Chapter 6

Judge Farnham shook his head when Jarrod was finished explaining why he should be allowed to have Ivy Erin buried, whoever she really was. The sheriff had answered the judge's questions for him, so the judge let him go, but he still wanted to hear more from Jarrod. Even as he told the long, confusing story, Jarrod wondered if the judge would just hold him over for a competency hearing because it sounded like he – Jarrod – had gone nuts.

But the Judge sighed and said, "All right, Mr. Barkley. I'm going to award custody of the body to you and give you rights to her personal property, with instructions to have her buried as soon as possible, but since the bounty's already been claimed in Kansas, I won't make any ruling granting it to you. I'll set a time for preliminary hearings on those two the sheriff has in jail for tomorrow. And I'm also instructing you to keep the court informed on how this whole thing proceeds."

"Your Honor," Jarrod said, "the two other claimants will be before you on the charges of lying to the sheriff, and perhaps other charges if things develop that way."

The judge picked up his gavel. "Whatever, Mr. Barkley. I'll be here and waiting anxiously." He pounded the gavel. "Court is dismissed." Then he stood up and said, off the record, "Mr. Barkley – my chambers, now."

Jarrod followed the judge into his chamber and Judge Farnham motioned him to a chair. Jarrod sat as the judge sat down behind his desk.

The judge leveled a gaze at him. "What do you really think is going on here, Jarrod?"

"Your honor, I don't have any idea," Jarrod said honestly. "I have never been so confused by a case in my life. She came to me early one morning, claimed to be Ivy Erin with a bounty on her head from Kansas for extortion. Next thing I know she asks to meet me in an alley at night, and when I get there, she's dead, shot in the throat. Then, two men show up separately claiming to be her brother and her uncle and they want the body, but then it turns out Ivy Erin was killed in Kansas weeks ago and this girl supposedly isn't her, and the brother and uncle probably aren't relatives of any kind. So here I am, with a client who probably wasn't who she said she was and relatives who probably aren't who they say they are and we still have an unexplained murder on our hands."

Judge Farnham kept shaking his head. "What are you going to do?"

"Sheriff Lyman and I are working on that, and the so-called brother and uncle will be before you tomorrow on charges stemming from their lies to the sheriff about who they are. I'm hoping to get some information this evening at the Gold Nugget, where she worked – maybe find a way to figure out who she really was and why in the world she'd claim to be somebody with a bounty on her head."

Judge Farnham looked straight at Jarrod. "You know, this would be funny except that it's not funny."

"That's the most sensible thing that can be said about this whole mess," Jarrod said.

"Come in late tomorrow and give me a progress report. I'm dying to see how this whole thing ends up making sense."

"You and me both, sir. In the meantime, I'm gonna go to the undertaker's and see if we can have the girl we have buried right away so at least her body doesn't become a pawn again."

"Good idea," Judge Farnham said.

XXXXXXX

Jarrod quickly saw the undertaker, who was happy to comply with the speed Jarrod requested, since he'd already had the grave dug and it was sitting open in the Presbyterian churchyard. Jarrod took a moment to look at Ivy – or whoever she was - one more time. He still found himself feeling bad for this girl. How does one girl's death get into such a tangled mess? Had her life been the same? Didn't anybody deserve better than this bundle of craziness?

"I'll figure it out," he said quietly to her. "In the meantime, I'll see you get some peace, if nothing else."

Jarrod left and headed to the Gold Nugget right away. He told Emil the burial was happening in only half an hour or so. Then he went to the sheriff's office and told him.

With that, Jarrod and the sheriff went to the churchyard and got there just as two of the girls from the Gold Nugget were arriving. The undertaker was already there with the coffin, along with two men to complete the burial, and the minister was coming out from the church, ready to conduct a service. In ten short minutes, the service was over and the undertaker's men were covering the coffin in the ground. Jarrod said his silent, final good-byes.

The two girls from the Nugget started to walk away, but Jarrod and the sheriff stopped them. "Ladies, do you mind if we have a word for a moment?" Jarrod asked.

The young women looked nervous, but they did not walk away. Jarrod actually recognized them now that they were removing their shawls from atop their heads. Sarah and Betty, as he recalled.

Jarrod smiled. "Please let me express my condolences on the loss of your friend."

"She wasn't really a friend," Betty said. "We just didn't want her to go to her grave alone."

"Did you know her very well at all?" Jarrod asked.

"No. She never said much about herself. Just said her name was Ivy Elder and that was about it."

"Have the things in her room been disturbed at all?"

The girls looked at each other and shrugged. "We haven't bothered them," Sarah said. "I don't know about anybody else."

"Did she say anything at all about where she came from, who her family might be?" the sheriff asked.

Sarah shook her head. "She wasn't around for long, a week or two at most. We never had the chance to talk about much."

"Is there anything she did say that might help us figure out who she was and where she came from?" Jarrod asked.

Betty looked surprised. "She was Ivy Elder from Kansas – wasn't she?"

"Apparently not," Jarrod said with a sigh. Then he offered a smile. "I'll be in the Nugget later this evening. If anything else occurs to you, would you let me know then? And ask Emil to make sure the door to her room stays locked. I need to have a look at her things."

"She didn't have much," Sarah said.

"Well, whatever she had."

"Sure," Betty said, and the women left.

Jarrod and the sheriff started back toward his office. It was going on six o'clock now. The sun was beginning to hang low.

"You know," the sheriff said. "A lot of murders are never solved."

"I know," Jarrod said. "I don't want this to be one of them."

"Any ideas where to go with it now?"

"No," Jarrod said. "Just – let me talk to the girls at the Nugget tonight without you there. Could be they might talk a bit more once they've had a few drinks and don't have to worry about the law overhearing them."

"You might be right."

XXXXXXX

Jarrod checked in at his office, finding only a note from his secretary – Your brother Nick came by. Jarrod tossed the note into his trashcan. He'd already told his mother he probably would not be home, so Nick could just go ahead and worry if he wanted to. Since there was nothing else that needed his immediate attention, he went straight to the Gold Nugget, planning on spending a lot of time there, and maybe losing a bit of money at the poker table, too.

He got some dinner there and started on a bottle of scotch he planned to spend the entire evening with. After he ate, Emil the bartender let him into Ivy Elder/Erin's room, but Jarrod didn't find a thing that was helpful. As Emil had said before, she only a couple dresses without pockets, an empty carpetbag and a reticule that once maybe held some money but didn't anymore. Jarrod bundled everything into the carpetbag and asked Emil to hold it behind the bar for him until he left for the evening. Then he went back downstairs.

The place wasn't very crowded at first, but as time wore on, more men came in. Jarrod recognized a few of the local businessmen and ranch hands who came in, but none of them were people he thought could help him with this Ivy Erin problem. He tried talking with each of the saloon girls who was working that night, but none of them had any more information than Sarah and Betty had.

After a couple hours of chatting with the girls, Jarrod found a poker game and sat down to play. He didn't think about Ivy Erin while he was playing. He was hoping that not thinking about her would clear his thoughts, plus he was hoping to make a little money. Then one of the men at the table – one of the hands from a neighboring ranch that Jarrod knew – said, "That girl who was murdered the other night worked here, didn't she? Jarrod, didn't I hear that was one of your cases?"

"You heard right on both counts," Jarrod said and he examined his cards and decided what to do with them. "Did you know the girl?"

The man said, "Not exactly. Talked to her once last week. Heck, she wasn't around for more than a week or two. Can't imagine how anybody got to know her well enough to kill her."

"Sometimes men kill women they don't know at all," Jarrod said, still mildly afraid this might be one of those cases. "Did she say anything that struck you as interesting in hindsight?"

"Not really," the man said. "Shame she was killed, though. She was a right pretty girl."

"That she was," Jarrod said.