His Perfect Bride. Judy Christenberry
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would give the wren the benefit of the doubt. As Hannah had said, death by unnatural means occurred frequently in this neighborhood. Lilly had certainly been terrified when she’d nearly bowled him over earlier. He doubted she had traveled far in her flight. Chances were a soiled dove like this Belle would have stayed close to her crib rather than meet Lilly in the open. Deegan wished he’d thought to ask Otis if he knew the young prostitute’s direction. No matter how many answered to the name Belle, if the boy was anything like he had been at the same age, Otis not only knew where to find specific doves, he knew which ones catered to men with jaded tastes.
Deegan had almost reached the end of the block when he caught sight of the lanky villain Lilly had branded a killer. Severn, if Hannah had guessed right. The man lounged in the entranceway of the saloon he’d entered earlier. He had a glass of whiskey in his hand, but didn’t appear interested in drinking it. His gaze traveled the length of the street, lingering only a moment longer when he reached the corner where the street preacher harangued a small gathering of disinterested drunks. Deegan was relieved that Severn showed little interest in him.
Rather than move on, Deegan pretended an interest in the reverend’s sermon, all the while watching Severn from the corner of his eye. It was only when the harsh-faced man shrugged away from the bar door and stepped back into the saloon that Deegan continued on his way.
He nearly walked past the next alleyway before recalling it had once been a busy corridor for men in search of crib-heaven. The space between the buildings seemed narrower than it had in his youth, and the condition of the lane was such that Deegan doubted a woman of Lilly’s caliber had the stomach to make it the thirty feet or so to the rear courtyard.
Calling it a courtyard was glorifying what was little more than an air well. Three disreputable buildings backed onto it, but it was the one with the back stoop that he remembered as the entrance used to reach many of the women’s rooms.
Despite the fact that Lilly claimed to have seen a man murder Belle, then set out in pursuit of her, and that the fellow showed no sign of having left the saloon in the short time since Deegan had originally seen him enter it, there should have been a woman’s body lying lifeless and forgotten in the courtyard. There wasn’t one. Therefore, Belle had walked—or crawled—away from the scene.
If indeed this was the scene of the violent act. Deegan had no problem believing the culprit was Severn. The man sounded like the type to regularly beat the various whores in his stable.
“Hi, honey,” a woman called, leaning from an open window two stories up. “You looking for a little lovin’?”
Deegan nudged the brim of his hat, tilting it to the back of his head. “Sure am, sugar,” he shouted, his voice adopting the drawling tones of a Wyoming cowpuncher. “Yer name happen ta be Belle?”
“Is if ya want it ta be,” she answered, proving, at least to his mind, that she wasn’t the woman in question. “That the name of yer girl back home?”
“Nope. Name o’ the lovebird my brother can’t stop talkin’ about since he was in Frisco last,” Deegan said. “He even wrote her a poem. I got it right here ta give ta her.” He fished in his pockets as if looking for a scrap of paper. “Hell, I’ve got it here someplace. He says today is her birthday or something. A pretty girl named Belle. Ain’t a lot, I know, but do ya know a gal that might be her?”
He got his answer when the woman’s smile faded. “Don’t know any dove by that name,” she said flatly, before leaning back in and closing the sash.
This was definitely the right place. What had Lilly said of the alleged murder? Something about seeing Belle holding the cabinet card she’d just been given. Something about dropping it.
There were a number of puddles of standing water—not particularly untainted rainwater, either. If anything had been dropped, it had probably found its way into one of them.
Although he was quite sure Lilly had mistaken the crime, even without a body, he saw no evidence that a woman had been killed there recently, her throat slit. The ground was too muddy to show blatant signs of blood, and Lilly herself had said Belle didn’t fight, an action that would surely have left its imprint in the muck.
Then again, perhaps this wasn’t the site of the violence. Perhaps it hadn’t been fear that had driven the customer-hungry prostitute back into her room at the mention of Belle’s name. The woman could have simply hated Lilly’s Belle—or another woman called Belle—and wanted nothing to do with helping a john find a rival’s crib.
If only he didn’t hear the echo of Lilly’s words in his mind: I brought her a portrait…she dropped it.
He was a fool. Logic told him there was nothing to find, and yet Deegan moved closer to search the stagnate water near the stoop. Refuse, most of it no longer recognizable, nearly filled the puddle. Deegan hunkered down, in no way eager to sort through the soaked mess. Portrait…dropped it.
Portrait…portrait…portrait.
He was about to give up when a damp bit of cardboard caught his eye. From the looks of it, the piece had skimmed over the puddle, nearly missing it before slipping into the shadow of a fallen, broken roofing tile. Carefully, Deegan lifted the cardboard free and turned it over.
The face of a once pretty young woman smiled up at him. There was no doubt in his mind.
He’d found Lilly’s photograph of Belle.
Chapter Four
Lilly stared into the looking glass in Hannah’s bedroom. In place of her conservative bonnet was an outlandish creation that seemed the epitome of a milliner’s nightmare. There were not only graceful feathers, faded silk flowers and satin ribbons in abundance, there was a pair of nesting birds complete with their clutch of unhatched, blue-speckled eggs affixed to the chapeau. Or at least Lilly thought there was. The cloud of netting that floated before her face nearly obscured her sight and made it difficult to admire the creation’s more imaginative flights of fancy.
As if the headdress wasn’t fantastic enough, Hannah had borrowed a form-engulfing, moth-eaten, fur-trimmed woolen cape and matching, equally feasted upon muff to disguise Lilly for her escorted visit to the police and ultimate escape from the Barbary Coast. Even Hannah’s assurances had not totally convinced Lilly that she would blend into her current surroundings better in such an ill-conceived ensemble.
No matter how odd her appearance, masking her identity appealed strongly to Lilly’s secret love of melodrama. However, as the mysterious Deegan Galloway’s plan called for him to simply take her by the elbow and sally forth to signal a cab as if nothing untoward had occurred, the ending to her adventure looked to be sadly flat. Not that she cared to run for her life as she had done barely an hour ago. It was just that with a disguise involved, she felt a more dashing plan would be fitting.
That was the romantic in her speaking, though. The more time that elapsed, the more her memory of the terror faded, so that now she could not help but wonder if her imagination had altered the scene, painting it in more dramatic shades than the reality of it actually deserved.
She had been so sure that she had witnessed Belle’s murder, yet she could be mistaken. She’d taken a single glance before fleeing. Had the violence, while brutal, not been of a fatal nature? With both Hannah and Deegan questioning exactly what she had seen, Lilly had begun to have doubts.
Her memory had not been aided by Deegan’s gallant rescue. Rather, it had added further color to the episode, turning her afternoon as adventurous as that of a heroine in one of Colonel Ingraham’s dime novels.
Her teachers and family had warned her that reading such low literature would have an adverse effect. She had not believed them. Now she would learn just how accurate their admonition had been. If Belle was found beaten but alive, Lilly promised in a bargainlike prayer, she would willingly renounce her weakness for Beadle and Adams’s stories.
But if Belle were really dead…
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