CHAPTER 7

Billy Connery lowered the letter and frowned thoughtfully. “This Rachel Frye, that’s Brady Kenton’s daughter, right?”

“Yes.”

“And she went to England with Kenton.”

“She did.”

“Then how has she come to end up in a hospital in New York?”

“A good question.”

“Perhaps we can wire the hospital and find out.”

“I intend to do that. I expect we’ll find she’s still there. It’s a charity-based hospital, the letterhead indicates, so I doubt they’d throw her into the streets.”

“I wonder if Kenton knows she’s there?”

“I can’t believe he would. He would never stand by while his flesh and blood was in some kind of medical crisis.”

“This seems to be a common refrain.”

“What do you mean?”

“This thing of ‘Kenton would never’ do this or do that. Kenton would never come back to the United States without letting you know. But obviously he has. Kenton would never let his own daughter languish alone in a hospital far from him. But again, it appears he has.”

“I can assure you, there has to be a reason for whatever he’s doing. I’ve known Kenton a long time. I know the man he is.”

“Unless the man he is now isn’t the man you’ve known. Something might have happened to change him.”

Gunnison couldn’t deny this possibility. Kenton had a history of occasional lapses into despair and drinking, and at such times he would become different than he was in better times. Kenton’s bad periods were inevitably triggered by negative events—severe disappointments, failures, personal crises of one kind or another.

Gunnison was fairly sure now that Kenton’s quest to find his wife in England had failed. This blow, which would be the worst of his life, might have driven him further than ever before into drinking and self-isolation.

He had to find Kenton and help him, or Kenton might not be around much longer to be found at all.

“What will you do now?” Connery asked, handing the letter back to Gunnison.

“Go to New York.”

“I’d like to go with you.”

“No. I have another job for you. I want you to go to Colorado in my place.”

“Really? To look for Kenton?”

“Yes. I need to go to both Colorado and New York, and clearly I can’t pull that one off.”

“You know that I’ve never met Kenton.”

“No, but you’ve seen more than enough pictures of him. Besides, it might be good to have someone looking for him whom he’s never met. If he saw me before I saw him and if he didn’t want me to find him, he’d simply disappear. You’ll be able to find him without rousing suspicion … I hope.”

Connery, beaming, pumped Gunnison’s hand. “Thank you, Alex. I’ll not let you down. If he’s there to be found, I’ll find him.”

“You’ll have to be careful how you proceed. Kenton is clever, and if he’s trying to hide, he’ll not be easy to locate.”

“It doesn’t appear to me that he’s been particularly clever,” Connery replied. “He did a sketch and simply left it in a cafe to be found.”

“I admit that does seem careless, if he’s trying to stay in hiding. But maybe it was a simple oversight on his part.”

“I will be careful. And if Kenton is in some sort of bad situation, I’ll do all I can to help him.”

“Watch out for yourself as well. Kenton may be hiding because he’s in danger. If you find him, you could be in danger, too.”

“What kind of danger?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that Dr. David Kevington is a determined and dangerous man, willing to do whatever it takes to gain and keep what he wants. He kidnapped Kenton’s wife years ago and hid her away like his personal treasure. If Kenton managed to get her away from him, Kevington would probably know no limits in how he’d react, trying to get her back.”

Connery pondered this a moment. “Kenton could be hiding from Dr. Kevington, then.”

“Maybe. We can’t know until we find him. But, Billy … if you do find Kenton, please be sure that you don’t accidentally help somebody else find him, too.”

Connery took this in thoughtfully, then nodded. “I will indeed proceed with great caution. And you do the same.”

“I will.” Gunnison shook the letter. “I wish this told me the reason that Rachel is hospitalized.”

“Whatever it is, it must be no small thing, to keep her nearly unconscious for weeks.”

“It doesn’t even tell us whether it was illness or injury. This is a hurriedly written letter.”

“Probably written by a physician with more work than he can handle. Can you imagine how mystifying, and frustrating, it must have been to have a patient who for weeks was unable to reveal who she was or who to contact about her?”

“I wonder if Kenton knows where she is?”

“Well, if he doesn’t, you can tell him when you find him. I doubt he knows.”

“How will you explain your New York journey to Roxanne?”

“I think maybe the time has come to do something radical.”

“Tell her the truth?”

“Exactly.”

*   *   *

Connery’s living quarters were small, cheap, second-story, and within easy walking distance of the Illustrated American. Typical of an unmarried young male, he lived amid his own mess, clothing strewn all about and the remnants of three-day-old meals still lingering on molding plates in dusty corners.

He usually was oblivious to the clutter, but at the moment it was a problem because he was trying to pack, which involved having to do some serious digging amid the smutty heaps. With every atrocity he uncovered he grew more disgusted at his own slovenly ways.

One of these days he’d do better, he vowed to himself. Especially when he had a woman to impress. At the moment, there was none. Connery’s romantic efforts of late had been faltering failures. But maybe, someday, there’d be a knock on his door, he’d open it, find some lovely creature on the other side, needing directions or help carrying something or to borrow a cup of flour, and a great romance would be born. It was a common fantasy for Billy Connery, though so far nothing remotely like it had happened.

There was a knock on the door. “I’ll be!” Connery muttered. “Wouldn’t you know she’d show up right when I’m about to leave for Colorado!”

But it wasn’t the girl of his dreams. It was exactly who he knew it would be: J. R. Randwick, who lived in the rooms across the hall. He played a dual role in Connery’s life: friend and annoyer.

“Come in, J. R. What brings you over this evening?”

“Hearing you bumping around. What are you doing?”

“What does it look like? I’m packing.”

“Getting ready to travel, eh?”

“You know, you ought to go into detective work, J. R. You’re wasted back in the bowels of that bakery.”

“Where are you going?”

“West. Colorado. Some isolated mining town called Culvertown.”

“Big story, huh?”

“You might say.”

“Alex Gunnison going with you?”

“No. This one’s on my own.”

“What? You’re writing the story, too, not just drawing?”

“No, I’m not writing.”

“So you’ll just be publishing pictures, no story?”

“Questions, questions. You’re full of them, J. R.”

J. R. wandered over to Connery’s table and tore a hunk from a loaf of bread there. Connery glowered at him. “Don’t you have food of your own?”

“Sure. I just like this bread you’ve got.”

“You should. You baked it yesterday.”

“That’s why it’s so good. Hey, let me go with you to Colorado.”

“What? You’ve got to work, my friend.”

“Nope. The bakery is closed for two weeks. They’re rebuilding the whole inside of it while the boss is off taking care of his sick father. I’ve got free time, and plenty of money saved up. I’m going with you.”

“You can’t, J. R.”

“Why? Will I break your concentration while you scribble your pictures?”

“This is a different kind of a trip. I’m not going to be drawing.”

“Then what?”

“None of your business, but I’ll be looking for someone.” There was a moment of inner warning: You’re about to say too much. But what did it really matter? J. R. was harmless, and if he didn’t give him solid explanations about why he couldn’t tag along on his journey, J. R. would push and push and push some more.

“Who you looking for?”

“A man. A missing fellow. Somebody that Mr. Gunnison wants to find.”

“Why not just hire a detective?”

“There’s reasons.”

“Aha! Secrecy. Something sneaky and covert. Now I know I’ve got to go with you.”

“J. R., you can’t. I’m serious about that. I’ve been given an assignment to carry out for Alex Gunnison, and I have to keep it quiet. This is a very important thing.”

Connery noticed the way J. R. was looking at him, intrigue mixed with jealousy. Despite himself, Connery felt a boyish surging of his ego and added an extra detail he would later wish he hadn’t: “You might say I’m going to see if we can’t bring a man back from the dead.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“No. You tell me what that means. You can’t throw out something like that and not tell me what you’re talking about.”

“I can’t say any more. I wish I could.”

“You’re looking for somebody who’s dead?”

“No.”

“Somebody who people think is dead, then.”

Connery said nothing.

“That’s it! You’re looking to find somebody who people think is dead. Maybe somebody pretending to be dead.”

“You better go, J. R.”

“I’ve figured it out! Who is it? Tell me!”

Connery would not tell, though J. R. prodded and probed until Connery could hardly stand it. When J. R. left, he was angry and frustrated.

Connery finished packing and knew he’d made a mistake. Probably nothing would come of it, but he’d be sure not to let Alex Gunnison know what he’d just done.

He’d be much more careful from here on out.

*   *   *

It took some time for her to grasp what he told her, and when she did, her reaction made Gunnison wonder if he’d done the right thing in opening his mouth.

“Let me understand this,” she said, a little icily. “All this time, Brady Kenton has been alive. The Illustrated American published a big story that was … a lie. Memorial tributes poured in from everyone from your father through the vice president of the United States … all for a man who really wasn’t dead at all.”

“That’s pretty much it.”

“All because he asked you to.”

“Roxanne, you have to look at it from Kenton’s side, and from mine. You know how important his quest for Victoria was to him. Most people scoffed at it and thought him a fool for believing his wife might still be alive … but he was right. By letting the world think he was dead, he had the freedom to go to England and seriously look for her. I had to agree to his request, Roxanne.”

“But you lied to me, along with everyone else.”

“He made me promise. He didn’t want me to tell anyone at all. Only Rachel Frye, a Texas Ranger named Frank Turner, and I knew Kenton was still alive. He wanted to keep it that way.… Even to tell just one person opened the door to the truth getting out.”

“But I’m your wife, Alex! We’re not supposed to have secrets between one another.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d react so strongly.”

“It’s just that the vows we made to each other when we were married were more important than the vow you made to Kenton.”

“Oh, come now, Roxanne.… Are you trying to tell me that there’s nothing you know that I don’t know? That you’ve never kept anything secret from me?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

She was obviously offended. “It makes me wonder what else you’re keeping from me.”

“What?”

“I’ve wondered at times … I’m sorry to say this, Alex … but I did sometimes wonder if it was really Brady Kenton who kept you away from me for so much time over all those years. I wondered if you were away from me because you wanted to be.”

“Roxanne!”

“And I wondered if there were … other women.”

Gunnison wished now he’d not told her the truth about Kenton. He’d not had any notion that it would be such a catalyst for all this anger.

“There were never other women. Never. I’ve been forever faithful to you.”

She stared at him, eyes beginning to fill.

“Roxanne, what can I say to you? Do you not believe me?”

Her lip trembled.

“Roxanne, I love you. I would die before I would be unfaithful to you.”

Tears came. She went to him and put her arms around him. “I know. I know.”

“Did you really doubt me?”

“No. I’m sorry. I was just angry that you’d keep such a secret from me.”

“I hope you can understand why I felt that I had to.”

“I do.”

“And in the end, I did tell you. I broke my vow to Kenton today. Just like I broke it when I told Billy Connery.” Gunnison decided not to reveal to her that he’d told Connery the truth months ago. Given her reactions so far, it was best to let her think he’d told Connery only today. He’d be sure to tell Connery not to say anything around Roxanne that would indicate otherwise.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry I acted like I did.”

“Forget all about it.” He hugged her. “You are glad to know that Kenton didn’t really die, aren’t you?”

“Of course … but I hope it doesn’t mean that he’ll come back and take you off on the road with him again.”

“That won’t happen. My days apart from you are finished. But I do have to go away one more time, just this once. I’ve got to go to New York.”

“Because of the letter … Rachel Frye.”

“That’s right.”

“Yes, you must go. But not alone. I’m going with you.”

“With me? Roxanne … there’s a chance, just a chance, that there may be some danger involved. Kenton may be hiding because someone is after him, or maybe Victoria. If so, they might be after Rachel as well.”

“If there’s danger, that’s all the more reason for me to go. I want to look out for you.”

“I’d rather have you safe at home.”

“Has it crossed your mind, Husband, that if someone is trying to find Kenton, it won’t take them long to come looking around Kenton’s workplace, and his friends?”

Gunnison hadn’t thought about that. It made sense, and scared him.

“They might watch this very house, Alex, thinking that Kenton might show up here.”

Gunnison nodded. “I think you may have a point, Roxanne.”

“I’m going with you to New York.”

“Yes. You are.”

“Will Billy be safe going to Colorado alone?”

“I hope so.… I’ll talk to him again before he leaves and tell him to watch out. He’s excited about his assignment and already packing even though his train won’t leave until day after tomorrow.”

“When will we leave?”

“Tomorrow morning. I want to get to Rachel Frye as quickly as possible.”