A Touch of Frost

by Jo Goodman

  “Do you think so? The conclusion seemed one-sided to me.”

  “Only because you didn’t get your way.”

  Fiona gave no indication whether or not she thought this was true. She said quietly, “It occurred to me that you would not want to make the trip by yourself, not after what happened to you on the journey here. And now that we’ve had this terrible thing happen to Blue, it makes more sense for you to have an escort. Why not me?”

  “Why not you?” Phoebe could only shake her head. “I truly do not know where to begin answering that.”

  Fiona finished chopping a carrot and scraped the medallions to one side of the cutting board. She chose another. “You must see that the men cannot escort you. They have responsibilities here. Remington was the only one who might have been spared because Thaddeus often sends him to auctions or away on some bit of legal business, but we all know how Remington failed to protect you, and given your feelings for him, it would hardly be seemly for him to accompany you.”

  This was so much for Phoebe to absorb that she lost sight of Fiona’s point and fixed her argument on what pricked the most. “You don’t know what my feelings are for Remington.”

  “You think so? It hardly requires a leap of imagination to see that you fancy yourself in love with him. Say what you like, Phoebe, but I will remain firm in my views.”

  “Then I won’t waste my breath denying or confirming. Let us consider practicalities for a moment. How would we arrange going back to New York?” Phoebe held her gaze steady. “I have no money to purchase tickets or to set myself up in New York once I return. I gave up my lodgings. I have no job to go back to and no promise that one would be made for me.”

  Fiona dismissed that with an airy wave, careless that she was holding the chef’s knife in that hand. “None of that should be a consideration. I have money.”

  “You? You never have money.”

  Fiona shrugged. “I do now.”

  “But . . . but how?”

  “What do you mean how? I have it. That should be enough for you.”

  Phoebe jumped away from the stove when sizzling meat and butter spat at her again. She turned back to the skillet, grateful for the distraction, and dealt with browning the fillet. “Did you sell your jewelry?”

  “Lord, no. All but a few pieces are paste anyway. I thought you knew.”

  “How would I know that?”

  “You went to that private school, didn’t you? How do you think I paid for that? How do you think I paid for any of the privileges we enjoyed? You cannot be so naïve, Phoebe. My wages as a performer would have barely kept us fed and clothed, so I accepted gifts. Why wouldn’t I? I had many generous admirers who could well afford to part with tokens of affection. And some of those tokens were worth a great deal. I sold pieces bit by bit as I needed the money. I had paste copies made—Mr. Meir was an excellent artisan and could keep a secret—and I used the excess of funds for incidentals.”

  “Incidentals,” Phoebe repeated. She set down the fork she’d been using to turn the beef and pulled out a chair to sit beside Fiona. “My education was no incidental.”

  Fiona shrugged again and did not look up from the cutting board. “Well, perhaps there was occasion to use the money for more than trifling things.”

  “Fiona.”

  “You are not going to become maudlin, are you? It’s done, and you know as well as I do that it was the very least I could do.”

  “Does it seem to you that I have been ungrateful? I’m not, and I should have expressed it more often. I did. To others. I should have said it to you.” She laid a hand over Fiona’s to stop the rhythmic chopping. She waited until Fiona set down the knife and looked at her before she spoke. “And you were right that I knew about the jewelry, or at least that I suspected. I shouldn’t have lied. You caught me unawares.” She lightly squeezed Fiona’s hand. “I am grateful, Fiona, and I am sorry that I ever gave you reason to doubt it.”

  Fiona’s response was a faint, watery smile. Her amethyst eyes glistened. “Onions,” she said in way of explanation for her weepy response, although she had yet to cut into a single one.

  “If you like.” Phoebe removed her hand. “Tell me about this money you have. If not jewelry, then how?”

  “Ellie.”

  “What?”

  “You should not frown so deeply, Phoebe. You will engrave your brow with creases and age well before your time.”

  “Yes, because that is what is most important right now.” Still, she schooled her features because she knew Fiona would otherwise remain distracted. “Ellie. Tell me about that.”

  “There is nothing to tell. Not really. She offered me money. I swear to you, I never asked her for it. Even if I suspected she had funds sufficient for my needs—which I absolutely did not—I would not have approached her.”

  “But you took money from her.”

  “Not exactly. I don’t have it. She does, but it is mine if I want it. It will pain me some to tell her that I will accept her offer. I made it clear that if the time came, I would only take it on condition of a loan. I have every intention of repaying her. I will not be beholding to Ellie Madison.”

  “How much money are we talking about?”

  “Very nearly one thousand dollars.”

  Phoebe found the amount unfathomable. “You must have misunderstood her.”

  “I assure you, I did not. She showed me her savings book. She has the money in the bank; it is a matter of withdrawing it, which Ben can do without raising the least suspicion because they share the account.” She put up a hand to forestall Phoebe’s next question. “Her husband,” she said. “I knew he was a faithless drunk, but even faithless drunks can get lucky. He was a partner in a silver mine. When he died, the partners bought her out. She wanted the bird in hand, so she accepted their offer. She tells me that if she had stayed in, her housekeeper would have a housekeeper. She would be that well situated.”

  “It seems to me that she was thinking of Ben’s future back then. Why would she want to give you any part of that?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? She wants me gone. She has from the first. I have often wondered why she has not poisoned me already, and I can only imagine that it is because she does not have the stomach for murder. It certainly has crossed my mind to attempt the same with her, but then she doesn’t allow me in the kitchen long enough to see it through.”

  “Fiona!”

  “I am not serious, Phoebe. Truly. Besides, I have no idea where she keeps the arsenic.”

  Phoebe slumped in her chair. “Lord, Fiona, if I age before my time, it will all be on your head.”

  Chuckling, Fiona got up and took over at the stove. “If you trust yourself with the knife, finish the vegetables.”

  Phoebe pulled the cutting board toward her and began to work. “I realize that you think I should know the answer to this, but I don’t. Why does Ellie want you gone?”

  “As a rule, women do not like to share a man. Neither Ellie nor I are exceptions to the rule. She wants Thaddeus back in her bed and I have him in mine. I acquit them of carrying on behind my back, but I do not acquit them of being tempted.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Phoebe. “Thaddeus loves you, Fiona. He adores you. I am certain I can speak for him on that count. I don’t know what Ellie thinks because she keeps her own counsel, but I believe you are wrong there as well. It is your lack of confidence that has made you suspicious of them. I have never observed anything between them that leads me to suppose they are tempted in the manner you are suggesting.”

  “I have never lacked confidence. You would know that if you stood in my shoes. You would know everything if you stood in my shoes.”

  “I am trying,” Phoebe said. “Except for your own imaginings, which are hardly evidence, what is there to suggest that they ever shared a bed?”

  Now it was Fiona w
ho turned away from the stove and stared at Phoebe. “What is there?” she asked. “There’s Ben.”

  “Ben?” But even as Phoebe said it aloud, she knew, and wondered why she hadn’t known it before.

  “Yes. Ben. Thaddeus’s bastard son.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Natty Rahway managed not to put his fist squarely in the middle of Doyle Putty’s face, or jam it into the underside of his weaker brother’s even weaker chin, but it was a narrow thing. What he did was pound his fist against the table hard enough to make it jump and shudder and push the Putty brothers back in their chairs.

  The Sweet Clementine Saloon was far less crowded than the last time he’d shared a table with Doyle and Willet, but Natty understood the consequences of drawing even a single customer’s attention to them. He regretted his loss of temper before the table stopped juddering. He leaned forward and spoke quietly, harshly. His narrowed eyes darted but when they lingered, they lingered on Doyle.

  “We agreed I would follow them,” he said. “We sat right here and agreed that I would handle the situation.”

  “There was no agreement,” said Doyle. “There was only you saying what you would do. Willet and I talked about it and decided that wasn’t good enough. We brought you along. You joined us, not the other way around.” He nudged his brother with his elbow. “Tell him, Willet. Remind him who it was that set this in motion. Remind him how we came to answer the call.”

  Willet pulled his chair back to the table and picked up his beer. “Doyle’s right, Natty. We did invite you to come along. Seemed fair as you’d done right by us in the past. Of course, nothin’ we ever done together was like this. More risk. More reward. I know you see that. It’s on account of our cousin that we heard tell of this in the first place. There’s no gettin’ around that.”

  Doyle nodded. “Les is a good’un. All the Brownlees are. Hard, honest folk, and we Puttys pity ’em for it. All the same, it was Les who put us on to this, even if he doesn’t know it, and we aim to see that he never finds out. Let him live in ignorance, I say. Willet agrees.”

  Willet nodded. “I do. No sense in the families never speakin’ to each other because of something like this.”

  “What this are you talking about?” asked Natty. He pushed his beer aside, too angry to drink. “The robbery? The abduction? The goddamn murders?”

  Willet shrugged. “All of it, I expect. Les doesn’t put his fingers in any of those pies.”

  “Jesus,” Natty said under his breath. “No one was supposed to get hurt. Do either of you recall that?”

  “On the train,” said Doyle. “And afterward, with the Apple girl. But things have changed since then. That job’s done, and we have an obligation to cut ourselves from connections to it.”

  “Certainly,” said Natty. “But murdering a lawman?”

  “And a whore,” said Willet.

  Natty swore softly. He looked around. There was a tall fellow at the bar, pale yellow hair, mustache, looking their way. Natty stared him down and he turned back to the bar and ordered a whiskey. “We should take this up to my room, boys. Better to talk privately.”

  Doyle almost blew out a mouthful of beer. He choked it down and accepted Willet pounding twice on his back. “Not a chance in hell.”

  “Not a chance,” Willet echoed. “We’ll stay here.”

  Natty kept his fury in check, in large part because he was mostly furious with himself. The Putty brothers had duped him, and he was having difficulty believing they had even tried, let alone succeeded. He was supposed to have been on the train to Liberty Junction when it left Collier, but he got held up by two of Miss Sylvie’s girls just as the deputy and Caroline Carolina were leaving the cathouse. He knew now it was no accident that they waylaid him, but it was his fault that he underestimated the time it would take him to reach the station and purchase his ticket. The girls couldn’t have known the consequences of keeping him from the train would be the eventual murder of their friend, but he could draw a straight line, and this one led from the Putty brothers to Liberty Junction and right back to the brothel. Even worse, Doyle and Willet wouldn’t have known about the whore’s intention to go to the Junction if he hadn’t told them. He was the one who had overheard her talking about her plans. Maybe he had gotten a little too full of himself thinking that they were a slow pair, always a half step behind.

  They often were, but not always. Lesson learned. He would not forget it.

  Not raising his voice above a whisper, he asked, “What was the point of killing them?”

  “Information,” said Willet. He rubbed the underside of his feeble chin with the back of his hand. “You were wrong about it being a seed pearl dog collar that turned up. It was that ring you first mentioned to us. The one Doyle got from that old woman on the train. That’s what the whore had.”

  Doyle tapped his brother’s beer glass. “Don’t know where you came by that other story. We told you we didn’t have a piece that like, but you always have your own ideas about such things. It’s no never mind now. It was the ring. We saw it plain as day when this rough little rascal knocked into the table where it was being examined. I was sitting close enough that I could have scooped it up, but that would have been wrong . . . and stupid. The deputy got it and eventually it was returned to the old woman.”

  Willet nodded. “Doyle and me pondered long and hard trying to come up with the name of the fellow we sold the ring to. Don’t know that he ever said, and it wasn’t important at the time, but we figure that’s information that the deputy heard straight from Miss Carolina. That didn’t leave us much choice, did it?”

  “And?”

  “And we got it. Name’s James Cashdollar. Whiskey drummer out of Denver. The deputy wasn’t giving him up, but the whore came around when she saw how serious we were. I guess she didn’t realize that we’d have to kill her no matter what, seein’ how she saw us real good.”

  Doyle pointed to himself. “I got a face folks trust. I guess she believed me when I said we’d help her get out of town, set her up someplace else.”

  Natty closed his eyes briefly. “Yes, Doyle, trust is what comes to mind when I look at you. I heard there have been questions being asked. Anyone come to you?”

  “We weren’t there,” said Doyle. “Least not so anybody knows. Lots of ways in and out of a whorehouse where nobody really sees you.”

  “So it’s done.”

  “More or less. There’s Cashdollar. Still need to take care of him.”

  Willet finished his beer. “And the Apple girl. She was there when the old woman got her ring back. And you recall that fellow that was lying in the aisle on the train? Turns out he’s Remington Frost. He was there.”

  “Are you planning on killing everyone?”

  Doyle said, “Not if we get to Cashdollar first. I’m just being practical here. If the law finds him before we do, then we might have another situation on our hands.”

  “So the two of you could be identified and connected to the robbery, but I’m in the clear.”

  “That’s right,” said Willet. “Nothing to connect you to anything.”

  “Except the two of you.” Natty thought Willet and Doyle looked surprised to hear it, just as if they hadn’t already considered it and what it could mean to them. Natty slid his beer in front of him again and raised his glass as if he intended to toast the Putty brothers. “Something to think about, isn’t it, boys?”

  • • •

  Phoebe did not know why she had expected that Remington would return before nightfall, but she had. Several times after dinner, while Fiona and Thaddeus cleared the table and cleaned up so Ellie could rest, Phoebe found herself drifting to the front porch in anticipation of his arrival. It was there that Thaddeus found her sitting on the swing and gently explained to her how it was going to be.

  “Days?” she asked. “Where will he stay?”


  “I suppose that depends on where the trail takes them. Could be he’ll spend some nights in Collier. Jackson might send him to Denver. He’ll be fine.”

  “Will he?”

  “Yes.” The swing rocked as he sat beside her. “What about you? Will you be fine?”

  “I’m not the one chasing murderers.”

  “I’ve found that is rarely significant. You’re waiting and you’re worried. That takes a toll like nothing else.”

  Phoebe nodded. She said nothing for a time, working up the courage to talk to him about the other matter on her mind. “You and Fiona were together for a long time in the kitchen.”

  He chuckled. “There was a lot of food to clear. I think the two of you emptied the larder. No matter. It was delicious. Fiona said that was because of you, so thank you.”

  “She did her share.”

  “Of stirring and chopping, she says. Fiona never misled me that she was a cook.” When Phoebe fell silent again, Thaddeus gently prompted her. “What is it? I think there’s something more you want to say.”

  “Fiona wants me to leave, Thaddeus. She’s pressed me several times. Twice today. While we were preparing dinner, she suggested that she accompany me back to New York. She presented her idea as though returning with me was for my benefit in the event I was afraid to travel alone.” Phoebe stole a sideways glance at Thaddeus. He was staring straight ahead, his granite profile without expression. She could not begin to guess what he was thinking. She waited.

  “I thought . . .” His voice trailed away as soon as he began. Eventually he cleared his throat and asked, “What did you say?”

  “It is disappointing that you feel the need to ask, but I understand. I informed her that under no circumstances was I going back, which is why we never seem to close the door on the subject. She did not explicitly say that she would not leave New York after escorting me there, but I suspect she plans to stay.”