Page 42 of The Saloon Girl's Only Shot

“He died? Here?” She pointed at the floor. “He’ll haunt the place!”

“I want to serve spirits.” Owen winked, pleased with that one.

“Murray actually expired in the privy,” Elmer said.

Temperance muttered something and stepped through the door into the living quarters.

Owen followed to see it was spacious, but empty. There was an alcove where the bed would go, a spot for a washstand and room for a table near the fire. Shelves hung on one wall as a pantry. There was a bench for preparing food beneath the window that looked onto the wagon house and john. On this side of the wall, the brick chimney held a cooking hearth.

“What do you think?” Elmer asked.

“Hmm.” Owen wandered back into the parlor. “What’s behind here?” He brushed aside the heavy drapes, revealing a pair of oversized doors like the ones on a barn. He turned the wooden latch and cracked one. Outside, a heavy post with a block and tackle was installed overhead. On the ground, a pair of cellar doors covered a big square hole. “Is this how the departed came in and out? Did he store them below?”

“In the cellar. Let me show you.” Elmer lifted a trapdoor in the corner beside the coffin table.

That’s why there was a tall, unfinished fence at the boardwalk, Owen surmised. To hide the deceased as they were moved. Owen latched the big doors, thinking he would remove them and fill this space with the bar shelves and a mirror.

“Coming?” he asked Temperance as he moved to the hole where Elmer was already descending.

“To see Frankenstein’s monster? No, thank you. Do not expect aid if you scream.”

“Chicken.” He went down the ladder.

The cellar was so shallow, he and Elmer had to duck their heads. The earthen walls and floor had only been dug out beneath a small portion of the parlor floor, providing just enough room for another sturdy table, this one rustic and scuffed. A canvas sling hung next to a similar pair of doors to the ones upstairs. There was a second block and tackle system here, mounted to the joists that supported the floor above them.

“I could store barrels of whiskey down here, maybe even learn to make my own.” The sling would make it simple to move the barrels in and out.

“Does that mean you’ll take this in exchange for clearing my debt with...” Elmer kept his voice low and lifted his gaze to where Temperance was murmuring something to Clarence. “Madame Beauville?” Elmer finished in a whisper.

“Bring me the registration proving this belongs to me, free and clear, and I will take over that debt, yes.” Owen shook Elmer’s hand.

“I’ll be back within the hour,” Elmer promised, rising up the stairs like a draught of smoke.

Owen followed, arriving in time to see Elmer tip his hat to Temperance.

“Miss Goodrich. I expect I’ll see you often.”

“In a town like this, there’s no avoiding it, is there?” she said with false cheer.

“I mean once this is a public house. I’ll come straight back with the registration,” Elmer promised Owen as he departed.

“No,” Temperance insisted after he was gone. “You cannot turn an undertaking parlor into a saloon. You want me to keep you in line? I am telling you that is undeniably wrong.”

“Why? I don’t even have to change the name.” He waved toward the window. “Imagine how delighted a miner will be when his friend says, ‘Let’s go see our old pal Amos at Murray’s Funeral Parlor.’ Then they arrive to see Amos sitting here, alive as can be, ready to buy them a drink and play cards. Married men can tell their wives they’re off to see a friend at the undertaker’s, and she’ll give him a tin of biscuits to bring along.”

Temperance was refusing to smile. “The fact that you’re having this much fun with it should tell you how wrong it is.”

“If the man’s wife comes in here to find him drinking,” he continued, “And shoots him dead where he sits, I’m prepared for that too.”

“You are completely without shame, aren’t you?” She spoke sternly, but her mouth twitched. She planted her hands on her hips and glanced to the door into the living quarters. “Why don’t you ask Jane to deliver babies in the other room? Make it a cradle to grave operation?”

“See? I knew you were wasted, working for Fritz.”

“I’m wasted working in a saloon,” she assured him. “If you want to hire me, ask me to write the railroad study.”

He ignored that and lifted his gaze to the rafters, thinking he’d have to get Emmett in here to build an upper floor.

“Lifting the roof will have to wait until the snow melts, but I could build at least three guest rooms up there, maybe four.”