Wilde West Part 27

"An accident."

"Yeah. I had my hand out and he walked smack into it."

Hanrahan nodded. "And I suppose yer hand was all balled up into a fist at the time."

Grigsby nodded. "Now you mention it."

Hanrahan nodded. "And where was Mr. Brubaker durin' these proceedin's?"

"On the floor. Some kinda problem with his head, it looked like."

Hanrahan suddenly laughed. He shook his head. "Jesus, Bob."

"Anyway-"

"What about Sheldon?" Suddenly serious. "Greaves goes to Sheldon with that, and yer up s.h.i.+t creek entirely."

"He already went to Sheldon. Reckon I'll find out tomorrow what happens. Maybe I'll get to be a sailor boy after all."

"Jesus." He looked at Grigsby. "You're thinkin' that Greaves might be layin' for ye? Lookin' to cause ye some physical damage of his own?"

Grigsby shook his head. "It's only that I'm gonna be away for a while, and if anything happened to me, n.o.body'd know about those letters."

Hanrahan frowned. "You need some help?"

Grigsby shook his head. "I'll be fine, Gerry. Like I say, this is all just in case."

Hanrahan sat in silence for a moment. Finally he said, "Tell me one thing, Bob. You figure it was worth it? Givin' Greaves a taste of knuckle?"

Grigsby thought about it for a moment. Finally he smiled. "Yeah, Gerry, I got to say it was."

Hanrahan stared at him for another long moment, and then he grinned. "Greaves and Brubaker both." He shook his head. "I'd give me right arm to see a thing like that."

"You keep your right arm. Things work out, I'll see you on Monday."

"And if things don't work out?"

Grisgby smiled. "Then maybe I won't."

When he left Hanrahan's house, Grigsby was surprised to see that the real dusk, of vanis.h.i.+ng sun and blending shadows, had come and gone. Night had fallen. He slipped his pocket watch from his vest, saw that the time was nearly a quarter to eight. He climbed on his horse and rode over to the telegraph office.

No telegrams addressed to him had arrived. He wasn't surprised; it was early yet. Mort had gone home, so he told Peters, the night operator, to hold any telegrams addressed to Grigsby that arrived tonight, and hand them over to Mort in the morning. He left Mort a note, asking him to forward his telegrams on to the Woods Hotel in Manitou Springs tomorrow, and to the Clarendon in Leadville on Sunday. Mort, Grigsby knew, would tell no one, not even Greaves; Mort believed that a telegraph operator took the same oath of silence as a doctor.

Afterward, Grigsby rode to Wilde's hotel.

Ned Winters, the desk clerk, told him that Wilde had left for the opera house. Except for Vail and the French woman, the others, too, were gone.

Grigsby nodded. "Okay, Ned. Give me the pa.s.skey."

Winters hesitated. He was a round little man in a baggy checked suit who grew the left side of his hair long and troweled it up over his bright pink scalp and plastered it in place. "I don't know, Marshal."

Grigsby smiled. "What is it you don't know, Ned?"

"If I should do that. Lonny-Mr. Laidlaw-he told me he don't want me ever to give out the pa.s.skey."

Grigsby nodded. "And what did he tell ya about sleepin' on the job?"

Winters looked quickly around the lobby. "Like I told you this morning, Marshal, I musta just closed my eyes for only a minute."

"You want to explain that to Lonny?"

Winters sighed. He opened a drawer in the desktop and pulled out a key, handed it to Grigsby. "What happens if one of them comes back?"

"Tell him the maid's in there cleaning. Buy him a drink and come up and get me. Bang on the door twice."

"How will I know which room you're in?"

"Bang hard on any one of 'em. Walls up there ain't that thick."

Winters nodded. He leaned confidentially toward Grigsby. "What's goin' on, Marshal?"

"How's that?"

Winters adjusted his bow tie. "Well, I mean, you wanted to know where they were all at last night. Woke me up to find out. I figure it must be something pretty important."

Grigsby nodded. "Reckon there's not much slips past you, Ned."

Winters smiled, pleased. "Well, you know how it is, Marshal. I been in the business a long time."

Grigsby put his elbows on the counter and leaned toward the clerk. "I ever lie to you, Ned?

Winters shook his head. "No sir, Marshal. Not that I know of."

Grigsby nodded. "Then I reckon there's no reason for me to start now."

Winters stared at him.

Grigsby said, "I'll be back down in a little while."

Upstairs, no one was wandering along the carpeted hallway. Grigsby unlocked the door to Wilde's room, stepped in, locked it shut behind him.

The room smelled, in the darkness, like roses.

Figured.

He lit a match, cupped it in his hand as he carried it over to the oil lamp, used it to set the lamp's wick aflame. He blew out the match, stuck it in his vest pocket. He adjusted the flame, then held the lamp up and looked around the room.

He stepped back and nearly dropped the lamp. Over in the corner, somehow sprawled along the room's two chairs, was a dead man.

No.

No, he realized, and blew air from his lungs. Not a dead man.

Only a long black topcoat spread atop the chairs, its long limp arms hanging loose.

Jesus, Grigsby thought. Spooked by an overcoat. He really was getting too old for this s.h.i.+t.

His heart still pounding, Grigsby walked over to the coat and touched it.

Wet.

Wilde had laid it out to dry.

Grigsby thought: bloodstains? Wilde had washed away the bloodstains?

Or had he worn it today, in the rain?

Grigsby walked over to the closet and opened the door.

Arranged neatly along the floor were more shoes than he had ever seen together at one time, in any one place outside a shoe store. Beneath him they gleamed and glimmered in the flickering lamplight, boots and brogues and some dainty, delicate things that looked like slippers for a fairy G.o.dmother.

But she would have been a fairly hefty fairy G.o.dmother. The slippers were dainty only in construction. In size they were larger than Grigsby's boots.

No one could call those feet average. Except maybe an elephant.

So. The shoes cleared Wilde.

In a way-and it surprised him-he was glad to learn it. He didn't much care for nances, but Wilde, at least, had some style. Some b.a.l.l.s, too.

He looked around the closet. Suits, jackets, topcoats, trousers, enough fancy-dan clothes for a regiment of lulu-belles. Pushed against the wall was a large metal steamer trunk, its hasp unlocked. For a moment Grigsby considered opening it. But Wilde's shoes had proved him innocent of the murders, and anything he happened to be toting along on his travels was none of Grigsby's business.

O'Conner's feet were average, and Grigsby spent some time going through the reporter's things.

He found three full bottles of liquor hidden around the room, one under the bed, one in the otherwise empty suitcase in the closet, and one in the bottom drawer of the dresser. This made sense-if you were a drinking man, you made a point of keeping some spare bottles handy.

There was also a half-filled bottle of liquor on the table by the bed, and Grigsby, being a drinking man, drank some.

In the top drawer of the dresser he found a cheap cardboard notebook. Opening it, he discovered that only the first page of it had been written upon.

In cramped, scratchy handwriting, it read: O. Wilde.

Oscar Wilde.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde.

That was all.

What kind of garbage was that? Where were his notes, where were the articles he was supposed to be writing?

Grigsby flipped through the notebook again. Empty.

He went back to searching. He found no single-edge knife with a seven-inch blade, and he found no mementos of Molly Woods.

Like O'Conner's, Rudd.i.c.k's feet were average, and Grigsby spent a fair amount of time searching through the boy's room. In the closet, as he riffled the pockets of the suitcoats and jackets, the smell of lilacs was so strong that his eyes began to water.

On the top of the dresser, beside the empty water basin, he found a small painting in a gilt frame that showed a sleek young man, his hands tied above his head, who was naked except for a pair of diapers, and who seemed pretty indifferent to, or maybe even pleased with, all the arrows sprouting from his muscular arms and chest, and the blood trickling elegantly down his oiled flanks. Clara, raised by nuns, had owned a book of Saints; and, from the arrows, Grigsby recognized the young man as St. Sebastian. The patron saint of lulu-belles?

Inside the dresser, in the top drawer, he found a notebook. He opened it, flipped through pages filled with a rolling ornate handwriting. Scratched-out words and phrases made a scattered pattern like buckshot wounds amid the lines. Poetry, it looked like.

He read one.

Beloved, when I, beside your silken skin, Trapped in the longitude and lat.i.tude Of pa.s.sion, consider that our att.i.tude And history are nothing like akin, I fear that one day our deepest mood Will differ, and you, brood- Ing, will see crime where there is only sin.

Crime? Sin?

Was he maybe talking about murder?

Or maybe just about cornholing?

It occurred to Grigsby that the poem might have been written about Dell Jameson, or someone like him, and he felt suddenly a bit queasy, as though he were holding a piece of dirty underwear. He closed the notebook and returned it to the drawer.

He searched some more, but he found no knife, and no organs belonging to Molly Woods.

Von Hesse's feet were average, too, and Grigsby went over his room carefully. In the closet, a suitcase filled with books, all of them in German. Clothes hanging neatly on their hangers.

More clothes, more neatness, in the dresser. Two small perfectly rectangular stacks of s.h.i.+rts, each perfectly folded s.h.i.+rt perfectly aligned atop the perfectly folded one beneath.

Grigsby glanced around the room. It was immaculate, nothing out of place, not a speck of dust anywhere.

Wilde's room, clean as it was, hadn't been this spotless. Neither had O'Conner's. Von Hesse could've had a different hotel maid, but Grigsby doubted it. And the maid hadn't arranged the s.h.i.+rts.

Clara hadn't kept their own house neater than von Hesse kept his room. Maybe Grigsby should hire the German to help him shovel out the place.

Grigsby searched. No knife, no bits and pieces of Molly Woods.

Henry's tiny cubicle of a room was even neater. It was empty. No shoes, no clothes, no suitcase, nothing.

Had the valet moved to another room? And if he had, why?

Find out from Winters at the front desk.

Grigsby pulled shut the door to Henry's room, locked it and started down the empty hallway.

When he came to 211, the Countess's room, he paused.

She's not for you, Bob.

But maybe she remembered something. She's had all day to think about it. She told me to come back.