After that both doorways commenced to crowd up. Poor drab Jeannie, whom the two-faced Scotchman had been screwing, let out a hideous wail to see her Angus sprawled there in the clearing gunsmoke. She threw herself down on him like a sobbing and shuddering bed quilt.
When Dame Flora came out to join her, Longarm moved closer, warning, "Don't risk skunk blood on your own dress, ma'am. As we were just saying, a skunk working in cahoots with others to lure gals and their life savings all this way must have felt mighty slick when you advertised for help and he applied for the job."
Dame Flora protested, "But Angus really was a private investigator, with experience here in the West as a range
detective and . . . Och, mo Dai! I see it all now!"
She didn't really. Nobody did before Longarm and Zion County rounded up all the Lukas help and impounded all the black-hearted bastard's business records. But after that it was simple. The inventive bookkeeping of a rapidly expanding beef baron who'd been buying way more than he'd been selling didn't meant frog spit as soon as one compared it with the more truthful church tithes of honest Mormon neighbors who'd offered exactly ten percent, no more, no less, of each and every sale to their county coroner.
Casually recorded deaths and burials failed to hold up also once one compared the Potter's Field burial of supposed male vagrants with the bones and above all shoes of Scotch females. Some of the frightened hands who'd helped to bury them were willing to fill in the fine print as soon as Bishop Reynolds said it seemed a shame they were just outside Utah Territory, where you got your choice between the gallows and a firing squad.
Billy Vail was as pleased with the final outcome, once Longarm got back to Denver. As they were jawing about it in Vail's office Vail chortled, "Senator Rumford wrote you a letter of commendation once he got back East. You done us proud by saving that silver for Uncle Sam and his Shoshoni wards."
Longarm reached for a smoke as an excuse to look away. What they didn't know about his own Indian policy wouldn't hurt any honest man and might help the Indians some.
Vail continued. "The governor of Missouri sent us a handsome thank you for the capture of Murgatroid Westmore, and the British Foreign Office thinks you saved Lord knows how many more subjects of their Queen from a fate worse than fucking. So there's only a single detail you failed to explain in your official report, old son."
When Longarm innocently asked what he'd left out. Vail demanded, "Where in blue blazes have you been all this time? Them dudes and even Murgatroid Westmore have been back East long enough for us to get wires about 'em."
Longarm lit his cheroot before he mildly suggested he'd had a few last loose ends to take care of out Utah way.
Vail grinned sort of dirty and decided, "I'll bet her end was loose by the time you were done with it. You never said in your report what that Dame Flora looked like, but. . ."
"Hold on. That high-toned Scotch lady and her maid left for the East aboard the same train as Rumford and those other dudes. So you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Billy Vail."
Vail said he'd meant no serious disrespect to a lady who knew Queen Victoria personally, but persisted. "Nobody left for nowhere before you and that Bishop Reynolds had tied up all the loose ends and solved the case entirely. So what, or who have you been dallying with since you parted company with those Scotch gals almost a full week ago, you rascal?"
Longarm didn't answer. That wistfully sweet young widow woman who'd managed that hotel in Ogden hadn't had a thing to do with any federal case, and he'd assured her the night Dame Flora and her maid had checked out that he'd never kiss and tell.