “you do manage to get yourself in predicaments, don’t you?”

  “This isn’t my fault,” I said.

  “Never is.” Monk gave me a level stare.

  “I mean it. I haven’t been nosing around, asking questions. I’ve just been trying to help Neva.” The memory of my note to the coroner crossed my mind and I felt just the tiniest bit guilty.

  “You’re sure you’ve never seen this feller before?” Grat again.

  “No, I’m not sure. How would I even know, but I don’t believe so. The only thing I can tell you is he has a deep voice and big, rough hands. They caught on my coat. He’s big all over. He ...” I thought a moment. “He has a funny kind of gait. He walked fast, then slow, and when he ran away, he kind of clippety-clopped.”

  Grat really did smile this time. “Clippety-clopped?”

  I slapped my hands on my thighs to demonstrate.

  “Sounds like a horse trotting on a paved road,” he said.

  “Well then, that’s what he sounds like—a horse.” I went on to describe the working man’s clothing he’d worn, as well as mention he had no particular odor. They laughed at the description. I can’t imagine why.

  The upshot was they’d be on the lookout for a man who sounded like a horse, but didn’t smell like one.

  I went to bed exhausted and disgruntled.

  “Say, China, little Miss Neva O’Dell, who you palmed off on me, is a firecracker. And she isn’t easy to keep track of, either.”

  Porter Anderson sat across from me in the visitor’s seat, sipping the coffee I’d brought down from the apartment and chomping enthusiastically on a snicker-doodle cookie. He tilted back, using the chair’s hind legs as runners and rocking to and fro. I breathed only lightly for fear a deeper breath would send both chair and occupant crashing to the floor. After the treatment it had received yesterday from Louis Duchene, I could only wonder to find it standing upright at all. Good thing the maker had used sturdy oak and plenty of glue.

  It was ten in the morning. Grat and Monk were off to their job at the fairgrounds, and I was tending to the business. Porter was my first visitor of the day. A surly visitor wearing a scowl.

  “Keep track of? What do you mean? What did she do now?” Gritting my teeth, I resisted the impulse to tell him to sit up straight and have a care for my furniture. And for his own spine, while he was at it.

  “For starters, she was gone when I knocked on her door this morning to see what she wanted for breakfast. She didn’t get back until an hour later. I was beginning to think she’d run off. Or that maybe somebody took her.” He chewed and swallowed before reaching for another cookie. “And wouldn’t he have been sorry?”

  The question sounded rhetorical.

  It beats me why people can’t, or won’t, behave in a way that furthers their own best interests. I found myself a bit exasperated with the girl.

  “Did she say where she’d gone?” I asked. “Or what she was doing?”

  “Not hardly. First she denied she’d been gone, then changed her mind and told me to mind my own business.”

  “She did?” This didn’t sound like the Neva I knew. She always struck me as too reticent to be so blunt.

  “In so many words.” Porter’s face flushed a little. “Said the less I knew the better off I’d be. Said she didn’t want me to get hurt.” He got even redder. “Hurt! Me!” He wound up with a softer, “I’ll show anybody hurt.”

  He seemed to have forgotten he’d already been hurt, if not directly because of Neva, because of me and my connection to her.

  “She’s a nice girl, Porter. I expect she was off somewhere taking care of her horse. And she’d feel bad if something did happen to you.”

  The chair slammed down. “Well, how the h ... Hades am I supposed to look out for her when she goes off who knows where and without a word? This is quite a job you’ve handed me, China.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I just couldn’t think of anybody else I trusted. You took such good care of me after Leila Drake’s gang tried to kill me, I figured you’re the best. Even if you did get me inebriated.” A little buttering up never hurts, right? And the reminder of my introduction to moonshine brought an evil-looking grin to Porter’s face, which had been my intention.

  “Tell me what can I do to repay you,” I said.

  The chair tilted again. “Put a spoke in the wheel of whoever is threatening the girl. Quicker she’s out of my hair, the better. And take care of yourself while you’re at it.” He gazed around the room as though searching for something. “I don’t know why Monk and Grat are leaving you alone without protection. One of them oughta be here with you.”

  I hate to say so, and I’d never admit such a thing to Porter, but the same thought had occurred to me. I kept hearing things that weren’t there, and flinching at as little as the flicker of a falling leaf.

  “Oh, I’m fine,” I said, smiling as though I had the utmost confidence in myself. “I have my pistol, and Cosimo Pinelli—you remember him, don’t you? Our next-door neighbor?—is keeping his eyes open and his ears cocked in case anything out of the ordinary happens. Why, I’ll bet he could repeat this entire conversation.”

  “Huh. Maybe if he spoke English.” Porter snorted, showing he did indeed remember Mr. Pinelli.

  The telephone rang, at which he jumped like a frog. I welcomed the interruption—a request from one of Doyle & Howe’s regular clients asking us to verify whether a certain gentleman paid his bills. Or not.

  A simple bread-and-butter problem, easy to fix. If we were lucky, it would net enough to pay the Washington Water Power Company for our electric lighting this month. As soon as Porter left, I’d probably do the job myself. Anyway, I noted details and told the client we’d be back with him within the week. Porter sat still and looked impressed.

  I put my pencil down , set my notes aside, and folded my hands. “Do you want me to speak to Neva? You see, right now, I don’t have any idea where she’s put the horse. I didn’t want her to tell me. What I don’t know, I can’t repeat. But if you think it’ll be helpful, I’ll try to get her cooperation.”

  Porter huffed out through his nose, sounding a small bull-like snort. “Nah. Better if you stay away. Somebody might follow you right to her and we don’t want that. I can tell her about you getting stopped, and let her know what’s going on.

  “She needs to hear the message,” he added when I started to protest. “Whatever they think she has, well, better if it comes out in the open.”

  I couldn’t disagree, and not just because my curiosity was killing me.

  “Anyhow,” Porter continued, “I don’t look for Neva to listen to a word I say, so when she sneaks out tonight or tomorrow to check on the horse again, I’ll follow her. Don’t worry. I won’t let her spot me. But at least we’ll have a handle on where she goes and who she sees.”

  I found myself nodding agreement. I didn’t like doing this sort of thing, tricking the girl into giving up her dearly held secrets, but like Porter, I couldn’t see any other way to keep her safe.

  Our conversation grew cheerier after settling a course of action on Neva’s behalf. Porter brightened, telling me he was making a stop at Dodson’s Jewelers with an eye to buying Alice a pair of diamond earbobs. And then, having eaten a whole plateful of cookies, he departed at last, promising to report back the next morning. I’d have t
o bake again, perhaps something chocolate.

  The small job I’d contracted took only half an hour—hardly longer than it took to create the invoice.

  I found myself too restless to sit still and work on the ledger. Restless and itchy, as if sensing some kind of calamity in the offing. Hoping to evade my own thoughts—or maybe they were fears—I decided to take Nimble with me to the post office to mail the aforementioned billing statement.

  I’d barely stepped outside and locked the office door behind me than the woman who ran a lovely little café up on Howard Street joined me on the sidewalk. Mrs. Flynn, tall and heavily boned although thin, worked hard to make her little hole-in-the-wall restaurant a success. Incongruous as it may be, given her height and a certain mannish appearance, she catered mainly to ladies. She furnished her place with tables covered with embroidered or lacy cloths, supplied delicate wire chairs, and served a light, delectable menu with the most wonderful pastries. I loved it, and always felt comfortable there when I dined alone.

  “Good day, Miss Bohannon, I’ve been meaning to ask you something—for a favor, actually,” Mrs. Flynn greeted me, tilting the brim of her plain felt hat to shade her eyes from the sun. The cloudless sky was the brilliant blue only found on crisp, sunny autumn days. Even the dust from the street, roiled by passing horses, buggies, and heavy freight wagons, failed to sully the clarity of the afternoon.

  “Yes, Mrs. Flynn? How can I help you?” Headed in the same direction, we started off together.

  Happy as a bird on a wire, Nimble pranced at my side carrying her red leather leash in her mouth. Her unusual looks, by which I mean her wedge-shaped head, curly, pale-gray coat, and whippy tail, always drew attention when we went out, and today was no exception. I smiled at a little boy who, holding tightly to his mother’s hand, walked backward, his wondering gaze fixed on her. It wouldn’t be the first time Nimble had been taken for a tame lamb.

  If it hadn’t been for the boyand for Nimble, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the man barreling down on us. A ham-handed bullying type of man so rude as to give the boy a shove as they came abreast, knocking the child to the ground.