Weeping Angel Read online

  She’d sworn never to have anything to do with a saloon after Jonas ran off with Silver Starlight, and now she clutched the key to one.

  Being voted down had been bad; having four of her own gender go against her had been worse. How could they have done such a thing to her? They knew how she felt. They knew about . . . about what happened . . .

  Fresh tears brimmed her eyes and she fought them.

  Passing her fingertips under her lower lashes to make sure her face powder hadn’t smudged, Amelia turned on her heels to leave.

  The light of day blinded her as she hurried across Divine Street, thankful no one had milled around to speak with her. And even more thankful Mr. Brody wasn’t anywhere in sight.

  She heard a thumpity-thumpity coming from down the block. When she glanced in the direction of the noise, she saw the big crate with the New American upright parlor piano being rolled inside the Moon Rock Saloon’s double front doors.

  Her chest ached anew, and Amelia wanted nothing more than to go home, strip out of her clothes, slide to the bottom of her bathtub, and pull the cool water over her head to hide.

  Chapter

  3

  By two-thirty in the morning, the candle-melting heat cooled to a temperature that would have kept a puddle of wax only lukewarm. The seductive breath of garden roses consorted with the scents of freshly watered vegetable gardens and lawns. The combinations milling through the air roamed sluggishly under and over the paneled, frosted cut glass doors of the Moon Rock Saloon.

  Frank lounged in a chair, his boot heels caught on a round table’s edge while he enjoyed a beer mug of 5-Star Hennessy cognac. Forgoing the handle, he slipped his hand around the fluted glass to warm the liquor with his right palm. Far from drinking fashion, he rebuffed the idea of a snifter; they were too ostentatious and too large. Their wide mouths allowed the bouquet to evaporate into the air, rather than his mouth. Savoring the taste, he indulged in his favorite drink. The mellow brandy capped off his long night as he listened to Pap O’Cleary romp through “Buffalo Gals” for the dozenth time.

  “Can’t you play anything else?” Frank asked between leisurely sips, growing tired of the song’s square-dance tempo.

  Pap didn’t miss a beat while shaking his derby-covered head. “Got this one under my skin,” he replied in tune to the music. “Under my skin . . . under my skin.”

  Frowning, Frank struck a match with his thumbnail and lit a cheroot. He brought the thin cigar to his lips, then inhaled. Exhaling a slow ribbon of white smoke as he spoke, he suggested, “Play ‘Sweet Betsy from Pike’ or ‘Down Went McGinty.’ Better yet, ‘A Hot Time in the Old Town.’ We did a damn hot business tonight.”

  “Best since we opened,” Pap agreed above the virgin-sounding chords he ravished from the New American upright parlor piano. “Oh, buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight and dance,” he sang in a deep-pitched voice, “by the light of the moon?” He abruptly stopped his jaunty playing and swiveled on the hardwood stool to face Frank. Meshing his fingers together and extending his arms, he cracked his joints. “Feels good to get the kinks out.”

  “Feels good just sitting here.”

  “You always say that at closing time.” Pap stood to shuffle through his repertoire of sheet music on top of the piano. He wasn’t a tall man, but he was solid as a brick. Beneath his Danbury black derby, he was bald as a baby’s bottom, but made up for nature’s premature deficit by sporting a whopping red mustache.

  “I always mean it.” Frank took a pull on his square-tipped cigar. “The best part of the night is smelling what everybody else has done with their day. That fragrance of roses belongs to Narcissa Dodge. She pruned the bushes at sundown when that elm of hers shaded her planting beds. And the whiff of grass is coming from Doc White’s yard. He just mowed his lawn this afternoon. Watered it right after supper.” Frank tapped the ash off his cigar onto the floor. “Jakey Spivey washed his yellow hound today. General Custer trotted by the saloon a couple hours ago, leaving the scent of Ivory soap, fresh dirt, and dog behind him. If you breathe in deep, you can still smell it.”

  “I have no interest in sniffing after a dog who’s half clean.” Selecting a folio, Pap pushed the brim of his hat up his forehead. “Besides, I don’t smell anything but your cigar and Rupert Teats’s livery.”

  Frank let the last of his Hennessy slide down his throat, then licked his lips with a satisfied swallow. “That’s because you don’t know how to smell life, Pap.”

  “I can smell food and I can smell women—and not necessarily in that order.”

  Frank laughed as he felt along his jaw for the heavy stubble roughing up his chin.

  A June bug bounced off the crystal chandelier above Frank. The hot, cut glass globe glowing from kerosene light burned the insect’s wings, and the bug plummeted to Frank’s beer mug with a plop. “Damn good thing my glass was empty,” he said to the dead beetle, and dumped the brown spot onto the sawdust-covered floor with a drop or two of cognac.

  “Play me something unrefined if you won’t play ‘Hot Time,’ ” Frank persisted.

  Pap gave his elbows a bone pop to stay limber. “I’ll play you ‘Hot Time.’ ” He set the sheet on the music desk and began with the chorus.

  Frank closed his eyes and let the song dance through his mind. He pictured sunsets in the Mexican desert—an almost endless pancake of land barren as a ninety-year-old woman—where the only shadows on the ground came from his horse and himself. He waited for an arid breeze to mantle his face with dust, but the dry wind never came. And never would again. Gone were the days of rambling and a panorama sprawling as far as his gaze could see. He’d traded in empty prospects and an empty life and decided to travel a road of stability instead.

  Though the shoe of proprietorship didn’t quite fit him yet, he hoped time would soften the leather and his sole would adapt to the size of small-town life. Hell, he had no place else to go. This was it for him. The final watering hole in a long line of thirsty ventures as a jack-of-all-trades. He’d mined silver on the Comstock, laid track for the Southern Pacific, ridden shotgun on the Overland Stage, ran a trading post in Nogales, and his last occupation—bardogging at the El Dorado in Frisco.

  It was there he’d met Charley Revis and bought this building from him sight unseen. Old Charley had said he’d tried to make a go of things in Weeping Angel a couple of years ago, but fortune hadn’t been on his side. He’d had a string of bad luck, most notably run-ins with the crones who didn’t abide a second saloon in town. He’d been in business just shy of a month when his cash box disappeared the same day his hurdy-gurdy dancer ran off. After that, Charley had called it quits, boarded up the place, and went to San Francisco.

  The night Frank met Charley, Charley had ordered a round of drinks for everyone in the El Dorado to celebrate his newfound wealth in the stock market. They got to talking, and Charley’s description of Weeping Angel had appealed to Frank. There was a crystal-clear lake with trout for the taking, the seasons were pretty to watch, and a man need only bother to keep a dog at his side instead of a gun. Frank had been looking for just such a town to hang his hat up. The challenge of turning the shebang into a glory house had cinched the deal for Frank, and he and Pap had ridden out of Frisco by the weekend.

  Frank felt the whir of June bugs as they flitted through his saloon and opened his eyes to the false light. He viewed the Moon Rock as if he were seeing it for the first time.

  A fine diamond-dust mirror ran the length of his thirty-foot, golden walnut bar. His back bar—or altar as the bartenders called it in the El Dorado—had shelves for pyramids of brightly labeled liquor bottles and the knickknacks forming his saloon’s “museum.” He displayed a cracked in half geode—two pieces of split rock with pale lavender prisms of quartz inside—on the mantel. And to anyone who asked, he swore the rock fell out of the sky from the moon and hit him on the arm; he had the scar to prove it. He supplied towels at the edge of the counter so his customers could wipe the foam from th
eir mustaches or beards. He offered men drinks out of crystal glasses. He’d scattered scarlet runners of carpet throughout the joint to add a touch of elegance, and he gave the patrons fancy brass cuspidors to spit in.

  Coming from his rebellious, empty-pocket beginnings, Frank had done well for himself. He should have been happy and downright content. He’d be turning thirty in less than two months, and he could celebrate in the Moon Rock—the closest thing to a home he’d ever had. He seemed to have been taking his life in recently, trying to make it add up to something, but he was coming up with a zero.

  Finishing “Hot Time in the Old Town” in a crescendo of finale chords, Pap chuckled. “Goes to show I can still twiddle the ivories and make ’em cry. What do you want next?”

  “Girls.”

  Tilting his head, Pap snorted, “Girls? You’ve got every female in this sleepy-eyed town tripping over you.”

  “I don’t mean the batting-eyelash and wave-of-the-handkerchief women. Their giggles and blushes wear on my nerves. I’m talking girls—as in decadent, white-fleshed girls who can run around the place showing off real skin so pearly it would put an oyster’s work to shame. The kind of girls who sing and dance and make a man feel like a man even if he’s short on guts and not strong on brains. You know what I mean—dancing girls.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. Do-si-do girls. Girls who charge for a look, a feel, and a do.” Pap shrugged. “Town ladies won’t go for dancing girls.”

  “What about Iza Ogilvie down at the Palace? She sings and dances.”

  The drone of crickets chirped with Pap’s laughter. “Iza Ogilvie is a dried-up British flower whose skin isn’t pearly. I’d say her flesh is more along the lines of a lizard’s belly, and so stretched out, it hangs off her like a dress that’s too big. Oh, she can sing passable, but when I fantasize about a woman, I surely don’t fantasize about a washed-out, middle-aged crumpet named Iza.” Pap stood and put his music away. “Now, I did hear tell, this place used to have a fine looker named Silver Starlight when Charley was here.”

  “Yeah, Charley mentioned she was his dancing girl. Stole his cash and ran off.”

  Pap nodded. “And took a Bible salesman with her. Caused quite a scandal, too.”

  “I’m disappointed in you, Pap. You’ve been hunting down gossip like that gaggle of matrons who honk in the churchyard after Sunday services.”

  “A man’s got to learn all there is to know about a woman before he makes his move in the flock.”

  Frank narrowed his eyes skeptically. “Who are you fixing to make a move on?”

  “I’ve had my eyes on someone.” Pap unfolded the fall board on the piano keys to keep the dust off them. “In fact, she’s part of the disgrace with the book and Bible salesman.”

  “How so? Silver Starlight ran off,” Frank noted, not particularly getting caught up in the hearsay, but went along for lack of anything else to talk about.

  “She did. With the salesman—Jonas Pray.” Pap began to take down the fly traps one by one from the broad-beam rafters. He lifted the conical covers from wire cylinders and dumped the flies onto the floor. “It was the salesman who left Miss Marshall high and dry.”

  The woman’s name made Frank frown. He’d been trying to forget about her all evening, but that forlorn look of hers had periodically popped into his mind—predominantly when he’d been appreciating the songs Pap heralded from the upright. “What does she have to do with any of this?” Frank asked, not certain he wanted to know.

  “She was set on marrying Pray until he ran off.”

  Frank took a moment to absorb what Pap was telling him. He didn’t like it. He didn’t want to feel any sorrier for her than he already did. Having sentimental feelings for a woman was bad news, and he made it a practice to write himself out of the headline. Then Pap’s meaning dawned on Frank, and he snapped his head toward his friend. “You’re fixing to go after the piano teacher?”

  “That fanciful notion has crossed my mind more than once, so I’ve decided to act on it.”

  “No shit?” Frank smoked his cheroot a minute. “Damn,” he muttered and lifted his brows. “Well . . . damn. I’m not anyone to stand in your way, Pap, but I’ve seen warmer women in this town. When Miss Marshall walks, I can hear the ice cracking off her skirts.”

  “I’ve never noticed.” Pap removed the last fly trap and broke into a leisurely smile. “But I have noticed how pretty she is. Haven’t you?”

  “No,” Frank replied too quickly. But he had noticed—less than twenty-four hours ago. He’d thought she dressed like a mail-order catalog on foot, but with nice features to go with the rigid trimming.

  A sappy expression lit Pap’s face. “Her hair is shiny brown. Kinda matches the color of Cobb Weather-wax’s mule. She has velvety skin with no freckles. Probably uses store-bought toilet soap. And her lips look made for kissing.”

  “Jesus, Pap,” Frank choked. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing. I’ve just been thinking. I’m going to be forty this year, and it’s time I find myself a wife. Me and Miss Marshall have a lot in common.”

  Frank said sarcastically, “You don’t have hair the color of Cobb’s mule, and frankly, your skin looks sun-weathered.”

  Pap put an empty fly trap back on its hook. “I know I’m nothing exceptional, but Miss Marshall needs someone. Especially after you took her piano.”

  Frank jerked his legs off the table, his boots thumping onto the floor. “That’s a line of bull. I didn’t steal the piano from her.” He ground his cheroot under his heel. “And who the hell are you to talk? You’ve been drooling ever since you got that upright out of the crate. Guilt hasn’t stopped you from playing it non-stop for the past nine hours.”

  “Who said anything about guilt?”

  “You did.”

  “No I didn’t. I don’t have anything to feel guilty about. I didn’t take the piano away from her.” Pap walked toward a tall cupboard in the corner. “But you must be feeling guilty since you brought it up.”

  “I didn’t bring it up.”

  “Well, you must have felt some kind of remorse, else you wouldn’t have said she could use this one.”

  “I was trying to be accommodating,” Frank insisted, unable to cover his annoyance. “She looked like she was going to cry.”

  “I hope you don’t have a call to make her want to cry again, Frank, now that you know my intentions.”

  “I . . . hell. Yeah, right.” Frank went for his glass, then remembered the mug was empty. He considered pouring a second Hennessy, but he’d set his limit on one per night. Any man surrounded by liquor for a living could easily suffer from bottle fever, so he never swilled on the job. An evening cognac quenched his thirst, and an occasional beer tasted too good to resist with his breakfast-lunch when the afternoon heat took him two hours to blow a cup of coffee cool.

  Though Pap had riled Frank, he wasn’t going to break his self-imposed rule. Besides, he wasn’t feeling guilty about Miss Amelia Marshall. He’d nearly succeeded in not giving her a second thought—until Pap had decided to make an issue out of her. Amelia Marshall’s troubles weren’t his concern. The town had temporarily rectified the piano company’s mistake, and he had made allowances for her.

  “I’m a student of musicology,” came Pap’s steady voice, his words drawing Frank from his thoughts. “It’s our common thread—Miss Marshall’s and mine. We both play the piano.” Pap took a broom from the cupboard and began to sweep the dirty sawdust into neat piles. “Tell me, Frank, can you read sheet music and draw a treble clef?”

  Frank stood with agitation. “No, but I can read the top of a bullet box and draw a Smith and Wesson No. 3 revolver. I suggest you button your lip on the subject of Miss Marshall, or I’ll be forced into proving my reading and drawing skills.”

  Pap laughed without interrupting his sweeping.

  Frank went behind the bar, dunked his mug into a round tub of cold dishwater, then headed for the swinging front doors. “I
’m locking up.” He put his hand in his trouser pocket and felt for the Yale key he kept on a silver ring. Then he remembered he’d taken it off to give to Amelia. Feeling inexplicably short-changed, he ran his fingers through his hair. “Hey, Pap, give me your spare key.”

  Pap set the broom handle against a table. “What happened to yours?”

  “I gave mine to your wife-to-be.”

  Pap’s eyes held a faint glint of humor as he said, “You better not be planning any funny stuff with her, Frank.”

  “I’m not planning on doing anything with her,” Frank replied as he took the key from Pap.

  Frank strode through the saloon’s entrance, stepped outside onto the boardwalk, and put his hand on one of the seven-foot doors he closed over his fancy ones. Leaning into the roughened wood wall, he pondered Pap’s choice of words. Funny stuff with her. Frank hadn’t counted on making a running commitment to Miss Marshall when he’d given her the key to the Moon Rock, but that’s exactly what he’d done. How the hell was he going to deal with her taking over his domain every afternoon with a barrage of kids?

  He hadn’t really thought things through at the time, and too late after the fact, he realized he’d be keeping close company with a woman whose glance seemed to be accusingly cold, but he still found her attractive. To complicate matters, Pap had gotten the foolhardy notion into his head she was the girl for him. Any trifling Frank would have tried with Miss Marshall was now off limits.

  Moving one of the heavy doors into place, Frank slipped a long rod into a hole in the plank and contemplated the situation. He was a mixologist and supposed to be a native philosopher. He knew how to listen for hours to endless monologues and be an impartial umpire of wagers and disputes, as well as a peacemaker, never an egger-on. He solved the drinkers’ problems of heart and mind, or at least pretended to. He never discussed religion or politics, but stuck to sex and sports.

  He got along with most everyone. He and Pap had never had a major disagreement, and not under any condition had they fought over a woman. They never would because Frank’s attention wasn’t engaged on the passionless Miss Marshall. So he had no problem to solve. No astute advice to offer himself.