Page 142 of The Widow and the Wanted

“Hold?” Boone says, voice cracking with it. “You had us holdin’ upstairs while she vanished.”

“She has not vanished.”

“You just said you don’t know where she is.”

Pearl goes pale and grips the wall.

“I said she has not come back here.” Goldie turns on Pearl and snaps her fingers. “Do not faint in my doorway.”

Pearl appears breathless. “Esther said her boy down at the livery saw Deputy Hepburn outside Hollister’s office last night. Just standing.”

Goldie’s eyes sharpen. “Hepburn. When did she tell you this?”

“At breakfast, but I didn’t think anything of it till now.”

“Who?” Boone snaps.

Goldie closes her eyes for half a second. When she opens them, the mother is gone and the general remains.

“He’s taken her outside of the camp,” she says.

“How do you know?”

“Hepburn does not guard. He hauls.”

“You know that for certain?” I ask.

Goldie gives me a look. “He moved a dead alderman out of my blue room in ’67 and a living judge out of my pantry last spring. Yes, Mr. Collins, I know the man’s habits.”

“Haul her where?” Boone asks, panic rising.

Goldie’s eyes narrow, not at Pearl, but inward, as if the whole town has become a map behind her face.

Boone steps toward the door, wild at the edges. “I will ride through every door in this godforsaken town if I have to.”

“You ride out wild and you’ll find exactly what Everett wants you to find.”

“We’re supposed to listen to you?” he bites back. “Your plan lost her.”

Goldie’s gaze cuts to me, and for one moment I think she might slap him. Instead, she straightens. The woman gathers herself up, chin high.

“I have spent twenty-five years studying men. Rich men, poor men, drunk men, men with badges, men with Bibles, and men with blood on their cuffs. I could have a damned doctorate in men if universities cared to learn what whores already know.”

Goldie points toward the street. “Everett thinks he is cunning because he has imagined the first thing you will do. And look at you. Both of you. Ready to oblige him like trained dogs.”

Boone’s hand twitches near his gun.

“He expects you to run into the first place you suspect, guns blazing,” she says. “He expects fury. He expects the great diamond boys to kick down a door with murder in their eyes. Then every man in town sees what Everett told them they would see.”

“Aces,” Boone says, muttering. “Ain’t no diamond boys. And she’s out there.”

“Yes. And if you care about her half as much as your faces advertise, you will stop proving it with noise and listen to a woman who is older, meaner, and in possession of better information.”

Boone flinches, then turns to me to see if I have been persuaded as well as he has.

I am not persuaded. I am only listening because Lula is missing and Goldie has finally stopped performing long enough to be useful.

Goldie sees it on my face and nods once, briskly, as if that is all the agreement she requires, then turns back to the map like sentiment is a basin of dirty water she means to throw out.