Longarm and the Diary of Madame Velvet by Tabor Evans

Author:Tabor Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Chapter 12

Elvira Tenkiller kept simple business records in pencil in a loose-leaf notebook. So they’d soon estabished that she’d last sewn a ripped seam for one Valya Sikorski of 27 Mine Road about the time of Madame Velvet’s death, close to two weeks before the robbery.

Longarm took down the names of other customers residing in a house of ill repute, noting none had been back since before their madam had died. He suggested, and Elvira agreed, it looked as if the failing health of both Madame Velvet and the town of Mulligan had inspired a stampede for greener pastures. Durango and other new settlements over on the west slope in recent Indian lands were more poorly supplied with ring-dang-doo than young single gents drawing boomtown pocket jingle. Longarm had just suggested the mysterious Russian Val might have stayed on in Mulligan with someone who didn’t cotton to regular wages, when Undersheriff Babcock came in to join them without knocking.

Babcock ticked his hat brim to Elvira and told Longarm, “You’re a real barrel of monkeys, and who needs an opera house when you’rehere to entertain us with two shoot-outs in less than twenty-four hours?”

Longarm smiled modestly and replied, “I do my best to please. What time is the inquest?”

The older lawman replied, “Doc Maytag ain’t decided. He has a drugstore to run, you know. I sent your latest playmate yonder to cool off in the cellar. What was that about there being one to go again?”

Longarm shrugged and said, “They keep sending them out in pairs. I figure there were at least four men and a woman to begin with. Two down makes it three to go.”

Elvira said, “They were trying to kidnap me. One made mention of a feminine mastermind just before Custis, thank God, came out of nowhere to my rescue!”

The undersheriff shot Longarm a puzzled look and asked, “Then they weren’t after you this time?”

Longarm said, “They were after Miss Elvira here to tell them how much I knew about that mousy gal they sent in ahead to scout the post office for them that night. Had they stayed hidden, it might have taken us a lot longer to learn we’re looking for a fallen woman named Valya Sikorski, better known as Russian Val. She speaks with a furrin accent, likely Slavic. Miss Elvira here would be better than me at describing her.”

The older lawman got out his own notebook as the dressmaker who’d measured Russian Val for more than one fitting said, “She’d be somewhere in her mid-to-late thirties, give or take the line of work she’s in. She has brown eyes and naturally brown hair, rinsed with henna on some occasions and possibly plain old dirt on others. She has a round face with regular features that can be painted up pretty or toned down drab with a dust rag. She stands about five foot two, and would weigh about a hundred and twenty-five or thirty. Just under what you men call pleasingly plump, and I suppose you’d say she had a spectacular hourglass shape with her corset on.

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