Fatal as a Fallen Woman by Kathy Lynn Emerson

daughter.
    Diana boarded a streetcar and paid her five cents. She gave herself a stern lecture en route to the next hurdle. She'd be no help to her mother if she let her emotions have free rein.
    * * * *
    The law firm of Patterson, Markham, Thomas and Campbell had the best reputation in Colorado for winning criminal cases. They had successfully defended a number of people accused of homicide. Diana, whose natural optimism had resurfaced by the time she was shown in to see Tom Patterson, felt her high hopes plummet again when that impeccably-dressed gentleman balked at the name Elmira Torrence.
    "I will not represent anyone associated with the red-light district." His lips curled with distaste.
    "Mr. Patterson, you don't understand. My mother is innocent. And her reasons for running the Elmira Hotel are—"
    "No, you don't understand, Mrs. Spaulding. I will not take this case." The ends of his mustache twitched with the force of his refusal.
    "If it's a matter of your fee—"
    He abruptly lost patience with her. "Money is no object?" he snapped. "Very well, I'll represent your 'innocent' mother . . . if you pay me $1500. In advance."
     Diana had always thought it a literary convention to say a person's eyes bulged or her jaw dropped, but she felt both things happen to her at once. She was still goggling when Patterson had her ejected from his office.
    Diana took several deep breaths, collected her dignity, and resolutely moved on to the next stop on her itinerary. Patterson's office was not the only business at Seventeenth and Curtis. She entered the five-story red sandstone building that housed the Rocky Mountain News and asked for  Col. John Arkins, managing editor and part owner of the newspaper.
    The letter Horatio Foxe had given Diana was addressed to Arkins, but before she could deliver it to him, he bowed over her hand with old-world gallantry. "I am delighted to meet you, Mrs. Spaulding." There was a hint of Ireland in both his voice and his appearance and he had the dashing, almost careless demeanor Diana associated with that country. Charmed, she was unprepared for what he said next. "The last time I heard your name, it was also in connection with a murder."
    "I beg your pardon?" She went very still in the chair in which he'd just seated her.
    "When the Leadville Chronicle covered your husband's death. A great miscarriage of justice, in my opinion. Letting the man who shot him get away like that. They never did find him, did they?"
    Diana had to swallow hard before she could answer. "Not that I know of." Once she'd left Leadville, she hadn't looked back. She didn't suppose the authorities there knew where to find her, even if they did have something to tell her about the man who'd killed Evan for cheating at cards.
    "And this time it's your father who's dead." Arkins beamed at her with ill-concealed speculation in his twinkling eyes. "Mr. Foxe suggests we might be able to help each other, Mrs. Spaulding. He's sent several telegrams here since you left New York, asking for details on the case. I imagine he's also sent messages to you. If you have not yet collected them, the Western Union office is at Sixteenth and Lawrence."
    Reading telegrams from Horatio Foxe was far down Diana's list of priorities at the moment. Anger flared up, at both Foxe and Arkins. They wanted to use her. It was the story that mattered, not her, and not her mother.
    "Col. Arkins," she said through clenched teeth, "I came to Denver as a daughter, not a journalist." Her hands balled into tight fists in her lap. "At the moment I'm looking for information, not providing it. To be truthful, you are one of the first people I've spoken to."
    "Henry Burnett covers the lowers."
    "The lowers?"
    "The hotel beat along Larimer Street and on down to the railroad station. That includes the Windsor. And the Elmira. I can arrange for you to talk to him in exchange for an interview with you, but I can tell you already what he'll say. She's the most likely