The Chase (Isaac Bell 1)

Bell smiled. “That won’t be necessary. I’ve booked a suite at the Brown Palace.”

Alexander appeared confused. “I can’t believe Mr. Van Dorn would allow that on your expense account.”

“He didn’t. I’m paying for it out of my own funds.”

Not aware of Bell’s prosperous situation, the superintendent of the western states looked completely bewildered. Unable to comprehend, but not wanting to ask questions, he returned to his office in a daze and closed the door, utterly defeated.

Bell smiled again and began spreading out the papers he’d carried in the valise on the conference table. Then he stepped into the anteroom and approached Agnes Murphy. “Agnes, could you let me know when Curtis and Irvine show up?”

“I don’t expect them back until tomorrow morning. They went up to Boulder on a bank fraud case.”

“All right, then. And would you call the building maintenance superintendent and have him come up? I have some alterations to make in the conference room.”

She looked at him questioningly. “Did you say the conference room? Mr. Alexander seldom allows the help to step inside. He keeps it mostly to entertain the town bigwigs.”

“While I’m here, it will be my office.”

Agnes looked at Bell with newly found respect. “Will you be staying at the Albany Hotel? That’s where most all visiting agents stay.”

“No, the Brown Palace.”

“Mr. Alexander consented to the extra expenditure?” she asked warily.

“He had no say in the matter.”

Agnes Murphy stared after him as if she had just seen the Messiah.

Isaac Bell returned to his office and rearranged the chairs to the conference table so he could have a large work space at one end. After a few minutes, the building superintendent arrived. Bell explained the alterations he wished to make in the room. The end wall was to have a layer of soft material so a map of the western states and towns the killer had hit could be pinned to it. Another layer was to be installed on the inside wall for information, photos, and drawings. The superintendent, after Bell had offered him a twenty-dollar gold piece, promised to have the installation accomplished by noon the next day.

Bell spent the rest of the afternoon organizing and planning his hunt for the bank killer.

At precisely five o’clock, Alexander stuck his head in the door on his way home. “Are you settling in all right?” he asked icily.

Bell did not bother to look up. “Yes, thank you.” He finally looked into Alexander’s angry eyes. “By the way, I’m making some changes in the room. I hope you don’t mind. I promise to put it back exactly the way it was when the case is closed.”

“Please see that you do.” Alexander swung his head in a gesture of dismissal and left the office.

Bell was not happy that things were not going well between Alexander and him. He had not planned to get in a game of quarrelsome loggerheads with the head of the agency’s office, but if he hadn’t gone on the attack he knew that Alexander would have walked all over him.

5

BUILT IN 1892 BY HENRY C. BROWN ON THE SPOT where he used to pasture his cow before he struck it rich, the hotel was fittingly named the Brown Palace, for the “Queen City of the Plains,” as Denver was called. Constructed of red granite and sandstone, the building was in the shape of a ship’s bow. The men who made their fortunes in gold and silver stayed there with their wives, who took afternoon tea, and their daughters, who danced away the nights at opulent balls. Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt had stayed there, as well as a few emperors and kings and other members of foreign royalty, not to mention the celebrities of the time, particularly famous stage actors and actresses. The Brown Palace was also embraced by locals and visitors alike because it was the anchor to the busy financial and cultural district of the city.

It was nearly dark when Bell walked through the 17th Street entrance of the Brown Palace Hotel. He checked in at the desk and looked around the magnificent lobby, which was situated in an atrium that reached up to the ninth floor. The pillars and wainscoting, freighted in by railroad from Mexico and carved from golden onyx, reflected the pastel light that filtered down from the massive stained-glass ceiling. Over seven hundred wrought-iron panels graced the balcony railings, ringing the lobby from the upper floors.

What was not generally known was that the owner of the Navarre Hotel and restaurant across the street had had an underground rail system dug from the Brown Palace to his own establishment in order to accommodate gentlemen wishing to enjoy the ladies of an upstairs brothel without being seen entering or leaving.

Bell was given his key and entered the elevator, telling the operator which floor his suite was on. A woman stepped in behind him. She stopped at the mirrored wall, turned, and faced the door. She was dressed in a long blue silk gown with a large bow in the back. Her fire opal red hair was fine and silken, pulled back in a bun with curls streaming from it. There were two large feathers rising from the hair. She had an engaging charm about her. She stood tall and erect and nubile, Bell guessed probably between twenty-five and twenty-seven, perhaps younger, judging by her swan neck and face as smooth as alabaster. Her eyes were a gold

en brown. She was, in Bell’s mind, unusually attractive—not quite beautiful, maybe, but very lovely by any standard. He also noticed she wore no wedding ring.

The woman was dressed as if she meant to attend a party in one of the hotel’s ballrooms, Bell reasoned. He was right as usual. The elevator stopped on the second floor, which held the ballrooms and dance floors. He stood aside, hat in hand, and made a slight bow as she exited onto the landing.

She threw him a smile with surprising warmth and nodded, and said, in a mellow yet husky tone, “Thank you, Mr. Bell.”

At first, it slipped by Bell. Then it hit him like a hammer on a thumb. He was stunned that she knew him, and positive he’d never seen her before. Bell gripped the arm of the elevator operator. “Hold the door open a moment.”

By now, she had mingled in with a crowd that was funneling through the arched doorway of the hotel’s grand ballroom. The women wore ravishing gowns in extravagant colors—crimson, peacock blue, emerald green—with ribbons, sprigs, and feathers in their hair. The men were dressed in their finest evening clothes. A banner over the doorway read BENEFIT FOR ST. JOHN’S ORPHANS.