The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday Page 4

  “And that’s how you see this thing we’re doing,” Rayella said, “these old letters. For me, I mean. A step up.”

  “I suppose so, yes. Hopefully. That’s what I’m aiming for.”

  “But as for you, it’s kind of a day off. Money-wise. You ain’t taking a fee.”

  “Don’t take that to mean I’m not motivated. I am. I’ll get the best price I can for the letters. For you.”

  “Meaning what, exactly? You never wanted for nothing, said so yourself. So how come you figure you know what’s best for me?” Rayella swallowed, a little scared at being so bold. But if not now, when? This young hotshot was in charge. No crime in making her prove she deserved it. “What I’m trying to say? You ain’t making anything off me but you must be making it off somebody, or I don’t get it. Your folks still paying your bills?”

  For some reason, that made the lawyer smile again, but not as though she was amused.

  “Not my place to pry, I suppose,” Rayella said, breaking the silence.

  “It’s okay. You don’t know me. I’m handling something of considerable value to you.” She nodded at the small black case beneath the seat in front of her. The curious old letters Grandma Savannah had left. “I’m happy to give you a little background. Increase your comfort level.”

  One of the flight attendants bustled past, gloved-up to collect trash. They passed theirs over, notched up their trays.

  The lady lawyer said, “Whatever you need to hear to help you make peace with me, with what I’m doing on your behalf, the whole situation, anything, just ask.”

  Seemed like a decent plan, Rayella thought. Make peace all around—with this woman, this business, Grandma Savannah’s strange, bats-in-the-attic love, not to mention the gift she left behind. Make peace with things finally breaking your way, the luxury of that. Join the Death Made Me Lucky Club. For once in your life, aim high.

  CHAPTER 7

  By the time Lisa and Rayella reached the Whetstone Inn—twenty miles northwest of Tombstone, at the end of a winding dirt road pitted with rocks—they almost felt acclimated to the strangely intense February sunlight.

  “Welcome to the middle of nuthin,” Rayella said as Lisa slowed the rental car in a cloud of dust.

  The building had the hand-built feel of Pueblo Revival—stucco walls painted sandstone beige with protruding redwood vigas along the roofline, rough-hewn window lintels, and porch supports.

  The landscaping consisted of smooth brown pebbles scattered around isolated aloe and agave plants, plus a few mesquite and Palo Verde trees, here and there a tussock of chaparral sage.

  “Yes,” Lisa said. “I was expecting something a bit closer to civilization.”

  They got out of the car and hurried to the welcoming shade of the porch, then the vestibule within. The interior had a more welcoming feel—exposed redwood beams, sandstone pavers with Navajo rugs and brightly colored Mexican tile for accent. A wall-mounted coatrack fashioned from antlers crowned a rust-spotted mirror.

  The narrow entry opened onto a large room furnished with low-slung leather chairs and sofas. Center stage, however, belonged to a long wood table of rough-hewn plank, at the shadowy end of which, backlit by harsh sunlight, a lone male figure sat.

  “How do,” the faceless stranger said. “Welcome to the Whetstone.”

  He rose from his chair and made way toward them, walking with an awkward forward lean, as though trying to catch some faint or distant sound. He wore a plaid shirt with western piping, the sleeves rolled up to his forearms.

  He looked back and forth between the two women, offering an uncertain smile, then settled his eyes on Lisa. “You must be Miss Ballymaroo.”

  “Balamaro,” Lisa said, offering her hand. “This is Rayella Vargas.”

  He shook Lisa’s hand with a limp grip, nodded to Rayella, then turned toward the eastern wing of the inn and pointed the way. “Got a room here where you can rest a bit and freshen up. Judge called, said he’s running late.”

  ***

  Once in the room, Rayella dropped her purse on the floor and did a back-dive onto the bed, bouncing twice on the white duvet, arms outstretched.

  “I feel like a big bag of dust.”

  “The desert will do that.” Lisa pushed back her suit jacket sleeve, checked her watch. “I’m going to go out and wait for the buyer, this judge. Make yourself at home.”

  Rayella, still flat on her back, offered a listless wave. “Don’t worry, I won’t raid the minibar.”

  “Who said I was worried? Knock yourself out. If there is one.”

  Rayella shot up on one elbow. “I can get tanked?”

  Lisa checked her phone for any missed calls or messages. “No. That wouldn’t be wise. I’m going to need you sharp when we close.”

  “Sharp as a razor, bright as a laser.” Rayella smiled wistfully, staring at the white linen curtains flaring with sunlight. “Grandma Savannah used to say that.”

  ***

  Back in the large open room off the entry, Lisa helped herself to water from a heavy glass pitcher swimming with lemon slices. Taking a seat in a low leather chair, she settled the Pelican case between her feet, opened her computer case, took out her laptop, and booted up. Stagecraft. Look busy.

  Shortly the proprietor, if that was what he was, shuffled up from somewhere. “I can show you to the conference room if you’d like.”

  Lisa nodded at the long ancient table. “We won’t be meeting here?”

  “I’d imagine you don’t want folks walking in on your meeting.”

  The place couldn’t have seemed more deserted. “I didn’t see any cars outside when I drove—”

  “There’s a couple from Cheyenne due in this afternoon. Can’t tell when they’ll show up. And knowing the judge, he’ll want things private.”

  The man hovered over her. Dark hair cut close, a weathered face. “By the way, your name is?”

  “You can call me Phin.”

  “Okay. Phin. Thank you. If you don’t mind, I’ll wait here, unless that’s…”

  “Fine with me. Judge knows his way around the place. Ought to, he paid for it.” He headed toward the back door. “I’m gonna see to some things. Need me, just poke your head out the door, give out a holler.”

  ***

  Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen. Finally, the sound of tires crushing gravel outside, a car engine throttling down into silence.

  When the front door opened, the man who entered wore “lawyer” like a sandwich sign: moussed hair, Italian suit, Cartier sunglasses. A few years younger than Lisa had expected. Worse, instead of courtroom gravitas, he possessed the casual, chin-jutting pomp of a backwater narcissist.

  Lisa closed her laptop and rose to her feet. “Judge Littmann?”

  The man turned toward her voice. No smile. No movement forward.

  So that’s how this will go, she thought. Lovely. She put her laptop away, collected the Pelican case with the letters inside and walked over.

  Extending her hand, she repeated, “Judge Littmann?”

  The man offered a pained smile. “Name’s Don Rankin. I’ll be representing the judge in this.”

  That wasn’t the arrangement, Lisa thought. Then a second man walked in.

  This one was shorter, thicker—chestnut hair slicked back, tan linen suit with dark pinstripes, blue suede bucks. He wore several rings on each thick hand. His head narrowed near the top, as though the family gene pool favored jaw over cranium.

  He sidled up next to Rankin and assumed position—spreading his feet, gripping one wrist with the opposite hand—staring straight into Lisa’s eyes as though to say: C’mon, bitch. Gimme good reason.

  Lisa, mustering as straight a face as possible, said, “And this is…?”

  “Mister Giordano is my associate,” Rankin said.

  How nice for both of you, Lisa thought. “I understand there’s a conference room here, and you know where it is?”

  ***

  Shortly the three of them were sitting in s
trangely incongruous chrome and leather swivel chairs, staring across a cherry veneer table.

  As though to make up for the lack of thematic coherence with the rest of the inn, the walls bore posters from famous westerns—The Far Country, Decision at Sundown, The Naked Spur—while at the table’s center, a tiny saguaro cactus rose like a bristly flagman from an earthenware cup.

  Stretching out his hand, Rankin said, “Let’s see the letters.” Giordano, sitting to his left, swiveled mindlessly back and forth.

  Lisa sat back, working through what she intended to say, what she intended not to say. She felt vaguely foolish not having seen this coming, wondering if Tuck had. And if so, why hadn’t he told her about it?

  “You did bring the fucking letters?” This from Giordano.

  Lisa refused the clown so much as a glance. “Tell you what,” she said, directing the words at Rankin. “How about we start this off with you convincing me I didn’t waste my time coming all this way.”

  Giordano started snapping his fingers, like he was trying to wake her up. “You deaf? Don said it. I said it. Show us the goddamn letters.”

  Rankin remained silent, brushing away an imaginary tuft of lint.

  It wasn’t until that moment she noticed the flat, glassy absence in Giordano’s eyes, as though he’d just come from the taxidermist.

  “Okay,” Lisa said. “Here’s how it is. Mister Rankin, you tell your ‘associate’ here that Halloween’s still eight months off, but if he really wants to trick-or-treat as Fredo Corleone, I can introduce him to the uncle of my senior prom date, Michael Lancelotti. You know, Mikey Lance, from South Philly? Help him raise his game.”

  Giordano shot up so fast his chair hit the wall behind him. “You think you can talk like that to my fucking face?”

  “Mister Rankin?”

  “I want to see the letters,” Rankin said.

  “You get this fool out of here, or I walk. Let Judge Littmann decide whose fault it is he lost his chance.”

  “You call me a fucking fool?”

  Giordano looked ready to come across the table, but Lisa just sat there, looking at Rankin. Yeah, she was alone against the two of them in the middle of nowhere. But Nico knew where she was, the car rental company did as well, this meeting was no secret. These two couldn’t afford to make that dumb a move.

  Besides, she told herself, the Giordanos of the world, they’re just noise. And she really did date Mikey Lance’s nephew. Well, sort of. She got wasted with him at the Rittenhouse after the prom, and judging from the state of things when she sobered up, she’d had sex with him, too.

  Not just him. Two of his friends. And his fiancée.

  Finally, Rankin held out an arm, checking his partner. “Bobby? Do me a favor.”

  “Nah, nah, Don, c’mon, I’m not—”

  “It’s okay. Really. Wait for me.”

  Giordano took a deep frowning breath, then made a show of casually buttoning his linen jacket as he headed for the door, mad-dogging Lisa with those empty eyes the entire way.

  Once the door clicked shut behind him, Rankin said, “If it were up to me…” A helpless shrug. “Now—ready to get serious?”

  CHAPTER 8

  “Before this goes any further,” Lisa said, “I need to hear from the judge himself that you act on his authority.”

  Rankin offered an indulgent smile. “Fair enough.” He began to fish around inside his suit jacket for his phone.

  “Let’s use mine,” Lisa said, producing her cell. “I’ve got the number. The judge and I spoke last night.”

  She’d already entered the judge’s information into her contacts file, programming the number for speed dial. Rankin watched as she thumbed in the code, waited for the connection. Fourth ring, someone picked up.

  “Ms. Balamaro.”

  The miracle of caller ID. The voice was chesty and rough as a saw but educated. More to the point: familiar.

  “Judge Littmann.”

  “Good to hear from you. I trust you arrived safely.”

  “Yes, I’m here with—”

  “Don, I know. So sorry I couldn’t come myself, but something came up rather abruptly here at Bristlecone. One of my best broodmares threw a shoe, and the loose nail dug right up high through the hoof. Had to wrap it in a gamgee, then turn her out to pasture for a bit, see how she walked. Been waiting for the farrier ever since, get a new shoe on her. Sorry to inconvenience you.”

  If that’s all just a story, Lisa thought, it’s a winner. “Will you be coming anytime soon?”

  “There a problem?”

  She looked across the table at Rankin, who was looking back across the table at her. Both smiled.

  “I wouldn’t say a problem. Call it a preference. I take it he’s your lawyer?”

  “Don wears a number of hats. My counselor, in the broadest sense. The point, as far as you and I are concerned, is that he has my total confidence.”

  The room seemed to shrink a little. “Does he now.” Muffled background voices. Spirited nicker from a horse. The judge said, “I gather you don’t share my opinion.”

  “It’s not that. I just always prefer, in an exchange this significant, that buyer and seller meet face to face. Ms. Vargas is here.”

  More muffled noise, like the phone had been pressed against the man’s shirt as he spoke to someone nearby. Then the judge came back on the line. “All right. Let me see what I can do. Like I said, I’m waiting for the farrier, and I know this may seem a little hands-on but this old girl won me a couple of purses, fat ones. Since then she’s delivered nine good foals. I’m not handing her over to some sale-barn vet. Worse, a slaughter truck. Not my style.”

  “Should we wait?”

  “No, no. Like I said, Don knows my business. You two kick it around a while, throw out some numbers. I’m sure I can step in and pick up wherever he leaves off.”

  Lisa ended the call, tucked her phone back into her pocket. Rankin, easing back and forth in his swivel chair, said, “Happy now?”

  ***

  Lisa placed the Pelican case on the table, thumbed in the combination, waited for the pop of the clasp. She removed two pairs of cotton gloves from inside the case, slipping one on, offering the other to Rankin.

  He didn’t reach for them, choosing instead to just sit there—gnomish smile, twiddling his thumbs, eyeing her like she was some carnival magician passing through town to hoodwink the rubes.

  She removed the velvet packet from the hard-shell case, loosened the knot in the faded ribbon, and gently unbundled the letters.

  “They’re in chronological order,” she said, turning them so the addresses and postmarks faced away. “Oldest, first.”

  Rankin wasn’t looking at the letters. He was looking at her.

  “Here’s what I think,” he said. “No way in hell those are real. Only an idiot would think so.”

  Neither of them moved. “The starting point of the negotiation,” Lisa said finally, “is that authenticity can’t be guaranteed. And is therefore irrelevant.”

  He chuckled. “You’re dreaming.” He sat forward finally and eyed the letters, but his gaze suggested he thought the real thing of value lay somewhere else. He still made no move for the gloves. “Can’t believe the judge is wasting his time with this.”

  She smiled obligingly. “Yes, but unless I’m mistaken, that’s not your call.”

  “First, the Holliday family says these don’t exist, and no matter how many hoops the judge jumps through, how many experts he hires, how many tests they run—and all that costs money—it’ll still be the word of a nun, a veritable saint according to the family, against a bunch of hustlers and pinheads.”

  Okay, she thought. Deep breath. “Perhaps even a nun,” she said, “had reasons to shade the truth.”

  “My point,” he said, “is all that front-end cost, paying the freight to figure out if these things are even old enough to be credible, let alone real, falls on the judge.”

  “I’m not denying that.”
<
br />   “Let’s think this through for a minute.” He clasped his hands behind his head, continuing to rock back and forth in his chair. “There are at least two ways I’ve come up with just over the past few hours as to who could have forged those letters and why.”

  “It’s our position,” she said, “that forgery is not at issue.”

  “First, the more boring of the theories, concerns the woman your client’s great-great- grandwhatever worked for.”

  “You mean Sophie Walton Murphy.”

  “The slave.”

  “Former slave.”

  “She worked for a member of the Holliday family.”

  “Mary Cowperthwaite Fulton Holliday.”

  Rankin pointed. Bingo. “That’s the one.” Shaking his head. “Talk about a mouthful. Like names are wings. More you got, higher you fly.”

  “She was the wife of Doc Holliday’s cousin Robert.”

  Tuck had mentioned this woman, who possessed her own peculiar intrigue.

  She married into the family in 1884, long after Doc had departed for the West, and so only knew of him secondhand—what the family passed along, what she read in the papers. Her children and grandchildren remembered her being utterly appalled at having to acknowledge Doc even existed, let alone that there was some blood tie.

  Then again, other facts seemed to indicate she wasn’t scandalized at all. Quite the opposite. She was fascinated. Even obsessed. Though times were hard for a while after her husband died, by the late 1920s she’d come into money again and was living her dream, hanging out at the Algonquin in New York.

  Rankin said, “She shot the breeze with all these snoots in New York.”

  “Eugene O’Neill,” Lisa responded. “Among others.” Like Dorothy Parker, Tallulah Bankhead, Noel Coward.

  “And she had that Negro woman with her.”