Free Undercover Bride by Margaret Brownley Page A

children to school so she could have the house to herself. It was time to do some real detective work.

    Maggie dropped the children off and drove straight home. A mule-driven wagon was parked in front.
    Curious, she walked around the back of the house and was greeted by Whitewash. She petted the dog. “Down, boy.”
    Sidestepping a mound of dirt where the dog had been digging, she moved to the porch. A small Chinese woman was bent over a metal tub scrubbing a pair of Toby’s trousers on a washboard.
    “You must be Lila. I’m Maggie Taylor.”
    Lila straightened and nodded. She wore a blue tunic with contrasting borders and loose sleeves. Her shiny black hair was parted in the middle and her bun anchored with what looked like knitting needles.
    “Very pleased to meet you,” she said in a singsong voice. It was hard to know how old she was, but Maggie guessed her early twenties.
    “I’m pleased to meet you, too,” Maggie said, her detective mind at work. Perhaps the woman could shed some light on Katherine’s mysterious death. “How long have you worked for Mr. Thomas?”
    Lila nodded her head again. “Thank you, good-bye.”
    Maggie tried again, enunciating each word with care. It soon became clear that the girl spoke very little English and had memorized only a few polite phrases.
    “I’ll let you get back to the wash,” Maggie said.
    “Very pleased to meet you.”
    With a smile and a nod, Maggie entered the house through the back door, anxious to get to work.
    She made certain the front door was locked before attempting to search the bedroom. She didn’t want anyone walking in unannounced. Several chessmen were scattered on the floor, and she stooped to pick them up.
    Odd. The pieces weren’t on the floor when she left to take Elise and Toby to school. She glanced toward the kitchen. Had Lila knocked them over? The dirty laundry had been placed in a basket and put on the porch next to the washtub. Far as she knew, the laundress had no reason to enter the house. Still, the chess pieces didn’t fall by themselves. Someone had entered the house in her absence—if not Lila, then someone else.
    But who? And why?

    Garrett’s bedroom was larger than the children’s. A double bed occupied one wall; a wardrobe, small desk, dry sink, and ladder-back chair another. The room lacked anything of a personal nature. No pictures on the wall. No daguerreotypes of his deceased wife and mother of his children.
    Had Garrett removed reminders of his first marriage knowing she planned to enter the room? It was a possibility. It would also explain why the room had been locked. Maybe he didn’t want her seeing signs of his first wife.
    She stepped over the bedroll on the floor that made up Toby’s bed and opened both wardrobe doors. The scent of bay rum hair tonic, moth balls, and old oak greeted her. On one side Garrett’s clothes hung from wooden pegs. The second half contained four drawers, and these she opened one by one. The drawers stored socks, handkerchiefs, and neatly folded shirts but, again, nothing of interest.
    She closed the wardrobe doors. Hands at her waist, she glanced around the room and then moved toward the desk. A chessboard dominated the desktop, and the arrangement of the pieces suggested a game in progress.
    Careful not to disturb the board, she sat at the desk. The top drawers held stationery and writing supplies. Much to her surprise, she found her letters to him tied with a piece of rawhide and stacked in the back of a drawer. Fiction, all of them, the contents spun as cleverly as a spiderweb.
    After putting a shadow on Garrett Thomas, Allan Pinkerton learned the suspect had placed an ad for a mail-order bride and approached Maggie with a daring plan.
    At first Maggie thought the idea foolhardy. The chances of Garrett choosing her out of dozens and perhaps even hundreds of women looking for a husband seemed remote. But Allan was convinced that he knew enough about Garrett Thomas to make the plan