Slocum and the Lady Detective Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Beautiful Bailout

  “How much?”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “How much is Mr. Slocum’s bail?”

  “Is that the varmint’s name? I hadn’t bothered to ask.”

  Slocum stared hard at the woman, trying to remember where they had met. Anyone this beautiful would have made an impression, and he couldn’t remember ever having seen her before a few minutes ago. But that didn’t make any sense. He had never met her, yet she knew his name—and she wanted to fork over bail money to get him out of jail.

  “How much?” She pulled out a wad of greenbacks big enough to choke a cow. Slocum was positive now that he didn’t know her. Not only was she lovely, she was rich. That combination in such a beautiful woman would have stuck in his memory to his dying day.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  SLOCUM AND THE LADY DETECTIVE

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / March 2011

  Copyright © 2011 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  eISBN : 978-1-101-47725-0

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  1

  “Double or nothing,” the scrawny kid said. He looked around furtively, as if somebody would stop him from offering to match coins.

  John Slocum flipped his twenty-dollar gold piece in the air, letting it catch the brilliant sunlight that made it almost impossible not to squint. At this time of year in Leadville, Colorado, the spring sun burned the flesh even as the nip in the wind remaining from winter caused an occasional shiver. Slocum thought it was about the best feeling ever. Unless he could do the boy out of forty dollars.

  “You don’t look like you have it.”

  “You callin’ me a cheat? Of course I got the money. Got forty dollars, and I’ll put it up ’gainst your double eagle.”

  Slocum was feeling his oats. He had ridden into town from Denver through Mosquito Pass, had endured deep snowdrifts and an avalanche along the way, and yet had arrived in high spirits for no reason other than winter was finally slipping into memory.

  “Get your coin,” Slocum said. He watched the boy fumble out a gold piece matching his own. He still wasn’t sure the boy—he looked maybe sixteen—had a second coin or why he was so willing to bet double or nothing on a single flip.

  “I’ll count. We both go on three. We match,” the youngster said, “I owe you forty. We don’t match, you owe me forty.”

  “Whoa, hold on,” Slocum said. “That’s not double or nothing. Those are even odds.” He didn’t want to risk what he didn’t have. Twenty dollars was a princely sum, considering how terrible his luck had been at the Denver poker tables. He was lucky to have anything in his pocket and wouldn’t have if he hadn’t found one last speck of good luck that won him a small pot at the Thieves Den Gambling Emporium just off Larimer Square. His winnings secured in his vest pocket next to his brother’s watch, he had left the game, left the gaming parlor, mounted his mare, and ridden due west hunting for a pass through the Front Range. Luck was a fickle bitch, and Denver had exhausted his chances for another winning hand.

  Leadville had to be better, and if this punk kid was any example, it would be.

  “All right, even odds. You still want to match?” The youngster nervously ran his fingers around the rim of his coin.

  “No.”

  “What? You can’t . . .” The kid glared at him. “Oh, all right. I’m feelin’ mighty lucky today. Double or nothing.”

  “If I win, you pay forty,” Slocum said, to be sure. It amused him the way his would-be gambling partner looked as if he had bitten into a sour persimmon.

  “Yeah, yeah. Let’s
do it. One, two, three.”

  Slocum flipped his coin on the count of three and seldom had he seen a hand so fast. Dirty fingers shot out and snared his double eagle in midair. The boy turned and started to run, only to slip on a patch of ice and fall facedown in the mud. Two quick steps put Slocum next to the young man. Before the cheater could get his feet under him, Slocum shoved him down into the cold, sticky mud with the sole of his boot.

  “That wasn’t very neighborly,” he said. The youngster sputtered. Slocum let him get to his hands and knees but kept him in the mud to teach him a lesson. “You have the money? Or were you lying?”

  “I ain’t no liar!”

  Slocum said nothing. An angry, mud-caked face turned up to him. Sullenly, the young man fumbled in his pocket and drew out two coins, both as filthy as their owner. Their former owner.

  Slocum took them and tucked the golden coins into his vest pocket. When the young man tried to stand, Slocum shoved him back.

  “Now, give me back my coin. The one you snatched.”

  With a quirky smile, the teenager pulled a coin from his pocket and handed it up to Slocum.

  “Cain’t fault a man for tryin’, now can you?”

  “I can. If you were a couple years older, I would have shot you as you ran.”

  “If I was a couple years older, I’d be wearin’ a hogleg on my hip and you wouldna dared!”

  Slocum had to admit the boy was quick. His hand had flashed out to grab the coin very neatly. Put a six-gun in a holster and let the boy draw and it would be a deadly combination. Slocum knew, though, that it took more than quick reflexes to be a gunfighter. He wasn’t sure the boy had the killer instinct required to pull the trigger.

  Looking down at the muddy, pathetic figure, he doubted it.

  “Get yourself an honest job. Stealing from strangers will get you killed.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Amid a flurry of flying mud, the boy slipped and slid and finally found enough purchase to run off. Slocum watched him go, shaking his head. Leadville was a mining town and a prosperous one to boot, surrounded by proven silver mines. If the youngster had tried this trick with a drunk miner, he might have gotten away with the theft—he probably had many times over if he had forty dollars to wager. Slocum considered finding others the boy had robbed, then decided against it. With sixty dollars riding high in his pocket, he could dare Lady Luck once more and have a chance of walking away with even more. Miners were notoriously bad card players, and for whatever reason, the less successful they were at finding blue dirt, the worse they were at poker.

  Some men couldn’t catch a break if it was hog-tied and thrown onto their doorstep.

  Slocum avoided the deeper mud holes in Leadville’s main street as he made his way to a restaurant that didn’t look as likely to poison him as the one serving up slop in a tent a few yards down the street. The smell from that place caused his belly to rumble—and not in a good way.

  He stepped into the restaurant and saw red-and-whitechecked tablecloths and silverware set out for the patrons.

  “Set yourself down anywhere,” the rail-thin waiter said. “You want the special or you want somethin’ special?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Not much,” the waiter said, scratching himself. “One’s steak and eggs and the other’s eggs and steak.”

  “I’ll have that, eggs runny and steak rare.”

  “It’ll moo when you stab it with the fork,” the waiter promised.

  And Slocum couldn’t find any flaw in the meal. It came exactly as he had ordered and slid down into his gullet, chased all the way with hot coffee. When he’d finished, he leaned back and felt as content as any time he could remember.

  “That’ll be two-fifty, mister,” the waiter said.

  “Mighty steep prices, but it was a mighty good steak,” Slocum said, fishing out one of his three double eagles and passing it over.

  The waiter took it, then frowned. He bit down hard on it, then grabbed the knife off the plate holding the remains of Slocum’s meal. The man dug the knife point into the coin, then tossed it onto the table.

  It spun and dropped with a dull thud.

  “Gimme real money. That there’s a lead slug that’s been painted gold.”

  Slocum pulled another coin from his pocket and dug his fingernail into it. The gilding came off and left his dirty fingernail shiny.

  “That’s all right,” Slocum said. “I’ve got a real gold coin here.” He pulled out his original coin, then stopped and stared at it as it lay in the palm of his hand.

  Part of the milling around the edge had broken free, showing dull gray metal beneath.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said, slamming the coin down hard on the table next to the other two.

  “That kid swindled me!”

  Slocum ran back his memory of what had happened. When the youngster had snatched the coin, he had stuck it away in his pocket. Slocum’s demand to be paid had allowed the muddy thief to press three fake coins on him, keeping the real gold double eagle hidden away. For the price of three lead slugs and getting dirty, which he hardly noticed, the youngster had swindled Slocum out of twenty dollars.

  His only twenty dollars. He didn’t even have a nickel left.

  “I don’t much care for your sob story, mister,” the waiter said. “I want my money.”

  “I was robbed,” Slocum said, “but I’ll find him and get it back.” He started to rise, but the scrawny man clamped down on his shoulder with surprising strength and forced him into the chair.

  “I ain’t lettin’ you out of my sight till you work off the meal. You want, I call the marshal. He’s one mean son of a buck and as likely to beat you to death as drag you to his godforsaken jail. The only good thing ’bout that jail’s that I feed the prisoners. The bad thing is that the marshal makes you pay for it. What do you want to do, mister?”

  Slocum’s mind raced. The man was no match for him if it came down to a fight, but Slocum didn’t have a quarrel with him. Eating a meal and then trying to pay for it with worthless slugs had to look as if a cheat had come into the restaurant.

  Slocum was no cheat.

  “I’ll work it off.” He stood, took the plates, and started for the kitchen. “You got hot water ready to wash the plates?”

  “Out back. Build a fire and get it started.” Slocum was halfway there went the waiter called, “You ain’t gonna run, are you?”

  The look Slocum gave him forced the man to clamp his mouth shut. The answer was written on Slocum’s face. He was an honest man and would give an honest day’s work to pay for what he’d eaten.

  And he did.

  It was well past sundown when Slocum finished the last of the chores and went inside. He had chopped a pile of wood for the cooking stove, had built a stack of clean plates and utensils, and had done what he could to keep the restaurant floor swept clean during the day. With the constant traffic of hungry miners and drifters coming through, knocking mud off their boots as they walked, it had been like moving all the dirt in one big hole to another and then back. He ended up where he started and there wasn’t anything to show for the entire day’s work. Nothing except satisfaction in paying off his debt.

  “What more do you need?” Slocum asked.

  The waiter, who also cooked and, Slocum supposed, owned the restaurant, shrugged. He glanced over his shoulder at a rough customer sitting near the door.

  “I’ll give you dinner if you’ll watch that one. From the way you carry that six-shooter of yours, you’re no stranger to fightin’.”

  “Done my share,” Slocum allowed. And he had, ever since the war. He wasn’t proud of having ridden with Quantrill and he sure as hell wasn’t proud of the way he’d killed the carpetbagger judge who had tried to steal his family farm back in Calhoun, Georgia. Slocum didn’t think that was a mistake but judge killing, even when they needed it, was a crime that would dog his heels until some unknown undertaker tossed dirt in his cold, dead face.

/>   But Slocum wasn’t the sort to allow a phony claim of unpaid taxes to carry the day. The judge and his hired gunman had met their fate, Slocum had buried the both of them, then he had ridden west and never slowed down to see what tracked him.

  “Men like that sit by the door, thinkin’ on eatin’, then dartin’ outside without payin’.”

  “You want me to collect from him?”

  “Naw, I’ll do that. Just be ready to tackle him if he tries to run.”

  The waiter hitched up the apron that kept sliding down his snake hips, then went to the table and stood over the man. He cleared his throat and said, “You owe four dollars fer the meal and dessert. You want to pay up now?”

  “You’re a pushy whoreson, ain’t you?” The man—a cowboy, if Slocum could tell, and on the run from the law—dug his heels into the floorboard and pushed himself back, legs straight so his hand would have a clear path to his six-shooter at his right hip.

  “Don’t want trouble, just want my money. You et, you pay.”

  “Here, and be damned.” The cowboy tossed a coin on the table, stood, and shoved the waiter back. In three strides he was out the door and swallowed up by the night.

  “That’s a relief,” the waiter said, picking up the coin. He frowned, bit into it, then flung it away so hard it sounded like a bullet ricocheting off the wall. “Fake. The bastard gave me a fake double eagle.”

  Slocum picked up the coin and examined it. For all he could tell, it was the twin of those he had been given earlier. What might have been an isolated occurrence was taking on the air of a flood of bad coins.

  He ran his finger over the yellowed surface and pushed away a veneer of gold. Nothing felt like gold. And beneath the surface lay gray metal better suited to making a bullet than a coin.