Louisa Cody didn’t know whether to be delighted or disgusted. She attended her husband’s show the night before in perfect anonymity. Very good for her plan—very bad for her self-respect. She wore lavender, a color everyone knew to be her favorite. Not a single Wild West worker paid the slightest bit of attention to a well-dressed matron of a certain age, a bit on the plump side.
No one noticed. That hurt. No one recognized her—the wife of the man everyone came to see. She had become inconsequential, invisible, worthless.
I will not be ignored—treated like a worn-out shoe tossed in the street for dogs to tear apart. One corner of Louisa’s mouth turned up in a sardonic smile. I’ve already taken the first step.
Frank Butler rode across Kansas City to the seedy music hall where Lillian Smith worked. She performed in vaudeville. No longer a Wild West star, she wore brown greasepaint and called herself Indian Princess Wenona.
The backstage doorman, a wizened old fellow with a face as gray as his nondescript sweater, refused to let Frank in. “The first show goes on in twenty minutes. She has makeup to do and costumes to get in to.”
Frank adopted a chummy camaraderie he did not feel. “But Pops, Miss Smith and I go back more than ten years. When she was a headliner in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, I was there, too. Let me go in, huh? Surprise an old friend.”
“My boss the manager don’t care much for surprises sprang on the females ’round here. He’s had to kick out a few chaps with his own boot toes if you get my drift.”
“This is nothing like that. Miss Smith was a nice young girl—a roly-poly kid if you get my drift. I’m in town this week and have a few minutes to look up an old friend. Come on, now. She’ll blame you if she finds out I was here, but you wouldn’t let me in.”
“Well, I’ll go see. No surprises though. Theater’s no place for surprises. What you ’spect me to say?”
“Tell her Frank Butler wants to see her.”
Pops issued a low whistle. “Horse holder to the great Annie Oakley—no insult intended, Mr. Butler. Well, I’ll tell Missy Smith.”
He shuffled off backstage. His hand riffled the black curtains known as legs until they billowed like storm clouds. Pops disappeared past the counterweights on the rail. Ropes knotted around belaying pins held heavy scenery aloft on battens above the stage floor. Frank knew how quickly an artificial sky could fall upon your head in the theater.
Forget bad omens. Frank muttered to himself the words he’d come to say. He inhaled the musty smell of old stage curtains as he walked under sandbags tied to overhead ropes.
In his old hothead days he would never have allowed anyone to suggest Frank Butler was an errand boy, a pitiable lackey fit to hold a playing card while his brilliant wife shot it in half.
He seldom admitted as much to himself—very seldom, and only when he drank more than one schooner of beer. His line of work demanded a hand as steady as the shootist’s. He valued his fingers well enough to keep them free from hangover shakes. He treasured his head enough to never let it be woozy from booze. Wish I had a shot of whiskey right now.
In a few seconds, the doorman motioned for Frank to come with him. “Mind you pick up your feet and don’t touch the prop carts.”
Pops showed him into a cubicle about the size of a jail cell. The stuffy room reeked of liniment and rose oil.
Lillian Smith was setting her greasepaint with rice powder. The too-light powder caked in hard lines on her face. She was twenty-eight, but she looked twice as old. The cloud of white dust gave her the ashy pallor of a Native American—recently deceased.
“You look most fetching as an Indian princess.” Frank started on a positive note to put her at ease, though it didn’t come out quite right. “It’s a fakery worthy of Barnum himself.”
Lillian shot back. “It’s not a fake. At least no more than Sitting Bull calling your wife Whatchamacallit.”
“Watanyacicilla.”
“At least my Indian name is easy to pronounce, and just as real as hers. I’ve been properly adopted into the Sioux tribe by their greatest fighting chief, Crazy Snake—a man who knows shooting talent when he sees it.”
Frank’s attempt at jollity had received something less than the welcome he had hoped for.
She glared at him in the mirror but didn’t turn around. She picked up the handle of a baby’s hair brush and started whisking away excess powder. “After all these years what brings Frank Butler to see the Greatest Shot in the World? Looking for a replacement meal ticket?”
Her snide suggestion stoked Frank’s internal turmoil. He tried to shrug it off. “Just came to say hello. I don’t have much time for seeing old friends, but we’re in Kansas City for a few days. I thought I’d look you up.”
“Well, you’re looking. What do you want? Not to see an old friend. We were never friends.”
“I always considered you a friend, a valued colleague. It was Annie who . . .” He made another stab at softening this woman’s hard memories of the past. “And understand she didn’t hate you. I think she was afraid of the competition. That’s why she acted so—”
“Don’t bother explaining your vicious wife to me, Frank Butler. I have little time and no interest.” She dabbed powder on a spot she had missed. “You never do anything without a purpose. Why did you come?”
“No reason to get your back up, especially not if you really are the best shot in the world.” The minute he said it, Frank hated himself for slipping in an insult. Somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to like the bitter woman this once bubbly girl had become—or to control his tongue, either.
Lillian slammed down the brush with a thwack. “I was the best shot in the world and the fastest rifle shot the world has ever seen. You could throw up a glass ball and I could fire four times—three times into the air and break the glass with my final shot. I could break four hundred ninety-five balls out of five hundred. I could break twenty in twenty seconds.”
Frank thought a good wheedle might work. He put on an injured look. “Didn’t I try to advise you to be more ladylike? Back on Staten Island, wasn’t I the one who warned you not to wear such racy clothes and that bright yellow sash or silly plug hat?”
When her hand refused to remain steady, Lillian threw down her thin bristled makeup brush. Red and black Indian “war paint” splatted on the dressing table to congeal there like the blood of a squashed tick.
Her voice quivered. “Annie wore short skirts. She still does. Why should Annie Oakley get away with wearing little girl clothes when Lillian Smith can’t?”
“Annie is small, and she looks like . . .” Frank saw the error of his ways too late.
On the verge of tears, she let go the pent up resentment of ten years in exile. “And Lillian Smith looks like a great sow. Always has. Even when I really was a little girl.”
A tear made a pasty rivulet as it furrowed through the greasepaint down her cheek. A sob caught in her throat as the hurt poured out. “I was just fifteen when I joined the Wild West. Fifteen. Annie was twenty-five—ten years older.”
Frank couldn’t help feeling guilty. He adopted a soothing voice. “I did try to help you. That time in England when the shooting club fined you. Didn’t I tell you to go back with a lighter weapon and prove you could shoot as well as they could—better even. But you didn’t go back.”
“How could I go back? I didn’t even know the name of the man who invited us.”
“You could have asked Nate. And the fine. What possessed you not to pay the fine?”
“I thought we were shooting for exhibition. Nobody said anything about bets or money.”
“The club thought you were dodging the fine. The rest of us thought the same.”
She sneered. “Wasn’t it nice of you to explain to me the errors of my ways after the club blackened my name all across England.”
“What did you think the newspapers would say about a female who tried to shoot with the big boys but couldn’t measure up? Then she went off in a schoolgirl huff after she broke all the rules?”
“Oh, yes, I remember how helpful you were.” She waxed more sarcastic. “I remember how eager you were to keep me from making a fool of myself at Wimbledon.”
She leaned forward to stare at him in the mirror. “You should have told me about the mechanical deer. Who ever heard of such stupid rules? Rules I didn’t know then. Oh, I know them now all right. I know the rules now.” She counted them off on her fingers. “Don’t aim for the tin head—you’d spoil the trophy if the deer were real. You must shoot their piece of tin in the place where a real deer’s heart is supposed to be. Most important of all, never hit the stupid piece of tin anywhere else or you’ll get fined. Hitting a deer—even a tin deer—without killing it means you have to chase it down to kill it. That would be much too exhausting for their exalted British lordships.”
Her annoyance blared out with ever-increasing volume. “How was I supposed to know shooting a piece of tin in the butt was worse than missing altogether? How was I to know the club would fine me for wounding a deer that wasn’t a deer at all? For the love of all that’s holy, their mechanical deer was nothing but a piece of metal on a greased track.” By now, she was on the verge of yelling.
“I didn’t know, either. I swear. Not until afterwards.”
She rounded on him with the stored spite of twelve years’ injustice. “It’s your simpering little Annie who was jealous of me. Your truthful little Annie—butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth—pretended she was six years younger just to compete with me. Annie Oakley will always be ten years older than Lillian Smith.”
Mumbling, she turned her back to the mirror. “Did everything she could to destroy me. Smeared me in the newspapers. Accused me of cheating. Told people I used a smooth bore shotgun instead of a rifle.”
She shook her finger at his reflection in the mirror. “She’s the one with the smooth bore, not me. I know she got me fired. She left the show because she couldn’t stand the competition—didn’t dare let me stay. I might get even better. Lillian Smith might outshine the great Annie Oakley.”
A demonic gleam came into Lillian’s eye. “She blackmailed Cody, didn’t she? She made the colonel fire me. She refused to come back to the show if he didn’t. Tell the truth. That’s what happened. It is, isn’t it?”
Frank swallowed hard. “I’ll tell the truth about our return to the show if you’ll tell me the truth about something.”
Sarcasm dripped from her lips. “Exactly what truth does Annie’s errand boy Frank want from Lillian Smith?”
Frank had made a mess of the visit. His mind went blank. He could think of nothing better than to ask a direct question. “Last night we found a bullet in her horse’s back, right under the skin—right about the place where her head would have been a split second earlier. Did you fire it?”
“If I had been aiming for Annie’s head, she’d be dead.”
“So you deny shooting at Annie?”
“I was nowhere near your precious Annie last night. I was right here. I know you don’t believe me. Ask anybody.”
Frank turned to leave. She stopped him. “One thing I would be interested in is your wife’s obituary notice. I’d give a thousand dollars to the one who caused it. No, make that a hundred dollars. She’s not worth a thousand.”
Frank had to fight to keep his temper in check as he strode out the door and into a crowd gathered by the harsh words flying from Lillian Smith’s dressing room. Between clenched teeth, he asked, “Is one of you the owner here?”
A balding fellow in mutton-chop whiskers said, “I’m the manager. I’ll escort you out personally.” To the cluster of vaudevillians he said, “Everybody back to your business. Show starts in five.”
Out in the alley by the theater, Frank asked, “Was Miss Smith here for all the shows yesterday?”
“Indeed she was—all six.”
“How long is her act?”
The manager squinted as he emerged into the sunlight. “Nine minutes.”
“How long is each show?”
“One hour and fifty-five minutes.”
“Did she go out of the building when she wasn’t onstage?”
“Of course. They all go out sometimes.”
“Does she go on at the same time every show?”
“Sure. Twenty-two minutes past the start.” The manager hitched up his pants and leaned toward Frank. “I’ve got to get back inside so let’s understand each other. As a favor to you, I’ve answered your questions.” He poked a determined finger hard enough in Frank’s chest to drive home the point. “Mind you, I was not obliged to tell you anything.”
The manager looped one thumb in the pocket of his striped vest. With his free hand he pulled out his watch to check the time. “I don’t expect ever to see you again—unless of course, you buy a ticket and sit out front.” He turned on his heel and strode back through the artiste’s entrance.
Frank walked around to the front of the theater and bought a ticket. He studied the program order as he waited to see whether one-time teenage prodigy Lillian Smith could still shoot straight.