Bloody Sunday (14 page)

It seemed that his comment to the clerk about that door not getting any use wasn't going to turn out to be true, after all, he thought as he straightened. He dried his face, went to the door, and opened it.

Glory stood there, still wearing the clothes she had been in earlier, except for her hat. She hadn't expected to spend the night in town, so she probably hadn't brought along anything else. She said, “May I come in?”

Luke nodded and stepped back.

“Of course. I don't have anything to offer you to drink—”

“That's all right. I didn't come over here for a drink.”

“I thought maybe we could have dinner in a little while—”

She interrupted him again by saying, “We'll have to see about that.” Her right hand dipped into a pocket on her buckskin vest and came out with a two-barrel, over-and-under derringer much like the ones Luke carried. She pointed it at him, eared back the hammer, and went on: “That'll depend on what you have to say.”

If a man had pulled a gun on him like that, Luke would have taken it away from him before the hombre even got it pointed at him, let alone cocked. Glory had taken him a little by surprise, though.

He shouldn't have been shocked that she would threaten him like this. He knew from experience that she reacted quickly to danger and did what had to be done. Clearly, she felt that he was a danger to her . . . and considering the mission that had brought him to Sabado Valley, she was probably right about that.

Things had changed since his arrival here, though. At least for now, he was more interested in the truth than he was in the bounty on her head. He said, “Take it easy, Glory. You don't have to point a gun at me.”

“No? Am I supposed to think that you don't give a damn about five thousand dollars? We haven't been acquainted for very long, Luke, but I already know you better than that.”

“What do you want me to do, stick my hands in the air and beg for my life? That's not going to happen.”

She looked at him intently and said, “I could shoot you, you know. I could put a bullet in your head, drag your body through that door into my room, and claim that you attacked me. Some people might not believe me, but they wouldn't be able to prove I wasn't telling the truth.”

“You're not going to do that,” Luke replied with a shake of his head. “You're too smart to kill the one person who's definitely on your side.”

“On my side?” She laughed. “How in the world could I think that you're on my side? You know who I really am, don't you?”

“Yes, I do . . . Mrs. Jennings.”

Luke knew he was taking a chance by saying that. Maybe she hadn't really been convinced that he was aware of her true identity and was trying to trick him into admitting it. But he was willing to run the risk because his instincts told him it was time for both of them to put their cards on the table.

Her reaction wasn't exactly what she expected. Angry lines tightened the muscles of her face as she said, “Don't call me that. I was legally married to Sam MacCrae. I was a widow when I married him.”

“Only because you killed Alfred Jennings back in Baltimore.”

“Is that what you believe?”

“It's what the wanted poster I read back in San Antonio told me. The one with that five-thousand-dollar bounty you just mentioned.”

“And wanted posters never get anything wrong,” she said contemptuously. “Lawmen never make mistakes.”

“That thought
did
occur to me,” Luke said.

“And greedy bastards never . . . never lie. . . .”

Unexpectedly, her face crumpled as she began to cry. That surprised Luke almost more than anything else she could have done. He had never seen anything from Glory except strength and determination. As her shoulders shook, she lowered the hammer on the derringer and tossed the little gun onto the bed.

“There!” she said in a voice choked with despair. “I'm unarmed. You can take me in now. You can take me back to Baltimore and watch them hang me, for all I care!”

Luke asked himself if she was acting, putting on a show for his benefit. He didn't think so, but it was hard to be sure of anything where this woman was concerned. She started to turn away. He put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Glory . . .”

She whirled back toward him. He tensed, ready to duck if she struck out at him, but instead she threw her arms around him and pressed her face against his chest as she sobbed.

He felt like telling her that it was too much, that she was overdoing it, but the way her body shook felt genuine. He supposed anybody could break sooner or later, no matter how strong they were. The strain of maintaining a tough façade could get to be too much.

Or maybe she was just skillfully playing on his emotions. It might take time to figure out what was really going on.

The best way to find out, he decided, was to play along with her.

He lifted his arms and put them around her. With one hand he stroked the fragrant, dark masses of her hair.

“It's all right,” he murmured, the meaningless reassurance of any man trying to comfort a crying woman. “It's all right.”

“N-No, it's not,” Glory said. “He framed me, the son of a bitch!”

Now that sounded more like her, Luke thought. He said, “Who? Alfred Jennings?”

“No.” Glory lifted her head and raised her tear-streaked face so she could look at him. “Alfred was a kind, wonderful man. I'm talking about his son, Hugh.”

“I don't understand,” Luke said.

She slipped out of his embrace, turned, and walked across the room before turning back toward him. She was pacing like a caged animal, he realized.

“Do you really want to hear the story?” she demanded. “Or are you just humoring me?”

“I really want to hear it,” Luke told her. “I've got to know the truth before I decide what to do.”

“You mean whether or not to turn me over to the law.” Her voice was flat, hard.

“You
are
wanted on a murder charge. You came to Painted Post to hide out from it, didn't you?”

“I was hiding because I didn't want to hang or spend the rest of my life in prison for something I didn't do.”

“Quite a few of the men I've taken in have tried to convince me at some point that they were innocent.”

“But you didn't believe it, did you? That would have stood in the way of you collecting your blood money.”

“If you really want me to help you,” Luke said, “you might start by not insulting me.”

“I didn't ask you to help me,” Glory said. “I just asked if you wanted the truth.”

Luke gestured to indicate that he was listening.

“All right.” Glory raked her fingers through her hair, and even though that emotional gesture left it disheveled, she wasn't any less attractive for it. “I was Alfred Jennings's second wife, just as I was Sam MacCrae's. He was married for a long time to a woman named Prudence. Hugh's mother. She was a terrible woman, and she passed it on to her son.”

“Is that what Jennings told you? Men sometimes aren't very objective when it comes to describing their wives. They're seldom really as good—or as bad—as their husbands make them out to be.”

“No, Prudence Jennings really was awful. I saw it with my own eyes. I was . . . acquainted with them socially.”

Something about the way she said that made Luke think there was more to the story, but he was willing to pass that over for now and get to her marriage to Jennings and his subsequent murder.

“Prudence made Alfred's life a living hell,” Glory went on. “And Hugh was a real trial as well. He was always getting in some sort of trouble with women or gamblers or assorted lowlifes. Alfred had to come to his rescue with money many times. Prudence insisted that Alfred take him into the business, and that just made things worse. Hugh wasn't just incompetent. He was a thief.”

“But Jennings couldn't get rid of him because he was flesh and blood,” Luke said.

“That's right. Then Prudence got sick and died after a short illness. Alfred couldn't fire Hugh then, of course, so soon after his mother died. So things went along the way they were.”

“Until you moved in,” Luke guessed.

Glory's chin jutted out defiantly. She said, “I didn't pursue Alfred or set a trap for him with my wiles, if that's what you're thinking. It was all his idea. But eventually, after a suitable time had passed, yes, we were married, and I planned to do my best to make sure the rest of his life was happy. I thought he deserved it.”

“So what happened?” Luke asked.

Glory drew in a deep breath and blew it out. She said, “Alfred discovered just how much money Hugh had embezzled from the company. Without Prudence there to torment him anymore, he was ready to wash his hands of Hugh, ready to turn him over to the law. Hugh knew that . . . and he killed him.”

Luke looked at her for a few seconds, then said, “Wait a minute. You're saying that Hugh Jennings killed his own father?”

“That's right.”

“Then why did the police blame you?”

Glory began to pace again. She said, “I was upstairs. I knew that Alfred had summoned Hugh to the house to tell him that it was all over, and I suggested that I should be with him when they met. I didn't think Alfred needed to go through that alone. He said it wasn't a good idea, though. He knew that Hugh resented me, and he thought if I was there it would just agitate Hugh that much more.”

She stopped, breathing hard again. If she was acting, Luke thought, she was one of the best at it he had ever seen, good enough that she ought to be on the stage.

“Too much time had passed,” Glory went on. “I started to worry, so I went downstairs thinking that I ought to look in on them no matter what Alfred had said. But when I came into his study where he had been talking to Hugh, he . . . he was lying on the floor . . . with a letter opener stuck in his throat . . . and there was blood everywhere. . . .”

She put her hands over her face and began to cry again. Luke kept his distance this time and let her get through it on her own.

Finally, Glory was able to say, “I . . . I ran to him, of course, and I tried to see if there was anything I could do for him—”

“Which got his blood all over your hands.”

She glared at him and snapped, “That's right. If you've already made up your mind you're not going to believe me, why are we wasting time with this?”

“I didn't say I've made up my mind. But I want to make sure I have all the facts straight in my mind.”

“Yes, I got blood all over my hands, and my dress, too, while I was trying to see if he was still alive and if I could help him. That was when Hugh came in with some of his wastrel friends and acted shocked and yelled that I had killed his father. But I hadn't, of course. He had. Then he went out and found some of his crowd and came back with them so he could pretend to discover the body. I'm sure he planned to claim that I must have killed Alfred, but I'd unwittingly made it even easier for him. Now he had witnesses to swear that they'd found me kneeling beside Alfred's body with his blood all over me.”

Luke nodded slowly and said, “I can see where that would look pretty bad, all right. What did you do?”

“Oh, I knew immediately what must have happened and what Hugh intended. He and one of his friends rushed at me. Hugh said they had to hold me while someone went for the police. I wasn't going to let that happen. I knew that Alfred had a loaded gun in his desk. I got to it first.”

“You shot them?”

Glory shook her head.

“I didn't have to do that. Hugh and his friends weren't brave enough to charge a gun. I got out of there with nothing but the pistol . . . and Alfred's watch that I had slipped out of his pocket. I . . . I wanted something to remember him by.”

“What about the hundred thousand dollars you're supposed to have stolen?”

“That was how much Hugh had stolen from his father's company. It was easy enough to cover up the theft by blaming it on me.” Glory's voice was bitter as she added, “Everything worked out perfectly for him. It couldn't have been any better . . . except that I was still alive and knew what had really happened.”

Silence hung in the hotel room for a long moment after Glory stopped speaking. Finally, Luke said, “It's a story worthy of a dime novel, but I suppose it could have really happened that way. I can see why the police charged you with murder.”

Glory laughed, but there was no humor in the sound.

“It gets even worse than that, believe it or not. After everything I've told you, I might as well spill the whole thing. After I ran, it came out that Alfred had done some looking into my background.”

Now they were getting to what he had suspected earlier, Luke thought.

“I said that I knew the Jennings family socially. They believed that I came from an old, wealthy Charleston family and that I was the widow of a British lord who'd been a blockade runner during the war for the excitement and adventure of it.”

“Really?” Luke asked with a wry smile. “They actually believed that?”

“I was good at making them believe it. And it was true that my family was from Charleston. My mother ran the best tavern and whorehouse on the waterfront. As for my father . . . well, I don't really know about him. I suppose he could have been British, whoever he was. But I learned a lot at an early age about living by my wits.”

“Did you have your sights set on Alfred Jennings from the start?”

“Actually, no.” She gave that cold laugh again. “Believe it or not, Hugh was my target. But then I found out what a rotten louse he was, and even the likes of me didn't want to have anything to do with him. Prudence dying and Alfred taking an interest in me, that just happened.”

“You didn't do anything to help the first Mrs. Jennings out of this vale of tears?”

She came at him fast, her hand flashing up in a slap aimed at his face. Luke was faster, catching her wrist before the blow could land. She stared into his eyes from a distance of mere inches and whispered, “You bastard.”

“I just want the truth.”

“And I'm giving it to you! Every word I've told you has been the truth!”

“Even the part where you admitted to being a lying swindler?”

She said, “Oh!” and jerked free from his grip. He let her go. She stepped back and went on: “Maybe if I'm going to hang anyway, I ought to kill you for being so damned obnoxious. They can only stretch my neck once.”

“Go on with your story,” he told her. “I'm still reserving judgment.”

She snorted and said, “That's funny. Me, being judged by a bounty hunter. How much blood do
you
have on your hands, Luke Jensen?”

“I'm not the one wanted by the law.”