Printer in Petticoats (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

O
n Tuesday morning a week later, Jess noticed that Eli was acting a little peculiar. More than a little, in fact. He sat hunched oddly over his type stick, his head down so low his nose almost brushed the font case. Every so often a strange sound hung on the air, a high sort of whine.

“Eli, are you wheezing?”

“Not me, by cracky. Ain't never wheezed in my life.”

There, she heard it again. “What
is
that noise?”

The old man lifted his head a fraction of an inch. “What noise?”

“
That
noise. Don't you hear it?”

“Nope.” He ducked his head and rattled a handful of type fonts onto his table. Jess shrugged, picked up her pencil and idly studied Eli while she gathered her thoughts for the editorial she planned on planting spring flowers.

All at once she noted that Eli was keeping one hand in his vest pocket. Had he injured it? Maybe gotten it caught in the lawn mower Ilsa Rowell kept on her back porch? She knew Eli liked to help out at the boardinghouse; maybe he'd burned a finger baking a batch of his oatmeal cookies.

Or maybe not. “Eli, what do you have in your pocket?”

“N-nuthin', Jess.”

“Eli?”

The old man ducked his head even farther, patted his vest pocket and then shamefacedly drew forth a tiny ball of orange fluff and set it next to his type stick.

A kitten! Jess shot to her feet. “Oh, the darling little thing!”

Eli tried not to grin. “Ya don't mind?”

“Oh, Eli, it's so sweet. Of course I don't mind. I adore kittens. Especially orange ones. Mama used to have a big orange mama cat, and when it curled up on the settee it looked just like a bowl of orange sherbet.”

“Yeah, it's cute, ain't it?” He waggled his forefinger to catch the kitten's attention, and the animal followed it around and around on the table top. “Spins jest like one of them whirlin' dervishes.”

Jess's heart lifted. After the past few weeks of chasing after stories that didn't amount to anything newsworthy, and trying
not
to chase after Cole, she needed a distraction. “That's just what we'll call him, Eli. Dervish.”

“Um, well, hate to tell ya this, Jess, but this here cute little critter ain't a ‘him.' It's a ‘her.'”

“Oh. It doesn't matter. ‘Dervish' is a neutral name.”

Eli studiously smoothed his gnarled hand over the animal's thick orange fur. “Hate to tell ya somethin' else, Jess.”

“Oh? What's that?”

He avoided her eyes. “Dervish done peed in my vest pocket.”

* * *

Within two days, Dervish had made herself at home in the
Sentinel
office. Eli fed her scraps of bacon and fried eggs from Ilsa's breakfast table, and during the day the kitten scampered about, intoxicated with the interesting playthings she found. A crumpled piece of notepaper. Eli's shoelaces. The buttons on Jessamine's shirtwaists, which the animal batted at while perched on her desk. At night Dervish slept at the foot of Jess's bed.

* * *

The next week was the first week of spring, and Jess kept herself busy reporting on the happenings around Smoke River. Jericho Silver again traveled to Portland to take his law examination, and this time he passed it. When he returned, Maddie invited Jess and Cole over for a celebration, complete with champagne and a burnt-sugar cake from Uncle Charlie's Bakery.

The following Monday Jericho presided at the trials of Conway Arbuckle on the charge of attempted murder for his role in firebombing the
Sentinel
office and Jim Trautner on the charge of kidnapping Cole.

The proceedings took place as the first daffodils began to bloom in gardens all over town, including, Jess noted with distaste, the run-down two-story frame house belonging to that disreputable woman, Lucy, the one Rosie Greywolf referred to as Arbuckle's “other wife.”

Juries found both Arbuckle and Trautner guilty, and Sheriff Anderson Rivera escorted the two men to the state prison east of Portland. That same day, Rosie Greywolf visited the
Sentinel
office.

When the Indian woman spied Dervish, her dark eyebrows drew together. “Keep inside,” she warned. “Coyotes close to town.”

“Thank you for the warning, Rosie.”

“Also bring news,” Rosie said. “For newspaper.”

“Oh?” Rosie was an invaluable source of news around town, a source that Cole did not have access to. “What have you heard?”

“Hear nothing,” came the terse reply. “But Rosie
see
much.”

Jess picked up a pencil and her notepad. “Tell me.”

The older woman's black eyes snapped with amusement. “First Mrs. Coffee Man leave town. And then Second Mrs. leave town, also.”

“Really?”

“Together.”

“You mean...why, they can't possibly be friends.”

“Not friends, maybe, but go same place. On same day. On same train.”

Jess put her pencil down. “How do you know this?”

The Indian woman licked her lips. “I watch. Good story, eh?”

So, Mrs. Arbuckle and Lucy Whatsername, Arbuckle's fancy woman, had joined forces, so to speak. Conway Arbuckle was on his way to prison, and this new bit of information would be a juicy piece of news for the next issue of the
Sentinel
.

She could hardly wait to see Cole's face when he read it.

* * *

The next afternoon Rosie Greywolf appeared in Cole's newspaper office.

“Rosie,” Cole greeted the Indian woman. “What can I do for you?”

“You should know this thing,” she began.

Cole waited. “What should I know?”

“About house. Coffee Man's other wife's house.”

“You mean Lucy Gaynor's place? What about it?”

“Empty now,” Rosie pronounced.

“Ye-es.” Again he waited.

Rosie pinned him with sharp black eyes. “Needs fix-up.”

“Ah.”

The woman peered up at him as if doubting he had even half a brain. “You fix up.”

“Me! Why? I don't own the place.”

“Buy, maybe. Very cheap.”

“Rosie, I live upstairs here. I don't need a house.”

“You need,” she persisted. Her gaze swung across the street to the
Sentinel
office and back to Cole. “Come summer,” she pronounced.

His collar felt too tight. “Yeah? What about summer?”

Rosie blew out a long-suffering breath, and all at once Cole understood. Rosie Greywolf thought he'd need a bigger place to live come summer because...

Jumping jennies!
Because the Indian woman expected that he and Jess...

“Rosie, what makes you think Miss Lassiter and I...?”

The woman huffed in exasperation and rolled her eyes. “Thought you smart, Newsman,” she said. Then she spun on her moccasins and glided out the door.

I'll be damned.
Did Rosie know something he didn't?

That afternoon he coerced Jess into going for a walk, ostensibly to enjoy the flower gardens in bloom.

“Oh, look,” she exclaimed. “Sweet peas! See? On that trellis.”

“Yeah. Kinda pretty.”

They made their way up one street and down another while Jess oohed and aahed over pansies and roses and something called Love in a Mist. By the time they reached Lucy's abandoned house on Maple Street, Cole was having doubts as big as boulders.

The place was more than run-down; it needed paint and new porch planks and God knew what else. Besides, what made him think Jess would even give the house a second glance?

But her reaction made him laugh. “Oh, Cole, look! That's the house that belonged to that woman, Lucy. Arbuckle's fancy lady.”

Apparently most women liked seeing a well-designed house, no matter who the previous owner had been. Then again, Jess wasn't most women.

“What a handsome front porch. See? It runs all across the front of the house and wraps around the corner.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But—” she tsked “—just look at that poor neglected garden. The roses need pruning, and it looks like no one's ever watered the petunias.”

“The place has been vacant for a month. Want to see the inside?”

At her first step past the unlocked front door, Jess stopped short and gazed around. “My, it is lovely, isn't it? I was so intent on finding Arbuckle that day I paid no attention to the interior.”

“Looks pretty dusty to me.”

“But look at the bones,” she said.

“Bones? What are bones?”

“You know, the structure. Look! The windows are nice and large and there's a handsome brick fireplace in the front parlor.” She darted on into the dining room.

“Wainscoting!” she enthused. “And another fireplace.”

She stepped into the kitchen and stopped short. “Oh.” Her voice fell. “These walls are filthy, and the stove is a disaster, all that grease and soot.”

“Yeah, it's a mess, all right.”

“But...” She stood tapping one finger against her chin. “One must always look beneath the surface of things.”

She turned to him, her gray-green eyes shining like two pieces of polished jade. “I want to see the upstairs.”

Before he could stop her, she tore up the wooden staircase at the end of the front hall, and Cole heard her delighted squeal.

“There are two—no, three bedrooms,” she called. “And a big sitting room, and they
all
have fireplaces. Arbuckle must have made millions on his coffee to maintain a place like this for his mistress, in addition to a suite of rooms at the hotel for his wife.”

“I try never to drink his brand of coffee,” Cole muttered.

He started up the stairs just as Jess came back down. “Every bedroom up there has lovely tall windows. I wonder what that woman, Lucy, did with all these rooms.”

“Entertained, maybe?”

“Ha! Entertained who? Nobody respectable would ever call on her, would they?”

“Dunno. I think her callers might not have been the most respectable types. I've never known such a woman well.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘well'?”

“I mean well enough to call on her. Or ask her what she did with a big old rambling house like this.”

“It is rambling, isn't it?” She worried her bottom lip. “That's what I like about it. It has, well, possibilities.”

“Possibilities,” he repeated.

Her face took on a glow he'd never seen before. “Yes, possibilities. For a family, you know? A big family, to fill all those bedrooms. It reminds me—”

She broke off.

“Reminds you of what, Jess?” He waited, trying to calm the flock of sparrows that just winged their way into his belly.

“Oh,” she said, her eyes growing misty. “It reminds me of our house in the East, before Mama died. Lace curtains everywhere, and wallpaper, beautiful wallpaper. Blue flowers in some rooms, and yellow stripes in the dining room. I always liked wallpaper,” she said wistfully. “I still miss that house.”

He took her hand. “There's a yard out back. Big garden space. You want to see it?”

“N-no.” Her eyes looked shiny.

Damn, he didn't want to upset her. He just wanted to show her the empty house, see if she liked it. He slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Come on, Jess. It's not worth crying about. Let's go on over to the hotel and have some coff—um, tea.”

She nodded and walked out the front door. Then, in a gesture that twisted his heart, she caught his free hand and held on tight.

Chapter Twenty-Six

J
ess ripped open the crisp white envelope and spread the single sheet on her desk.

Dear Miss Lassiter,

I am pleased to inform you that your news story of April eighteenth concerning the ongoing campaigns of General George C. Custer has garnered the favorable attention of the Association of Oregon Journalists. Consequently, the Association takes pleasure in issuing this invitation to publish a monthly guest column in the Portland Oregonian.

We sincerely hope you will accept.

Very truly yours,

Rufus M. Bidwell

Editor in Chief,

Portland Oregonian

She sucked in her breath, her pencil halfway to its usual place between her teeth. Wonder of wonders! She'd written a really good story. A really, really good story.

She'd gotten the idea from Rosie Greywolf, who had glided into her office one sunshiny morning and poked a worn finger at an article Jess had published in her Saturday edition about the latest exploits of George Custer in Colorado Territory.

“You listen,” Rosie had murmured. “White man does not like Indian man. Will be big trouble soon.”

“What kind of trouble, Rosie?”

“You heard of place called Sand Creek?”

Jess could not meet the woman's unblinking gaze. “Yes, I read about it in a Portland newspaper. A massacre, it said.”

“Will happen again. Indian will take revenge for army killing many women. Many children.”

“Rosie, how do you know this?”

“I am Cheyenne. My mother, my brothers were at Sand Creek.”

When Jess wrote her next story about Custer's Indian raids, she had remembered Rosie's words about the massacre at Sand Creek.

The flutters in her belly turned into a herd of horses and then into a thundering freight train. She was learning to be a really good journalist! Miles would be proud of her.
Papa would be proud of me.

Her breath stopped. She'd always heard that success was intoxicating. She'd never believed it, but now she knew it was true. It seeped into one's blood, like opium, and she never wanted it to stop. At that moment she knew she would never, never be able to give up her newspaper career.

Not only that, but she knew she did not want to share it, not even with someone she thought of as highly as she did Cole Sanders.

But oh! She couldn't wait to tell him about her letter from Rufus Bidwell.

She sped across the street to the
Lark
office, congratulating herself on uncovering the news before her competition. She couldn't wait to tell Cole her discovery.

Taking a deep breath, she burst through the door of his office and came to a dead stop.

“Where is he?” she asked a startled Noralee.

The girl glanced up from the type stick on the table before her. “He went out real early, Miss Jessamine.”

“Do you know where he went?”

Noralee ducked her head. “He said he was going to Gillette Springs. Took that Arabian horse of his and rode off first thing this morning.”

Jessamine studied the girl. “Why Gillette Springs?”

“Dunno, ma'am. He said it was important.”

Important? What could be so important that Cole would dash off on a Saturday morning? A news story. That was it! She clenched her teeth. One she hadn't heard about.

Yet.

But...she smiled inwardly. She knew something that was happening in town that Cole
didn't
know. Something very interesting.

He did not return to town until long past suppertime, and when Jess saw him stride up the boardwalk and disappear into the
Lark
office, she stuffed her pencil and notepad into a desk drawer and flew across the street.

“Cole, you'll never guess what?”

His dark eyebrows rose. “Okay, I give up. What?”

“You remember that house, the one on Maple Street?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice wary. “Lucy Gaynor's old place. What about it?”

“Ike Bruhn is fixing it up! He's repairing the floor in the kitchen, and just yesterday he installed a brand-new stove, a beautiful new Windsor with a double oven and a special reservoir for hot water.”

“You don't say.” His tone sounded weary. “Never thought you'd get so excited about something as domestic as a stove.”

“And a porcelain bathtub upstairs,” she added. “A big one.”

“You don't say,” he repeated.

Why was he not as curious about these events as she was? She was positive there was a news story in all this; she could practically smell it.

“Cole, who owns that house?”

“Lucy Gaynor owned it. Maybe she still does.”

“But Lucy is gone. She and Mrs. Arbuckle moved to Portland after the trial, remember? We both wrote a story about it.”

“Maybe she's planning to return.”

Jess stared at him. He met her gaze, his mouth quirked. “That'd be a first, don't you think, Jess? Could be she wants to open a—”

“Oh!” Her eyes went wide. “Wouldn't
that
be a story?”

He shook his head tiredly. “I wouldn't go off half-cocked about it if I were you.”

“Ooh, the clues make my fingers positively itch!”

Cole suppressed a grin. “If you can contain yourself, would you care to take supper with me?”

“Could we walk by Lucy's house on the way?”

He laughed. “Sure. Gotta keep an eye on those roses in the front yard you said needed pruning.”

She shot him a withering look. “Roses!” She sniffed. “Roses are not the least bit newsworthy. Come on, let's go see the house.”

Cole let her drag him along Maple Street, but the closer they drew to the place, the harder he worked to keep pace with her.

“Look!” She pulled him to a halt at the front gate. “There's a brand-new front door, with colored glass insets!”

“Yep, I see 'em.”

“And the walkway up to the porch is wider than I remember. Whoever is paying for all this must be rich.”

“Have you asked Ike who hired him?”

“Of course.”

“And?”

“Ike just grins. That man is closemouthed as a clam.”

She danced up the porch steps and swept through the front door, and he heard her cry of surprise. “Cole! There's new wallpaper in the dining room.
Yellow
wallpaper.”

“You approve?”

“Oh, yes. Whoever is doing this has exquisite taste, don't you think?”

“I wouldn't know, Jess. I don't know a thing about stoves or wallpaper or...”

“Bathtubs,” she supplied. “Come upstairs.” She darted up the staircase. Cole sauntered up after her, drew her away from the shiny white porcelain tub and planted a kiss on her flushed cheek. “Getting hungry?”

“No. Yes. No! I want to see more of the house.”

“No, you don't. You want to come to supper with me.” He snaked his arm across her waist and propelled her back down the stairs, out the front door and along the street toward the restaurant.

All through her chicken croquettes and strawberry shortcake, Jess talked on about the house on Maple Street. Cole worked his way through his rare steak and crispy fried potatoes and apple pie and just listened.

At the door of the
Sentinel
office, he drew her into the shadows and kissed her thoroughly. It sure was hard to talk himself out of taking her upstairs, but she was so wound up with her new discovery he figured she'd rather chatter than kiss him.

He forced himself to walk back across the street to his room above the
Lark
office, and even though he wouldn't be with Jess tonight, he found it impossible to stop smiling.