NINE
“WHAT WAS MY SISTERsquawking about?” Clive mumbled.
“It’s nothing.” Denton stepped to the door and closed it. “Louise just doesn’t know everything a bounty hunter has to do to find a criminal.”
“So, Tibbs tells me you have to talk to me.”
Denton nodded. “I do.” He moved to a chair across from the sofa and sat. He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. “I have heard from Louise and Terrance, but I haven’t heard how you felt about your father marrying Miss Mills.”
Clive shrugged. “At first, I didn’t care. It was my father’s life.”
“What made you start to care?”
Clive stared at the floor for a few silent moments, and his expression darkened. “Did you know,” he said slowly, “that my father was cutting us all out of his will?”
Denton was relieved that Clive knew, only because he wasn’t sure how to touch on that awkward subject. “I learned that yesterday.”
“Do you know how it feels,” Clive lifted his blood-shot gaze to Denton, “when your father tells you that he’s not giving you an inheritance?”
Denton shook his head. “My father wasn’t wealthy, so no, I don’t know how that feels.”
“You feel cheated!” Clive’s voice lifted in anger. “And when I found out that the old man was going to giveeverythingto his new wife... That was like a kick in the gut.”
“I can imagine.” Denton frowned. “Did you ask your father why he did that?”
“Yes.” Clive pushed his fingers through his hair. “It’s because he was tired of seeing his children spend their money on useless things.” His expression hardened. “My father thought I wasn’t worth it.”
“Clive,” Denton said, hoping to ask the important question with the right tone of voice as not to upset him, “did you try to stop your father?”
“Many times.” He snorted a cynical laugh. “But the man was bullheaded.”
“How about the morning of his wedding? Did you try to talk some sense into him then?”
Clive shook his head. “I had been drinking quite a bit after I stormed out of the house the night before. I had fallen asleep in the stable.” He shrugged. “At least that is where I woke up after Terrance found me to tell me Father had been murdered.”
Inwardly, Denton seethed. Just as he’d thought, the man had been too drunk to remember. Either that, or he was lying. Didn’t Clive realize that Denton could ask the servants who worked in the stable to see if Clive was telling the truth? Of course, Denton would do that very thing once he was finished with Clive. In fact, Denton would also find those servants who had been with Albert Greenwood the longest. They would be the dependable ones... and hopefully, the ones that would tell Denton what he wanted to know. Someone had to have seen something.
* * * *
COURTNEY TOSSED HERbook on the sofa and growled in frustration. Denton had been gone for several hours, and she was anxious to hear what he’d found out. She’d promised him to stay inside the hotel, but the walls were closing in on her, and she wanted to scream.
She left the couch and moved to the window. Keeping the curtain drawn, she peeked through the slit and looked at the busy street below. From the color of the sky, Courtney could see that the sun was making its descent on the horizon. Many people still littered the streets, and even some children were seen playing on the boardwalks while their mothers visited with other women.
Carefully, Courtney lifted the window to let in some cooler air. So far, nobody – that she could see – had looked her way on the second floor of the hotel. She was grateful for that.
Out of the corner of her eye, a woman with burnt-red hair, wearing a black gown with the same colored shawl, stopped near the corner of the building just across the alleyway from the hotel. Courtney only knew one woman with that wild color of hair.Louise!
Sucking in a panicked breath, Courtney pulled away from the window, yet continued to peek out to see what Louise was doing by the saloon. The woman anxiously glanced up and down the street as she twisted her hands against her middle. Courtney wondered why someone in mourning would be out in public – and near the saloon, for heaven’s sake.
