Already the sun at this mountain elevation was merciless, pouring down like hot honey, wilting Alice’s upswept hairdo and dampening the camisole under her red satin dress. She wrinkled her nose. The air smelled like smoke and something oily.
People stared at her. Even though she had knotted the red knitted shawl over her chest and wore the respectable sun hat she had unfolded from her travel bag, it was obvious to everyone that she was a woman with a questionable reputation. A “fancy lady.” While there were precious few women on the street to disapprove, there were dozens of men, mostly miners and shopkeepers, who cast admiring glances her way.
The Alice part of her cringed at all that male attention. The Lolly part of her smiled and shamelessly batted her eyes. Rand, she noticed, kept her arm securely drawn through his, and whenever a man ogled her he tightened his hand.
Coleman’s Assay Office was housed in a small, neat building painted bright yellow with window boxes of red geraniums attached to the front. Her heart squeezed.
“Just look at that,” she murmured. “Dottie loved red geraniums, they were her favorite flower. Jim planted red geraniums for her until the day he died.”
Rand conducted her up the walk and onto the wide front porch. When they entered the office a bell over the door tinkled, but there was no one behind the wooden counter. A handsome iron scale sat on one side.
After a moment a smartly dressed woman in her forties stepped forward. “Yes?” Her gray-blonde hair was pulled into a prim bun at her neck, and her crisp brown shirtwaist and brown plaid skirt looked schoolteacher-ish.
“Are you the owner?” Rand asked.
“Who is inquiring?” the woman asked with a frown.
“The name is Logan. I’m a US Marshal, Miss...?”
“Whittaker,” she said quickly. “Emmeline Whittaker.”
“I understand the original owner, Dorothy Coleman, is recently deceased,” Rand pursued. “Are you the current owner?”
The woman bit her lip. “Yes, I am,” she said. “And no, I am not.” She studied Alice for a long minute and then flicked her gaze back to Rand.
“Would you care to explain, Miss Whittaker?” Rand asked.
“Um. Well, you see, Mrs. Coleman, the owner, left the business to me when she died.”
“Oh? Mrs. Coleman had a will?”
“You’ll have to ask my attorney about that, Marshal. His name is Jason Meade. Just up the street on the left, past the dressmaker.” She ran a disapproving eye over Alice’s satin and sequin dress.
“Marshal, how long will you be in town?”
Rand looked straight at her. “For as long as it takes.” He touched his hat brim. “Good morning, Miss Whittaker.”
“Rand,” Alice whispered when they were back on the boardwalk outside. “Aren’t you curious about the business records? Why didn’t you ask to see the account books?”
“I don’t want Miss Whittaker to know I’m interested. I’ll get the account books tonight.”
“Tonight? How?”
“Steal them,” he said shortly.
She stared at him, but he looked away and guided her on down the street. “Rand?”
He shook his head. “Later,” he intoned.
Jason Meade’s law office turned out to be a small smudged white canvas tent with a painted wooden sign outside. Rand pulled open the entrance flap. “Mr. Meade?”
A skinny, dark-haired man in serge trousers and a gray striped shirt looked up from a desk stacked with thick law books. “That’s me, all right.” His gaze landed on Alice and he jerked to his feet. “Say, aren’t you the gal who sang at the Golden Nugget last night? Lolly something? Lolly Maguire, that’s it. I recognize that red dress you’re wearing.”
Alice smiled at him. “Mr. Meade, I am interested in purchasing the assay office across the street. What can you tell me about it?”
“I’m afraid it’s not for sale, Miss Maguire.”
“You mean the owner is not interested in selling?”
He cleared his throat and gave Rand a quick glance. “The owner is, uh, deceased, Miss.”
“Who owns the property now?”
“Um...well, no one, actually. Miss Emmeline Whittaker is managing the office until the terms of the will are clarified.”
“Do you have the will?” Rand asked.
“Well, yessir, I do. But it isn’t exactly a public document. Not just anybody off the street can read it.”
Rand pulled his vest aside to reveal the revolver. “I’m not just anybody, Mr. Meade. I’d like to see that will.”
The lawyer’s eyes rounded. “Oh. Well, I’m afraid—”
Rand fished in his shirt pocket and laid his US Marshal’s badge on the desk. “Now,” he added.
Lawyer Meade blanched, then turned to a small steel safe in the corner, twirled the dial back and forth and swung open the door. “Here it is, Marshal.”
Rand scanned the single page of yellowed parchment, then handed it to Alice. “Says here that upon Dorothy Coleman’s death, her sister, Alice Montgomery, inherits the assay office.”
“Well, yes, that’s true, Marshal. We’ve wired Miss Montgomery a number of times, but there’s been no response.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“I mean me,” Meade said quickly. “I wired Miss Montgomery.”
“When did you send that telegram to the deceased’s sister?”
“Oh, right after Miss Dorothy, that is Mrs. Coleman, passed on. Got no answer. No answer at all.”
Rand folded up the will and stashed it in his vest pocket.
“Wait a minute, you can’t take that! That’s a legal document.”
“It sure is,” Rand agreed. “If I were you, Mr. Meade, I’d keep trying to contact Miss Montgomery. I am quite sure she will want to know about her sister’s bequest.”
That afternoon Rand leaned back on his dining chair and sent Alice a grin. “Interesting morning, wouldn’t you say?”
Alice finished off her lemonade and he refilled her glass from the pitcher on the table. “Very interesting,” she agreed. “Emmeline Whittaker is usurping ownership of Dottie’s assay business. Lawyer Meade is lying. And it’s all making me terribly thirsty.”
“Sheriff Lipscomb was in a real hurry to hush up your sister’s murder,” Rand said. “And it looks to me like the coroner, Dr. Harvey Arnold, was in on it.”
“But none of that is a motive for killing someone, is it?”
“Maybe not. But we’re not finished yet. I’m going to get my hands on the assay office account books, and you have another night of sleuthing at the Golden Nugget.”
“This undercover business is wearing,” Alice breathed.
Rand lifted his glass and touched hers. “More lemonade?”