Free The Great West Detective Agency by Jackson Lowry

but doesn’t have it.”
    â€œHe knows who does?” Lucas sucked at his gums, thinking hard. “How do I find who has the dog?”
    Little Otto shrugged.
    â€œThis isn’t much information in return for what I gave you.” Lucas stood straighter when he saw the tiny smile come to the man’s lips and the distant look.
    â€œBreakfast was good.”
    Lucas opened his mouth to speak, then clamped it shut. He had nothing to say. The implication destroyed his own confidence. For more than two years he had connived to get closer to Carmela and had failed. A single glance on the part of this mountain of a man had been all it took for Carmela’s resolve to melt away? He found that impossible to believe.
    â€œWhy does Dunbar want the dog?”
    â€œThat,” Little Otto said, “is a matter of some dispute. I doubt companionship enters into it.”
    Lucas scratched at a bite on his belly and growled like a dog. The mongrel he had petted in the alley the night before had divested itself of a few fleas. The more he tried to do the right thing, the more he was punished for it. He should have kicked the dog instead of buying it a pound of ground meat at the butcher shop.
    â€œCould it be that Dunbar wants to get the dog back to entice Miss Baldridge into a more intimate relationship?”
    â€œDo you mean Dunbar or do you mean yourself?”
    â€œI did you a favor. You owe me the information.”
    â€œYou can’t take back the favor,” Otto said sensibly, “but I am beholden to you. Let me add one speck of gossip I have overheard. Dunbar is sorely pissed that he wasn’t elected governor. He is willing to go to any lengths to gain that position.”
    John Long Routt was well enough liked and had been elected after serving as territorial governor appointed by U. S. Grant. Even if Routt met an unexpectedly abrupt end, Lafayette Head was capable of taking over. Lucas followed politics only as much as it benefited him through laws and loopholes, but neither Routt nor Head generated much opposition. If Dunbar attempted an assassination, he would never be the one chosen to succeed either man. Whatever he planned went beyond the Colorado state borders.
    But a man with such soaring ambitions wanted more than to lure a lovely woman, even one as fetching as Amanda Baldridge, into his bed by stealing her dog.
    â€œYou find out more and tell me,” Lucas said. He felt betrayed and angry now. Little Otto only laughed as he left the Emerald City.
    Lucas ran his finger around the glass rim and produced a pure, clear note that cut through his ears and sliced up his brain.
    â€œNow I do that.” He snorted and shoved the empty glass away.
    Lucas started to follow Little Otto when Lefty called out to him from the stage.
    â€œMiss Thompson wants to see you. Lord knows why.” The barkeep swung a beer keg around easily and balanced it on his left shoulder. “She said
now.
”
    Lucas had half a mind to keep walking. He wasn’t a servant to be ordered around, yet the woman asked to see him. Actually told Lefty she wanted to see him. Possibilities built like summer clouds over the Front Range. What had been pleasant for Little Otto might have been unendurable for Carmela. He had thought to rescue her from the big lout, and this was his chance.
    He took the steps onto the stage two at a time and skipped across the boards to the singer’s dressing room. The door stood ajar.
    â€œCarmela? You hankering to see me?”
    â€œLucas darling, come in. Yes, I have a bone to pick with you.”
    â€œIntroducing you to Otto?” His heart almost missed a beat. He pushed into the dressing room and his heart came close to exploding like a keg of Giant powder.
    The singer was half-dressed, with expanses of delicious skin never seen by an audience exposed. He moved closer, but Carmela pulled up a thin muslin dressing gown and settled it about her creamy shoulders