Longarm on the Fever Coast by Tabor Evans Read Free Book Online Page B

see about that, and proceeded to knock politely but firmly on doors. They found, as he'd hoped, that most law-abiding folks with nothing to hide but their privates were willing to let the law have a look around as long as they got to cover their privates first. The only couple who flatly refused to let Longarm in without a search warrant were the Hades-bound honeymooners he'd heard earlier. Longarm decided not to bend the U.S. Constitution all out of shape just to see what the woman looked like. It was almost bound to be a disappointment, and it was tough to picture them letting Godwynn in to watch.
    The son of a bitch wasn't anywhere else on board that Longarm could come up with. So he drifted back to his own stateroom to see how they were doing with poor Lenore.
    They'd done better than he'd expected. Somebody had stripped the ruined bloody bedding off the top berth, and the dead blonde was now reposing on the bar springs. That only seemed cruel till you noticed how someone had washed her off, smoothed her hair, and struggled her into a modest ivory flannel nightgown from her own baggage. Longarm felt sure the motherly nurse or whatever had done most of the work, although the boozy ship's surgeon was the one going on about how his company would wire home for her at the next port of call, and then carry her on to the end of the line on ice so someone of her own could meet or have the body met with there.
    The motherly gal, a bit older and fatter than Longarm, said she'd drained such blood as those bullets had left in the dead gal and emptied her basin over the rail just outside. That was the first Longarm had noticed, in the soft lantern light, how someone had used face powder and rouge to keep Lenore's face from going that pallid beeswax shade dead faces got before they turned really funny colors. When Longarm asked where she'd learned so much about undertaking, she explained she'd been a Union army nurse in the war. She looked away as she added, "Making them look presentable before their dear ones saw them was the least we could do. Lord knows there was neither the medicine nor the medical skills to save a third of them."
    He didn't say he'd been there. He wasn't being modest. He didn't want to remind her how long ago it had been. He was now in his thirties, and he'd had to lie about his age to be allowed to act so foolish. She'd have had to have been in her twenties and able to prove her good character and nursing skills to Sister Clara Barton, the boss of all the Union nurses, before they'd have let her put rouge on dead soldiers-blue. So he figured her for her early forties, give or take hard work and a healthy appetite.
    They didn't talk more about the past till after some crewmen had come with an improvised pine coffin to carry poor Lenore down to the cold-storage hold. He told the purser not to bother making up the berth that night. He explained he was getting off in the morning to begin with and already had his own possibles in that other stateroom on the starboard side.
    When he told the older army nurse he had a fifth of Maryland rye among those possibles, she dimpled at him and replied, "Lord love you, I could use a stiff drink, and we used to get Maryland rye fresh from the still when I was serving in that charnel house outside of Washington. But lest you feel you've wasted good whiskey, young sir, it's only fair to warn you I don't want anyone making all my bones ache."
    Longarm smiled sheepishly and insisted, "I thought we'd agreed I was only trying to comfort a shot-up lady, ma'am. For the record and a lady's reputation, I never even kissed Miss Lenore. All that mush you may have misread sprang from an earlier conversation about a far older lady who died purer than she might have wanted."
    The nurse said in that case she'd trust him for just one nightcap in his stateroom. They'd both figured out who he was by now. But along the way to the starboard side she surprised him a tad by introducing herself as Norma