Give Me Tonight(110)

"But I've provided your alibi. I said you were with me that night. "

He shook his head, scowling morosely. "They think you're lying to protect me."

Addie sighed and pressed her palms to her temples, desperate to remember the name she’d given to Jeff. Inside her mind somewhere was the truth. She closed her eyes and pressed harder, wishing she could squeeze out the memory. But her returning memories were in­frequent and almost always incomplete.

"It's one of our own men," she said, curling her fingers into her hair as if she would tug it out, dishev­eling the perfectly coiffed braids. "Surely one of them knows something, or suspects something. Why isn't anyone saying anything? They wouldn't really protect one of their own even if he was a murderer, would they?"

"I don't know," Ben muttered, beginning to pace again. "I wouldn't have thought so."

Later that evening, as the family sat down to dinner in the main house, Ben strode in with a distracted ex­pression. They all glanced up at him as he looked at Addie and spoke quietly.

"I've got some business to take care of. I might be gone until morning."

Addie's skin prickled with awareness. Something had happened. "Anything serious?" she asked with forced calm, and he shrugged.

"I won't know until later."

Slowly Addie took the napkin from her lap and put it on the table. "I'll walk you to the door," she said, darting a cautious glance at May, who offered no ob­jection. As soon as they left the room, Addie clung to his arm. His muscles were taut. "What is it?" she whispered anxiously.

"One of the boys admitted to having seen one of the beds in the bunkhouse empty during the night of the murder."

"Whose?"

"Watts's."

"But . . . but he's taken me and Caro to town lots of times, and you had him watch over the house so many nights while we were all asleep—"

"I can't prove he's the one. It's only a suspicion." Addie took a deep breath and held on to his arm more tightly. "Where are you going now?" she whis­pered.

"To visit his sister."

"But . . . she's a prostitute."

"Hell, Addie, I'm not going to bed her. I'm just going to ask her some questions."

"She's not going to tell you anything to implicate her own brother, even if she knows something. Oh, Ben, I don't like this at all—"

"She's just a girl. A girl who likes money." He frowned as he looked down at her, prying his arm loose from her grasp. "And I don't have much to lose by visiting with her. In the meantime, don't worry about Watts. He's staying far away from the house in a line shack tonight, guarding the edge of the prop­erty. "

"Ben," Addie said, her forehead furrowed, "she might try to get you to sleep with her. I know you and I haven't been together lately, but—"

"Oh, good Lord." Ben laughed suddenly. "If you think there's a danger of the two of us . . ." He con­tinued to laugh, shaking his head as he went out the door. "For your sake, I'll do my best to control my­self." She scowled as she watched him go, wondering what he thought was so funny.

In the cowboy's lingo, an especially dirty saloon or dance hall was called a dive. The place where Jennie Watts worked, the Do-Drop-In, deserved a new word all its own. It was filthy and noisy, the floors sticky, the customers raucous, the music boisterous. Ben am­bled in and ordered a drink, discovering shortly there­after that the cheap whiskey deserved its nickname of "rotgut." Ben drank sparingly, eyeing the fleshy girls and their skimpy clothes until he saw a bosomy dark­-haired girl whose face reminded him of Watts. Lightly he caught her arm, and she automatically raised a hand to swing at him until she saw his face. Then she put the upraised hand to her hair, smoothing the stray wisps back as she smiled at him.

"Hey, han 'some. "

"Are you Jennie Watts?" It was unorthodox to ask someone's name. Part of the unwritten code was to wait until a stranger decided to identify himself-or herself. But this was a whore, and she couldn't afford to be offended too easily.

"Jennie's busy. But I'm not."

"Where is she?"

The girl frowned a little. "Upstairs. Don't know when she'll come down, neither."

He gave her a cajoling smile and slipped a few dol­lars into her hand. "Will this help you remember to tell me when she does?"

She smiled saucily, her palm closing around the money. "Maybe." She wiggled her backside entic­ingly as she walked off, causing Ben to submerge a grin in his drink. It was only a few minutes later that she returned to nudge him with her elbow while car­rying a tray of empty glasses. He looked at the narrow stairs leading to the upstairs rooms and saw a girl just reaching the bottom step. She was young, thin and hard-faced, with exotic blue eyes set against strikingly pale skin. In a few strides he was at her side.

"Pardon me . . . Jennie Watts?"

She glanced up at him through adult eyes in a child's face, and the combination made him vaguely uneasy. "Why do you want to know?" she asked, surprisingly deep-voiced.

"If you are, I'd like a few minutes of your time. "

"You want to dance first?"