Training Ivy [How The West Was Done 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Karen Mercury

  Perhaps Ivy noticed it, for she took Neil’s arm and said soothingly, “I only need to find some soap, although I’m sure Father has some in his house.” She looked to Harley from under her lashes, as though accustomed to playing the sly flirt. “You’ll be by Vancouver House later on, won’t you, Harley?”

  Harley opened his mouth to reply, but a strange interruption took place then. The pharmacy’s front door banged open—at first everyone assumed it was the incessant wind—and a gangly fellow who would probably be bald in a few years blew into the room.

  He was all agog about something, and when he spied Ivy, he blared out, “It happened! I ran all the way here to tell you!”

  Ivy let go of Neil’s arm and approached the gangly guy. “What happened, Zeke? Because the prediction about the Indian and the peaches has already come true! That man standing right there is living proof of that.”

  Zeke gripped Ivy’s arm as though to keep her from blowing away. “It has? Well, get set for this!” With wide eyes, Zeke scanned the room, impressing every single jar of boiled dove’s eggs with his importance. When he spoke, it was with the voice of a spirit from beyond the grave. “A large amount of water has fallen from the sky.”

  Everyone swiveled their heads and frowned at the lone sooty window, trying to see the rainclouds.

  Chang said, “What? It hasn’t rained for over a week.”

  Zeke looked at Chang. “Oh, hey, Chang. Thanks for that tea, by the way. It really works wonders. No, what I’m referring to is Whit Gentry!”

  Neil frowned. “Gentry? He owns the ranch next to mine. How did a large amount of water fall on him?” He looked at a wall. “An overhead boiler burst?”

  Zeke snapped his fingers. “Nope! He was walking down by the livery just now when—you know the second story, populated by prairie flower ladies? Well, one of them opened up a window and decided to dump out her bathwater! Yup! Swoosh, all over poor ol’ Whit.”

  Harley chuckled. “Well, that definitely sounds like a prophecy come true, all right.”

  Zeke continued, “But that’s not all. Ol’ Whit Gentry keeled right on over!”

  Harley said, “Prostitute’s bathwater will do that every time.”

  But Zeke was adamant. “I’m telling you, he’s dead! He’s so dead there’s not enough of him left to snore.”

  Chapter Five

  The group raced down Thornburgh Avenue.

  Faster than the wind Ivy ran—faster than the tumbling shrubs that chased her.

  Neil was by far the swiftest runner, and as he pulled ahead, he huffed, “How on earth could a bathtub full of water have killed a man?”

  Zeke gasped. “Unless she threw the bathtub down on top of him?”

  This was beyond exhilarating! This was exactly the sort of adventure Ivy had been longing for. For months—years, really, if one counted the time spent languishing in her mother’s sad, sickly house in Hyde Park. Perhaps it was her overexuberance to finally participate in life, but Ivy raced almost as fast as Neil. As she jogged, she admired his long, muscular legs and how the sinews of his arms actually flowed under the sleeves of his cotton shirt, cuffs rolled up to his elbows. Here was a man who could protect a gal—and much more.

  “I’ve got to meet this Caleb fellow.” Harley jogged next to her, being burlier and more suited to wrestling than sprinting.

  “I’d like to meet him, too,” Ivy agreed.

  Harley had a devilish glint in his fiery eyes. “I should go check on those men grading, but this dead body sounds much more interesting.”

  Ivy added, “Items have been flung about in Neil’s vicinity lately. I believe he must be the conductor of all this psychic activity.”

  Harley scrunched his brow. “I do believe that. He seems like a conductive fellow.”

  Ivy let out a whoop of happiness. She’d only just arrived in town, and already she’d met two men worthy of her interest. She’d gone ten years in Hyde Park without meeting a vibrant, lusty man. It was true what she’d heard. Men of the Far West were much more alive than the stultified mummies back East. It must be the good hard living, the fresh air, and the difficult physical labor that did it.

  In Laramie City, men roped cows, built fences, and graded railroads. Back East, men congratulated themselves if they lifted a gin fizz. They slowly eroded into their pasty, pudding-like bodies until they became blobs of blancmange, discussing finance. That was what had ultimately been Ivy’s downfall in her wedding planning. Imagining being married to a blood pudding encased in a tuxedo had sent her shrieking to the train station.

  There not being much to do in Laramie City other than drink, gamble, and hover over dead bodies, the scene of the crime was bustling. All of the calico queens from the second story had come downstairs in their finery, or lack of it. Ivy saw that apparently white petticoats had replaced the formerly fashionable red, and some were bustled at the small of the back. One prairie flower wore an intriguing swan-bill corset, which Ivy longed to ask about. The taller shape of it gave an enviable hourglass silhouette to the voluptuous gal.

  Ivy was glad when Neil ignored these women, peeling them away from their arguments over the body without a glance at their displayed charms. Perhaps it had something to do with the “prick tea” that Harley had seemed to be making a gag about.

  “Now who’s the one who dumped the bathwater on poor Whit?” Neil shouted as Ivy and Harley shouldered their way through the press of people.

  The hooker told her story—basically, that she was sick and tired of people using her bathwater, it was filled with sludge, and she was in a huff by the time she’d caught an actual cat perched on the edge of the tub, pissing. So she’d hauled it to the window to dump and start from scratch. The tub had slipped from her grip.

  “This is Harland Park, the Indian looking for the peaches,” Ivy told a large-eyed Zeke. “He’s been to India, and he went into Chang’s looking for—ah, for therapeutic peach pits.”

  “Amazing,” breathed Zeke as Harley squatted next to the body.

  Ivy squatted down, too. Poor ol’ Whit Gentry, apparently a rancher of some kind, was laid out flat on his back with a hand on his stomach, as though already being processed by the undertaker. Of course he was soaking wet through and through, his slouch hat having been knocked off by the impact of the tin bathtub, which sat ten feet away after having bounced off his head. With his eyes wide open and no other indication of skullduggery, the logical conclusion was that the tub’s wallop had bashed him dead.

  “A sheer accident,” Ivy said assertively.

  “Not entirely.” Kneeling now in the dirt, Harley gingerly moved aside the jaunty scarf tied in a knot around poor old Gentry’s neck. Red welts circled his otherwise browned neck. “Looks like he was strangled, doesn’t it? And look here.” Harley pointed to Gentry’s forehead, where a strange indentation marked him. The odd shape was still in the stages of turning black and green from the bruising of whatever had struck him.

  “A part of the tub?” Ivy inquired.

  “Could be,” Harley retorted in his rich British lilt. Ivy could listen to him recite from the Bible with his full and resonant voice, like an actor’s. “But the mark around the neck indicates he was strangled. Can you look about for anything that might’ve done it? Piece of rope, a reata?”

  “Zeke, help me look,” Ivy said as Neil waved a dismissive arm at the crowd.

  “Back off, back off! And don’t touch that bathtub!” he shouted. He jammed his hands onto his hips and glared down at Harley. “You too, you spoony cove! Get away from my dead body.”

  Harley uncoiled his strong, sinewy frame, manfully standing to return Neil’s glare. “Your dead body shows marks indicative of strangulation.”

  Ivy grabbed ahold of Neil’s arm. “And look at that odd mark on his forehead.” She went to check the bathtub, to see if any part of it matched up with the shape, which seemed to be a large C with a bit of a tail to it.

  Zeke was asking the ladies and assorted gentlemen, “Did anyon
e actually see Mr. Gentry walking under the window? Getting hit by the bathtub?”

  A merchant said he’d seen Mr. Gentry being hit by the tub, but once it happened, he’d become so full of mirth he’d run upstairs to join in the laughter of what was obviously an intentional joke. A couple more men said the same thing, but no one had seen any strangulation going on.

  Ivy reported to Neil, “There’s nothing on the tub that matches his forehead.”

  Zeke interjected, “Water will fall from the sky and an everlasting imprint will be made. That was Caleb’s prophecy! There’s an imprint on his forehead!”

  Neil slapped Zeke across the chest with the back of his hand. “Will you stow it with your goddamned prophecies? This is apparently a murder, not a goddamned spirit rapping!”

  “Actually,” Harley intoned, “a séance might not be out of order in this situation. I’ve been looking into this whole spiritualism movement for a while now. All of Caleb’s prophecies have come true and seem to be interconnected. Neil here seems to be the conductor, the channel that is drawing all of this activity and information to us. If we could get this Caleb fellow to come into town and meet with us, a spiritual ‘sitting’ might reveal more details.”

  Neil protested, “I’ll conduct an orchestra before I’ll be a channel for any such spoony bullshit! And that Caleb invert—I’m telling you, he’s studying to be a half-wit. No, leave me out of this spiritual blather. I’m just going to get a couple coves to take Gentry to the death-hunter’s and then ride out to find his wife.”

  “Death-hunter’s?” Harley inquired.

  “Yes—you know! The undertaker’s!” Neil snapped irritably.

  Harley frowned. “I know what you meant. You just speak like a goddamned Australian convict. A chum, eh? A flash cove who’s been bang up to the mark?”

  Neil laughed nervously. “Everyone talks like that in Australia. Hey, Charlie! I need you and Wade to bring Gentry here over to McClure Brothers.”

  Harley muttered confidentially to Ivy, “I speak eighteen languages, and I know my dialects. And your head of security is an escaped convict, probably from Tasmania.”

  Ivy said, “And how do you know he ‘escaped’?”

  “Why else would he come to America? Most Australians are more interested in mining for the gold they’ve been discovering right on their own continent.”

  Ivy didn’t like that these two vibrant, hale men seemed to loathe each other. She’d been looking forward to courting both of them and choosing between them. Now it appeared that whichever one she settled on would be murdered by the loser. “Now, Harley. Whatever deed he committed has been paid in full, or they wouldn’t have let him out. Oh, what is this?”

  A departing hooker had been standing on a gauntlet, a beautifully fringed and beaded glove that had been stamped into the dirt. Gingerly lifting it, Ivy shook it out, and a length of twisted rope fell onto the ground. Only a foot long or so, the rope was thin and terminated at both ends with a large glass trade bead.

  Harley squatted down next to her. He looked at the rope. Then at Gentry’s neck. Then at the rope. “This could be what was used to strangle him.”

  As Charlie and Wade lifted the body, Ivy asked, “Yes, but what is it? It’s so short.”

  “Could be the drawstring for something.” Harley placed the rope inside the glove and pocketed them both. “Someone’s poke or purse.”

  “Like a sort of reticule?”

  “Exactly. Say, Neil. This is going to be an odd request.”

  Neil fairly snarled at his adversary. His nostrils flared as he looked sideways down his lovely aquiline nose at the linguist. “Odder than anything else you’ve said?”

  “Yes, probably. I want to photograph that body. I’ve brought camera equipment for surveying, and it’s all been taken to Vancouver House. You say the body will be at the undertaker’s?”

  “Yes. But why would you need to photograph it?”

  “It’s a new theory I’ve been hankering to test out. Don’t worry, it won’t harm the body in any way.”

  “Well, you know,” Neil said in a new way that was somewhat friendly. “I’ve seen that symbol before, the one on his forehead. I just can’t pinpoint exactly where. But I’ve got a hunch it’s stamped on some paper on the desk of Miss Hudson’s father. Not that it involves him,” he was quick to tell Ivy. “Just that I’ve seen it, incidentally, emblazoning a paper of some sort.” He frowned and looked far away at the horizon. “But I’ve got to get over to Gentry’s ranch now, find his wife.” Looking back to Harley, his exquisite face almost had the cast of nobility when he said seriously, “You’ll look out after Miss Hudson.”

  “Most assuredly.”

  “I’m coming, too!” cried Zeke. “I can look for the paper you’re referring to. After all, paper is my job.”

  “No,” said Neil. “You’re coming with me to Gentry’s ranch. If Katie Gentry is going to be sobbing all over me, as I reckon she will, I’m going to need someone more familiar with female emotional turbulence.”

  “I? But I’ve never been married,” Zeke protested.

  “That wasn’t what I meant,” Neil said darkly.

  So they parted ways, Ivy glad that she was at last alone with the accomplished British traveler. Not only was she able to take his solid, substantial arm and parade down Thornburgh, but a heat emanated from him that made her feel assured and confident in some odd way. That was it—she felt protected. The serious mountain man rifle slung across his back, the strength in his swagger, the livid, deep scar across his cheekbone—all these things combined to melt Ivy into a particularly feminine puddle of frailty. Oddly enough, this alleged feminine weakness actually made her feel stronger than she had in years.

  Exhilaration flowed through her veins as she strolled with the powerful adventurer. What a day! An hour ago she’d walked the opposite direction clutching the arm of a different man. She was becoming quite the bon vivant, if not something of a fresh judy! “So what is this photographic idea you have?”

  “Well. It will sound odd, but there is some scientific basis for it. The idea has been floating about that if you can photograph the retina of a recently deceased person, the retina will function like the plate of a camera and display to you the image of the murderer.”

  Ivy’s jaw hung so low she couldn’t even speak.

  Harley continued, “Hear me out. If the pupil becomes hugely dilated at a moment of sheer fear, anger, shock, or other strong emotion, the concept is that the image of the last thing the victim sees remains fixed forever. Or for a short time after death, thus why it needs to be photographed to preserve the image.”

  “But,” Ivy gasped at last. “What if the last thing he sees is—oh, I don’t know, say, the floor? Or the back of his own hand as he lies face down on that floor? Or the barrel of a gun?”

  Harley shrugged. “Theoretically we’d get a photograph of the gun, at least. And the idea has gained enough footholds in society, at least in some shady underworlds, that some murderers have resorted to gouging out the eyes of their victims.”

  If Harley expected her to cringe in shock, then he was in for a surprise. “This sounds like that spirit photography I’ve heard about. Some photographers have been able to capture images of the dearly departed standing behind a subject. Of course, the ones I’ve seen mostly look like a photograph of the departed glued to a stick that someone is holding up. Completely ridiculous.”

  “I’d like to try my hand at that as well!” Harley cried enthusiastically. “If it’s true that your beloved Neil is a conductor, a medium, if you will, then we might be able to get some interesting results.”

  “Oh, he’s not my ‘beloved.’ I only just arrived, as you know. I barely know the man.”

  “Really? You seem to have such camaraderie, such an emotional connection. That’s just my observation, of course. And the fact that he’s adamantly and hotly competing with me for your hand.”

  At this, Ivy did cringe. “What gives you the idea he wa
nts my hand?”

  “My dear.” Harley patted her hand. “I’ve made a study of the mating rituals of humankind—a sort of amateur ‘sexologist,’ if you will. And the way that fellow took such a rabid and instant dislike to me tells me that I’m a vast threat to him.”

  Did Harley insinuate that he, too, was fighting for her hand? Ivy had never been in such an enviable and yet terrifying predicament. She decided to play coy. “Perhaps he took an instant dislike to you because you were accusing him of being an escaped convict.”

  “No. He already loathed me the moment he laid eyes on me.”

  Ivy said flippantly, “Perhaps it’s that sort of loathing that also contains love. Perhaps he sees qualities in you that he wishes he possessed.”

  They were approaching the front steps of Vancouver House now, so Ivy had to release Harley’s arm. He said thoughtfully, “Intriguing concept. Masculine competition that also contains love…”

  “Father’s carriage is gone,” Ivy said as a maid let them in the front door. She skirted around the many trunks that evidently contained Harley’s surveying and photographic equipment.

  “He left you this,” the maid said, handing Ivy a note.

  Ivy unfolded it.

  My Dear Daughter,

  I must go back to Sherman Summit to see about a situation. These Irish tracklayers are always causing incidents. Please help make Captain Park at home. Tell him to check on the water line for the roundhouse.

  Love, Father

  P.S. I will wire Liberty and tell her you are returning home.

  P.P.S. There is no more honey to be had anywhere in town. If you see any, please purchase it for me.

  “All of it” was inserted after the word “purchase,” using an arrow.

  “Honey!” Ivy cried, exasperated.

  “Excuse me?” Harley looked up from unscrewing a lens of some sort. A case open before him contained many mechanical parts that probably all fit together in some way.