Lake of Fire (32 page)

“What’s this about motive?” he asked Hank.

“Sutton wants to stop my purchase of the Lake

Hotel.”

For a fleeting moment, Cord thought he saw a look of satisfaction on the face of Alexandra Falls, but it vanished before he could be sure. He wished she would leave, but she showed every sign of settling in to listen. Thankfully, Fanny and Constance had walked ahead and were almost at the door to the hotel.

“Come, Lieutenant,” Norman interceded. “I know Mr. Sutton, and I don’t believe he would resort to violence to achieve a business goal.”

“You’re taking his side?” Hank’s voice rose. “Because you think I’m hiding something to do with that letter and the inspections?”

At Hank’s tone, Norman gave him a steady look. “I’m taking the side of law and order. And though I did not previously have a prejudice about the documents, your bringing them up now is certainly suspicious.”

Hank turned to Stafford. “None of us in the canyon heard a shot. What if Fielding collapsed because he was fatigued, and Sutton took the chance to shoot him point-blank? The sound would have been muffled.”

A glance passed between Stafford and Manfred Resnick.

“Did anyone see Mr. Fielding fall?” Resnick asked. “Was anyone near him?”

“Laura and I were,” Cord admitted. “But we were walking ahead looking at the ground, watching our footing. There were lots of roots, stones, and slippery patches.” He gestured toward the hotel. “Get Laura out here and ask her if I ran back and shot him.”

“I will be speaking with her,” Resnick replied. “Did anyone hear a shot?”

“Nope,” from Burke Evans. “I’m afraid I left the party to share a smoke with one of the other drivers.”

“The wind was up, coming through the treetops like an approaching train, along with the roar of the falls,” Cord said. “I didn’t hear anything I’d call a shot.”

Norman frowned. “Constance and I both heard a high-pitched something, that may have echoed in the canyon below.”

Stafford looked around at the group. “Then it is likely that Mr. Fielding was shot from a distance downwind with a rifle.”

Hank stabbed a finger at Cord. “Aren’t you even going to search him?”

“For what?” Resnick asked. “If he had a pistol, he could have thrown it away along the path, from the wagon, or into the brush around here.”

Hank snorted. “Nonetheless, Lieutenant Stafford, I shall speak to Captain Feddors about your failure to properly investigate this matter.”

He strode away in the direction of the soldier station.

Esther Giles, looking cool in a white lawn dress, stood outside the log building with Captain Feddors. In female company, the dour officer seemed transformed, smiling.

Hank almost turned away and came back later. But his mission was to present his case against Cord, a smoke screen against his own failings. As Norman suspected, the letter and the inspection report had indeed been sidetracked from the railroad.

It had been just after the grand opening in 1892. Everything was going so well, when he noted the marked envelopes in the postal niche inside the hotel’s front door. The first was from a team driver he’d been forced to fire a few years before for sloth. This season, the man had been back in the park working
on a road crew outside Hank’s domain. They’d run into each other near the front door the day before and had words. Well, words on Hank’s side; the driver had been grabbed by two male hotel employees and escorted outside.

Hank’s face heated, and he reached for the missive, without thinking that it was against the law to interfere with the post. That was when he noted the larger envelope, also addressed to the railroad, with the name of the inspector at the upper left corner.

It had been so simple to fish it out with the other.

For eight years, he’d felt safe from discovery, but somehow those carefully hidden documents had emerged from a locked bank box. Why had he been so stupid not to burn them?

A peal of laughter came from Esther, and she gave an affected little wave with her pocket handkerchief. From experience, Hank expected the lawn square smelled of lily of the valley … the day before yesterday Esther had come to his boat for an afternoon interlude. Her husband, Harold, had taken a fishing tour. Though older than Hank, she had been a pleasant surprise. He’d loosened her Spanish ruby comb and let her long black hair spill over her pendulous breasts.

Hank drew a comb out of his pocket and smoothed back his hair that was falling over his eyes. With his own handkerchief, he mopped his brow.

Finally, he moved forward. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Giles; Captain.”

“Hank!” Esther trilled. “That is, Mr. Falls.”

He kept his face neutral, bowed to her, and spoke to Feddors. “I wonder if I might have a few minutes of your time.”

On the hotel porch, with the sinking sun throwing shadows of the pines across the scrub lawn, Cord settled into a rocking chair. He was exhausted, despite a bath and changing out of the blood-and sweat-stained clothes he’d been wearing when he carried Forrest out of the canyon. Hank might be Forrest’s partner, but he’d stood by like a stick that might snap when there was backbreaking work to be done.

It was all Cord could do not to find Hank and take him down a peg. Hell, it would be even more satisfying to smash a fist into his face.

But the high road would be best with Norman and Hopkins Chandler. Let it look like Hank was the desperate one, grasping at straws to save his hotel.

His hotel
.

Cord had not thought of it that way before, but from the construction phase on, Hank had lived in this place. He no doubt saw it in a proprietary light, had believed he would go on here as many years as he cared to, in the role of manager for the railroad.

Cord forced his focus back onto his own goal. Hank would get over it, just as he planned to try to get over Thomas Bryce’s lording it over him.

Once Cord owned the Lake Hotel, mortgaged
through the bank in Great Falls, he’d sell his half of Excalibur to his adopted brother, Thomas. As the hotel in Salt Lake was larger and grander, he should be able to pay off the loan and take the deed to the Lake Hotel, free and clear. After that, if people found out he had a Nez Perce grandmother, there would be no one legally able to take the property away from him. The best-laid plans …

With Forrest fallen, would Hank plead for more delays? Would his accusations, while apparently not given credence by Manfred Resnick or Norman, influence Hopkins Chandler upon his return from Bozeman?

The day’s events called for a whiskey, though what he wanted most was to go over to the infirmary to see Laura.

This afternoon, things had seemed to be falling into place. Constance’s staying with Norman once they’d alighted at the first stop had allowed Cord to lunch and share the canyon with Laura. On the walk up toward the wagon, he’d been planning to ask her to go with him tonight to hear Bitter Waters. This time he would introduce her.

As Cord started to rise from his chair and go to the lobby bar, something brushed his sleeve. He turned.

Constance moved her hand from his arm to the back of the rocking chair next to him.

He stood to acknowledge her and, though he indicated the chair next to his, she did not move to sit down.

In spite of the difficult day, she managed to look stunning as always, in a sapphire silk dress beneath
a fringed shawl. She had pulled her sleek hair up, emphasizing cheeks pink from the day’s sun. Gold earrings danced when she moved.

The only clues to her distress lay in her troubled eyes that mirrored the deepest shade of royal in Yellowstone Lake, and the way she worried an embroidered handkerchief with her hands. “Uncle Forrest is the only father I’ve ever known. My own died before I was old enough to remember him.” She looked out over the water. “If anything happens …” She shuddered.

Sweet Constance, Cord thought, so soft and childlike with her emphatic ways. So pampered in her relatives’ fine house where he’d met her in St. Paul.

“Who could have shot him?” she despaired. “This West of yours is too wild, too cruel.”

Although Cord had a house in Salt Lake City near Hotel Excalibur, he considered his ranch as home. A simple and sturdy log structure, surrounded by three hundred acres that his father, Franklin Sutton, had claimed to mine before the first homesteaders had come to the valley called Jackson’s Hole.

It was to his ranch that Cord had always wanted to bring his bride. But somehow in St. Paul, he’d been so caught up in disbelief that a woman like Constance wanted him that he’d forgotten to consider whether his life would be one she wanted to share.

On the day she had stood with him outside the Northern Pacific ticket office in St. Paul, she’d been very quiet. Ornate lettering advertised the Dining Car Line to Cinnabar, Montana, connecting by stage to
Yellowstone Park. Cord had thought she was simply sad to see him leave, but now he remembered how she had peered through the arched windows at the photos of western landscapes and pronounced them stark.

“The West is my home,” he had told her.

On the hotel porch, Constance went on, “It’s just too difficult, too harsh out here.”

Cord sighed. Late June, and it was just getting on to the best time of the year. Constance had no idea what Wyoming was like in winter.

“I thought I could live out here,” she went on, “but I was mainly thinking of Salt Lake. I really didn’t know how remote Yellowstone was when you said you wanted to buy and manage the Lake Hotel.”

His collar felt too tight, and he tugged at the starched material. “Constance … Connie, no matter how right it seemed in St. Paul, it’s wrong for so many reasons.”

He didn’t accuse her of fabricating their betrothal.

“I don’t know why I decided you’d marry me,” she confessed. “I just wanted the fairy tale to be true, the way you swept in and were so different from the men I’d known. By the time Mother and I arrived in the park, I truly believed you would ask me as soon as we saw each other.”

Her fingers fumbled at the ring, and he covered them with his own. “No, please. That is my gift to you, for all we imagined. Can’t you keep it and feel glad?”

He caught a glimpse of tear sheen in her eyes before she bent her head.

Then she looked back at him frankly, with a hint of the jealous fire he’d seen this morning when he and Laura came around the corner of the hotel. “What about Laura?”

He hesitated.

“You fell for her when you were together on the trail,” Constance accused.

Why not admit it? “You’re right. I felt guilty about it and held back because of you.” His voice rose. “But you shouldn’t question what I do from now on since you’ve made it clear you’ve set your cap for Norman Hagen.”

She flushed.

He was about to tell her about Norman’s inquiries for her, but before he could, the screen door to the porch opened.

“Constance,” Fanny Devon called from inside. “Laura hasn’t left the infirmary even though the doctor won’t let her see Forrest.”

Her bounteous curves appeared in the doorway. A pearl clasp anchored her dark hair atop her head. “We need to convince Laura to eat something and to rest.”

Constance rose obediently.

“William.” Fanny greeted him warmly, her voice dropping a full octave.

Cord rose. “Is there any more word on your brother?”

“Nothing yet.”

He gestured toward the dining room. “Let’s eat something and then take Laura a plate.” With the crowd diminished, the doctor might let him join her vigil.