Chapter 15
The sun jabbed an impertinent finger into Sadie's eyes. Grimacing, she rolled to her back, flinging a forearm over her face and doing her best to ignore the tequila hammers pounding in her skull.
But her reprieve was momentary. A rattling sound reached her ears, followed by an insidious, mechanical clicking.
What the—?
Blinking blearily, she squinted in exasperation through the patchwork of shadows and morning. Cass was fully clothed and standing by the vanity. Apparently, he'd been shaking Maestro's music box to inspect it. Now his nimble fingers were winding the key.
Holy crap!
Sadie flew out of bed. Heedless of her hangover—and the blast of November that chilled her naked flesh—she bolted across the carpet to snatch the booby trap from her unsuspecting lover's hands.
"Good God, don't play it!" she gasped. "You don't know what it can do!"
He raised jet-black eyebrows. Honestly, she didn't know if she would ever get used to him being brunette, especially since he'd dyed his hair to please some other woman.
"Okay. I'm listening. Shoot."
She blew out her breath. Her head really did hurt, and the flood of memories—Cass with Dolce, the humiliation of fainting, Collie's watchdog posturing—wasn't making her any less cranky. Setting the music box safely on the vanity, she reached irritably for her robe. Her teeth were chattering with cold.
"First off, this is Pinkerton business—"
"Not that again."
"You said you were listening," she snapped. "That means the pie-hole stays shut."
His lips twitched. "My apologies, Contessa." He bowed in the grave manner of a certain, Yankee psychiatrist. "Pray continue."
He was mocking her, the louse!
"Don't get me started," she growled. "You're on thin ice. Don't think I forgot how you strutted into Rothchild's yesterday, on the arm of the one woman in town who could blow my cover."
He rolled his eyes. "Give me some credit, Sadie. I was trying to keep Dolce away from you."
"By bringing her to the auction?"
"She's been trying to meet Lady Fiore all week. The only reason she hasn't hit you up to be her patron, is because I've been keeping her busy."
"I'll bet you have," she said tartly. She ignored his withering glare. "In any event, I think I finally figured out what happened to Minx. Why she robbed Tabor's mansion and jumped off the bridge."
She told Cass her suspicion about Minx's peacock music box. She described the "lullaby therapy" that Baines had prescribed for Wyntir. Sadie then revealed how the young heiress had complained of blacking out, and that she'd waked with inexplicable scratches and bruises.
"An unethical hypnotist might use a combination of methods," Sadie speculated, pacing in her agitation, "including drugs, to make a subject perform unconscionable acts. I think Maestro is commanding his puppets to steal and kill. Renfield, Minx, and Sheridan were all unwitting accomplices."
Halting in mid-stride, she drew a shuddering breath and faced Cass. She'd expected him to burst out laughing, to tell her she had an over-active imagination, to demand proof of her wild accusations.
Instead, he was frowning.
"Well, that certainly explains a few things," he said grimly.
"Y-you believe me?"
His jaw hardened. "Yes. I do."
Her breath released in a giddy rush of relief. She was tempted to throw her arms around his neck. Never had she loved him more than in that moment.
"Thank you," she said humbly. "That means everything to me, Cass. Everything."
Those sun-crinkled eyes narrowed. She sensed something was bothering him.
"Mace would never have believed me," she hastened to explain. "He thinks women have fluff for brains. He places no stock in intuition, instinct, or hunches. Without solid proof to back my accusations, he would have laughed in my face.
"But I'm pretty sure where to look for proof," Sadie continued eagerly. "All we have to do is find some shred of evidence that will stick in court. Then we can prove Mendel Baines has been hypnotizing people to—"
"Baines is dead," Cass said flatly.
Sadie wheezed. With three small words, Cass had just obliterated her best Maestro theory—a theory she'd spent long, arduous hours building against the brawling, debt-ridden, morally bankrupt professor.
"When? How?!"
"He shot himself in the head. Around 11 o'clock last night," Cass added grimly. "I tried to stop him. But he was in a trance, probably triggered by the humidor under his arm. It was playing music."
Goosebumps prickled Sadie's scalp. She didn't know which was scarier, that she still didn't know who Maestro was, or that the bastard was leaving musical novelties at her door—and at other doors too, apparently! Baines had fallen prey to the sinister mastermind.
Struggling to form an alternative theory, she grasped at the first idea that presented itself. "Fowler was Minx's original suspect in the Welbourn case. It's no secret he uses hypnosis. He knows all the players: Lilybelle, Sheridan, Wyntir, Minx—"
Cass grunted.
"What?" she demanded warily.
"Fowler's not the only one who knows all the players."
"What's your point?"
"Right before the opera, Wyntir was hugging Sheridan and whispering in her ear."
Sadie frowned. "That hardly qualifies as hypnosis."
"But it could qualify as a trigger. Wyntir wasn't at the auction. She could have left that music box at your door."
Sadie didn't like where these accusations were leading. "Rebekah wasn't at the auction either. She could have left the music box at my door."
Cass didn't look convinced.
"Just because you dislike Dante," Sadie flared, "doesn't mean he's Maestro!"
"And just because you do like him, doesn't mean he's not."
She threw up her hands in exasperation. "Dammit, Cass, I knew you'd think the worst when Collie told you! He's 17, for God's sake. All 17-year-old boys have sex on the brain!"
Cass grew uncommonly still. A slow, dark flush rolled up his neck. "And just what was Collie supposed to tell me?"
Sadie's heart lurched. Uh-oh. The kid kept his mouth shut about Dante? Dear God, I'm such an idiot.
In retrospect, Sadie didn't flatter herself that Collie had kept quiet to do her any favors. He'd been trying to keep Cass from a guaranteed trip to the gallows.
Clenching her fists at her sides, she drew a shuddering breath and tried desperately to ignore her hangover. She had to get her story straight. What she said in the next few breaths could save lives—including Cass's.
"Dante was trying to help me when I fainted," she said firmly. "He carried me outside and loosened my corset. He's a doctor, Cass."
Cass frowned. His coyote instincts told him something wasn't right. Despite what Sadie believed, Collie was skirt-shy. Although the boy didn't know much about sex, he did know the ways of doctors. He'd spent nearly a year under Doc Jones's roof, fetching water, bandages, and splints whenever Sera wasn't around to help her older brother. If Collie saw something inappropriate pass between a doctor and a female patient, he would recognize it.
"So let me get this straight," Cass said slowly, his keen, sniper eyes watching every nuance of emotion that flickered over Sadie's face. "You fainted."
"Which was your fault!" she fired back. "You damned near gave me a heart-attack when you entered Rothschild's with your hair dyed and that bowler on your head. That woman had no right to sink her claws into you and swaddle you in swallowtails for her amusement!"
Cass recognized Sadie's temper tantrum for what it was: a diversion. She was hiding something. He ignored the outburst.
"And after you fainted, Goddard unbuttoned your corset."
"So I could breathe," she reminded him testily.
"Then what did he do?"
"Nothing! He massaged my neck. He whispered a few comforts in my ear. All perfectly normal doctor behavior."
"Did he kiss you?"<
br />
"Of course not."
"Did you want him to?"
Color flooded her face. Her jaw opened and closed.
Finally, she blustered, "I was dazed. I was reviving from a faint, for heaven's sake."
"Did you want him to kiss you?" he demanded again in gravelly tones.
Her eyes glistened, growing bright with unshed tears.
"I..." She swallowed hard. "I didn't think it would matter," she confessed tremulously. "You were with her, you'd changed to please her, and I needed his comfort!"
A cold, bitter wind blew into Cass's heart.
He'd known it. He'd sensed it. From that first moment in Jewell Park, when he'd spied Sadie with her arms around Goddard's neck; when he'd seen the Yankee smiling like a hungry wolf and Sadie batting her eyelashes at him, Cass had known his woman was falling for that smooth-talking, college-educated, over-dressed prick!
"Cass, please," she begged. "Don't do anything rash."
He shook her hand off his sleeve. Turning on his heel, he crossed to the vanity, picked up the music box, and smashed it against the marble counter.
"Cass, stop! Stop! That's Pinkerton evidence!"
"I'm done apologizing for protecting you," he snarled, pocketing the battered, musical cylinder. "Until you wise up, or Maestro's behind bars, I'm putting you on notice. Stay out of my murder investigation."
"I don't take orders from Rangers!"
"You'll take orders from me," he snapped, fishing a star from his coat pocket and stabbing it into his lapel.
Sadie quailed. That wasn't his Ranger star. The lettering on the five-sided cutout clearly read, Special Deputy U.S. Marshal.
She fumed as realization set in. Rex is in town. Dammit, why didn't he tell me he was coming?
Cass stalked for the door. He wrenched it open and paused on the threshold. "By the way," he flung over his shoulder, "nothing would please me more than to lock some high-and-mighty Lady Pinkerton in jail."
"You wouldn't dare!"
"Try me, sweetheart."
Cursing like a muleskinner, Sadie grabbed one of his guilt gifts—a perfume bottle—and hurled it after his tyrannical head. The missile smashed against the slamming door, creating a kaleidoscopic spray of honeysuckle and glass. But the gesture was an impotent one.
Cass was already gone.
* * *
After his row with Sadie, Cass was too angry to wait for the Windsor's elevator. Pocketing his Marshal badge, he stomped down five flights of stairs and slammed through the lobby door—and the lobby door slammed into the pimple-faced bellhop, who'd been helping Wyntir with her shopping.
An explosion of milliner's boxes flew from the youth's arms. Ladies' gloves and stockings rained down on the black-and-white tiles. Cass choked back an oath. He'd inadvertently trampled the pristinely white egret feathers of a hat.
"Oh, no! My birthday chapeau!"
Standing like a blue-satin lighthouse in a frothy sea of frou-frou, Wyntir looked torn between embarrassment and despair as the sputtering, red-faced bell hop desperately shoved her unmentionables into tissue-lined boxes.
Sheepishly, Cass stooped to retrieve the hat, but the confounded feathers had snapped off in three places. He was just about to stammer an apology when Wyntir got her dander up.
"Good golly, mister, where's the fire?"
Mister?
Cass's Coyote instincts went on alert. The petite beauty was glaring daggers at him. In fact, she was looking him straight in the eye without a single, blessed hint of recognition. Apparently, his top hat and dye job were more effective disguises than he'd thought.
The Coyote in him smelled opportunity.
Steeling himself against a smirk, Cass bowed in imitation of her snooty butthead of a guardian. "A thousand apologies, senorita," he drawled in his best caballero's accent. Sadie wasn't the only one who could put on airs and pretend to be royalty. "I am—how you say—inconsolable to cause a lady such distress. Por favor. You must tell me how to repair my honor. I am Don Reynaldo Dominar, Marqués de Oro Gran Polla y La Libido Asombroso. At your service," he added with an impossibly straight face.
The rough translation of this lampoon was, "I am the Ruling Dom with the golden pecker and the amazing libido—at your service." Sexual propositions always sounded so much more refined in Spanish.
Wyntir's brows knitted. "You... um... are a Spanish nobleman?"
Funny how women only hear the royal part.
Cass clicked his heels and bowed his head. "Sì. Don Dominar. But you must call me Dom."
"Oh. Um, I see."
"I beg your forgiveness, senorita. A gentleman knows not to burst through doors. I have no excuse for my manners, other than the angels."
"The angels, seňor?"
Cass pressed a hand to his heart. "Cupid lent wings to my feet so I might gaze upon your lovely face before you departed."
Wyntir giggled.
"Did you say it was your birthday, seňorita?"
"Well, not officially. But at midnight—"
"Bueno! I shall buy you presents!"
Wyntir turned rosebud-pink. "I'm sure that's not necessary—"
"I insist! To replace what I have soiled is my responsibility as a man of honor!"
Cass didn't know how he was going to pay for roughly $200 worth of female frippery, but he decided to cross that bridge later. The important thing was to get Wyntir to trust him. And to spill her guts about Goddard.
Within two hours, Wyntir was doing just that. She snuggled under the brazier-warmed blankets of a garland-draped sleigh, driven by a toothless geezer and his gelded paint. The horse sported an antler headdress. Cass had arranged this silliness because Wyntir had shyly confided to Don Dom (as she now affectionately called him,) that she'd always wanted to ride in a reindeer-drawn sleigh. Her guardian wouldn't hear of such nonsense, because she owned two sensibly roofed coaches to ward off snow.
"And croup," she'd confided with a giggle.
Now she blew steam off the whiskey-infused toddy that the enterprising geezer had warmed in an Arbuckle's can between his boots.
"This coffee is yummy. It makes the snow sparkle. With rainbows!"
Yes, Wyntir was three sheets to the wind and slumming in the Highlands, although she didn't seem to mind. Nor did she seem to mind the whooping ragamuffins throwing snowballs, fencing with icicles, and sliding down hills in cardboard cartons. In fact, Wyntir had been eager to join the fun. About ten minutes earlier, she'd climbed down from the coach to help a quintet of red-headed urchins fashion a "Mother Snow Lady," whose "hair" looked particularly fetching with the feathers from Wyntir's damaged chapeau.
For a hoity-toity heiress, Wyntir is all right.
"Your guardian," Cass drawled, "he is—how you say—a bit stuffy, no?"
"Oh, he's very stuffy," Wyntir confided, much to Cass's amusement. "A proper Bostonian. Harvard-educated and all that. I did spy a hole in the bottom of his shoe once. Dante was mortified, but I didn't mind. Papa was always giving promising young businessmen a chance."
So Goddard was a penniless nobody until Greyfell took an interest in him?
Wyntir sighed. "Dear Papa. He had a heart of gold—he really did—even though he was so grouchy. His mood swings were due to a plague of headaches. A mining shaft collapsed a few years back, and he got struck by falling timbers. He was afraid that old neck injury would get him addicted to morphine. Unfortunately, opiates were the only solutions the doctors had to offer—at least, until Dante came along."
"Did Dante hypnotize your Papa?"
"Oh no. In fact, he got angry when I participated in one of Professor Baines's hypnotism experiments. After Papa's death, I kept waking up crying. By day, I started hyperventilating. Professor Baines said I was having anxiety attacks. The hypnotism seemed to help, but Dante said it was dangerous." She shrugged. "So I sought the advice of Preacher Fowler."
Cass hiked an eyebrow. "The man who talks to ghosts?"
Wyntir's cheeks turned rosebud-pink. "You don'
t have to make it sound so creepy! Preacher Fowler talks to perfectly nice ghosts, like my Mama and Papa. And angels, too.
"But Dante said Preacher Fowler was preying on my innocence," Wyntir continued, looking troubled. "He said I was delicate and impressionable. As my guardian and physician, he insisted on treating my anxiety himself.
"Now Dante won't even let me invite Rebekah to my birthday party! He said she should be returned to the asylum. Isn't that just dreadful? Rebekah is doing so well under Preacher Fowler's care! Sometimes, I think Dante's afraid of her."
Cass found this confidence intriguing. "A grown man? Afraid of a child? Why is that, querida?"
Wyntir's heart-shaped face took on the look of a crusading mother. "Because Rebekah sees things. Really sees things. Even though she never visited Greyfell Manor when Preacher Fowler came to call, she told me that my favorite diamond necklace could be found in the oddest place: a hollowed out book in Papa's library. I didn't even know the pendant was missing! But when I searched for the volume, there was my necklace, exactly as Rebekah had described it! Papa was furious when I showed him the vandalized volume. He fired the butler and two maids over it."
A muscle ticked in Cass's jaw. No one had to convince him that Second Sight was real. Before becoming Lynx's wife, Sera's visions had proved her future husband was innocent of a murder charge. "Was Dante living at Greyfell Manor when your pendant went missing?"
Wyntir blinked impossibly big, ocean-blue eyes at him. "Goodness. That's an odd question."
"Humor me," Cass said grimly.
Wyntir's eyebrows knitted. She began to rub her forehead. After a few moments, she seemed to give up.
"Strange." She loosed a strained little laugh. "I haven't thought of that incident for so long. And now, I honestly can't remember."
Chapter 16
The trouble with pitching perfume, Sadie fumed, was that the mess had to be cleaned up. Adding to her annoyance was her realization that she'd wasted 30 minutes scrubbing the door and the wallpaper, and the room still reeked like a bordello. At that point, she was in no mood for the trials of corsets and garters.
So she stabbed her legs into trousers, pasted on a beard, and hooked blue-tinted spectacles over her ears. Finally, she set off for the lobby. Her intention was to find Rex's signature in the ledger. After she figured out his room number, she planned to give the traitor a piece of her mind.
Dance to the Devil's Tune (Lady Law & The Gunslinger Series, Book 2) Page 21
