“Why do you ask? You have a job.”
“It doesn’t mean I can’t help out here. I mean to make this station home while I conduct my investigation.”
“Home?”
“In a manner of speaking. It’s about halfway between Denver and Stonechurch so it suits. I can also board in Frost Falls when I have to. They’re building a hotel there that’ll be done soon. Can’t imagine I won’t be able to get a room when I need it.”
“But home will be here.” It wasn’t exactly a question, but it was filled with doubt.
“Unless you tell me different. If money’s a concern, Mr. Stonechurch is paying.”
“If you help around here, your room and board is taken care of.” Laurel’s eyebrows puckered and twin vertical creases appeared between them. “I’m not sure how you’regoing to do what he expects of you while you’re doing what I expect of you.”
“That’s a fair point. Why don’t we see how it goes? You’ve been managing so far without Mr. Pye.”
“It’s only been a few days.”
“And I’ll only be absent a few days here and there.”
Laurel fell silent, mulling it over. Finally, “Mr. Stonechurch is set on this?”
“He is.” In truth, Stonechurch didn’t care how the work was carried out. He wanted the payroll back, and if he couldn’t have that, he wanted Josiah Pye. Call wanted to begin the inquiry at Morrison Station, and Stonechurch hadn’t objected.
It seemed to Call that it was an endorsement of his methods. “Mr. Stonechurch is depending on your cooperation.”
Laurel pressed her lips together, nodded. “Very well,” she said after a moment. “You can stay. I’ll eventually have to hire someone to take up your slack.”
“Your prerogative.”
“You can stable your horse and set yourself up in the bunkhouse. The stage isn’t due here for several hours. That’s when the next meal will be put out. We eat after the passengers leave. Talk to Rooster about where he needs you most and make yourself useful. The boys are around somewhere. Introduce yourself and don’t let them get underfoot. They’re good workers but easily distracted and they’ll dog your steps if you let them.”
Call nodded. “Appreciate it, Miss Morrison.” He had it in his mind to shake hands on their arrangement and started to remove a glove, but if she understood his intentions, she wasn’t having any part of it. She took a step back from the lip of the porch, picked up the broom, and resumed sweeping. He’d had plenty of experience in the army being dismissed so he recognized this for what it was. He was tempted to salute. Thinking better of it, he turned sharply instead and led his newly christened mare to the barn.
Laurel had second thoughts about what she’d agreed to while he was still in her sights, and third thoughts when he disappeared into the barn. She certainly understood Ramsey Stonechurch hiring someone to get his money back, but why he would put his trust in McCall Landry, a virtual stranger, was more difficult to comprehend. Perhaps Mr. Landry had skills and experience she knew nothing about. Mr. Stonechurch would have made a better study of the man than she had, and probably hadn’t noticed or cared that he had as fine a pair of gray eyes as she had ever seen. The fact that they glinted silver in the sunlight was unlikely to have been a consideration.
Sighing, Laurel made a final pass with the broom and carried it into the house. Those eyes shouldn’t have been a factor for her either when she agreed to take him on, but she couldn’t honestly say they hadn’t been. She had to cast her mind back years to remember the last time she’d felt something for a man with fine eyes. It was her recollection that she’d been a silly girl and the fine eyes had belonged to a boy who thought he was a man at fifteen. She’d thought so, too, back then. Her father caught her coming out of the barn with straw in her hair, and Johnny Turner appeared too soon after her exit for there to have been any doubt in her father’s mind as to what had been going on in the loft. The straw clinging to Johnny’s narrow shoulders and the back of his head was evidence her father didn’t need and would have rather not seen. Johnny elected to leave with his tail between his legs rather than take a thrashing for the girl he’d professed to love only minutes earlier.
Johnny-fine-eyes married his second cousin a few years later, and had a child on the way when he went off to war. He never came back. Laurel didn’t presume he was dead. She figured him for a deserter.
Laurel had put Johnny Turner out of her mind by the time she reached the kitchen. She set the broom in a corner and sidled up to Mrs. Lancaster, who was kneading dough on the table. She breathed deeply of the yeastaroma rising from the dough. “Are all the dry goods put away?” Laurel asked.
“In the pantry. Rooster took care of it. That’s a man with something to prove to himself. He wouldn’t let me help.” She shook her head and used a forearm to brush back strands of dark brown hair and threads of gray. “Hefting those heavy bags. He’s got no sense.”
“I know. There’s no point in trying to go easy on him. He won’t allow it.”
Mrs. Lancaster nodded. She folded the dough, folded it again, and pushed down with the heels of her hands. “Rooster says we have a new fella helping out. Was he pulling my leg?”
“No. His name is McCall Landry. Mr. Stonechurch hired him to find Mr. Pye. Well, to find the money Mr. Pye took. Mr. Landry was a passenger on the stage that was robbed. You flirted with him when you were clearing the table. Remember that?”
“Flirted with—” A new thought interrupted her. “Ah, yes. Idoremember. Landry, did you say? I don’t believe I caught his name then, not that it’s what I would have recollected anyway. Fine-looking man.ThatI remember.”
“McCall Landry,” Laurel said. “I believe he prefers Call.”
“That so? I bet you never called him that. Bet you called him Mr. Landry.”
“What if I did? There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s his name.”
Mrs. Lancaster lifted her flour-dusted hands out of the dough and held them up to profess her innocence. Her dark brown eyes, though, were shrewd. “Just an observation. I meant nothing by it.”‘
