Chapter 2

“Deputy,” Paul Decker shook his head. “This is the darnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“What do you mean?” Deputy Patrick O’Riley furrowed his brow. What could it be that had a man like Decker so vexed? Surely, he’d seen it all in his line of work.

He’d followed the mortician’s wagon into the Depot District, serving as an escort of sorts, and helped him unload the body at the cellar door of his home that also served as the area’s mortuary. Decker generally served as Medical Examiner when the doctor, Bob White, was busy.

Today, Doc White was at Pastor Quinn Stephens’s home where their daughter and her husband resided as well. The pastor’s daughter would be blessing them with their first grandchild soon.

“I think I want Doc to concur with my findings before I make a report.”

“Fair enough.” The deputy conceded although he wanted to know immediately what the man found about the dead body. He felt as anxious as his sister, Collette, when she badgered him for information about a strange case. This one, indeed, was strange and the mortician knew something was so unusual, he wanted confirmation before he told anyone. That was even stranger still.

Collette Sandoval had a mind for puzzles. She and her cohort and best friend, Esther Rose, spent a great deal of time ferreting for answers when one of his cases went unsolved. Although they both were married women now, they still found time to get together a few times a week for what they called The Tatting Club. Esther Rose was quite skilled at the craft and vowed Collette could learn to make lace as well as she. While Collette had learned to make a few items in the delicate craft, Patrick knew the club was a guise for their seeking answers to those cases that had reached a dead end in his office.

He’d never admit this to her or Esther Rose, even though the latter was now his wife, but in the end, he and Sheriff Pike Bewdley appreciated knowing what was going on in the state of Colorado, especially in and around the Denver City area, when no one else could unravel the mystery.

So long as they didn’t get themselves into any danger, he and Liam Sandoval, Collette’s husband, allowed their wives to have their tatting club sessions. There was an inkling of pride, Patrick’s had to admit, knowing his sister and wife were so clever that they could outwit even the local Pinkertons when it came to taking little facts from a newspaper article and figuring out enough to solve the case.

They were as determined as little squirrels who gathered nuts in a hollowed-out tree for winter sustenance. Collette and Esther Rose thrived on settling their curiosity about unresolved enigmas, and it served his department quite well when they did.

Now Patrick had to wait for Doc White to examine the dead man’s body before he could find out what Decker found to be so ... unspeakable. What could it be? Patrick shook his head as he walked back to the Sheriff’s office.

Collette’s curiosity must certainly run in the family blood, for he, too, was overly interested in knowing what had been discovered. Unfortunately, it might be yet another day before he would know. Babies generally took a while to come into the world and Doc would be held up until then ... unless one of the midwives would be allowed to stay with the Stephens’s daughter while she brought the new life into the world.

Hmmm. Patrick considered an idea he had brewing. Maybe he’d run a little interference and let Sarah Whitehead know the doc had another pressing matter to attend to. Why she, or another midwife, had not been called to attend this one was strange. Did the Pastor and his wife not trust the young midwives to help their daughter? Certainly, everyone else in the Depot District trusted them, as far as he knew. Which he didn’t, really, now that he thought about it. He and Esther Rose had not yet been blessed with an expansion of their family.

His only experience with the midwives had been a few years ago in one extreme case when he had been riding shotgun with the stagecoach to escort a large sum of money to Cripple Creek. A passenger suddenly screamed in distress and, being an officer of the law, he was obliged to help. He very nearly delivered the woman’s baby.

But by God’s good graces, Sarah Whitehead and two of her midwife companions happened to be traveling toward Denver and came across the ordeal in the nick of time. Sarah, as it turned out, was one of the midwives in the Depot District.

Patrick knew her well enough to ask her to check in on the Stephens’s daughter, without being too presumptuous. If she was more concerned about the Stephens’s grandbaby than her fierce anger toward him, she’d be amicable about coming with him. Wouldn’t she?

He could escort her to the parsonage and let the doc know that Paul Decker was needing his opinion on a peculiar case. And that it was vital to his investigation to get the results from Decker’s post-mortem. Having Sarah there to take over should make it easy for the doc to come with Patrick and attend to another pressing matter, wouldn’t it?

Sure, that sounded convincing enough to pull off. Patrick jerked a quick nod to himself and set out to find Sarah. Twisting his wedding band as he strode toward the large home on the east end of the district where the midwives resided, he prayed Sarah would be available and willing to help.