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She’d admit that much, too.
“Gloria and I will handle this, honey,” he said. “You go on in inside.”
Norma Rose glanced toward the cabin. It was said Gloria Kasper was a much better doctor than her husband had ever been. Years ago, when they were a newly married couple, Gloria, believing her beloved Raymond was having an affair with one of his patients, started accompanying him on all of his visits, and continued to do so until his death a few years ago. Then, in the midst of the influenza outbreak, Gloria, concerned her friends would be left without medical care, had obtained her medical degree. Since then, she had saved many lives.
“Go on, now,” her father repeated. “Gloria will take care of Dave. You can shoo out the last of the townies.”
The townies—folks that lived all year round near the local White Bear, Gem or Goose Lakes, or in the town of White Bear Lake—were always the last to leave. Especially with the new noise ordinance in town.
The residents of Bald Eagle Lake didn’t consider themselves part of the town and had formed their own community, one with a unique spirit. The resort owners, when dozens of their properties had dotted the lakes, had unified their community a long time ago. The original owners had all formed a gentleman’s agreement of all for one, and one for all, and the pact still held.
“Go on,” her father said, giving her a shove.
Norma Rose was at the kitchen door of the resort before she realized she hadn’t told her father about Ty pretending to be Dave’s lawyer. She turned around, listening. They’d have met by now.
The trees between the resort and the cabins blocked her view, otherwise she might have been able to see the lawyer walking to his car. It wouldn’t take long for her father to get rid of him. Tilting her head, listening for a Model T to start, she stood for several minutes, until it was obvious Ty hadn’t been asked to leave.
Yet. He was probably helping Gloria put Dave to bed or something. Then her father would send him down the road.
Norma Rose entered through the kitchen door and crossed the meticulously scrubbed room. It would have been nice to see the lawyer leave. Then she’d have no reason to continue thinking about him.
In truth, she had no reason to think about him and absolutely no time.
Exiting the kitchen, she turned right and entered the wide hallway that ran the width of the lower floor with staircases leading to the second and third floors at each end. Nightingale’s took up all her time. What had been a small family resort only a few years ago was now one of the largest in the state. It had a grand ballroom—complete with a curtained stage—a dining room that could seat up to a hundred people, three smaller party rooms, several offices and a covered porch that ran the length of the building and faced the lake. All that was on the first floor. The second floor contained family and employee living quarters, as well as guest rooms like those on the third floor.
The larger the resort became, the more there was for her to do. This was the first year they weren’t adding to the main building. The improvements were focused on the twenty bungalows intermittently placed around the property. Her grandfather had built most of them during the last century, when people started commuting to the lake area on the train. The vacation spot had been popular before the rail lines had been laid, but boomed when what had been a three-hour wagon ride became a twenty-minute train ride.
Many of the older resorts had closed up over the last twenty years, with people buying up the acreage to live here year round, but since Prohibition, the resorts had started to thrive again. So had the trollies coming from the cities. The streetcar company also owned the amusement park, giving people a destination as well as a way to get there.
Norma Rose turned left onto the center hallway that would pass the dining room and end at the ballroom, where Reggie, their longtime bartender, would be glad to see her. He liked things shut down by one, and considering he was back on duty by ten in the morning, she couldn’t blame him.
Sometimes she wished she didn’t have to report to duty until ten. But, for the most part, she didn’t mind. Nightingale’s was her life. She had witnessed its rise from a run-down homestead with a dancehall and few rented cabins to a glamorous showcase that rivaled hotels nationwide. Listening to her heels echoing against the wood floors, she glanced at the naturally stained wood wainscoting and grinned. If not for her, the entire resort would be painted red. That was her father’s favorite color. He owned over a dozen maroon suits. His office was splattered with burgundy; she’d even specially ordered his desk to be built out of natural red mahogany.
There were plenty of red hues in all the other rooms, too, but she’d insisted on some things being left natural wood—the floors and wainscoting—and had added shades of gold and black. Black. Now that was a color. Maybe that’s why she was so intrigued by the lawyer. Ty’s black outfit was spectacular. Norma Rose paused before entering the ballroom to shake her head, feeling flustered that she couldn’t control her thoughts when it came to the newcomer.
Most of the lights had been turned off, and she moved straight to the bar, where three locals sat. At least they were three that she liked. Smiling, she stepped up between two of their barstools. “Scooter, Dac,” she greeted the men on her left before turning to her right. “Jimmy.”
“Evening, Norma Rose,” Scooter Wilson greeted in return. “You here to give us the bum’s rush?”
Frowning, for she’d expected townies and didn’t think of Bald Eagle people as such, she asked, “What are you boys still doing here?”
“Placing bets,” Jimmy answered, picking his tweed driving hat off the bar beside him and placing it over his corn-colored hair. “On if we ever see Brock Ness again.”
A shiver rippled her spine.
Scooter slapped a coin he’d set to spinning on the counter. “He told your father no.”
Her insides slumped, confirming what she’d feared.
Neither of the three said anything else, and she knew why. Her father wasn’t a gangster. He was a businessman who, at times, associated with mobsters. There was nothing illegal about that. Gangsters were very good customers. They never squabbled about the price, always paid with cash, in full, and usually in advance.
However, plenty of folks feared her father, and what might happen if they got on his bad side. He wasn’t an easy man to say no to. Maybe she should have told Ty Bradshaw that.
Norma Rose hid her frustration, and nodded toward the bartender. “Reggie’s ready to call it a night. You boys should drift on home.”
The men gathered their hats and downed the dregs from their earthen mugs before they stood and pushed in their stools. Far more difficult to come by, yet sought after more highly than whiskey or rum, beer was readily available at the resort, for those trusted enough to remain silent.
Norma Rose walked with the men across the large ballroom, their footsteps echoing loudly. At the front door, she bid them goodbye and waited until the double doors closed behind them. Turning, she glanced at the mantel clock on the fieldstone fireplace centered between the ballroom doors. One thirty in the morning.
She should go to her office and start researching musicians. A week from now would be Al and Emma Imhoff’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and the week after that, Palooka George’s birthday bash. Both parties expected top-notch music, and it was her job to provide it.
But it was late, and though she hated to admit it, she was tired. But above all, she wanted to know Ty Bradshaw was good and gone.
She’d taken no more than a single step forward when the front door opened. Walking in, her father gestured toward the registration desk. “Norma Rose, get the key to the Northlander.”
All of the cabins were named, a throwback from her grandparents’ Scandinavian ancestry. About to move, she froze when a second man walked through the door. The rapid increase of her heart rate had to be from anger, for she certainly wasn’t happy to see him again.
Ignoring Ty and the grin on his face, she turned to her father. “How’s Uncle Dave?”
“He was poisoned.”
Norma Rose took two steps, mainly to catch her balance by grabbing hold of the wide front desk. “Poisoned?”
“Yes,” her father answered, “but he’s going to be fine.”
Norma Rose didn’t doubt that. It had been her idea to move Gloria into the resort permanently when her home in White Bear Lake had mysteriously burned to the ground last year. Someone had been upset about Gloria’s belief in birth control, that’s what Norma Rose had deduced. Having a physician on-site had been a good business move and Dave couldn’t be in better hands.
The seriousness of her uncle being poisoned—and the threat to the entire family and community—made Norma Rose’s spine quiver. “How?”
“You don’t worry about that,” her father said. “Get the key. Ty will be staying with us for a while.”
Norma Rose bit her tongue to keep from saying several things, and kept her gaze from wandering to the lawyer. “The Northlander isn’t ready for occupancy. The workmen just finished painting it today.”
* * *
“I don’t mind the smell of paint,” Ty said, biting back a grin. Norma Rose was a classy-looking dame, that was for sure, but she was also a sassy one. As full of herself as a cat with a diamond collar.
Anger, lots of it, snapped in the blue eyes she settled upon him with more frost than a subzero night. “I haven’t had a chance to have the bed made up yet.”
“I know how to make a bed,” Ty answered. He really hadn’t made an impression on her, or he had, just a bad one. He’d have to rectify that. Becoming a welcomed guest at the resort was a necessity, and from what he’d learned, being accepted by Norma Rose was just as important as being accepted by Roger Nightingale.
She stomped around the desk, her hips swaying with each snapping clip of her heels. If an artist ever needed a model in order to draw the perfect hourglass figure, they should look up Norma Rose. The image of her backside was enough to stir the blood of a dead man.
“If he,” she said pointedly to her father, “needs a place to stay for the night, there are a few rooms available on the third floor.”
“He’s staying with us for a while, not a night.” Rounding the desk, Roger said, “I’ll get the key, you go get some bedding.”
The glare she cast at her father’s back would have dropped most folks to their knees. She erased the expression before her father turned around, key in hand, and then she hooked the little chain of her purse on her elbow and marched the opposite way around the desk, so she wouldn’t have to come any closer to him. Ty didn’t even attempt to hide his smile. Getting on Norma Rose’s good side was going to be a challenge. He liked a good challenge. He was up for it, too. Bodine had turned into a mole of late, and following his trail had grown lackluster.
“She can be a slight short now and again,” Roger said while Norma Rose turned the corner. “But I couldn’t run this place without her. Matter of fact, I don’t run this place. She does. Has for a few years now. She does a fine job of it, too. I mostly stay out of her way.”
The man handed over a single key attached to a diamond-shaped piece of leather, tooled with the resort’s name. “Thank you,” Ty said. “I’ll remember what you said about your daughter, and try to stay out of her way while investigating what happened to your brother-in-law.”
“Hell of a thing,” Roger said, “Dave getting poisoned. Can’t think who might have done that.”
“Start writing down names,” Ty said. “I’ll look into every one of them.”
“I will, but, it’s our secret,” Roger said. “Other than Norma Rose, I don’t want anyone hearing about this.”
“Silence is my specialty,” Ty said. “I’d be out of a job if not.”
“Good thing you came along when you did,” Roger said.
“As I said, my last job led me here.” Ty wasn’t counting his eggs yet, although his instincts said Nightingale was nibbling hard on the bait.
“Those feds,” Roger growled, as he nodded in the general direction his daughter had gone. “Take that hallway to the end and turn left. Norma Rose will be at the end of that hall, in the storage room. She can show you where the Northlander is located. You and I will talk in more depth in the morning.”
Ty agreed, and shook the man’s hand. Roger Nightingale was no fool. He hadn’t got to this point in life without being thorough...very thorough. By the time they talked again tomorrow, the man would have had Ty’s background checked out right up to the minute his mother had given birth to him. Ty expected as much, and would have been disappointed if things had been different.
“Good night, sir,” he said, stepping back.
“’Night,” Nightingale said, clearly already preoccupied by who he should call first.
Chapter Three (#ulink_ac10be8c-3830-523d-8854-d25598f79c72)
Norma Rose was stomping back up the hallway when Ty turned the second corner. He’d cased the joint, but was amazed by its size. It looked mammoth from the outside, but from what he’d already seen of the inside, a person could get lost and not be found for a year. Holding out his hand, he said, “I’ll take that.”
She clutched the wicker basket closer to her narrow waist.
“Your father said you’d show me to the cabin, but I’m sure I can find it.” Ty fought the grin trying to form at the way she struggled. She had a mouthful to say, that was clear, but wasn’t sure if she should say it, which was interesting. “Just point me in the right direction.”
“He said to show you, and I’ll show you,” she said stubbornly, spinning around to lead him down the hall and through a storage area with shelves full of bedding and linens.
Noting the outside door didn’t need to be unlocked before she opened it, Ty said, “If you insist, but that will just make an extra trip.” Her statement had told him exactly what he’d needed to know. Norma Rose would do anything her father told her to do.
Tossing a glare over her shoulder like he was public enemy number one, she snapped, “No, it won’t.”
“Yes, it will,” he insisted, stopping on the stoop. “I’ll have to walk you back to the resort after you show me the cabin.”
The moonlight flashed in her eyes as she spun around. “Why?”
“Because I’m a gentleman,” he said smoothly. “And a gentleman would never let a lady walk alone in the middle of the night.”
She thrust the basket at him and spun back to the door as soon as he took the handles. “Follow that pathway,” she said, pointing to a well-worn dirt trail. “You’ll eventually come to cabins. Five of them. The Northlander is the last one. It’s marked.” She pulled open the door. “There’s a road leading to it, as well. If you want your automobile, you’ll need to go back out to the parking lot and drive around the other side of the main building then follow the road that curves toward the lake.”
“I’ll get my truck in the morning,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to disturb the other guests.” He thought about giving her a wink, but chose a smooth smile instead. “As I said, I’m a gentleman.”
She was a cold one; she barely even blinked as she said, “Suit yourself.”
“I usually do,” he said. “As you do, too, I’m sure.”
Holding the door with one hand, she leveled a stare on him. “You, Mr. Bradshaw, cannot be sure about anything concerning me, so don’t pretend to be.” Slowly, her gaze went from his shoes to his hat. “But I can be sure about plenty where you are concerned.”
“Oh?” He shifted the basket to one hand. “Like what?”
“You’ll discover that soon enough.” With a haughty flick of her chin, she entered the building and closed the door with a resounding thud.
The brick structure was solid and well-built, yet Ty knew she’d be able to hear him through the open window beside the door as he let out a bellow of laughter. The echo of another door inside the building slamming filtered through the night air and Ty laughed again before he turned to follow the pathway. He started whistling, not exactly sure why, other than the fact he felt like it.
Norma Rose Nightingale had met her match in him, whether she was prepared for it or not. Mainly because no one, not even a spicy little tomato with a fine set of legs, would stand in his way of ousting Bodine. No, siree. She was just one of many good-looking women with sexy legs covering this earth. He’d tolerate her because he had to, but he wouldn’t bow to her haughtiness. The sooner she discovered that, the better off they’d both be. In the meantime, getting on her good side was going to make a fine game of cat and mouse. He had time. Palooka George’s party was two weeks away.
The cabin was easy to find and was a log structure much like Dave Sutton’s abode. Using the key to enter, Ty set the basket down. His research had already told him this cabin didn’t have a pull string hanging in the center of the room. It had been wired with light switches. Part of the renovations taking place to several of the cabins on this side of the resort.
A low whistle of appreciation escaped without him thinking about it as he flicked the little switch. The workmen camped out behind the barn in several tents had done a fine job. This place was as shiny as a freshly minted penny. He picked up the basket and walked across a thick braided rug, upon which a table and two chairs sat. There was also a small heating stove in the corner. Some serious dough had been laid down to fix up the cabin; even the bed sitting in the center of the room was new, mattress and all.
There was an old-fashioned washstand in the corner, with a pitcher and bowl, along with a new dresser, and the windows that had been left open to release the smell of paint had screens on them. A nice touch considering the number of mosquitoes he’d encountered during his walk along the trail. There’d been a water spigot on the way here, too, which the cabins would share, along with a privy and bath house.
All the comforts of home.
If he’d had a home.
Ray Bodine had seen to it that he didn’t.
Ty made up the bed and stripped down to his short-legged and sleeveless muslin union suit before lying on the fresh sheets with both arms behind his head and a thick pillow beneath them. Tired, he closed his eyes.
This was nice. Far better than most of the hotels he usually resided in. No banging of doors, noisy occupants returning to their rooms at all hours of the night, and no traffic, no sirens blaring and horns honking from dusk to dawn.
It had been a long time since he’d experienced such silence, since before the war, really, and he didn’t believe he’d ever had frogs and the gentle rhythm of water washing onto the shore to serenade him to sleep.
Norma Rose’s image fluttered behind his closed lids. He smiled at the idea of changing that starched little attitude of hers. He doubted she’d ever been kissed. That, too, would be fun to change.
It was all part of his plan.
Holding that thought, with a cool breeze wafting over his skin, Ty gave in to slumber.
* * *
He was up early, due to the hammering next door, but was well rested and he bade good morning to the carpenters working on the cabin beside his—named the Willow—as he collected water from the spigot in the pitcher from the washstand.
Apart from the noise of the hammers, the woods were quiet, serene with the waves of the lake still gently crashing ashore. He took his time returning to his cabin, pretending to enjoy the scenery, including the large weeping willow next to the cabin the men were working on. A large crate sat beneath the tree’s long, leafy branches that hung almost to the ground.
The Duluth Building Company.
Interesting. Nightingale’s resort was only twenty miles from St. Paul, yet he ordered building supplies from Duluth, a hundred and fifty miles north. Then again, Ty doubted the crate was actually used for building supplies.
After cleaning up with the water he’d fetched, Ty left his suit coat, vest and hat on the fancy brass hooks supplied for such things, and found a secure spot for his holster and gun under the new mattress before he left his cabin.
He meandered quietly, walking the full circle of cabins on this side of the main building. There were ten in total including his and all were named. Whitewater, the Cove, Double Pine and other such titles. Several had small buildings a few yards away from the main bungalow that were summer kitchens, he discovered, after sneaking peeks in a few windows.
