Killing Time In Eternity - Edge Series 4 (29 page)

For the moment he ignored the Quinn and Son store and rode up to Joel Gannon’s premises where he dismounted and hitched his horse to the rail outside the funeral parlour. The door between the black draped windows featured with displays of miniature tombstones and caskets was not locked and as he went in a bell like the one on his own door down the street tinkled with what seemed to him like an inappropriately cheerful sound for such an establishment.

He struck a match to get his bearings in this totally darkened room he had never entered before and saw it was furnished primarily as a business office. But against the rear wall, between a door and a glass fronted cabinet displaying leather-bound books and framed certificates, was a sofa and an armchair with a low table supporting a vase of dried 154

flowers between. Which provided a less commercial touch to the room that perhaps helped the recently bereaved to talk more comfortably about the arrangements that needed to be made.

The solid door that gave access to the rear of the premises was locked and, conscious that he was probably a little light-headed from lack of sleep and food and being beaten and shot at, he found himself wondering for no reason why Gannon should secure this door. Unless to prevent body snatchers from stealing the corpses of the recent dead, maybe? This unbidden train of irrelevant thought continued to occupy his mind as he went back outside and transferred Brady’s limp body from the horse to a shoulder, grimacing as he accepted the awkward weight of the once muscular man and carried it inside. Here he arranged the corpse with some attempt at orderliness on the sofa. After he had closed the door on the faint aroma of formaldehyde and while he led the two horses down the street and into the alley beside his store the wind ceased completely and the rain slackened to no more than drizzle. He unsaddled his own and Ramsay’s gelding and put them into their stalls. Then he went into the store by the back way and muttered a few terse word of gratitude when he found that the stove in the parlour still held glowing embers. He stirred these into flames beneath fresh cordwood and started a pot of coffee. Then, too hungry to trouble with time consuming hot food, he wolfed down some bread and cheese and left over cold meat.

And not for the first time in his new life regretted the self-imposed rule that forbade him keeping hard liquor in whatever place he called home. He vented a short, harsh laugh at the
new life
notion as he began to reflect on the day just gone. During which little had happened that had any relevance to what he had promised himself after he shot the lawman to free the Virginian named Adam Steele and . . .

He came awake with a start and was disconcertingly disorientated for several seconds. Moved too quickly in the chair close to the front of the stove and felt the sharp pain that triggered his memory into disconsolate action. He felt luxuriantly warm from the stove he had fuelled before he fell asleep and comfortably well fed because of the late night supper he had eaten. But these were only two aspects of well being as he recalled all the other events that preceded this waking at a new dawn in the parlour behind a haberdashery become a tailoring establishment in a Kansas town where the killing was reaching epidemic proportions.

He rose carefully from the chair and moved slowly around the room, flexing his muscles to work the stiffness out of them. Poured a cup of tepid, stewed coffee and carried it into the store. Opened the door and felt the wet coldness of another grey morning in Eternity. Here and there lamplight gleamed forlornly from windows and there was a 155

stronger smell of wood smoke in the dank air. Nobody moved on the street until he stepped out on the sidewalk in front of his store and sipped the almost unpalatable coffee: glanced to left and right and wondered if what he was trying to do here was worth the trouble and discomforts.

So why was he doing it? In truth it was simply to expiate the grudge he harboured against whoever had forced him to remain here by killing Billy Childs. But had there in fact been a killing? The boy’s father and Doc Childs’ New York policeman friend, Arthur Colbert and Walter Benson and now Gus Brady had all been murdered for certain. But their violent deaths were only his business because he had involved himself in looking into the way Billy Childs had been killed: which was not necessarily a murder. Now he was too deeply involved to back off, for attempts had been made to kill him and he sure could not ignore that. But why couldn’t he? Why couldn’t he just climb on his horse and ride away from this dreary town in the middle of a desolate nowhere? Forget about the store and the money he was cheated out of by the crooked lawyer, the work he had done to earn the promised money and the way he had been shot at, beaten up and shot at again as he tried to settle a grudge? The kind of thinking that had brought him to this point this early morning was what had driven him to ride so many long and gruelling trails as the man he used to be. But he was no longer that kind of man: had turned over a new leaf and –

A scraping sound broke in on this frustrating line of thought and he looked diagonally across the street as a head showed at a newly opened upper story window of a small house next to the Whittier Notions Store. And he recognised the tall and lean Clay Warner just before the erstwhile gunslinger and bounty hunter and now deputy sheriff called to him:

‘Looks like it’s gonna be another wet day!’ He yawned and vigorously fisted his eyes like he had just woken up. He was naked above the waist.

‘I don’t care what it looks like being, honey,’ a woman complained from the room in back of him. ‘Right at this minute it’s damn cold with that window open.’

‘You saying you’re in need of warming up, sweetheart?’ Warner countered with a broad grin toward Edge. Then he slammed the window closed as Beth Flynt vented a throaty laugh and started to say something that did not carry across the street. Edge closed his store door and started down the street, in two minds about the exchange. It seemed to him like Warner, the professional gunman who maybe was an expert with a repeater rifle as well as a revolver, could have initiated the uncharacteristically amiable conversation to make Edge think he had just awakened from a contented sleep. Though if it had been staged for his benefit, the woman had sounded as natural as Warner looked: but then Beth Flynt was an amateur actress at the theatre. 156

This thought about the theatre triggered an unbidden notion about another reason he was still stuck in this dreary town when he had the easy option to ride away. Sue Ellen Spencer - one of the leading lights at the Washington Memorial Theatre. Who had seemed to more than merely imply that she sometimes had difficulty in acting like a lady and in certain circumstances could behave like a natural born woman . . . It was for sure that Sue Ellen figured in his immediate plans, but only as an attractive side issue. As he smelt more chimney smoke in the grey light beneath the leaden clouds of the false dawn and saw several other windows showing lights he told himself there was a more important priority. He could maybe try to change his way of life: but he would never be able to alter the innate nature of the man he had always been. He would not be cheated of his due nor ever remain a passive target for killers.

One of several buildings that were still in darkness was the law office. And no smoke rose from its stove that always radiated high heat whenever the marshal was at his desk. But Edge was prepared to wait for awhile and after he had crossed the street he set down his almost finished cup of awful coffee on the office window ledge and rolled a cigarette. Lit it as a fast moving figure appeared on the opposite sidewalk: a man with a purpose, a grim expression on his fleshy face.

The tall and overweight Joel Gannon crossed the street unmindful of the way mud splashed up to stain his lower pants legs. He did not speak until he stepped on to the law office porch and then he nodded curtly and greeted: ‘Mr Edge. More bad business, I’m afraid.’

Edge said: ‘It seems to me like nothing good ever happens in this town, feller.’

Gannon‘s face, with eyes that lacked their usual cheerful glint, suddenly changed expression from a mild frown to a deep scowl. ‘Surely it wasn’t you who – ‘

‘Afraid so. I’m the one who brought what remains of it to your place.’

‘What, I don’t understand – ‘

‘The remains of the latest bad business are Gus Brady’s remains.’

Gannon’s shock expanded and then he grimaced as he said: ‘Oh yes, I do understand your black humour, but – ‘

‘He was gunned down out at Troy Shaver’s work yard and I figured it was best to bring the body – ‘

Gannon broke in irritably: ‘Mr Edge, I operate a twenty-four hour service! As one in my profession must do since death is no respecter of the clock. There are certain formalities to be observed in dealing with the newly deceased and I would have – ‘

Edge rasped the back of a hand along his bristled jaw line and cut in again on the perturbed man. ‘It’s pretty desolate out there where the Shavers live, feller. Be all kinds of 157

creatures on the prowl and circling overhead. Looking for breakfast about now. So I thought it best to – ‘

The undertaker was slightly mollified. ‘All right, I suppose I can understand your motives. But you should have come to my house and awakened me. Not just left the cadaver on the sofa in my office like you did.’

Edge finished the cold coffee. ‘Sure, feller. But I never figured I’d need the services of a mortician for the short time I planned on staying in this town. If there’s a next time, I’ll find out where you live and – ‘

Gannon nodded, grunted in qualified satisfaction then was irritable again as he checked a fob watch, looked both ways along the street and complained:

‘Where the devil is the marshal? It’s already seven thirty. With all the trouble in this town, one would have thought he’d keep his office manned at all times. After all, he has hired a deputy.’

‘If you want, I’ll – ‘ Edge broke off as yellow light from a lamp carried across the law office and spilled through the window. Then the door opened and Ward Flynt, looking newly awakened, unshaven but fully dressed minus a hat and coat glowered out at his early morning visitors.

‘That’s the very reason I’m bedding down in one of the cells out back, Joel,’ Flynt said sourly, peering from one man to the other while his spirits fell rapidly from a point that had already been low as he demanded: ‘So what’s happened now, damnit?’

‘Gus Brady is dead, Ward,’ Gannon told him. ‘A bullet in the back of his head.’ He raised a hand to demonstrate the position of the wound on his own skull. ‘I found his body dumped in my office and Edge here –

The lawman broke in grimly as Gannon hooked a thumb toward Edge: ‘Don’t tell me

– another man’s been killed and you were right there on the scene again?’

Edge hunched his shoulders in the mud spattered sheepskin coat and said on a stream of tobacco smoke: ‘Appreciate it if I could tell you about it inside, marshal?’

Flynt sighed, dragged the door open and made an ushering gesture with the hand holding the kerosene lamp that usually stood on his desk.

‘I can’t tell you any more than Edge, Ward,’ Gannon said. ‘I only came down here to make sure you knew about what happened to Brady. And I really should get back to my place. To see that the deceased has the proper attention in the proper way. Before anyone happens in and sees him how Edge left him. And then there are today’s funerals of Doc Childs and Mr Shelby to be – ‘

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‘Sure, Joel,’ Flynt cut in wearily. ‘But like with them others after the doc died, I’ll need an official report from you. The same kind Doc Childs would’ve given me on a sudden death in my jurisdiction?’

‘No need to tell me, Ward.’ Gannon was easier in his mind and looked almost happy to be getting back to what he did best. Managed an amiable nod of farewell toward Edge before he turned and hurried across the street as a gust of freshening wind drove raindrops into the porch.

Edge stepped into the law office, dropped into the chair before the desk and set down his cup as the marshal stirred the embers in the stove into fiery heat. At the lawman’s invitation he did not wait for the morning chores to be done before he told of the events of the night: starting with how Buck Segal had thrown everyone out of the Second Chance Saloon and ending with when he delivered Brady’s corpse to the undertaker’s parlour.

‘You and Sue Ellen reached the old cannery too late to hear what was being talked about? And never saw who it was the rest of them went out there to meet up with?’

‘Way it was, feller.’

‘And somebody put a bullet in Gus Brady’s head just as be was going to spill the beans to you?’

‘Way it turned out. Though I’m not so sure the sonofabitch with the rifle didn’t aim to kill me. And Brady just happened to move into the line of fire at the right moment.’

‘The wrong moment for Gus.’

‘I guess you can understand why I like my version better?’

‘Yeah,’ Flynt said absently, put a pot of coffee grounds and water on the stove and dropped into his chair behind the desk as more wind driven rain was hurled against the window. ‘Another man shot down and I’m still no closer to finding out the reason why any of the five were murdered, damnit! Six if the Childs kid didn’t kill himself or was in an accident.’

‘Brady started to tell me something about a train,’ Edge prompted the red eyed, ruddy faced, unshaven and haggard looking lawman.