“As a rule, women do not like to share a man. Neither Ellie nor I are exceptions to the rule. She wants Thaddeus back in her bed and I have him in mine. I acquit them of carrying on behind my back, but I do not acquit them of being tempted.”
“You’re wrong,” said Phoebe. “Thaddeus loves you, Fiona. Headoresyou. I am certain I can speak for him on that count. I don’t know what Ellie thinks because she keeps her own counsel, but I believe you are wrong there as well. It is your lack of confidence that has made you suspicious of them. I have never observed anything between them that leads me to suppose they are tempted in the manner you are suggesting.”
“I have never lacked confidence. You would know that if you stood in my shoes. You would know everything if you stood in my shoes.”
“I am trying,” Phoebe said. “Except for your own imaginings, which are hardly evidence, what is there to suggest that they ever shared a bed?”
Now it was Fiona who turned away from the stove and stared at Phoebe. “What is there?” she asked. “There’s Ben.”
“Ben?” But even as Phoebe said it aloud, she knew, and wondered why she hadn’t known it before.
“Yes. Ben. Thaddeus’s bastard son.”
Chapter Thirty-three
Natty Rahway managed not to put his fist squarely in the middle of Doyle Putty’s face, or jam it into the underside of his weaker brother’s even weaker chin, but it was a narrow thing. What he did was pound his fist against the table hard enough to make it jump and shudder and push the Putty brothers back in their chairs.
The Sweet Clementine Saloon was far less crowded than the last time he’d shared a table with Doyle and Willet, but Natty understood the consequences of drawing even a single customer’s attention to them. He regretted his loss of temper before the table stopped juddering. He leaned forward and spoke quietly, harshly. His narrowed eyes darted but when they lingered, they lingered on Doyle.
“We agreed I would follow them,” he said. “We sat right here and agreed that I would handle the situation.”
“There was no agreement,” said Doyle. “There was only you saying what you would do. Willet and I talked about it and decided that wasn’t good enough. We brought you along. You joined us, not the other way around.” He nudged his brother with his elbow. “Tell him, Willet. Remind him who it was that set this in motion. Remind him how we came to answer the call.”
Willet pulled his chair back to the table and picked up his beer. “Doyle’s right, Natty. We did invite you to come along. Seemed fair as you’d done right by us in the past. Of course, nothin’ we ever done together was like this. More risk. More reward. I know you see that. It’s on account of our cousin that we heard tell of this in the first place. There’s no gettin’ around that.”
Doyle nodded. “Les is a good’un. All the Brownlees are. Hard, honest folk, and we Puttys pity ’em for it. All the same, it was Les who put us on to this, even if he doesn’t know it, and we aim to see that he never finds out. Let him live in ignorance, I say. Willet agrees.”
Willet nodded. “I do. No sense in the families never speakin’ to each other because of something like this.”
“Whatthisare you talking about?” asked Natty. He pushed his beer aside, too angry to drink. “The robbery? The abduction? The goddamn murders?”
Willet shrugged. “All of it, I expect. Les doesn’t put his fingers in any of those pies.”
“Jesus,” Natty said under his breath. “No one was supposed to get hurt. Do either of you recall that?”
“On the train,” said Doyle. “And afterward, with the Apple girl. But things have changed since then. That job’s done, and we have an obligation to cut ourselves from connections to it.”
“Certainly,” said Natty. “But murdering a lawman?”
“And a whore,” said Willet.
Natty swore softly. He looked around. There was a tall fellow at the bar, pale yellow hair, mustache, looking their way. Natty stared him down and he turned back to the bar and ordered a whiskey. “We should take this up to my room, boys. Better to talk privately.”
Doyle almost blew out a mouthful of beer. He choked it down and accepted Willet pounding twice on his back. “Not a chance in hell.”
“Not a chance,” Willet echoed. “We’ll stay here.”
Natty kept his fury in check, in large part because he was mostly furious with himself. The Putty brothers had duped him, and he was having difficulty believing they had even tried, let alone succeeded. He was supposed to have been on the train to Liberty Junction when it left Collier, but he got held up by two of Miss Sylvie’s girls just as the deputy and Caroline Carolina were leaving the cathouse. He knew now it was no accident that they waylaid him, but it was his fault that he underestimated the time it would take him to reach the station and purchase his ticket. The girls couldn’thave known the consequences of keeping him from the train would be the eventual murder of their friend, but he could draw a straight line, and this one led from the Putty brothers to Liberty Junction and right back to the brothel. Even worse, Doyle and Willet wouldn’t have known about the whore’s intention to go to the Junction if he hadn’t told them. He was the one who had overheard her talking about her plans. Maybe he had gotten a little too full of himself thinking that they were a slow pair, always a half step behind.
They often were, but not always. Lesson learned. He would not forget it.
Not raising his voice above a whisper, he asked, “What was the point of killing them?”
“Information,” said Willet. He rubbed the underside of his feeble chin with the back of his hand. “You were wrong about it being a seed pearl dog collar that turned up. It was that ring you first mentioned to us. The one Doyle got from that old woman on the train. That’s what the whore had.”
Doyle tapped his brother’s beer glass. “Don’t know where you came by that other story. We told you we didn’t have a piece that like, but you always have your own ideas about such things. It’s no never mind now. It was the ring. We saw it plain as day when this rough little rascal knocked into the table where it was being examined. I was sitting close enough that I could have scooped it up, but that would have been wrong... and stupid. The deputy got it and eventually it was returned to the old woman.”
Willet nodded. “Doyle and me pondered long and hard trying to come up with the name of the fellow we sold the ring to. Don’t know that he ever said, and it wasn’t important at the time, but we figure that’s information that the deputy heard straight from Miss Carolina. That didn’t leave us much choice, did it?”
