Rita had barely gone when Tulley burst in, scattergun raised in a fist, attack-style, that and the badge on his shirt allowing him to bull right past Hub at the batwings.
For a moment, York thought the Rhomers had arrived after dark, after all.
But that wasn’t it — Tulley had just heard about the excitement down to the Victory.
The eyes in the white-bearded face were wild. “I hate to ’bandon my post, Sheriff, but I thought mebbe you might need your ol’ deputy.”
York put a hand on the man’s shoulder, while using his other hand to pull down the shotgun-waving arm.
“You did right, Tulley. I can use you right about now. And, anyway, smart money is on the Rhomers hitting town in sunlight.”
He filled Tulley in on what had happened here. The undertaker was heading out, going after his wicker baskets, and the deputy took everything in with big eyes.
“Now,” York said, “in just a short while, Miss Rita will be comin’ down those steps with a travelin’ bag in hand.”
“She goin’ somewheres?”
“She’s going to a jail cell down at our office. You’re going to accompany her there. And we’ll leave your post at the stable untended for tonight. Just before sunup, you’ll head over with your scattergun. Till then, Miss Rita is in your charge.”
Tulley was frowning. “The gal know she’s headin’ for a jail cell?”
“Possibly not. Make her as comfortable as you can. Give her that large cell, way on the end. If she needs a meal, run down to the hotel restaurant and have them bring one up. And let her know all she has to do is call out and you’ll walk her to the privy. Got all that?”
Tulley was shaking his head doubtfully. “This may not all be to her likin’.”
“It may not. Be firm. You have a gun.”
The deputy goggled at the sheriff. “Well, sir, ladies like Miss Rita, they has guns, too, sometimes.”
“Little ones, Tulley. Not a great big one like you.”
That made Tulley smile. He seemed mollified. And the thing was, York hoped Rita would have a gun amongst her things. If somebody got past him and Tulley, she might need to defend herself.
Because she was behaving very much like the kind of loose end this killer was tying off.
At the doors, York told Hub that if Rita wanted to reopen the Victory, that was fine — once the undertaker had hauled both corpses away.
“Might want to do some work with a mop first,” York advised.
“Sheriff,” Hub said dryly, “you have a good feel for business.”
Out in front of the saloon, York emptied the two spent shells onto the boardwalk and reloaded with fresh bullets from his gun belt. He really didn’t think the Rhomers would be dumb enough to attack at night. But the one Rhomer he’d had experience with turned out pretty damn dumb. So you never knew.
Right now he was on his way to talk to that bank president. It was time. The banker could wrap himself up in respectability all he wanted, but if he was also wrapping himself up in a duster and slashing the throats of young females, well, York would have to take exception.
Thomas Carter lived on the third floor of the brick bank building, above Doc Miller’s surgery and sharing the same outdoor stairway, just up another landing. And Carter appeared to be home, several windows glowing with light. York climbed the two flights and knocked on the banker’s door.
When he got no response, the sheriff knocked again, louder and more insistent; but still nothing.
He tried the door and found it unlocked. A lot of doors were left unlocked in a town this size, but for a man like Carter, that seemed surprising.
Entering a small kitchen, York announced himself, loudly, but again was not acknowledged. He moved into a living room arrayed with expensive-looking furniture in the Victorian style, button-back sofa, wingback chairs, marble-top tables, Oriental carpet. A bedroom with more heavy furnishings and striped wallpaper was uninhabited, as well, and so was a guest room.
“Mr. Carter! Sheriff York. Are you here?”
He was there, all right. In a study at a rolltop desk, where he was slumped, arms slack and hanging down, his head to one side, resting in a drying, darkening pool of blood. Carter was still attired in the same dark brown suit with embroidered vest he’d worn at the Citizens Committee meeting early this evening.
The side of the banker’s head that was up had a small black hole in it, edged with red, dark red turned black. The one eye showing was blank, the mouth yawning open expressionlessly. The scorched smell of gunpowder was in the air.
Carter’s right hand, at the end of a dangling arm, hung limp over a .45 Colt that rested on the floor, where he might have dropped it.
Might have dropped it, if this were a real suicide.
But York knew it wasn’t.
Half an hour later, York was back at his office, where he dragged the chair from behind his desk back into the cell block. Tulley was seated outside the first cell, scattergun across his lap, his snoring no worse than a mountain rockslide.
York pulled the chair up and sat as Rita, seated on the edge of her cot, in a light blue shirt and Levi’s and riding boots, glared at him.
“Lock me up,” she said, “and put that old fool in charge of my safety? I can’t even sleep with him sawing logs.”
“You’re not under arrest,” he told her. “You can leave. But I believe, if you do, you stand to be killed.”
“Locked in here, somebody could kill me.”
Her traveling bag was on the floor next to her. He smiled. “Where is it?”
“Where’s what?”
“Your derringer.”
She huffed a laugh, smiled, and reached under the flat-looking pillow. She showed him the small, pearl-handled, silver gun.
“Your sister had one like that,” he said.
She returned it to its hiding place. “This is my sister’s. It was returned to me after she passed.”
He had used that gun. He had killed Sheriff Harry Gauge with it. Thanks to Lola.
“We don’t usually allow our prisoners,” he said, “to hold on to their firearms.”
“You said I wasn’t a ‘prisoner.’”
“Make that ‘guest.’ But you need to be on your own guard while you’re here. I’m just one man.”
Disgusted, she nodded toward the slumbering Tulley down the cell block. “And that desert rat isn’t even one man.”
“He might surprise you. Thomas Carter is dead, by the way.”
“What?”
“Killed himself. At least that’s what I’m supposed to think.” He told her how he’d found the body, just a short while ago.
“Why isn’t it a suicide?” she asked. “Maybe Carter killed that bank clerk and it wasn’t so hard, but when he used a knife on poor Pearl, it made him realize what he’d done. What he’d become.”
“Yeah, that’s what somebody wants me to think.”
“But you don’t.”
“No. And neither do you.”
A dark eyebrow arched. “Don’t I? What if I told you that Pearl shared with me what Upton told her — that Thomas Carter had embezzled funds and set up the robbery of his own bank to cover it up. What then?”
“Then I’d thank you for the information, and say you’re right, but that only goes so far.”
She got up and came over to the bars and stared through them at him, frowning. “It goes all the way, Caleb! You hounded that man into a terrible act with Pearl, and then into a state of mind where he took his own life.”
York shook his head. “No, there’s more to this than that. And I think you know what it is. Would you care to tell me?”