Seasons of Death

by M. K. Wren

  “Why? They’d be highly incriminating if they were found.” He paused, then, “Of course, we can’t be sure Lee had them with him. Yes, I’m well aware of how ‘confused’ Clare can get. But we can be sure the knife was left in the body. If Tom killed Lee, why would he leave something as incriminating as that knife?”

  “I can’t answer that. Wish to hell I could. It was wedged in damned hard, though. Maybe he couldn’t pull it out. Anyway, we’re not talkin’ about a premeditated murder here. I don’t figure Tom was thinkin’ too clear after he killed Langtry.”

  Conan let that ride. He leafed through the file again, then closed it. “What about the actual site of the murder? The office?”

  “Well, probably. Lights were still on, the door open, and so was the safe when Dex Adler got up there about ten, and Dex saw Langtry go into the office at eight-thirty. But there’s no solid evidence. It could’ve happened somewhere else, I guess, but it don’t seem likely.”

  Nor did it contribute to the case against Tom Starbuck, Conan added to himself. He asked, “There was no sign of a struggle in the office?”

  “Not accordin’ to the reports Sheriff Kenny made on the robbery in nineteen-forty.” The jangle of his phone brought him suddenly upright; he snatched up the receiver. “Newbolt.” A series of affirmative grunts and unconscious nods, then, “Right. The ’copter’s over to Riddle right now. I’ll radio Danny to meet you at Three Creek. I’ll get there soon as I can.” He rose as he hung up. “Sorry, Mr. Flagg, but I’ve got to go. Light plane crashed down on the Jarbidge River.”

  Conan was already on his feet. “Thanks for your time, Sheriff, and the information.”

  Newbolt rounded his desk and picked his Stetson off a hat rack. “You’re welcome to the information. Hope it helps.”

  “So do I, Sheriff. So do I.”

  Chapter 7

  Before leaving Murphy, Conan stopped at the Wagon Wheel for gas and coffee, staying for a second cup while he eavesdropped on two sun-hardened, Levied buckaroos discussing the local rodeo circuit. On the drive back to Silver City, he still had the top down on the car, but the sun’s heat was tempered with a curdling of cloud, and ominous thunderheads were mounting beyond the Owyhees.

  But the sun was still shining, if intermittently, in Silver, and John Kulik’s friends were still hammering at the upstairs railing of the Idaho Hotel’s porch. They waved as Conan passed. Mrs. Bonnet was still taking photographs—her subject, the store—and the artist, Betty Potter, was still painting—her subject, the Masonic Hall. And all’s right with the world, Conan thought wryly as he parked under the crab apples.

  He put the top up on the car, then went into the house, where he was greeted with the heady aroma of lunch in the making. It was served on the kitchen table: thick, savory vegetable soup—“just something to do with the leftovers,” Delia insisted—slabs of homemade bread, and cherry pie hot from the oven. Conan was beginning to think he had at least come to a gastronomic Shangri-la. Clare was in good spirits, her outburst of this morning apparently forgotten, and when she mentioned that she had to go to the store and Conan offered to accompany her, she acquiesced willingly.

  As they descended the porch steps, she looked up at the sky. “Yes, it’s going to rain; you can feel it. That’ll be good for the asparagus.”

  “I gather you’re the gardener of the house.”

  “Oh, I like to grow things, and they seem to like growing for me.” She stopped at the side of the road, then picked something up from under a sagebrush. “Part of some Chinaman’s rice dish, I’ll bet.” She handed her find to Conan, a shard of white pottery with a leaf design glazed in blue and unmistakably Chinese in style. “You can keep it.”

  “Thank you, Clare. It’ll be a good memento of Silver.” For a while she walked in silence, eyes turned down on the road, then she said, “I love the way the mica glitters. In Silver I’m always walking on stars. Do you believe in reincarnation, Mr. Flagg?”

  That stopped him for a moment. “Well, I think it’s an intriguing concept.”

  They had reached the front of the schoolhouse, and Conan saw an American flag thrust from an upstairs window; Lettie Burbage’s museum was apparently open for business. As Clare turned left onto Morning Star Street, she said matter-of-factly, “I’m coming back as a bluebird. Or perhaps a tree. A mountain mahogany. They’re so small and dainty, but, oh, they’re strong. Or a fir tree; one of those tall, slim ones, like church spires. God speaks best through the trees, you know.”

  She looked at Conan expectantly, and he commented, “They’re certainly one of God’s finest expressions.”

  “They’re old souls. Now, Lee…” She gazed up into the blue-and-white mottled sky. “He’ll come back as an eagle; a golden eagle flying high over the mountains.…”

  Conan could muster no response at all to that, but he didn’t have to. They were near the Masonic Hall, and Clare left the road and crossed a grassy clearing toward Jordan Creek. “This is a short cut. Water’s not too high now, but you have to watch out or you’ll get your feet all wet.”

  Conan let her lead the way, smiling in amazement as she stepped agilely from one rock to another, the icy water chattering within inches of her feet. When she reached the bank, she turned, laughing. “I’ve never fallen in yet!”

  Conan was waving his arms for balance. “I hope you can keep that record intact.” Then as they walked up the slope behind the store building, he asked cautiously, “Clare, do you remember a gold watch you gave Lee?”

  “Of course. It was so beautiful. It had a—what is it called? Greek key. Yes, a Greek key design on the back. I gave it to him on our first anniversary. I said all our anniversaries would be golden.” And her bemused smile gave no hint that they weren’t.

  “What happened to that watch?”

  “Oh, Lee still has it. He always wore it.”

  There was at least a discrepancy in tenses there. “It wasn’t among his personal effects, Clare. Did he have it with him the night he was killed?”

  She walked on, putting her back to him. “Why do you have to keep asking questions? I don’t want you to keep asking questions!”

  Conan followed her up a steep path toward the street; the walls of the store and hotel loomed above them on either side, reminding him of battered Louise Nevelson bas-reliefs. He said, “All right, Clare, we won’t talk about it now.” She didn’t respond to that, but the set of her shoulders relaxed. In the open space between buildings stood a vault walled in stone, with an elaborately decorated iron door. Conan asked, “Was there a bank here?”

  She turned. “Oh, that was in the Wells Fargo office. It was still standing till about thirty years ago.”

  This brought them to Jordan Street, and Clare stepped up onto the plank walk fronting the store and peered in the windows, but their reflections revealed more of the exterior world than of the dim interior. “Let’s see, what did I do with that list?” She found it in a pocket, and started to open the door, but it swung away from her, the handle jerking out of her hand. She gave a startled, “Oh!”

  The person who had inadvertently snatched the door from her stood equally startled just inside the store. Mrs. Bonnet, her dark glasses poised in one hand. At close range and without the glasses, her face showed her to be well past her youth, but clearly affluent and concerned enough to make it impossible to determine how far past. Nor had she relinquished her figure to years; she would still fit nicely into a size ten. After the initial surprise, she smiled and hurriedly put on her glasses, covering brown eyes that Conan noted as her best feature.

  “So sorry,” she murmured, slipping past Clare, “I wasn’t watching where I was going.” She gave Conan a brief scrutiny, then hurried off toward the hotel.

  Clare watched her, frowning slightly, then when Conan opened the door for her, started into the store again. Then abruptly she stopped, staring straight ahead, her mouth open, moving soundlessly. A moment later, she careened into Conan and ran out the door, footfalls thumping
on the planks. He stared blankly after her. “Clare?”

  But she had disappeared around the corner of the store. He frowned irritably, then followed her, pausing just beyond the corner where he could see her stumbling down the slope toward Jordan Creek. “Clare! What in—Clare!”

  She didn’t look back or stop, but broke into a halting run, and Conan, remembering her age with dread visions of heart attacks and strokes, ran after her, watching with a sinking sensation as she negotiated the creek. She didn’t fall, although she was wet to the knees before she reached the other side. The frigid water didn’t stop her, nor did Conan’s shouts, and he didn’t catch up with her until she reached Morning Star Street, and by then he was wondering about his own heart at this altitude. He caught her arms and spun her around. “Clare, for God’s sake, what—”

  But she began struggling frantically, small hands flailing at him while she shrieked, “Get away from me! I don’t know—I don’t know where it—let me go! Let me go!”

  In films, this was the time for a smart slap across the face, but somehow Conan wasn’t up to that. He let her go. She darted away, but after half a block, when she reached the schoolhouse, she was forced to pause to catch her breath. Conan waited patiently until she continued up the road to the Starbuck house at a limping half run, then he followed at a leisurely walk. Lettie Burbage, he noted, was taking all this in from her second-story observation post, but when he looked up at her, anticipating with no relish a barrage of inquiry, she abruptly withdrew.

  Voices carried with extraordinary clarity in the mountain air, and well before Conan reached the house, he heard Clare calling Delia, then Delia’s questioning responses. And another voice. When he passed the crab apples, Delia was at the foot of the porch steps holding Clare, and Dex Adler was scowling at Conan as he approached.

  Adler demanded, “What did you do to her?”

  “I tried to stop her before she had a heart attack, but apparently her heart is better than I anticipated.”

  Delia, looking over Clare’s head, smiled at that. “Clare, it’s all right now. Just calm down.…”

  Clare turned her tear-reddened face toward Conan. “Somebody tried to kill me again, Mr. Flagg.”

  Adler exploded, “Oh, damn! Now, this has gone too—”

  “No one was trying to kill you, Clare.” Conan spoke quietly, but firmly. “I was just trying to stop you before—”

  “No! No! I saw—somebody was chasing me! Don’t treat me like I’m crazy. I’m not!”

  Delia took her in charge, guiding her toward the steps with an arm around her shoulders, murmuring soothing words. When they had disappeared inside the house, Adler gave Conan a withering look. “No good is going to come of all this.” And with that pronouncement, he stalked off toward his house.

  Conan sat on the steps and lit a cigarette, at the moment inclined to agree with Adler, and wondering what had triggered Clare’s irrational flight. Mrs. Bonnet? Or something she saw—or simply imagined—in the shadowy interior of the store? He was still pondering a quarter of an hour later when Delia joined him on the step.

  “She’s calmed down now,” Delia assured him. “Lord, I don’t know what gets into her. What happened?”

  Conan told her, but she found no enlightenment in it. “Mrs. Bonnet? I don’t think Clare even knows her name. Maybe she reminded her of somebody. Did she have red hair?”

  “No, she’s blonde.” He came to his feet. “I’ll get your groceries if you have the list.” Then when she brought it out of her apron pocket, “Are you in a hurry for this?”

  “Well, I was planning on the chicken for supper.”

  He smiled. “You’ll have it. I just wanted to stop by the schoolhouse while Lettie’s there.”

  Chapter 8

  It was an elegant building, the schoolhouse, and before he went inside, Conan stopped to contemplate it, noting the refinement of the triangular pediments over the windows, the perfect symmetry of the placement of doors and windows. No doubt the basic plan had been drawn on the golden section.

  Within the open door, he paused in a small anteroom, then made his way to the stairs on the left-hand wall, passing an ore cart and an assortment of mining equipment. The walls were crowded with old photographs and maps of mines that bore out Delia’s assertion that the entire area was riddled with underground tunnels. Here were feats of engineering as astounding as any Pompeii or Troy could offer.

  He heard voices from the second floor, and when he reached the small room at the head of the stairs, saw Lettie Burbage tilted back comfortably in a chair behind a cluttered desk reminiscing with an elderly couple. One wall of the room was jammed with a collection of lavender-tinted glass objects, while a display of Chinese artifacts filled most of the rest of the space. The desk was dominated by a bronze cash register with “Idaho Hotel” cast into the elaborate design.

  Conan took the hint and pulled out his billfold, remembering the sign posted downstairs requiring an admission fee of fifty cents.

  Lettie broke off her conversation with the visitors. “Afternoon, Mr. Flagg.” She leaned forward to take his ten-dollar bill.

  “Keep the change,” he said, “for the museum.”

  Lettie beamed and deposited his contribution in the cash register. “You go on in and have a look around. I’ll be with you in a little while.” Then she resumed her reminiscences as Conan went through the open door into the large room that constituted the museum proper.

  Lettie’s “little while” turned out to be quite a long while, but Conan didn’t object. There was enough here to occupy him for hours. In the center of the room stood a big, round wood stove, a minor masterpiece of Victorian baroque design. Other pieces of furniture were scattered about: school desks, a spinning wheel, a sewing machine patented in 1877, an Edison phonograph with a morning-glory speaker. Mannequins in period costumes looked blankly at him from amid the diverse collection: tools, saddles, harnesses, snowshoes, sleigh bells, cowbells of all sizes; iron and enamel pots and pitchers; a molting stuffed owl; bullion molds two and three feet in length, gold pans and ore buckets; the copper worm from a still; wash tubs, cheese molds, butter presses, churns, sad irons, and a small wood stove with mounts for four irons used in a Chinese laundry; early thermoses and an incredible variety of kerosene lamps; the jewelry, cosmetics, gloves, and purses worn by fashionable ladies, the bone-and-lace fans that cooled them in vanished summers. There was even a small coffin, painted white, with a glassed oval in the lid.

  It was a random sampling of the everyday life—even unto death—of another era, and Conan wondered what a similar sampling of his era would be like seen a hundred years hence. He had made the entire circuit of the room and paused now near the door to study what at first appeared to be a wreath of dried flowers mounted behind glass in a deep frame. A closer look and a typewritten sheet posted by the frame disabused him. The flowers were made from “locks of hair from departed family members,” and were commonly hung in parlors. That, Conan decided, was one aspect of this bygone era that was well by-gone.

  When at length he heard Lettie’s visitors making their adieus and clumping down the stairs, he returned to the anteroom where Lettie was lighting a cigarette with a wooden kitchen match.

  “Have a seat,” she ordered. “What d’you think of it?”

  Conan went to the chair by the window and lighted a cigarette for himself, and, on the assumption that she was referring to the museum, said, “You’ve done a marvelous job collecting and displaying all that, Mrs. Burbage.”

  “Thanks. Course, it wasn’t just me got ever’thing together. Call me Lettie. I’ll call you Conan. Indian name?”

  “No. Irish.”

  “Oh.” Her raised eyebrows furrowed her forehead, but he didn’t elaborate. “Well, Conan, you made any progress?”

  “On Lee’s murder? I’m not sure yet. Delia told me you were Tom’s secretary.”

  “Right. From October of thirty-seven after Martin died—my husband—till September of forty
-two when the mill closed.”

  “I wonder if you could draw me a rough floor plan of the office. It helps me to visualize things.”

  She looked at him as if she thought he was a little mad, then shuffled through the debris on the desk and found a piece of paper and a pencil, then caught her leashed glasses and perched them on the bridge of her nose. “Well, it was a separate building, but stuck onto the side of the mill. Let’s see…” She made a tentative rectangle about twice as long as it was wide, her pencil moving erratically. “The mill was back here—” she extended one of the long walls to indicate the wall of the mill. “—and the front door was in the middle of this wall.” That was the other long wall. “Altogether there was six rooms like…this. See—two rows of three rooms each. Now, when you first walked in—from the front, I mean—this was sort of a reception room. That’s where Amanda’s desk was. There was a door on each side.” She made agitated marks that no architect would recognize as symbols for doors. “On the left, that went into my office. I had my own. Then there was a door out of my office to Tom’s here in the back corner. When you took the right-hand door out of the reception room, that was Lee’s office. Then Dex Adler’s office was in the other back corner. There was a hall—made a sort of an L—connectin’ Dex’s and Tom’s offices and leadin’ to this back door into the mill. This little space left here, that was the foreman’s office.”

  The drawing wasn’t a great deal clearer than her explanation, but Conan only nodded. “Tell me about the foreman.”

  She unhooked her cigarette from her lower lip, where it had hung, defying gravity, throughout her exposition. “Tell you what about him? Oh. You’re wonderin’ if he could’ve had something to do with what happened. Well, I don’t figure you have to worry about Will. Will Day, that was his name.”