Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
The sun was setting by the time she’d stopped asking people on the street if they knew Reverend Peele. The day had been so long and she was dragging now that it was almost over.
After leaving the jail, she’d stopped by the doctor's office and asked the doctor to look at the bullet graze on Josiah’s back, then ran to grab him a clean shirt and his boots before setting out to find that preacher and spent the entire day doing so.
Now, she was bone tired as she made her way back to the doctor's office to check in on Bonnie and Archie.
To her surprise, Archie was awake. He looked better. His fever was still elevated, but his eyes didn’t look as weak.
She didn’t mention any of the trouble going on all around him. He shouldn’t have to worry about anything other than recovering, so when he dosed back off, Violet convinced Bonnie to join her at the hotel restaurant for a late supper.
The window in the restaurant had been boarded up, which made the room even darker than it should have been. There were small oil lamps on every table and it would have been a very intimate affair had she’d not been sharing her meal with a small town saloon whore.
She wasn’t the only one to notice her company, either. Some of the other patrons were staring while some were out right gawking.
That old saying you could take a girl out of the whorehouse but couldn’t take the whorehouse out of the girl was true. It only took a glance to know what Bonnie did for a living. Her manner of dress was a dead giveaway.
Most days her face was painted, but she hadn’t bothered since arriving in Elkin, but something about her just screamed—sex. It might have been the way she carried herself, or maybe the men in the restaurant were just more prone to notice women of looser morals.
The gawking didn’t stop even when their food arrived and when Bonnie started to get uncomfortable and said she shouldn’t be there, Violet’s anger exploded.
The woman sitting at the next table over was sneering at them. Violet met her judgmental gaze and yelled, “What are you looking at?”
The woman gasped and turned her head, but not before Violet heard someone mutter, “whore,” under their breath.
Someone else said, “doesn’t belong with civilized company,” but she couldn’t tell who it was.
Violet ignored them all and told Bonnie to do the same. They continued to eat, but the words people were whispering didn’t leave her.
The saloon was still on her mind and it dawned on her then that she hadn’t asked anyone there if they knew the Reverend. Just because he was a godly man didn’t mean he didn’t sneak in every now and then.
As Graham so often told her when she caught him and Rose all over each other in the back room, men had needs. She assumed the good reverend did, too.
After she had the meal charged to Josiah’s room, they headed back outside. The sun had fully set now and the noise from the saloon was filling the street. The tinny music and raucous laughter could be heard all the way down the road.
She turned to Bonnie. “Want to go back to the saloon with me?”
“What for?”
“I need to ask the girls about Reverend Peele, the man who performed my wedding ceremony, and see if they know him. No one I spoke to today did, but I don’t want to miss anyone.
Someone in this town has to know him, or at least seen him at some point.
He was Edwin’s friend, after all. He had to have been in the mercantile at least once. ”
“One would think so.”
They headed down the street, stepping around people on the sidewalk, and it took every ounce of willpower she possessed not to go inside the jail as they passed it. Knowing Josiah was in there alone almost killed her, but knowing he was locked away in there only spurred her on.
The saloon at night was a completely different atmosphere than it was during the day.
There were more cowboys and saddle bums filling the space.
The girls she’d met upstairs were lingering around the main room now, most of them in the laps of the men at the gaming tables, and the noise was almost unbearable.
Bonnie spotted the brunette she acted as if she’d known earlier in the day and spoke with her before a few other girls joined them.
When Bonnie asked them if they knew Reverend Peele, no one did.
“Sorry,” the brunette said. “The last holy man to step through that door tried to convert us all and Bub tossed him out on his ear.”
Bub, the bartender, looked their way when he heard his name. He gave her a once over and a grin before turning back to the bar.
Bonnie got their attention again by saying, “What if he didn’t tell anyone he was a preacher?”
Everyone looked at her when she straightened up. “Oh, maybe he didn’t.”
“Well, what did he look like?”
Violet gave them the description of the man who’d stood with her and Josiah by that creek bank and married them. He was hard to forget. Although there were lots of men with white hair, the reverends had stuck out all over his head, making him look half-mad.
He’d had a bulbous red nose too, and his voice was quite squeaky for a man. The moment she was finished describing him, one of the girls who worked the saloon had her face scrunched up as if thinking.
“What is it? Does he sound familiar to you?”
“Kind of,” the girl said. “He sounds a bit like Amos but, he’s not a preacher. He’s too big of a drunk to be a godly man.”
The brunette Bonnie knew looked out over the room. “I think I saw Amos earlier.”
Violet’s pulse leaped as she turned back to the bar. There were so many people there and cigar and cigarette smoke hung heavy in the air.
She craned her neck, and even climbed the steps to the upstairs rooms to get a better look and when one of the girls said, “there he is,” she saw him. Near the front of the saloon next to the man playing an upbeat tune on the piano.
He had a girl in his lap, his hand up her dress, and when he lifted his head and grinned, Violet did the same.
She’d just found Reverend Peele.
Commotion by the door brought Josiah’s head up. The raised voices that followed brought the deputy on duty to his feet. He’d still been napping, but jumped to attention when the door slammed open and Violet walked in—trying to drag someone in with her.
She turned and grinned at him, her hands clenched on the arm of a man who was trying to get away. When Bonnie stepped into the doorway and gave the man a shove inside, he finally got a good look at him. And smiled. “You found him!”
Violet laughed. “I sure did! He was in the saloon.” She gave the man’s arm another pull before saying, “Meet Amos Goodbody, aka Reverend Peele.”
The Reverend—Amos—he corrected himself, looked half drunk. His eyes were bloodshot, his clothes disheveled, and that shocking head of white hair was everywhere.
He managed to pull away from Violet and flopped down in the chair by the sheriff's desk and leaned against it. Then just blinked at everyone in the room with him.
“Amos,” the deputy said. “What have you done now?”
“You know him?” Josiah asked.
The deputy huffed out a laugh. “Who doesn’t know him? He can usually be found on one street corner or another, passed out drunk.”
“So, he’s not a preacher?”
The deputy laughing was all the conformation he needed. He glanced at Violet and knew the moment she realized what he did.
They weren’t really married. That license they’d signed was fake, which meant Edwin had come to Silver Falls to marry her with a fake preacher and a fake license.
But why?
The sheriff chose that moment to come back into the office. He took one look at Amos, rolled his eyes, and swung his arm out, pointing to the empty cell next to his. “Throw him in there, Ned. I don’t want him passing out on my desk again. He’s too heavy to carry when he’s nothing but dead weight.”
“Hold on,” Josiah said. “He can identify Edwin. Take him over to the undertaker and see if he can tell if it's him.”
The sheriff sighed. “I just came from the undertakers.” He gave Violet a look before walking around his desk to sit down. “Do you know how embarrassing it is to ask to see a man's private parts? Especially when said man is dead?”
Violet gave him a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry you had to do that, sheriff, but better you than me.”
The sheriff banged his fist on his desk, startling everyone, especially Amos, who still sat slumped over.
When Amos lifted his head, the sheriff asked if he knew Edwin.
Amos nodded, his eyes closing again.
“Don’t dose back off, Amos. These folks need some answers. I certainly didn’t find any.”
“No luck with the freckle, then?” Violet asked.
The sheriff’s face turned a funny shade of red. “No, he wasn’t shaved as you said he would be and I didn’t feel like rooting around to find it, but you’re more than welcome to.”
“I’d rather not.”
Amos looked over at her when she spoke, then spotted Josiah in the cell. He sat up, blinked blood-shot eyes, and grinned. “I know you.” He rubbed a hand over his face and blinked again, as if clearing the fuzziness away. “What did you do to get thrown in here?”
“He’s accused of killing Edwin.” The sheriff answered.
Amos’s eyes widened. “Ed is dead?”
“Maybe. That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Mrs. Lincoln doesn’t think the man we have at the undertakers is really Edwin. She wants you to go look at him and see if you can confirm it or not.”
“Miss Campbell,” Violet said, correcting the sheriff. She gave him a brief look and a sad smile. “If Amos isn’t a real preacher, then Josiah and I aren’t legally married.”
The sheriff looked at Josiah. “Is this the man you were asking me about the other day? The preacher you were looking for and the marriage license he was supposed to file.”
“Yes. Edwin brought him to Silver Falls, claiming the man was a preacher. Edwin wanted to marry Violet, but she’d told him we were already engaged.
He thought we were lying and more or less bullied us into marrying on the spot and he,” he pointed an accusing finger at Amos, “is who performed the ceremony.”