“Oh?” It took every ounce of strength Stuart had not to ask about these supposedflattering thingsNorah discussed.
Ruthann shrugged as she tucked Caleb’s blanket around him. “I just want you to know that Norah could do much worse than to find herself being courted by you.”
Stuart let out a short laugh. “Thank you, sister. I’ll take that as a compliment. Now I must get back to the office.”
And he left before his face could betray precisely what he thought about courting Norah. Between Ruthann and Mrs. Parker, it seemed everyone had an opinion on the subject.
He wondered what Norah’s opinion was. She hadn’t pushed him away last night. It made him hope she was as eager as he’d been for that kiss that hadn’t happened.
It made him want to try again as soon as possible.
Thoughts of Norah occupied his mind the entire walk back to the office, but the moment he was through the door, something else took priority.
Stuart went straight to the cabinets in the storage room at the rear of the building. The room kept all sorts of odds and ends—including old paperwork. After several minutes of opening and shutting doors and rifling through stacks of paper, he found what he was looking for.
The receipts dated from early last summer sat at the top of a teetering stack. The fleeting thought that they really needed someone to come back here and organize all of those flew through Stuart’s mind before he began sorting through the receipts.
Minutes passed as he moved pages from one stack to another, growing closer and closer to the date of the attempted robbery. And then there it was.
He skimmed through the pages. That specific train had arrived from points west and would have continued on to Pueblo in the morning. Anything that needed to be offloaded and placed on a train to Denver or south to Santa Fe would have been removed when it arrived. And freight intended for points east that had arrived on other trains would have been loaded that evening or early the next morning. Not to mention anything that would have remained on the train for Pueblo or east into Kansas.
Stuart sorted through the receipts, setting aside items marked as received and then sent on to Denver or anywhere that wasn’t Pueblo or somewhere else east of there. He looked through what was remaining. A shipment of fruit from a nearby orchard. Coal. A slew of smaller, less expensive sorts of things.
He stepped back, running a hand through his hair. None of it struck him as anything particularly worthy of a late night robbery.
It must not have been something that came through Joliet’s, then.
Stuart shuffled the papers together and replaced them in the cabinet, more determined than ever.
There had to be something worth stealing that night, and if he had to visit every freight company in town, he would find it.
Chapter Fifteen
AS MR. MADDOX LINGEREDon her front steps, Norah questioned every decision she’d made that afternoon.
He’d come calling immediately after the noon meal, doffing his hat to Mama and complimenting everything from the parlor furniture to Norah’s smile before asking if Norah was free to take a stroll with him along the river.
