The Outrage - Edge Series 3 (28 page)

When Muriel Mandrell showed the two unwelcome visitors to the door Blanche voluntarily remained in the parlour and Edge was thus able to return the poison pen letters to their writer without the girl seeing. She took them without any display of triumph and nor did she show any degree of relief. She simply looked physically and emotionally drained as she pushed them up a sleeve of her dowdy dress.

During the slow ride back to the centre of town neither Edge nor Sarah Farmer said anything until they reached the intersection when he announced he could use a drink and they both angled their horses across to the hitching rail out front of the saloon of the Grand Hotel. Inside there were a few reticent greetings and some nods directed at them as they weaved among the handful of occupied tables toward an empty one near the hotel lobby entrance. Fred Tolliver registered Edge’s tacit signal and brought over a bottle of bourbon and two shot glasses. And Sarah waited until after he had finished a first drink with one swallow before she asked:

‘Are you feeling better now?’

He grimaced. ‘Yeah, but it’s starting to bother me.’

‘Well, I guess a man like you has never had much occasion to be in the kind of society where young girls have doubts about the way they – ‘

He took out the makings and shook his head. ‘It’s not the stuff about Nancy Quinn that’s troubling me. I mean I’m bothered by needing a drink to keep some things from bothering me,’

‘You’re not usually a drinking man, Edge?’

‘I can be though I try not to be. But ever since Nick Quinn gave me a taste of his whiskey on the stage from Pine Wells it seems like I keep finding any lame excuse there is to take a belt.’

‘Mr Edge, Miss Farmer.’

They both looked up as Matt Colman, wearing his new suit and looking carefully groomed, stepped into the archway between the saloon and the lobby of the hotel.

‘You’re looking rather smart tonight, Matt?’ Sarah arched her eyebrows to make the comment into a query.

‘Come on, Matthew it’s getting really late.’ A doll pretty girl made the petulant plea as she moved into the archway alongside him. She was about twenty with a mass of highly shined, shoulder length jet-black hair and a slender body tightly clothed in a white formal dress.

Colman momentarily showed his irritation with her fretful mood but then forced a smile for the couple seated at the table as he made haste to introduce: ‘Miss Lassiter, Mr Edge. I think you know Rosemary, Miss Farmer? We’ve just had some supper in the hotel restaurant.’

He backed off a couple of paces and looked like he wished he had never stepped into the archway.

‘It surely is late so I think it best you get Rosemary home to her folks, Matt,’ Sarah advised.

‘Thank you, Miss Farmer,’ the girl said eagerly. ‘Come on, Matthew, let’s go.’

‘I saw you from the lobby and thought I’d stop by to say hello.’ Now Colman looked like he would rather stay in the saloon but without the girl.

‘It was very nice of you, Matt,’ Sarah said.

Edge finished making the cigarette and showed a wry smile as he told the young man:

‘It’s good to hear your lady friend doesn’t want you under her feet, kid.’

Colman responded with a tentative grin as he answered sardonically: ‘It seems to me that women can be the worst at walking all over a guy if he doesn’t watch out for himself?’

He steered the eager to leave Rosemary Lassiter out into the lobby and a little later as Edge finished explaining the name joke to the quizzical Sarah Farmer they were interrupted for a second time from the same area.

‘Sarah! And Edge! How good to see the both of you.’ The statuesque Alice Cassidy came through the archway wearing a dress for the first time since Edge had known her. She had several glittering rings on the fingers of both hands and there were three strands of pearls hung around her neck. Her colour was high and it was apparent that she needed to make an effort to keep from staggering. So she was a lot drunker than she had been when she was with the group of men beside the chuck wagon out at the ranch earlier in the evening. ‘How are the two of you?’ Her Deep South accented voice was slurred and her slack mouth expressed a foolish grin. ‘Still developing that friendship of yours I’m real pleased to see.’

Sarah glowered and complained frostily: ‘Alice, I really don’t think this has anything to do with - ‘

Edge lifted the bottle off the table as he suggested: ‘We can get another glass if you’d like a drink, lady?’

The gently swaying woman shook her blonde head with a studied determination. ‘That’s real kind of you but I don’t think so. I suppose you’ve noticed that I’ve already had one or two. Something you would have seen out at the place, I reckon? On account of me having had another stand up blazing row with Noah, the ornery sonofabitch! And I have to allow I’ve sunk a few more shots of Kentucky’s finest since then so – ‘

‘Alice, I really think you should take yourself off to bed,’ Sarah cut in and peered around the saloon, embarrassed by her loudly inebriated sister.’

Many of the other patrons were grinning their enjoyment of the situation as Alice made a dismissive gesture, pulled a scornful face at her audience and demanded of Sarah: ‘Why is it, my dear sibling, that men can be such miserable bastards? Can you answer me that?’

‘I suppose it’s one of the ways of the world, Alice,’ Sarah rasped through gritted teeth.

‘And the world of men is something you’ve had much more to do with than me. So why on earth should you of all people need to ask me such a question?’

Alice sighed deeply, shrugged and swayed some more as she admitted ruefully: ‘You know, I think it truly is time I went to bed. Goodnight to you both.’ She raised a hand in farewell, turned carefully and withdrew unsteadily into the hotel lobby, where she veered to go past the desk toward the foot of the stairs instead of the doorway to the street.

‘It seems like your sister has rented a room here at the hotel,’ Edge said as he leaned back from watching the drunken woman’s wavering progress.

‘Alice has a room reserved here at the Grand on a permanent basis,’ Sarah replied absently as she gazed fixedly into the middle distance, her mind obviously concerned with other matters.

Edge lit the newly rolled cigarette and asked: ‘Something?’

‘Not really.’

‘Whatever you say.’

‘Well . . . Alice and I never saw each other for a number of year s before we returned to Springdale. And I’ve heard that when she ran that alleged house of ill repute in New Orleans she was well known for never going with men.’

‘Doesn’t that kind of go with the territory of being a madam? Keeping a bunch of dogs and not barking yourself?’

She smiled briefly. ‘It’s not a subject I know very much of anything about. And anyway I’m not sure if Alice has ever been completely truthful with me about that brothel. Me or anybody else. I've often thought that Alice simply enjoys the notoriety. Chooses to let the gossip circulate and become exaggerated when she could easily put a stop to it if she wanted.’

Edge finished the heeltaps from his second shot of bourbon and pressed the stopper firmly back in the bottle. ‘This town sure does have some of the weirdest characters I’ve ever come across, you know that?’

She showed a wan smile. ‘And I suppose my sister is one of the most strange of all of them. Did I hear right, Edge? You were out at the ranch today?’

‘I’d just got back from there when I ran into you at the livery. It was where I talked with the Sawyer kid about Nancy Quinn’s problem.’

‘What did you think of the place?’

‘It ain’t the best run spread I’ve ever been on.’

‘I’ll bet.’ She shook her head reflectively. ‘Alice and Noah went into ranching on a whim soon after they sold up the New Orleans hotel for a small fortune. The hotel that could have been a bordello or maybe wasn’t? I think Noah could have made a real go of ranching but Alice just wants to play stupid games all the time and he always gives in to her. Target shooting’s the latest nonsense I hear?’

Edge confirmed: ‘It’s what it seemed to be today.’

‘It was horse racing awhile back. Before that rodeos. One time Alice wanted to start a gambling casino and dancehall out there. But the local people raised hell over that. Because they were sure it would end up as another of her houses of ill repute before too long.’

‘At least she gives a few of the wilder young bucks around here a chance to let off some steam without bothering anybody in town.’ Edge recalled the broad span of the age group out at the Cassidy spread and added sardonically: ‘Along with some fellers who are a little longer in the tooth.’

‘That’s one way of looking at Alice’s tomfoolery, I suppose.’ She grimaced and made a clucking sound with her tongue against her teeth. ‘It’s just a pity Muriel Mandrell didn’t have something more diverting to occupy that twisted mind of hers – to keep her from dreaming up all those poisonous notions she put down on paper.’

‘I guess she’s been on the receiving end of a whole lot of bad mouthing that didn’t get written down,’ Edge said on a trickle of tobacco smoke.

Sarah began irritably: ‘What makes you think that – ‘

‘All those years after she gave birth to Blanche. And there was no wed-in-church husband around in a strait-laced place like Springdale?’

Sarah’s righteous anger diminished to a frown and she allowed: ‘She probably did. But I’ll need to apply a great deal of careful thought to that over a long time before I can start to forgive that woman for all those nauseating accusations she made again me.’

Edge nodded and shrugged. ‘I guess so.’

She accompanied her own shrug with a sigh and a half smile. ‘Still, times are changing aren’t they, Edge? And people just have to change with the times I guess. Aren’t the more intelligent and forward thinking people supposed to be getting more civilised out here in what Easterners used to call the wild west?’

He grinned briefly as he stood up, left some coins on the table in payment for the whiskey and murmured: ‘Where men used to be men and – ‘

She cut in almost cheerfully: ‘I know how that old chestnut ends. And women were grateful, isn’t that what they used to say?’

‘Something like that.’ He took her arm and escorted her outside where they unhitched the horses from the saloon rail and swung up into their saddles.

Then Sarah suddenly did a double take across the street and Edge asked: ‘Something wrong?’

She shook her head. ‘It was probably nothing more than a trick of the light. But I thought I saw somebody duck back into the alley between the family bakery and the dry goods store over there. Just for a moment it looked like Joe Kellner.’

‘You want me to take a look?’

She chewed her lower lip then shook her head and replied: ‘I’m sure now it was my imagination. Certainly Joe wouldn’t want to hide from us, would he? I’m sure it was merely in my mind. Which hasn’t been working at all as it should ever since I read that letter Muriel Mandrell wrote me.’

‘Okay, let’s go home.’

She spread a rueful look across her attractive face. ‘You know something, Edge?’

‘The older I get the more I come to realise I don’t know too much about anything.’ He leavened the cynicism with a fleeting grin that didn’t have time to reach his eyes.

‘If it hadn’t been for that awful letter with its totally unfounded insinuations about my moral character I may have been tempted to ride out to the Quinn house with you tonight. Even though I have to be up early to take school tomorrow.’ She directed a mock wicked look at him as she added: ‘Isn’t that a shocking thing for a small town schoolma’am to admit?’

He grimaced as he countered: ‘Damn, it sounds good to me and makes me want to teach the Mandrell woman a real hard lesson.’

She gave him a sympathetic smile. ‘Perhaps another time?’ The smile developed into a girlish giggle. ‘When I could maybe give you some private tuition.’ She arched her eyebrows and added: ‘In biology?’

His smile was self-deprecating. ‘I’ll sure look forward to that, Sarah. Reckon I can recall the theory. But I’m a little out of practise.’

CHAPTER • 18

___________________________________________________________________________

THE NEXT morning Edge awoke at sunrise and was instantly and irritably aware that
he was alone in the single bed in the smaller guestroom at the luxurious Quinn house. And it was not until after he had made a pot of coffee and drank it in the kitchen while he washed up and shaved that he was able to rid his mind of erotic thoughts concerning Sarah Farmer. He carried a second filled to the brim cup out into the yard behind the house where he breathed in the freshness of the new, brightly sunlit day while his mind remained contentedly unoccupied. Then after he finished the coffee he set down the empty cup on the rear doorstep and began to amble leisurely around the two acres or so of garden which was formally landscaped at the front and sides of the handsome house.