by Cameron Judd
Macky took no seeming notice of the woman until she was halfway up the staircase; then she caught his eye and he froze, gripping his broom so tightly it looked as if he might break it. Macky’s eyes kept drifting from the woman’s face to her chest and back again. Luke had to grin. Macky might be mentally limited, but he was a man all the same, and a vision such as Katrina Haus could not fail to catch even his innocent eye.
Katrina noticed Macky and turned toward him, studying him closely. Luke could not tell whether she was enjoying his obvious discomfort or simply found him interesting for some reason. “Good morning, young man,” she said in a clear, delicate voice made musical by the hint of a foreign accent Luke couldn’t readily identify. German, he decided. Or something close. Luke was crossing the street to the emporium as she spoke to Macky. In Luke’s hands was a flyer he’d just torn down from the dress shop wall.
“Good…good morning, ma’am,” Macky said.
“You’re doing quite a good job in sweeping these steps.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
It was obvious to Luke that Katrina had detected Macky’s simplicity. She talked to him in the light tone one would use with a small child. “Is this your store?” she asked.
“My…my uncle’s store, ma’am.”
“Oh! And you work for him?”
“Yes, ma’am. I…I sweep and such. My name’s Macky. Macky Montague.”
“And you’re quite good at sweeping.” She approached Macky, reached out, and patted his shoulder. The bashful young man was taken aback, and looked over at Luke as if pleading for help.
So far Katrina had shown no indication of being aware that Luke was behind her and watching. Luke slipped closer and heard her say to Macky, “Your uncle, I’m told, is quite a wealthy man. Is that right, Macky?”
“I don’t know what that means, ma’am. Wealthy.”
“It means rich. That he’s got a lot of money.”
“I reckon he does, ma’am. He was a railroad man for most his life. He run the railroad.”
“So he drove a train? Like an engineer?”
Macky laughed, amused by the notion of his uncle wearing an engineer’s cap and physically operating a train. “No, ma’am. He run it like he runs this store. It was his railroad.”
“Well! Then certainly he must be a man of fortune! Tell me, young man, what is your name?”
“I’m Macky, ma’am. What’s your name?”
“You may call me Miss Haus. Or Prophetess Haus, if you wish.”
Macky asked, “What a prophetess?”
“A teacher. Someone who helps others learn.”
“Like in a schoolhouse?”
“Usually in a lecture hall or public auditorium. Sometimes other places.”
“Can you…can you teach folks to read if they don’t know how?”
She paused, silent. Luke held still, behind her and still unnoticed. She laughed softly, gently, and said, “You’re a sweet young man, Macky. You remind me of my brother.”
Macky was beginning to relax and enjoy being talked to by a beautiful woman, an experience he’d never had before. He didn’t seem to notice she had skirted his question. “What’s his name, your brother?” he asked.
“Peter. I called him Petey.”
“Where he now?”
“He’s…away. Gone.”
“He’ll come back?”
“He died, Macky.”
Macky’s eyes shifted from side to side and he swiped a nervous hand across his mouth. “I can’t be your brother, but I can be your friend, if you want me to,” he said.
She didn’t answer at once. Luke had the impression of a cunning mind at work. Which roused suspicion. A beautiful woman, exhibiting friendliness to a half-witted innocent, asking him about family wealth and playing to his inevitable shyness and awkwardness while clearly seeking to engage his sympathies…this woman merited keeping an eye on for reasons beyond being pleasant to look at.
“How very sweet!” she said. “A woman such as I am, living and traveling alone, is always in need of friends, Macky. The right kind of friends, ones who are kind and friendly and helpful and can be trusted. I think you might be that kind of person. I can usually tell. So yes, maybe you can be my friend in this town.”
“Yeah, ma’am. I’ll do that. If you be my friend, too.”
“Macky, I can be your friend in ways you may not even know about. All it takes is a little bit of money and a private place. I can make you feel…good. Make you very happy in ways I’ll bet no one has done for you before.”
Luke wouldn’t hear more. He understood what she was getting at even if the innocent Macky didn’t, and he wasn’t going to stand by and watch some conniving prostitute try to get her hands on Montague money by taking advantage of the simplicity of a man with a boy’s mind.
Luke took a step closer to the woman and deliberately rattled the flyer in his hand. Katrina heard it, turned, and looked closely at Luke. Her eye drifted down, she saw his badge, and suddenly her face blanked and she seemed to withdraw.
“Ma’am,” Luke said, touching the brim of his hat.
“Sir,” she replied, curt. Her eye seemed drawn to his chest to study his badge. His was drawn to hers for other reasons.
“Ma’am, I think you may have dropped this,” he said, holding up the flyer he’d torn down from the wall. He’d come up with this pretext for interruption when he’d noticed just now that the papers in her hand were other copies of this same flyer. She was going around town putting them up.
“Oh, I’m quite sorry,” she said, reaching to take the flyer from his hand. But he pretended not to notice her effort and drew the flyer back to read it.
“‘Prophetess Katrina Haus, Seer of Visions, Practicioner of Mediumship (Authentic) and Communicator with the Departed. Lecture and Communication to be held on Tuesday, Wiles Exhibition and Lecture Hall, Seven o’clock in the evening. Admission Seventy-five cents, Payable at Door.’”
“Yes, sir,” she said sweetly in her pleasant Germanic accent. Her hand flashed and suddenly she had snatched the flyer from Luke’s possession and added it to the stack in her other hand. “Thank you for returning my flyer to me, sir,” she went on. “There is, I trust, no problem in my posting these notices in public places? I inquired in the town hall after arriving in your lovely town, and was told how to proceed with such a thing within the bounds of town law.”
“You did the right thing, then,” Luke replied. “Plenty of folks don’t bother even to inquire. They just do what they want and hope to get by with it.”
“I strive to be a law-abiding citizen,” she said, smiling and putting her hand out for a shake. Luke took her hand and noted how it felt like a small, easily crumpled spring leaf in his own bigger paw.
“I’m Acting Marshal Luke Cable,” he said, finding himself hoping, as all men do when encountered by feminine beauty, that he was making a favorable impression upon her. Never mind that she was likely a traveling harlot here to take advantage of any man she could, and a probable fraud medium besides. She was stunningly beautiful and Luke was having trouble getting past that.
“She my new friend, Luke,” said Macky. “She says I make her think of her brother.”
“That’s…fine, Macky. But remember it’s always good to try to get to know something about a person before you tie in too closely with them.”
“Why, Marshal, what have I done?” asked the woman in frail, faux little-girl innocence. Luke caught himself thinking she’d probably perfected that juvenile voice in the company of men perversely appealed to by such a thing. It actually annoyed him.
“I take it you are this ‘prophetess’ who will be speaking?” Luke asked.
“I am.”
“She nice, Luke,” Macky said. “She not a bad lady.”
“He’s right, you know,” she said, still with that charming smile. “I’m not a bad lady. I’m a gifted woman who can bring happiness to others by letting them speak with their departed loved ones.”
“I’d like to talk to you privately for a moment, ma’am,” Luke said, and her smile dwindled. She quickly forced it back into place.
“Excuse me, Macky,” she said, patting his arm. He giggled.
Macky went back to his sweeping and Luke led Katrina out onto the street, directly in front of the emporium. “How can I help you, Marshal?” she asked.
“I need to ask you a question or two about your activities in Wiles,” he said. “Difficult questions,” he added, conscious of how delicate this would become if he proved to be wrong in his suspicions.
“Activities? Whatever do you mean, sir?”
Luke glanced around to make sure Macky and any others who might come around were out of earshot. “Miss Haus, I have been told by witnesses that men have been seen frequenting your room at the Gable House throughout the small hours of the night. Do I need to spell out my concern?”
There was a long pause, then: “Sir, I am…I am shocked at your allegation!” But her effort to sound offended came off hollow.
“No intent on my part to offend, ma’am. There’s also no intent to stand by and let laws be violated in a flagrant manner, especially those affecting the morality of our community. Which is why I have to inquire.”
“Marshal, I am in town to help those who have lost loved ones regain contact with them through the principles and practices of spiritism. It is for those purposes only that individuals have come to my hotel chamber.”
“At two and three in the morning? And all of them men?”
“The fact that here my visitors have been men, sir, is coincidence. In other towns I am sometimes besieged by mothers seeking to make contact with their lost children, often sons killed in the late war. Other places, such as here, my clients happen to be bereaved fathers and widowers. Most times there is a mix. And I expect that will be the case after I’ve had opportunity to advertise my offerings more openly, which is why I’ve visited your local printer and had these broadsides created. I’m placing these across town. I assure you, Marshal, my activities in Wiles are of the highest and most decent nature, intended only to bring new joy to the joyless, hope to the hopeless, and communication to those who have been cut off from their dearest ones.”
“You’ve given that little speech more than once, I think,” Luke observed.
“This is not the first time I’ve defended myself against misunderstanding and false accusations.”
“You keep conducting your business at such odd hours, and in such a setting, and such accusations are going to happen.”
“Marshal, it has been my experience that some spirits will communicate with the living only in the darkest hours of night, and in settings of privacy. It is often essential for me to conduct my visitations at these ‘odd hours’ you mention.”
“Might you consider going to your customers instead of having them come to you, then?” he countered. “Appearances, you know. A woman visiting a house with the full family present, even at a late hour, would strike folks a lot different than when a man pays call on a woman alone in a hotel room in the midst of the night. Especially one who—forgive me, ma’am—dresses herself to such display as you do.”
Katrina thrust up her nose and gave a disdainful harrumph worthy of Clara Ashworth. “Sir, I possess the attributes I possess. I did not choose them any more than you chose those overlarge ears.”
Luke squelched an impulse to put his hands up to hide his largish ears, which always had been an embarrassment to him.
“Marshal, are you through with me? I would like to go on about my business without further interference, if I may.”
“Go on, then. But, Miss Haus, please be aware that I will be watching you.”
She smiled and moved in such a way as to make her bosom bounce. A man on the far side of the street walked into a hitch rail. “Marshal, I am quite accustomed to being watched. I hope I gave no offense regarding your ears, by the way.”
“Forget about it.”
“I’ll bet you wish you could forget them,” she muttered.
She turned and headed up the steps toward the emporium front door, swaying her hips a little more than necessary beneath her long dress. Traffic on the street stopped until she was inside the emporium and out of sight.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A skittering at the rail on the east side of the staircase made Luke turn his head just in time to see a small, familiar figure come over the handrail. This was Oliver Wicks, one of the most unusual individuals in Wiles, and possessor of a unique heritage.
“‘Ello, Luke!” Oliver said in a decidedly British accent, winking and grinning in a worldly way that belied his young age of twelve years. Then, typical of him, he darted up the stairs and slid through the open front door of the big store with the silent ease of a shadow dancing across a wall.
Luke shook his head in mild amusement. He knew young Oliver well enough to know what was probably luring him inside the emporium. Youthful though Oliver was, he was sufficiently precocious to appreciate feminine beauty as much as an older lad would. The scoundrel of a boy was sneaking into the emporium to ogle Katrina Haus.
Katrina Haus. Something about the woman unnerved Luke and filled him with suspicion. That whole “communication with the dead” business in particular. Why did that nag at him so? He was struggling to make a mental connection he couldn’t complete.
It came to Luke that the arrival of Oliver Wicks might be fortuitous. Oliver was a boy of insatiable curiosity, interested in the goings-on of the town, whether his business or not. And because of a quirk in his heritage and upbringing, he had ways of finding answers that often evaded those in the adult world. More than once Luke had taken advantage of information Oliver had provided him. At least three minor local crimes had been solved partially because of intelligence provided by the alwayssnooping boy.
The quirk in Oliver’s heritage was the background of his widower father, a native Englishman named Philip Wicks. Wicks, a busy and talented carpenter in Wiles, was known across the county for his agility in clambering about on the framing lumber of unfinished houses. He had applied his athleticism in a different manner in younger days back in England.
Philip Wicks had been a “second-story man,” breaking into and robbing homes by employment of superior climbing ability. The criminal career he’d pursued as a young London man had grown out of his childhood activity as a “climbing boy” and “budge,” a lad who was able to clamber into houses and the like and open them on the sneak to allow burglars to enter after dark. Rumors around Wiles had it that he’d left England to avoid prosecution that would have put him into incarceration for much of his life. Luke had heard the stories but had no interest in old crimes committed in a distant country. As long as Wicks remained a law-abiding citizen of Kansas, the law of Wiles would leave him alone.
Luke had never seen evidence that Wicks had continued any criminality on this side of the Atlantic, but one remnant of his past was obvious: his son, Oliver, had inherited his father’s climbing skills, love of high places, and interest in the world of rooftops, balconies, and rails. Every citizen of the town was accustomed to seeing young Oliver balancing like a circus athlete on hitch rails, swinging like a monkey from rafters, tightroping his way dangerously down the ridgelines of high roofs, or leaping across deep alleyways from one rooftop to the next.
Most of the townfolk took an accommodating attitude toward “Oliver the Climbing Boy,” as he was usually designated. He was an oddity, a conversation piece, a sort of town mascot made all the more interesting by the trace of British accent he’d picked up from his father.
But there were some in the town who held a low view of Oliver Wicks. They saw him not as a colorful and unusual point of personality in their town, but as a misbehaving and potentially dangerous boy driven by base and criminal impulses.
“After all, Deputy,” Clara Ashworth had once said to him, “the boy has been caught looking in windows. And not windows anyone could look through, but ones only he can rea
ch. He watches people, that vile creature does. Watches them through windows they never would imagine anyone could reach. God only knows what that boy has seen!”
There was some exaggeration in her accusations, Luke realized…but only some. Oliver indeed had been caught looking into second- or third-floor windows, twice at Gable House Hotel and once at the house of Bill and Beatrice Parmalee, who lived between Wiles and the little outlying community of Doggett. Beatrice had accused the boy of attempting to watch her change clothes, but no one had believed that. The woman weighed well over two hundred pounds and had a face and shape fit for a grizzly. Even the most lewd-minded boy would hardly wish to inflict upon himself the sight of her in a state of undress.
Luke had believed that the real reason for Oliver’s peeping in that instance was not Beatrice, but the fine collection of rifles and shotguns Bill Parmalee had on private display in the upper room into which Oliver had been caught peering. It was a collection worth seeing, and everyone who knew Oliver knew he loved guns and had already begun his own collection. Once questioning of Oliver vindicated Luke’s theory, all that came of that peeping incident for Oliver was a good scolding from Ben Keely, a milder one from Luke, and a hide-tanning from Oliver’s father. Luke’s only serious worry about that entire incident was that Oliver might have been eyeing the guns in anticipation of stealing one or more of them, but that never happened. Bill Parmalee retained all his guns, and Beatrice retained, and even seemingly coddled, her conviction that she had been victimized as an object of boyish lust.
Luke headed up the stairs toward the emporium door. Then he remembered something and turned back toward Macky, who was just finishing his sweeping. “Macky, could I ask you about something?”
“Yeah, Luke. Yeah.”
