Bell’s first step following their meal was to head for the town’s lone post office. Wickersham had a vehicle, but the office was near the hotel so the two men walked. The single room was bisected by a low counter with prison-like iron bars to offer a measure of security for the off-limits area in the back. Bell could imagine some of the rougher characters who’d lived here over the years blaming the postal workers for late or nondelivered parcels.
He waited until there were no more customers before approaching the clerk, who he could tell was also the postmaster.
“May I help you?” the slight, balding clerk asked. His voice was high-pitched but friendly.
Bell said nothing. He laid a business card on the counter.
The clerk picked it up and pulled the glasses dangling around his neck on a slender silver chain to his eyes. “Wowza! All the way from Washington, D.C.”
“There was a certain matter in Denver . . .”
“Oh, the arrest. Yeah, I heard about that. Some cripple woman hiding in a trunk at night to steal money.”
“She was missing a leg, but I assure you she was no cripple. Slapped me harder than a mule.” Bell turned his head and indeed his cheek was flushed. He took the card back and slid it into his coat pocket.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Northrop?”
“We’re here on a separate matter. The Little Angel disaster.”
“Terrible shame. These mountains claim their share of men every year, but it’s still a shock every time it happens.” The clerk suddenly looked suspicious. “There isn’t a postal angle to what happened to those men, is there?”
Bell improvised. “There’s a question about invoicing for some mining equipment from the Thor Forge Company. They insist the invoices reached Joshua Brewster, but they weren’t paid. I wonder if you knew anything about this matter?”
“Can’t say I do. Only one of the men killed had an address here. John Caldwell. He rented a room from the Dawson sisters up on Spring Street. The others were spread out too, I imagine, renting rooms or camping up near the mines. None had any business with me.”
“What about Brewster? Do you know where he lived?”
“Tent by the mine. Every once in a while, he’d rent a room at the Teller House for a night or two. Up until a few months ago he had a place in Denver, but I know for a fact he sold it to come here.”
“Interesting. Any idea why?”
“To open that worthless mine again. Folks that knew him best said he got a little crazy recently. He obsessed over Little Angel. Turned on friends and everything. It happens sometimes. It’s like people who drink too much or gamble all their money away. They can’t stop themselves. Brewster was like that at the end.”
Bell knew he’d gotten as much out of the clerk as he could without rousing more suspicion, so he said, “Well, I thank you for your time. I’ll let the folks at the Thor Forge know that unless Brewster had a hidden stash of money with a lawyer or something, they’re out of luck getting paid.”
He and Tony Wickersham left the post office.
“Isn’t impersonating a federal investigator against the law?” the young Englishman asked as they started walking.
“It is,” Bell replied. “But I didn’t impersonate anyone just now.”
“Well, you gave him another man’s card and implied that you were Robert Northrop.”
“I gave him the wrong card by mistake,” Bell said with a knowing smile. “That implied I am Robert Northrop. He was the one who assumed. I just didn’t correct him. Cops and judges usually get angry when I pull this trick, but I’ve never been prosecuted for it.”
It took the pair only a few minutes to find Spring Street and the yellow house belonging to the Dawson sisters, a pair of elderly spinsters who supported themselves taking in and feeding lodgers in the large house left to them by their long-dead parents. There was a wide porch across the front of the clapboard house that would have a swing or chair in the summer months. Gingham curtains were peeking around the edges of the downstairs windows. The roof was slate and appeared to be in good shape despite its age.
A man opened the front door and was backing out just as Bell and Wickersham mounted the porch.
“Excuse me,” Bell said with a
friendly smile. “Are the Dawson sisters in?”
“Oh, hi,” the man said, startled. He wore the threadbare suit of a traveling salesman. In one hand was a leather sample case. Patent medicines, or maybe cosmetics, was Bell’s guess. “Miss Emily is in, but Miss Sarah is in Boulder on a buying expedition, as she calls it. It appears that people get snowed in here quite often.”
“We’ve heard,” Bell said, and thanked the man, who moved off down the street on his own business.
Bell knocked at the door and waited only a few seconds before it was opened. The woman was young, raven-haired, and beautiful. She smiled at Wickersham, but her gaze lingered longer on Isaac Bell. Her teeth were dazzlingly white. “Well, hello there,” she said.