Gunpowder Tea (The Brides Of Last Chance Ranch Series)

by Brownley, Margaret

  Every moment spent with her left him wanting more. He admired her intensity when she puzzled over something. Loved the rare occasions she dropped her professional persona and allowed him to see the passionate, beautiful woman beneath the cool exterior. At such times her eyes lit up whenever they met his.

  They did light up, didn’t they? Or was it his imagination playing tricks on him? Crimes must be solved, a friend’s killer brought to justice, and here he was thinking of Annie yet again—the last woman in the world he should be thinking about.

  If only he hadn’t kissed her; if only he hadn’t held her in his arms. Perhaps then he would be better able to put her out of his mind.

  With a groan, he slammed the shot glass down, spilling the untouched whiskey. He then tossed a bill on the counter and stomped outside.

  Chapter 27

  “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

  Annie couldn’t sleep. Instead she stood on the balcony staring out at the thick darkness of night. She wanted to talk to Taggert in the worst possible way, but it seemed as if he had purposely avoided her.

  Shivering, she walked inside, closed the glass door, and lit the kerosene lamp. She reached for her GTF file and flipped through the pages until she found her favorite scriptures.

  She traced her finger over the sentence written in cryptic. “I was blind, now I see.” It seemed like the perfect biblical verse for a private eye. She closed her eyes and forced herself to concentrate on the words. But, God, what don’t I see? Something . . .

  So many questions; so many unsolved puzzles, but none had anything to do with her low spirits. What depressed her—scared her—was the gnawing suspicion that no amount of problem solving or detective work could fill the empty hole that festered inside.

  For as long as she could remember it seemed as if part of her was missing. At first she blamed it on her mother’s early death. During her teens she was convinced her father’s aloofness created the void inside. Later she blamed it on a lack of meaningful work assignments. The petty thief cases assigned to her weren’t challenging enough. What she needed and wanted was to sink her teeth into a “real” case. Then the hollow in her heart would go away—or so she thought.

  Her current assignment had turned out to be more challenging than she ever could have imagined and it had truly fulfilled her, at least for a while. But then Taggert entered the picture and the feeling of emptiness became want . . . and want became need.

  “I was blind . . .”

  When she was a child she heard the minister of their church talk about God’s plan and she asked him what that meant.

  “How do you know what God’s plan is?” She still remembered her pastor’s answer.

  “Follow the joy. You know God’s plan by doing the things that give you great joy.”

  The day she told her father she intended to follow in his footsteps would forever be ingrained. “You’re a girl,” he said as coldly as a tormentor might point out a cripple’s useless legs.

  “I wouldn’t be the first woman in the agency,” she’d argued. That honor went to Kate Warne, who joined the firm in ’55 and was instrumental in helping the agency’s founder foil a plot to assassinate Lincoln.

  Her line of reasoning held no water with him and he continued to ignore her. It was her brother Travis who taught her to use a gun, ride a horse, and defend herself.

  “Are you sure you want to do this, sis?” he asked one day after sneaking up behind and grabbing her by the waist.

  She reached for his hand and bent back his finger.

  “Ow!” he cried, letting her go.

  She whirled to face him. Her brother had taught her well and she was ready to tackle the world. “Yes, I want to do this.” She would prove to her father she was every bit as capable of being an operative as a man. Maybe then he would see her, not as a child to ignore, but as the woman she had become.

  William Pinkerton hired her on the spot, but only because she was Charlie Hunt’s daughter.

  By the time her father learned that she had joined the firm, she had already completed the extensive training program, which included dramatizations of crime scenes and lessons on disguises. He stormed into the principal’s office and their raised voices could be heard throughout the building, but William Pinkerton’s decision prevailed and Miranda was allowed to stay.

  From that moment on, she never questioned God’s will for her. She was certain that God had removed the blinders from her eyes so she could follow the path He had set for her.

  If only she hadn’t met Taggert. If only she hadn’t experienced such joy when they were together. Like a thief in the night, he stole her heart and all that remained now was an empty space. She didn’t know exactly when or how it happened, but there it was, plain as day.

  Years of training had taught her to control her feelings. She learned to control body language, words, and facial expressions so as to conceal her true identity. But the womanly part—the part that craved Taggert’s touch and kisses—that part she didn’t know how to control.

  But she had to find a way. Otherwise her goal of restoring the Hunt name to its former glory as Pinkerton’s best and finest would be in jeopardy.

  She stared at the open Bible in her hands, but no answers materialized. It was as if God had snatched the road map of her life away and purposely left her in the wilderness to fend for herself.

  She set the Good Book on the desk with a sigh and reached for the dime novel purchased at the church bazaar. Perhaps a little light reading would put her mind to rest and help her sleep. There was nothing to do until she could talk to Taggert.

  For the next hour she was thoroughly engaged with the lively story.

  Miss Hattie’s Dilemma was a romantic tale of a woman torn between two men, but it was also a story of the lust for gold. Mrs. Kate Adams, who wrote under the pseudonym K. Mattson, was a good writer. Descriptions of the cave where gold was found seemed so real it felt like Annie was there on the spot. She could almost hear the drip of water, see the indentations on the cave wall, the light in the dark tunnel.

  Feel the kiss . . .

  Startled, Annie dropped the book on her lap. Maybe the cave seemed familiar for a reason.

  The cave in Kate’s novel was almost identical to the cave on Miss Walker’s ranch. She shook her head—that was crazy. This was fiction, pure and simple, written before its author even set foot in Arizona Territory.

  Shaking the thought away, Annie turned the page and tried to concentrate, but the words kept blurring together. Flashes of memory bombarded her. Was it just coincidence that a copy of the book had lain in plain sight on the cave floor?

  Work the clues. How often had she heard William Pinkerton utter those very words?

  Go back to the beginning.

  She considered everything that had happened during the past several weeks. The mysterious lights, the poisoned cattle, the fire, Mr. Stackman, even the train and bank robberies. Slowly, the crazy, mixed-up puzzle pieces fell into place and a disturbing picture began to emerge.

  She jumped out of bed and threw on her clothes. Fingers trembling, she had trouble fastening the hooks and eyes at her waist, and it took every bit of effort to buckle the holster around her thigh.

  In her hurry, she accidentally knocked her GTF file on the floor. She stooped to pick it up and her gaze fell on the verse “I was blind, now I see . . .”

  She dropped the folder on the desk. Indeed she did see, and what she saw, she didn’t like.

  William Pinkerton accused her of taking unnecessary risks, but she had no intention of doing so tonight. There was too much at stake. She needed Taggert’s help. More than that, she wanted his help.

  She crept along the hallway in the dark. She stopped to listen but could hear nothing over the sound of her pounding heart. She treaded ever so carefully down the stairs and avoided the middle where they were most likely to creak.

  Reaching the bottom, she felt her way through the darkness to the telephone. She lifted the r
eceiver to her ear and turned the crank. She hated waking Aunt Bessie in the wee morning hours, but she didn’t dare leave the house. Through the horn-shaped receiver plastered to her ear came a ringing sound that seemed to go on forever.

  “Come on, come on,” she muttered beneath her breath. “Answer.”

  The incessant ringing of the switchboard woke Bessie out of a deep slumber. Ignoring it, she buried her head beneath her pillow. It was probably some lovesick goon calling and wanting to be connected to his lady friend.

  It was shameful, that’s what it was, the goings-on in this town. Men calling women, women calling men, and it didn’t seem to matter what time it was. When she first agreed to be the hello girl, she was told the phone would be used primarily for emergencies. Ha! Emergencies, my foot!

  She turned over and gave her pillow a good thump, but it did no good; the switchboard kept ringing and her husband kept snoring and her overactive mind began to imagine the most awful things. What if it really was an emergency?

  Finally she slipped out of bed, but more out of curiosity than a sense of responsibility. Walking barefooted from the bedroom to the dining room, she paused to light a lamp.

  “All right, all right. Hold your horses.” She sat on the stool and donned her earphones. Much to her surprise, it was the Last Chance calling. The main house, no less.

  “What num-BER?”

  “Please connect me to the bunkhouse.”

  Bessie Adams recognized the hushed voice immediately. She glanced at the long clock in the corner of the room. It was a little after 2:00 a.m. “At this time of night? What is it with women today? Why, in my day—”

  “It’s Annie. Please hurry. It’s urgent!”

  The line suddenly went dead. Bessie played with the switch, checked the jack, and tried ringing the ranch number back with no luck.

  She slammed her headset down. For this she was awakened from a sound sleep! She knew something was going on between Annie and that new man, Branch, and now her suspicions were confirmed. A body would have had to be blind not to notice the way the two gazed at each other at the church bazaar, or how they snuck off together afterward. No wonder Annie’s nose was out of joint when Bessie suggested she introduce Branch to Charity.

  “Harrumph! If Mr. Bell knew how his instrument would be put to use, he might have thought twice about inventing it.”

  She turned off the lamp and shuffled back to bed. Tomorrow she’d ask her nephew to check the new lines going out to the ranch for problems. Then she intended to give Annie a motherly talk.

  Her husband, Sam, snorted twice and rolled over. “Who was calling at this hour?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Go back to sleep.”

  The line dead in her ear, Annie dropped the receiver. A man’s form stood no less than ten feet away. Though it was dark, she knew immediately who it was. She reached into her false pocket for her gun.

  “Hello, Able.”

  He stepped forward into the circle of moonlight streaming through a narrow window.

  “How did you know?”

  Something in her voice must have told him it would do no good to act innocent. She pulled her derringer slowly out of her pocket, careful to keep it hidden behind the folds of her skirt. “That you’re the Phantom?”

  “How did you know?” he repeated.

  In retrospect, there had been so many clues, but she had failed to put them together.

  “The night of the fire. Something always bothered me about that night, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. You and I reached the front door at the same time, but you went out first. I always turn the lock before retiring, but the door wasn’t locked when you went out. That meant that someone had left the house prior to the fire, and that someone could only have been you.”

  “Foiled by a lock,” he said.

  “That wasn’t the only thing. You always go to town on Tuesday for supplies,” she said.

  “So? What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I arrived at the ranch on a Thursday and you were nowhere to be found. I rang the bell and called, but the house was empty. It turns out that was the same day the bank was robbed.”

  “Go on.”

  “Then there was the night Branch and I were at the cave. We heard someone leave, but when I checked the horses, none appeared to have been ridden. That bothered me, but I think I solved the puzzle. The day in the garden when you were digging for carrots, I noticed an old barn. That’s where I’ll find your horse. Am I right?”

  “No one uses that barn anymore. Miz Walker said I could keep my horse there.”

  “Then there was the dime novel. I first saw it in the kitchen but it never occurred to me that the one in the cave was the same copy.”

  “How careless of me.”

  “Yes, wasn’t it?” Her mouth dry, she forced herself to continue. “What I don’t understand is the significance of the book. It’s fiction.”

  “That’s what I thought. But then one day I happened to come across the cave and what do you know? It was almost identical to the one in the book. So I started digging.”

  Another piece of the puzzle fell into place and she nodded. “And you found something.”

  “I found gold, just like it said in the book.”

  “Then why bother with robberies?” she asked. “If you found gold, you’re already rich.”

  “Not me. Miss Walker. The gold belongs to the boss lady.”

  Ah, more pieces of the puzzle. “So you decided to buy the ranch,” she said. “And you needed money. But why rob? Why not just mine the gold?”

  “To mine that much gold I’d need proper equipment, and that would have drawn attention to the cave.”

  “You had to have known Miss Walker would never sell.”

  “Everyone’s got a price, and I figured Miz Walker couldn’t hold out forever. Once the ranch was mine, I could start mining.”

  “But you couldn’t do it on your current salary,” she said. “So you hired others to do the dirty work.”

  “Yeah, but it took too long. That’s ’cause they were cheating me out of money. So I got rid of them.”

  “By getting rid of them, you mean you called the marshal.” How the marshal knew to greet the train always puzzled her. “That’s why he was waiting for them when the train pulled into the station.”

  “They got what was coming to them.” He shrugged. “Besides, it was quicker and more lucrative to rob the bank. Didn’t need anyone for that. What I needed was the ranch.”

  “But Miss Walker refused to sell, so you decided to scare her off by poisoning her cattle and burning down the barn and stables.” When he didn’t deny it, she continued, “What about the Wells Fargo agent? Why did you kill him?”

  “I didn’t know who he was. All’s I know, he was following me.”

  His matter-of-fact tone filled her with contempt. Sometimes criminals were found in the most unlikely places. In the last year alone, the agency had uncovered a pickpocket priest, a counterfeiting doctor, and an arsonist fireman. Still, it was hard to believe that the same hands that created such delectably light pastry could kill a man in cold blood.

  “What about Branch? Why did you knock him out?”

  “He’s been nosing around and I figured he wasn’t who he said he was. I don’t know where he was heading, but I sure didn’t want him going back to the cave.”

  “And Mr. Stackman? How does he fit into the picture?”

  “Everyone knows he wants the old lady to sell the ranch and marry him. I figured if she thought she was gonna lose him, it might scare her into taking him up on his offer.”

  “You thought of everything, didn’t you?” she asked. “Except for this.” She raised her arm and pointed her gun straight at him.

  At that moment, the light came on in the big room, revealing the gun in Able’s hand.

  Undaunted, she said, “Drop it!”

  He gave her gun a cursory glance. “My barking iron’s bigger than yours.”

&nbs
p; Just then Miss Walker hobbled into the entry on crutches, her gaze darting from gun to gun. It was obvious she’d been sleeping on the sofa in the big room. Less obvious was how much she’d heard.

  “What in the name of Betsy—”

  In one quick movement Able wrapped his arm around the old lady’s neck and pressed the muzzle of his gun against her temple. Miss Walker’s crutches fell to the floor with a clatter.

  He glared at Annie. “Now will you drop that can opener you call a gun?”

  Annie lowered her weapon to the floor.

  Miss Walker’s face grew red from the pressure of his arm and her eyes bulged. “What is wrong with you, Able? What’s going on? Answer me!”

  His laughter held no mirth. “I have the gun, so that means for once I give the orders, not you. Once again I’m the king of the range. Me!”

  His manic voice made Annie’s flesh prickle with cold shivers but she willed herself to remain calm. The freckles she once thought gave him a boyish look now stood out like angry ink blots. How had she previously missed the cruel, tight mouth and cold, fish-stare eyes?

  He backed into the living room, dragging Miss Walker with him, and motioned Annie to follow with a toss of his head. He glanced around, face grim, a wild look in his eyes. He made no effort at deception now, although he’d certainly managed to dupe everyone in the past with his easygoing manner and fine cookery.

  “Pull the cords off the draperies,” he ordered, and Annie did as she was told. She could hardly do anything else, not with a gun pointed at Miss Walker’s head.

  He forced the ranch owner down onto a ladder-back chair. “Now tie her hands and feet,” he ordered.

  Miss Walker glared at him. “You can’t do this. You’re the cook.”

  His eyes glittered. “And you’re the goose.”

  Annie kneeled in front of Miss Walker. “Sorry,” she mouthed.

  Able kept his gun pointed at her while she wound the cord around Miss Walker’s one good leg and cast. Just as Annie tied the last knot, someone pounded on the door.

  “Annie!”