The Genuine Article (The Sheriff Chick Charleston Mysteries Book 2)

by A B Guthrie

  My men weren’t there, either of them, and after watching a slow game at one of the two occupied tables I went back out, wondering where to go next.

  I lagged down the street, looking for cars that just might have the beat-up mark of Breedtown on them. Three or four clunkers were parked at the curbs, but none told me anything. My idea was dumb anyhow.

  Mike Day was taking the air in front of the bank, as was the right and privilege of the owner. He said, “Good afternoon, Jase. What’s on your mind?”

  In approaching him I had to step over one of his setters, which asked mildly what was my business. “Murder,” I said, shaking the hand he put out.

  “Yes. Too bad. It gives a man to think.”

  I asked, “What are you thinking?” I was sure of an answer. Day had ideas about everything.

  “Young man, I’m afraid you and the sheriff—no disrespect—are just chasing your tails. You quiz the wrong people, probably put the wrong questions.”

  “How do you know that? From talking to Eagle Charlie or Becker or somebody?”

  “I hear things. Who doesn’t? I’m here to tell you Becker’s a solid man.”

  “I didn’t say he wasn’t. You have something to suggest? We could use a tip or two.”

  His gaze left mine, looking at the case with a banker’s eye. “Grimsley wasn’t killed for personal gain. No sense in that. No love angle, either. It was an enemy killed him,” he said.

  “We already figured that out ourselves.”

  “Forget the locals. Look afar, Jason. Look afar. Grimsley had business contacts way beyond county limits. Inquire into them. It’s a cinch he gypped some stranger who returned the trick in blood.” Day looked pleased with his language. “He was that kind of a man.” Now he spoke with such force that one of his setters opened an eye to see what was the matter. “Hell, he didn’t even bank in town. How’s that for loyalty?”

  I left him with his thoughts about loyalty.

  It was getting along toward late afternoon. I went home and practiced the fingerprinting I had neglected for a couple of years and studied the book the FBI had sent at my request.

  At supper my father said, “Thank God, that evangelist is striking his tent after tonight.”

  Thinking of Halvor, I said, “I guess he’s made some converts.”

  “Who’ll revert the minute he turns his back if not sooner. Infernal nonsense!”

  I had more important things on my mind, so I told my parents about my problem—how to get Framboise and Pambrun to the sheriff’s office. “What’s the trick?” I asked. “What’s the approach? I’ve racked my brain and come up with nothing.”

  Mother said with a mother’s smile, “You’ll find a way, Jason.”

  My father studied his plate and then looked at me and spoke with the certainty of old conviction. “Candor, son,” he said. “Complete candor. Men answer to it. No tricks. No deception whatever. State your purpose honestly, openly. They’re breeds, some would say, but breeds are human, for goodness’ sake, even if they’re not always treated that way. Be candid.”

  I said, “All right and thanks. Now I have to find them.”

  I couldn’t, though, even though I looked until bedtime and past. But I did find a reason.

  The evangelist had sung his last chant just before I dropped into the Bar Star. I knew he had because automobile lights were coming from the direction of the tent. They began casting beams along the deserted street. Foot travelers would be following soon. A dull game was in progress at the Bar Star. The players were the only customers besides a drunk who was dozing at the end of the bar. Bob Studebaker, the owner, had relieved Tad Frazier as bartender.

  I was tired of pretending I was looking for nobody. And, having failed so far, how I could fail more by asking. “Bob,” I said, moving up to the bar, “have Pete Pambrun or Framboise showed up tonight?”

  He plunged a couple of glasses in wash water, dried his hands and answered, or, rather, didn’t. “Looking for them, huh?”

  “Now what would make you think that?”

  “Easy as shit. You asked.”

  “Well. Have they?”

  He leaned his bare, plump forearms on the bar. “Would you expect them to?”

  “Why not? You’re not on their blacklist.”

  “You got a lot to learn, Jase.”

  I said, “Tell me.”

  “No breeds in town today. Nobody from Breedtown. Why? Because they know they’ll be grilled. They figure they’re suspects, being part war-whoop. That’s why. That’s the goddamn why. You’re anti-business, you and Chick Charleston. Have a drink.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Buy one then, seeing as how I wised you up.”

  “On duty, Bob. Later, you can bet.”

  We were smiling at each other, smiling honest smiles.

  I walked to the Commercial Cafe, feeling hungry, though God knew Mother had fed me enough. A gang of teenagers occupied a table, noisy and drippy with the ketchup they drowned their hamburgers in.

  I asked Jessie Lou for a ham sandwich and coffee. She didn’t meet my eyes, either in taking the order or filling it. Had she, I guess I would have looked down.

  On the way home I thought: Another day lost.

  Chapter Eight

  I went to the office early the next morning, before anyone but Jimmy Conner was there. “I need the keys to the county car,” I told him. “Be in later.”

  “I can’t be givin’ out keys without orders,” he answered. “Who says give you one? Better wait around until the sheriff shows up.”

  You had to make allowances for a man probably just out of bed. You had to indulge old, old-time employees who got to thinking they were essential to operations. Besides, I liked Jimmy.

  “Aw, quit it, Jimmy,” I said, giving him a big smile. “You know me. I’m Jason Beard, if you’ve forgotten. Remember? I chase up to the Commercial Cafe and bring grub to your guests in the crowbar house and so save you walking. If I go now, I’ll be back in time to do that chore for you.”

  He looked down. “My goddamn feet. Get the key yourself,” he said, needlessly pointing to the key hook. As I left, he added, “Good luck with whatever it is.”

  So here I was on the road to Breedtown, bent on bringing Pete Pambrun and Framboise to the office for questioning.

  The day was raw. A gale blew out of the canyons to the west. I could almost see the air massing in the mountains and charging out on command. God’s command, I supposed Brother Sam would have said. The car swerved and lurched in the face of it, and the steering wheel tried to spin from my hands. June, the Moon of the Wild Rose, by the old Indian calendar. It might better have been named the Moon of the Wild Winds. What rose would blossom in this weather? What did blossom was dust and the pebbles that peppered the car.

  But somehow it was my wind. The mountains were mine and the whipped country that waited good days. There was the sure if suffering hope in it, and I wondered if all men came to look on their birthplaces, however stricken, as home.

  In an English class I had tried to put my feelings for place, for my place, on paper, but the words came out flat or florid, and I gave up and hugged the feeling to myself.

  It was a mistake to let my thoughts ramble away from the road. I missed the churned track and got stuck at the ford across Eagle Charlie’s little spring stream. The back wheels spun in the mud and wash gravel and ground deeper as I fed gas to the engine.

  I was close to the settlement, just a hundred yards or so away from it, but no one watched that I could see and no one came out to help. One cur, its hair fluttered and flattened by the wind, added a couple of barks to the shrill voice of it. I had to put my shoulder against the door of the car to get out. It slammed shut behind me. I got my boots muddy on the shore of the stream.

  In the leeward shelter of a corner stood Eagle Charlie and the old Indian woman I had seen before. The dark of her face looked darker with rage. Her mouth twisted with talk, and her eyes were black as aimed gun bar
rels. I caught the hoarse gutturals of Indian speech. An edge of wind hit one of her braids. It stood out from her head like a spike of feeling. Eagle Charlie said something and made a sweep with one hand and arm as if to brush her away. Turning, he saw me and nodded.

  I asked where I could find Framboise and Pambrun. He pointed to a shack toward my left, saying nothing.

  He and she were the only people in sight. The rest, I supposed, were walled up against the wind. A board tore loose from an eave and made a shudder of sound like a thrown shingle. Somehow a couple of tepees managed to hold themselves upright. Outside the shack a saddle horse stood, reins trailing, rump to the gale, which tore at mane and tail and the short hair of haunch.

  The shack was partly log, badly notched. Its roof was weathered board. One plank lifted and sank and lifted again at the wind’s urging.

  My knock got the answer “What do you want?”

  “To come in, first of all.”

  “No lock on the door.”

  It was a single-room shack. The room was thick with human smell and the odor of tobacco, but it was tidy beyond expectation. The worn wooden floor was swept clean, and not a cobweb hung from walls or roof, none that I could see at first glance. Pambrun—it turned out to be—sat on a made bed. Framboise occupied a battered chair held together by haywire. A bucket and pitcher stood on a bench near a midget cookstove over which kitchenware hung.

  I said, “Hi. How are you?”

  The answer was noises in the throats.

  “That wind’s a bastard today.”

  The report wasn’t news to them.

  “Could I talk to you a while?” I asked.

  They looked at each other. Framboise said, “Talk away. It’s free.” He was a big man, broad-faced, with so dark a complexion as to make a man wonder if some female ancestor hadn’t got mixed up with the black man who accompanied Lewis and Clark.

  “The sheriff would like to see you.”

  Pambrun answered, “We’re here.” He was a thin, small man, lighter of skin than the other.

  “He’s trying to find out who killed Grimsley. He thought you might help.”

  “Why pick on us?” Framboise said.

  Pambrun replied to him, “Because we’re goddamn Injun.”

  “You’re wrong there,” I said. “We’re not picking on anybody. We’re just asking questions.”

  Pambrun said, “No answers here. Not a damn answer.”

  “And damn if we go to town,” Framboise put in.

  Uninvited, I took a seat on a sawed block that apparently served as one.

  “Look,” I said. “Let’s keep it friendly. I know you by sight. You know me. I’m a deputy. My name’s Jason Beard.”

  Their eyes met again. “Beard?” Pambrun said to the other.

  “One they call Bill.”

  They both nodded their heads in secret agreement.

  “Bill Beard is my father,” I said.

  They studied me slowly as if to find signs of my ancestry.

  “You as good a man as he is?” Pambrun asked. Except that his lips moved, his face was a blank.

  “No,” I replied, “but I try to be.”

  Pambrun said, “Beard” again. Then neither spoke.

  I scrambled in my mind. How open them up? “It was my father’s idea,” I said, though it wasn’t, “that I bring a drink for our meeting.” I dug in my windbreaker and brought out a flask I had bought.

  “It’s a trick, huh? Soften us up. No?”

  His gaze was on Pambrun, who said, “Not Beard. Not Bill Beard. No.”

  “No.”

  Their eyes quickened then. Pambrun got up. I handed him the bottle. He went to a shelf and found tin cups, poured whiskey into each and watered the whiskey from the bucket. The cups were clean. Taking mine, I felt like a cheat and a traitor. Sure, I wanted to soften them up and so had resorted to the white trader’s oldest trick, helped, I didn’t know why, by the name of my father.

  Settled again, Pambrun said, “Honest to God, we don’t know a thing.”

  “But just the same, ask away,” Framboise told me.

  I wished Charleston were there. He would know the right questions. I said, “Were Grimsley and Eagle Charlie friends?”

  “Maybe,” Pambrun replied after taking a swallow. “They got along, anyhow.”

  “Why in hell should Eagle Charlie wipe him out?’ Framboise added. “Dead, Grimsley is no use to him.”

  “But he was before then?”

  They considered, their eyes meeting.

  Pambrun said, “Every once in a while Eagle Charlie got a free beef. He divvied it up. We all got some.”

  “Free for what?” I had a sudden but passing notion to dig into the subject of Rosa Charlie and her assignations with Grimsley.

  Pambrun shrugged and began building a cigarette. “I hear, once long ago, that hungry Indians butchered cows they didn’t own.”

  “But no more?”

  “No more. Not us. People think so, but Eagle Charlie would kick us off.”

  “He was still a son of a bitch, that Grimsley,” Framboise said. “Who cares he’s dead?”

  Pambrun looked at me, a question in his face as he fiddled with his empty cup. I bobbed my head, and he made more drinks.

  The information I was getting was pretty old stuff, so I changed the subject. “That Luke McGluke—you know him—he comes around, doesn’t he?”

  With his finger Framboise drew circles around his temple. “He comes. Sometimes he brings grub, a little. No harm.”

  “What about the man named Red Fall? You’ve seen him here.”

  It was Pambrun who answered. “He talks to the old squaw. He likes old stories, old Indian ways, old what you call beliefs.”

  “Does she talk English?”

  “She can, but she won’t,” Framboise replied. “Not a word. Makes believe not to savvy.”

  “But Fall, can he understand her?”

  “Rosa helps out.”

  “Oh,” I said, “you mean she interprets?”

  They nodded, both of them.

  “The old woman,” I asked, “is Eagle Charlie’s mother?”

  “No,” Framboise replied. “Rosa’s grandma.”

  “They don’t like each other, not from what little I’ve seen?”

  “That old one is tough,” Pambrun said in his turn. “They fight all the time.”

  “What about?”

  “Anything. For her there is too much white man in Eagle Charlie. She lives in the long ago.” He paused and went on, “She’s a good Catholic.”

  “Old Indian, a blanket squaw you might say, and still a good Catholic. That’s kind of strange.”

  Pambrun said, “No. The priests raised her. But the priests, they were pretty wise. With Indians, I mean. The Indians thought one way, the priests another, but the priests let them mix. What the hell? Not so different.”

  Framboise broke in. “What’s that got to do with Grimsley? The old one and Eagle Charlie can’t get along. So what?”

  I had to grin at him and answer, “You’re right. I’m off the track. Have another drink. Not for me, thanks.”

  Pambrun attended to the two cups.

  I said, “I don’t think the sheriff will need to see you,” and felt sure he wouldn’t. “I’m satisfied, for now, anyhow. Thanks for the talk, and so long.”

  They both got up as Framboise said, “Going, huh?” A smile, the first one, came to his ugly face. “Going out to spin your wheels, huh?”

  So they knew I was stuck, as probably everyone in the settlement did. Framboise motioned to Pambrun and the two came out the door with me, leaving their unfinished drinks. The wind had died to a breeze.

  Pambrun went to the drooping horse and got a rope from the saddle. Framboise tightened the cinch. Pambrun went to his knees and tied one end of the rope to my axle, walked back and gave the other end to Framboise, who had mounted. I climbed in the car and started the engine. Framboise took a couple of dallies around the saddle horn and
kicked the horse into motion.

  With the horse pulling and my hind wheels grabbing for traction, it didn’t take long to get out of the mud.

  After untying the rope from the axle Pambrun had gone back into the shack. He returned and offered me the half-empty bottle.

  “Keep it with my thanks,” I said.

  Again their glances met, and then Pambrun said, “Say how to your father.”

  Chapter Nine

  Over sausage and buckwheat pancakes I asked my father, “How is it you’re friends with two characters named Pete Pambrun and Framboise? I don’t know what his first name is.”

  Mother was at the stove frying more cakes.

  Father said, “Louis.”

  “But how come?”

  “Simple. Soon after you left town.”

  I waited for him to take, chew and swallow a bite.

  “It was your late friend, Grimsley,” he said.

  “That explains everything, does it?”

  “Why don’t you let your father finish his breakfast, Jase?” Mother asked me.

  Father smiled and said, “Never mind. I’m about through.” He helped himself to more pancakes. There was nothing for me to do except sit and eat.

  At last Father said, “Grimsley accused those two men of rustling a steer. Trumped-up evidence, but he pretty well convinced the county attorney that he had a case. Halvor Amussen, your sidekick, too. Mr. Charleston was on vacation, and Amussen was in charge of the office—too much in charge.”

  “Even then, Grimsley was out to get the breeds?”

  “Right, but I guess there’s no doubt that he’d lost a steer or two, maybe more.”

  “He hadn’t accused anybody since then, no one except just before he got clobbered?”

  Mother, having seated herself, said, “That sounds unfeeling and vulgar, Jase.”

  Father waved her comment away. “He learned a lesson that didn’t last long enough.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I knew Framboise and Pambrun couldn’t be guilty. I said so.”

  “You know your father,” Mother said.

  I asked, “How did you know?”