A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose #2)(40)

“Who was your father?” Travis Seeley was smoking a cigarette, and he tapped the ash in the glass tray in the middle of the table.

I felt Eli tense beside me, but if he got upset too, it would confirm everything the Iron Hand people thought they’d dug up. “I am a bastard,” I said. “I don’t know my father.” Both true things, in different ways.

“Hard to believe our informants were amiss,” Harriet said. “But I suppose if you help us look for the chest, I could forget all about what we heard.”

I turned to look at Eli. He gave a tiny nod. Somewhere along the line, maybe these two would die.

“Don’t know why you feel you got to threaten me,” I said, turning back to Harriet. “And I don’t know why you feel it’s got to be Eli and me who help you. Why do you think we’d want to or need to? We’re here on our own say-so.”

Just then the waiter poured my coffee and brought Eli’s orange juice. He took our breakfast order.

But our two uninvited companions stayed on point. “Eli, you’re clearly a wizard, and a powerful one. Lizbeth, you have a reputation as one of the best shooters in Texoma. And here you are together. That doesn’t happen by accident.”

“Actually, it did happen by accident,” Eli said after he took a sip of orange juice. “I had no idea I would meet Lizbeth here, and I was happy as a man can be to see her at the train wreck.”

“Not too many men would be happy to find their wives at a train wreck,” Harriet said. Her polish was wearing thin, and she was almost snarling.

“We’re a real unusual couple,” I said, bending forward as she had earlier. “One thing we got in common, Eli and me: we like to eat breakfast by ourselves.”

Harriet glared at me. After a moment, Travis said, “So be it.” They both rose and marched out of the dining room.

“I bet they stuck us with their bill,” I said to Eli. “What do you want to bet?”

“Not a nickel, Lizbeth. Not even a penny.” He smiled at me and I smiled back. We finished our breakfast in a much better mood. We’d found something to unite against.

I ran up to our room to brush my teeth after we’d eaten. I love a cup of coffee, but having the taste of it on my teeth the rest of the day… not a good feeling.

The maid had already made the bed and put out fresh towels. I had felt guilty the first time I’d been waited on like this, but now I just felt glad. Housework had never been a calling for me, just a chore I had to perform to be decently clean.

In all the hotels I’d stayed in, the maid had never written me a letter after cleaning the room. I found a sealed envelope in my little suitcase. I’d only opened it to put my washed and dried stockings inside; I was glad I’d done that. Though I was mighty curious, I stuffed the envelope into my purse and hurried downstairs.

Eli was waiting by the front doors, and something in me kind of twanged when I saw him. I froze on the bottom step, suddenly aware that I was way too happy to see him, way too used to him being there, waiting for me. I could see disaster in my future, a totally different kind of disaster from the ever-present chance that someone would shoot me.

He turned to look just at that moment, and his calm face went all puzzled and surprised. He was over to the stairs in a few strides. “What’s wrong, Lizbeth?” he asked quietly, taking my hand.

I had to jerk myself out of this bad moment, and I did, with a wrench that was almost physical. “Someone walked over my grave,” I said.

Eli looked startled. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, it’s an old wives’ tale. When you feel a sudden… shakiness inside, or a shiver, you say that someone must have walked over your grave.”

“Gruesome,” Eli said. “Are they off of it now? Your grave?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.” We went out the door side by side, me carefully not touching him. After we’d walked for a moment, I said, “We should find a bench or something. There was a letter in the room. I haven’t read it yet.”

Since we’d been headed nowhere in particular, and we had no plan for the day—at least that I knew of—we walked to the little park and settled on the same bench we’d used before.

“I hope this is interesting, because I feel we’re getting nowhere,” I said as I pulled the envelope from my handbag. I put my thumb under the flap to open it.

“Wait!” Eli took it from me and pressed his hand against the paper, his eyes closed. “Okay, no magic inside,” he said, and gave it back to me.

“Magic?” I didn’t know it could be put in an envelope.

“Could have been a spell inside, or it could have been spelled to react when you opened it,” he said.

I shook my head. “That is…” I couldn’t even think of the words. I felt real straightforward and simple. I opened the envelope to pull out a single sheet of paper. Hotel stationery. The message was not in cursive, but in the plain printing we’d learned when we’d first started writing. It was short. Meet tonight after dark behind Mount Olive Church on Lee Street.

“If it’s a trap, it’s certainly not a fancy one,” I said.

“The handwriting could be because the writer can’t do any better, or it could be a disguise.”

“We know nothing.” I was pretty disgusted with that state of affairs.