Harvest Moon (Jordan-Alexander Family 2)

“He’s right, you know,” David told her. “This is a business.” He glared at his sister. “You’ll be lucky if this gentleman doesn’t press charges against you.”

“Gentleman? Hah!” Tessa snorted. “He doesn’t know the meaning of the word. Chasing women and children across the country like he does, scaring the wits out of them, hunting them down.”

“What are you talking about?” Lee demanded of Tessa, before turning to David. “What’s she mean by that?”

“You know what I mean,” Tessa informed him. “You and your blood money.”

“Enough, Tessa.” David was fast losing patience. “All right, Mary, if you won’t give me the gun, put it away.”

Mary reluctantly did as he asked, returning the weapon to her pocket.

David spoke to Tessa, then Mary. “You two, wait inside. I’ll escort Mr. Kincaid wherever he wants to go.” David motioned for Lee to move outside, then followed him out the door.

* * *

“Do you mind explaining what was going on back there?” David asked as soon as he and Lee were out of sight of his office. They turned the corner into the alley.

“Damned if I know.” Lee shook his head as if trying to clear it. He leaned against the side wall of the bank. It was embarrassing to admit he’d been attacked by a woman wielding a hot coffee pot and even more embarrassing to be thrown out of an office by a woman with a two-shot derringer.

“What were you doing at my office?”

“I brought you a report on Arnie Mason from the agency. I thought it might be helpful to your case. The supplies you ordered were sitting at the depot.” Lee shrugged his shoulders. “They seemed like a plausible reason for a stranger to show up at your office. At the time.”

David nodded in agreement. “So what went wrong?”

“I opened the door…” Lee paused to recall what else he had done. “I opened the door, I said good morning, and she came at me with a coffee pot.”

“Who?”

“That hellion you call a client.”

David smiled. “I get the feeling she doesn’t like you. What did you do to her while she worked at the saloon?”

“Nothing,” Lee swore. “She stayed out of my way, avoided me at every turn as if I had some catching disease.”

“Well, something about you sets her off,” David commented. “You must have done something. She must have seen you somewhere before.”

Lee paused for a moment, weighing the information. “Look, David, I knew who she was even before I got to Peaceable. I followed her from Chicago.”

“On agency orders?” David asked. “Is she under suspicion? Wanted for something?”

“She’s clean as far as I know,” Lee assured him. “Except for Arnie Mason. But she happens to be the sister of a Pinkerton man, a detective who was killed in Chicago a couple of months back.”

“Eamon,” David guessed.

“Yes, Eamon Roarke,” Lee confirmed. “He was working on a case here in Peaceable. The same case I’m working on now.”

“Was Roarke’s death an accident?”

“If it was, it was a damned convenient one. Eamon was on to something big. Stagecoach robberies, illegal whiskey, gun smuggling…just to list a few.”

David whistled beneath his breath. “What about Tessa? What’s she doing in Peaceable?”

“I don’t know,” Lee admitted, “but she left Chicago in a hurry. I followed her because I promised her brother I’d look out for her.”

“What about her husband?”

“According to Eamon, she’s a spinster.”