Thea Devine (20 page)

It was enough, it had to be enough, but even as she prepared to leave him later that afternoon, she felt as if it could never be enough. There was still more that she wanted, more he would give.

But he knew not to touch her and not to ask the thousand questions and make the dozens of comments
that he knew she would not want to hear. He had to let her go this time, and it was the hardest thing in the world to watch the wagon recede in the distance and know her mind was already turned to business in town.

But she
was
thinking about him,
and
her, and it was a problem with no solution. Nothing had changed except that he had come after her as he promised and that she had succumbed to his artful masculinity.

It was easy to think that she didn’t have to make any decisions tomorrow. She didn’t have to deal with her feelings, she could just shunt this wondrous aspect of her life to one side while she took care of business. But she knew it was not that simple. Her need for him was escalating with each searing encounter.

She didn’t know what to do about it, and speculating on all the possibilities kept her occupied until she pulled up on Main Street once again.

It was strangely deserted, even for a late Sunday afternoon. She let herself into the office, to that unnerving quiet, and went upstairs to the apartment. It too was empty, and this was not usual. She felt a jangling sense of something out of place.

Or maybe it was she who was out of place.

“Well, Maggie my dear, I suppose you were smart to get out of town today.”

“Mother Colleran,” she said resignedly, as her mother-in-law slithered into the parlor from her bedroom. She shot the old woman a resentful glance. “I’m very sure I was smart to get away from
here
.”

“You’re not so smart, Maggie. You know, Frank would not have had any of these problems.”

“But he’s not here,” Maggie pointed out for about the hundredth time. And where could
she
go to escape the viper’s tongue?

“They’re up in arms again, Maggie. You should’ve heard the talk about you around Bodey’s store today.”

“I’m glad I didn’t,” she muttered, feeling all the magic of the day evaporate.

“You could remedy things …”

“I don’t know of anything that needs a remedy, Mother Colleran.”

“They are saying that you want to take the livelihood out of the hands of men who want to
work
, Maggie. Not smart, my dear. There are a lot of working men around here.”

“Now I understand,” Maggie murmured. Her article about transient workers. Another nail in the box they were building around her.

“Mr. Brown is so mad …”

“Mr. Brown?” Maggie asked softly, her interest piqued.

“Arwin said.”

“Mr. Brown hangs out around Arwin’s store?”

“Came in to talk about credit for the men, Maggie. Don’t be stupid. And he’s very unhappy that in addition to impeding the right of way for the line you’re trying to turn the town against workers who will spend money in town and maybe even settle down here. Even Arwin could see the sense of that, and everyone knows he’s on your side. Maybe he’s switched now, Maggie. You’d better be careful. I don’t think you’ve got three friends left in this town, unless you count Reese and those two deadbeats that help you run things into the ground down there.”

“I see,” Maggie said, but Mother Colleran wasn’t finished.

“Colville men are applying for those construction jobs you know. Your former friend Sean Mapes was the first in line this morning; I saw him when we went to church. Mr. Brown never made him an offer, you know. I don’t think he wants the Mapes property as dearly as he wants yours, Maggie. So Sean has to go begging.”

Poor Annie. It was the first thought that occurred to her.

“You should have taken Mr. Brown’s offer, Maggie. People say they saw him talking to you the other night. They think maybe you’re ready to back down in spite of what you write and what you say. No one knows where you stand any more, you know. This never would have happened to Frank. I almost hate to go to church now; they look at me strangely and they don’t have to say it, I see it in their eyes: Frank would have been for the railroad. They know the money would be pouring in by now. I’m mortified, Maggie. I can hardly bear to sleep here.”

“Please don’t. I’ll be glad to have Dennis pay your bill at the hotel.

“And how would
that
look? Everyone would say I deserted you. Don’t be stupid, Maggie,” and she turned and flounced out of the room.

Maggie buried her head in her hands. There was no talking to her in any rational way. She never knew how much of the nonsense she spewed was real and how much was her speaking her thoughts as they occurred to her.

But once she exited the room Mother Colleran became irrelevant; Maggie often thought she was a figment of her imagination anyway. But some of the things she had said today rang true: Sean’s defection, Arwin’s reservations, along with the powerful influence of whatever Mr. Brown might have to offer him.

So what had happened? Suspicions had been raised about whether her concerns were legitimate or just a ruse to force up the price on her land. The offer had been made and she had rejected it, yet when she was seen in polite conversation with Mr. Brown, speculation began again as to what she had to gain. She had written a negative article and advertising had appeared that she could not reject, and now speculation was that she was
going to sell out altogether.

It was fascinating: they wanted her to maintain a morality about the situation while they waited for her to succumb to its lure.

And there was more to come. Tuesday the building of worker accommodations began down the line. Reese drove her out there two days later, and it was worse than she envisioned: a half dozen shacks had been thrown up along the survey site, haphazardly nailed together, rudely constructed with tarpaper roofs and paper windows. Inside each was a crude plank floor and a small pot-bellied stove. The worker provided the rest, on credit from the company, and when the first section of track had been laid, the worker dismantled the house and toted it to the next site.

So when Warfield wrote in glowing terms of the superior housing the company would be providing its workers, she felt like she was living in a dream where her perceptions were totally out of kilter with everyone else’s.

“How may I get rid of him?” she demanded of Dennis as she showed him the article.

“There’s nothing about a contract,” Dennis assured her, his worried gaze roaming her face. She was angry, yes, he thought, but there was something else about her now, an impatience, a sense of her mind being occupied elsewhere.

“On the other hand, when I tell him he’s relieved of his duties, he adamantly refuses to go.”

Dennis shook his head sympathetically. “Send him to me. You should have done that weeks ago anyway, Maggie. I know why you haven’t, and it’s just as I said—you’re letting my feelings for you get in the way.”

She took a deep breath. How could she tell him? She had forgotten all about that. “I’ll send him to you,” she promised.

“But be careful now, Maggie. There’s a great deal of tension in town right now. No one wants to know what you are planning to tell them this issue.”

“I won’t tone it down, Dennis. That would be bending over too far the other way anyway.”

“Maybe you’ve got a very bad conflict of interest, Maggie, and you can’t have reader support until you resolve it.”

It was something she had never thought of, and she looked at him appraisingly. “That’s very interesting; all I have been hearing is how I am trying to get a better price on the property.”

“Better than was offered?”

“The gossips say so.”

“Why wouldn’t you sell then?”

She threw up her hands. “How can you offer me insight in one breath and enmity in the next?”

“Maggie, it’s so simple: selling off the land would resolve the conflict.”

“How? It’s like tacitly agreeing to everything that will follow if I give them the right of way they need.”

“Sell it to someone else.”

“Who will then make a fat profit?”

Now Dennis threw up his hands. “You win, Maggie. It’s unresolvable unless you turn over the editor’s chair to someone who can be totally objective. I’m not sure you are, and I’m certain Arch Warfield isn’t, and you’re going to be backed into a very tight corner as long as you keep writing and the railroad keeps coming. And it will.”

“That sounds like a threat, Dennis.”

“It was a caution, Maggie, and a reminder that I’m here when you need me.” But he saw her slough that off with a shrug that roiled him with an internal anger she would never see. Everything was perfectly obvious to him: Maggie should accept his proposal and turn the newspaper operation over to Reese, who seemed very fair
minded. She would never have to worry about anything again.

“I’m grateful for that,” she said, three beats after his reminder, and she saw the displeasure flash across his face. Well, there was no help for it. She knew the things he would not say now, but still, beneath his words, the beat of his desire to take care of her thrummed like a living thing. He was still determined to maneuver her somehow into a place where she could not refuse him.

She was glad to see him leave, as always, and it was not a pleasant realization.

Later, when she had finished her article, she handed it to A.J. for his objective evaluation. “Dennis thinks I have absolutely no check on my emotions.”

“I’ll assure him, Miz Maggie, you got me.”

Somehow she felt assured. A.J. had a no-nonsense practicality about him and an eye for cutting through the verbal trappings of a phony. She sensed his real affection for her and she respected him because, in spite of his background, he was a real gentleman.

“Yep, Miz Maggie, you have the right of it here. I seen that kind of shack all over the mining community, and it wasn’t long before there was fires and deaths, and the next man came along and settled right over the ashes.”

“Thank you, A.J.,” she said gravely, and she meant it with all her heart.

And Arch Warfield knew enough not to show up the rest of the week because it was inevitable that A.J. would cut his stories.

And Maggie knew enough not to yearn for what was not possible any time during the week.

On Saturday morning she allowed herself the luxury of sitting and thinking about Logan in the half hour or so before she expected A.J. Coffee cup in hand, she walked from window to window in the office and then into the back room, where she settled down at the type case and
stared at the empty spaces.

A whole week had gone by and she had not seen him, she had hardly thought about him, she had not wanted him. And now, as she remembered her long afternoon with him, her yearning flooded back, poignant and almost unbearable in its intensity, unresolvable in its finality.

With that conclusion, she heard the scrape of A.J.’s key in the door and got up to go out into the office to greet him.

As she crossed the threshold, she heard two shots ring out, and A.J. crumpled into the office right before her eyes.

When she bent over him, she saw the shattered skull and endless blood pouring out of a hole in his back that had torn out his heart.

Chapter Twelve

They got Doc Shields, they got the paper out, and then Maggie cried—in Jean Vilroy’s arms. Reese took her away and made her lay down, and Jean stoically finished their usual Saturday chores and ignored Reese when he returned and tried to help.

They were A.J.’s only family, and even while Mother Colleran grumbled about the expense, Maggie and Dennis arranged the funeral and the service at the church. They bought the burial plot and were, with Logan and Arwin Bodey, the ones in attendance when A.J. Lloyd was laid to rest.

Logan had come because Arwin had thought to send a message to him. This little thoughtfulness overwhelmed Maggie, and Reese insisted she must rest after the services or she might break down altogether.

His proprietary attitude dared anyone to oppose him, particularly Logan. He didn’t like Logan at all, or the mysterious way he appeared in time for the funeral, or the fact that Maggie was so glad to see him, even awash in her tears.

Logan took a room at the hotel and waited.

Monday morning, Reese sat down in the editor’s chair of the
Morning Call
.

Maggie didn’t know it. Maggie had fallen into a laudanum-induced sleep that she dearly needed, Mother Colleran told everybody. She was positively devastated by A.J.’s death. She discovered the body, you know, she told her cronies. The whole back of his head shot away, just like that. And they got him in the heart. Mother Colleran was a heroine again. Everyone, she found out, had truly liked A.J.

Well, she didn’t understand it, and she was sure everyone would adore Reese, if only Maggie would see the sense of allowing him to help her run the paper.

But Maggie didn’t see the sense of it at all. She was flaming angry when she finally awakened late Tuesday afternoon and found she had lost a day and a half.

“But don’t worry,” Mother Colleran said placatingly, “Reese stepped in and everything is going just the way you would have wished.”

“
Reese?
”

“Maggie, my dear, you were overwrought. Someone had to.”

“I was
asleep!
”

“Well of course you were; how else could you rest and regain your strength? Really, Maggie, I think you should go down there and thank Reese for volunteering to run things. Any other man would have …”

“Done the same,” Maggie growled, feeling cornered again.

“That was rude, Maggie. You should be grateful. Everything is fine. Reese is very good at managing, you know. Maybe he’ll prove his worth to you now that A.J. is gone.”

The words chilled her. As artlessly as Mother Colleran said them, they still seemed to have meaning all their own. Now that A.J. was gone, there might be a place for Reese. Murder. But it was murder, and if the sheriff had questioned anyone, she did not know it.

“Well, we told the sheriff you had a breakdown, Maggie, and Reese and I were sound asleep up here. You actually were the only one awake at the time, and he was right there by the door when it happened. Well, we told the sheriff that, and he hunted around for clues and bullets and the like. They were sure he was shot from behind, though, Maggie. I wouldn’t think you are a suspect. Unless you were outside.”

Her head started pounding. Complications upon complications. She didn’t know what any of it meant.

Finally she went downstairs to confront Reese, and she confronted a workroom that hummed with activity. The regulars crowded as usual around the front counter, but there was no A.J. to commiserate with them. Instead, they were bemoaning his loss to whoever would listen. Arch Warfield was industriously scribbling away at a desk, while Reese himself was going through copy with an unnervingly experienced eye.

He sensed her presence. “Maggie! How wonderful you’re up and feeling better. Come look at this. Tell me what you think.”

And it went downhill from there.

When she tried to tell him, he waved her off. “Look, Maggie, A.J.’s loss is a big blow to you. You have to let me help. If it means anything to you, I’m younger, stronger, I have some experience, stronger legs, and a more congenial disposition. Besides which, it would be nice to work side by side.”

His audacity crowded all her sorrow about A.J. out of her mind.

“I appreciate that, Reese, really I do. I think if you just let me get a sense of what has to be done, I could find a way to use you the most effectively.”

“I can think of one way, Maggie.”

“And if you mention that again, I’ll fire you before I even hire you.”

“All right, Maggie. Let me tell you what has been going on.”

A.J.’s death was the big news and the whole of the front page was devoted to it. Maggie went directly to the sheriff’s office before she even looked at Reese’s copy, and she gave her testimony and heard his theory, which was not much different from the one that Mother Colleran had told her. She returned to the office with his admonition that she was not free from suspicion until his investigation had been completed.

But she knew this sheriff. In his mind, A.J. was expendable if no suitable suspects were in the offing. Nor could he prove that Maggie wasn’t where she had said she was. He might not ever follow up another clue if it required too much effort. He was damned lucky she wasn’t going anywhere.

Then again, maybe she would. She felt like Reese was crowding her out with his cheerful assurances that he had everything under control.

Worse, his article was damned accurate and she had no reason to cut a word. The only thing she could do was demand he give her back her chair, and he did that with easy grace. He was laughing at her, she thought, mocking her tight hold on the one thing that was hers.

But A.J.’s death scared her. If someone thought he had to murder A.J., that someone wanted something very badly. Colville was not a town renowned for its lawlessness. The worst thing that every happened was when somebody shot out the chandeliers in the barroom or someone’s cattle got rustled or a boundary dispute turned hostile.

What possible reason could anyone have for wanting A.J.’s death?

She didn’t like the one answer that occurred to her.
She shut it away, certain that there was another explanation. She felt disoriented. She had the sinking feeling she was walking around in the worst of her nightmares and that she might soon awake to find that none of this was real.

It was real. And the best real thing that followed on all this was that Logan came. She remembered hazily that he had been at the funeral and then had suddenly disappeared.

“Are you all right?”

“I don’t know. I’m feeling dislocated, like something is missing. Something is missing.” The tears welled up in her eyes. “Oh, damn it.”

“Listen, Maggie, the old she witch up there has been telling everyone you’re prostrate with a case of nerves, totally unhinged by A.J.’s death.”

“I don’t doubt it. Reese was sitting in my chair when I came down this afternoon. I can’t tell you, I
won’t
tell you, but …”

“I’ll tell you, Maggie. I’ve been at the hotel for the past two days, and gossip is running wild about A.J.”

“Why shouldn’t it? When was the last time someone was killed in Colville?” she demanded, feeling a faint slither of pleasure that he had elected to stay in town, and presumably for
her
.

“I’m sure I can’t remember, but this, this is so odd, so unanswerable; it makes no sense at all. And I’ll tell you, Maggie, there are some that want to pin the blame on you.” He watched her haggard face as he said it. He had made a different connection with this information, one she hadn’t thought of. He was curious to see if she would sort it out.

“But I adored A.J.,” she began, and then stopped. “That doesn’t matter, does it?” she said flatly as an idea occurred to her. She saw by the expression in his sky-blue eyes that he had thought of that too. “Oh my Lord.”

He took her hands into his own and squeezed them, hard, as if to impress upon her that he was the only support she needed. She gazed wonderingly into his eyes. This was the man who had held her shimmering nakedness in his hands only two days ago, the man who knew he did not have to do one thing more but continue his sensual odyssey with her. The man who had known her for most of her life was now pledging to stand by her. This man loved her, she thought, and she felt a violent resistance to the realization, and a faint welling of joy that it was so.

“Do you see?” he demanded.

“Yes,” she whispered. She saw, she saw more; she saw the next nail being laid into the box where she envisioned herself. She saw forebodingly that it looked just like a cage, and that the jailer who wielded the hammer looked just like Frank.

“What good is that Logan Ramsey going to do you?” Mother Colleran demanded. “He can’t run a newspaper, he can’t take A.J.’s place. I don’t understand why you won’t let Reese help you.”

“I have decided just what he can do,” Maggie said, but she already knew: nothing. She didn’t want him near the place and she could not define why.

“You are not well enough to take over both A.J.’s duties and your own,” Mother Colleran went on. “I heard you crying last night.”

“Nonsense, Mother Colleran.”

“Please, I know what I heard. You never grieved for Frank like that.”

“Indeed. It was hard to mourn someone who chose the town whore over his wife. But heavens, why talk about that? Frank’s propensities in the marital area, my dear mother-in-law, left much to be desired, and he found someone who could accept the very little he had to give.
There was nothing to mourn. There was nothing solid down there at all. I’m thankful that someone took him off of my hands,” she added for good measure, some part of her loving this vicious attack. It had the added benefit of turning the thrust of the conversation away from Reese’s desire to sit in her editorial chair.

But the thought of that made her think of her nights there with Logan, and a sudden jolt of desire stemmed her words and left her breathless for a moment. She wondered what she was doing here, defending her decisions to this sour old woman who still witlessly worshiped a son who was dead and who had ultimately proved to be worthless.

“He was your husband,” Mother Colleran retorted. “It didn’t matter what he did, he deserved better than he got from you. And didn’t I tell him that, over and over. He never did listen, Maggie, but later he told me I had been right, and his marrying you was a big mistake.”

“He should have married Melinda Sable instead, Mother Colleran? A malleable whore? I guess he should have. He had the makings of a whore himself.”

Mother Colleran smacked her. “Frank was a saint!” she shouted, and wheeled away blindly, overcome by a murderous feeling of wanting to choke away Maggie’s surety. She ran for her room, her only safe haven in the home of the woman who hated her.
Hated her
. She had told Frank again and again, and now Reese, and still Maggie was here and in control and she, their mother, had nothing.

Maggie stared after her in shock. She had never, in all their verbal battles, goaded her mother-in-law to physical violence.

Reese found her there, in the parlor, sitting tightly on the edge of a chair, rubbing her cheek periodically in disbelief. He was utterly nonplussed that his mother had struck her.

“Mother’s the gentlest soul alive,” he protested, and
Maggie looked at him as if he had come from another world. “You must have provoked her terribly.”

“I believe we were discussing you.”

“Well you see, Mother is a lioness protecting her cubs.”

“Or a madame, selling his services,” Maggie muttered so low that he couldn’t quite catch her words. No wonder she had always characterized the old witch as Madame Mother, she thought.

“The mark is fading,” he assured her cheerfully. “Now tell me what I can do for you, Maggie. We have a newspaper to get out.”

She wanted to tell him exactly what to do. Instead, they drove out to monitor the progress of the building crew and the first tie-in of track that was due to reach Junction City, just below Fort Fremont about thirty miles away, in approximately two weeks. The crew rode out every morning now, clearing and posting the land to the south, toward the fort. A mile at a time, a dollar a day, with unlimited credit for whatever were a man’s needs.

She saw Sean Mapes on the work gang and she felt like crying. And then she thought that perhaps when the crew had reached the boundary of the Danforth land, Sean would be offered the opportunity to sell out. It wouldn’t happen for two months or more yet, but he would have been working all that time, laboring to earn the money to keep the ranch going another day, another hour. He might be very glad to leave the burden behind. He had as much as said so.

Reese didn’t miss the lean frame of Sean Mapes either, nor did he comment on it. He knew that Maggie would perceive all the permutations from Sean’s decision to take the money. And he knew what the final outcome would be. So, he thought, reading her expression as she watched Sean, did she.

“But how can you comment about that?” he argued as
they returned to the office. “You would have to put yourself in Sean’s position, see things through Sean’s eyes. You are just not equipped to be objective about that story.”

“Probably not,” she agreed reluctantly, but privately she had decided she would write it anyway, one way or another.

But once they were back at the office again, Reese hovered. “I know what I can do for you, Maggie,” he said teasingly, but when she looked up at him inquiringly, she saw that his pale eyes were deadly serious and that the undertone she had heard was really what he meant. And then he added lightly, “I can be your conscience.”

“You serve me better by keeping your mother out of the way,” she said astringently.

“Maggie, you and Warfield can’t do it all, and you’re taxing Jean to the limit as well, since you can’t handle all of the things you used to help
him
with. You have a resource here. Use it. Use
me
.” Again she heard that sensual double meaning, and she hated herself because she really could see the logic of his argument, while her intuition firmly resisted it.