by Erik Carter
I pulled Bob around and took off. A few moments later, I turned and looked back. She was still standing on the steps. She waved halfheartedly. I waved back then gave Bob a little smack.
“Giddyup.”
We trotted away.
A few minutes later we were approaching the main stretch of Desecho from the east. We rode slowly. I chewed a piece of licorice. It was quiet.
Going back to the office after a case was either a moment of excitement or a dreaded task depending, of course, on how the case had ended. But this time it was neither exciting nor dreary. It was neutral. Technically the case wasn’t even over now that Lilly wanted me to keep tracking the mystery man and kidnappers. What I really couldn’t fathom, though, was why the poor girl wanted me to continue to search for the kettle itself. Probably needed some sense of closure.
But if she wanted the kettle found, dagnamit, I’d find it for her. I was a detective, after all. It’s what I did. And she was still ponying up the dough. Staying on this case would give me job security for a while. I felt a little selfish for thinking that. A little.
There had to have been something I overlooked. I had been close, so close, to the kettle several times during the whole mess. That meant that somewhere along the line I had made a mistake. I’d miscalculated. What had I missed?
The mystery man had killed Macintosh and taken the kettle. But who was the bastard? He would have to be someone with knowledge of the kettle’s value. He would also have to be someone who didn’t believe in its curse.
Then something struck me.
To steal the kettle, the mystery man had killed Macintosh at his house, knowing he had been the one who had it intercepted from Lilly. That meant the mystery man knew about the kidnapping. There were several people who knew about the stolen kettle—but the kidnapping was unpublicized.
Who would have known about the stolen kettle and the kidnapping?
As I got closer to the main drag of town, another horseman approached in the opposite direction. It was Jake Adamson. He was disheveled, unshaven. His shirt was unbuttoned with sweat stains around his neck and armpits.
I nodded at him, and we stopped our horses. It was still tough to look at the guy. He looked so much like Dodson. “Mornin’, Jake,” I said. “You know, the bank’s back that way.” I grinned and motioned toward town.
Jake opened his mouth, looked back at town, then whipped around again to face me. “I … yeah, I just gotta take care of something. Still a little … a little while till we open.”
During my other encounters with Jake, it had been someone else who had acted skittish—either me or Kurt. Now Jake was the one who was acting as jumpy as a fish in the desert.
“Doin’ all right today, Jake?” I said.
“Yes, thank you. Couldn’t be better.”
I noticed, behind him on his saddle, a belt with a revolver and cartridges. What did a banker need with a gun?
“Where’s your buddy?” I said.
“Kurt had to … had to go.”
“I see.”
He said nothing. There was a long pause.
It was best to let the guy alone. Sometimes a man’s just gotta fix his own hitches. “You take care now, Jake.”
“You do the same.”
I clucked at Bob, and we headed toward town. Jake took off again in the opposite direction.
Strange. The whole thing with Jake and Kurt … just strange.
I turned around in the saddle and watched as he receded. His head was moving—shaking, darting, as though having an animated conversation with himself.
Very strange.
But I had to refocus. If I didn’t get this kettle case off my plate, it was going to be the death of me. I’d half considered turning Lilly down when she offered to keep me on the case. But I needed the money. There was always that pesky money issue.
Someone out there wanted the kettle so badly that he was willing to kill one prominent man, Macintosh, in his own home and allow another prominent man, Cosgrove, to be murdered by the kidnappers. Who would be willing to shed that much blood over one little trinket?
As I determined a moment earlier, whoever did so would have to have known about the stolen kettle and the kidnapping. Several people knew the kettle had been stolen, but those folks thought we were dealing with a simple case of theft. Who knew about the kidnapping? Macintosh and Jimmy Blue Eyes, but they were now both dead. There was no one else who knew about the kidnapping.
Except …
Jake Adamson.
Jimmy Blue Eyes, before his untimely death, had told Jake Adamson about the kidnapping. Jake told me as much in his office.
Jake Adamson?
“I think that kettle has no place in a collection or in the West at all,” Jake had said when I was in his office. “It belongs in the South.”
Jake? The banker? The guy who ran a service to help his fellow man?
He and his pal had been acting fishy. Extremely fishy. Hell, he even told me he hated Cosgrove.
“I try to make life better for the black man. It’s hard to do that in Desecho with a guy like Cosgrove running the show.”
Jake hated Cosgrove, and he knew the kidnappers were gonna kill Cosgrove if they didn’t get the kettle. And somebody, wearing thick disguises, had followed me around during this entire case until I got to Macintosh’s mansion, where he killed a man and took the kettle.
The licorice fell from my stunned mouth.
God dammit, it was Jake Adamson. Jake was the mystery man. He and that big goon of his. They’d both been following me, taking turns with the black bandannas. Kurt wasn’t some displaced Southerner on a mission of love. He was hired muscle.
I turned around in my saddle again. Jake was well off in the distance now, nearing the top of a small rise. I again saw the revolver hanging from the belt on his saddle. And I could also just perceive, stuffed under the belt, a black bandanna … exactly like those I’d seen the mystery man wearing.
Jake was about to clear the top of the hill.
I spun Bob around and was ready to take off at full gallop, when I thought of the lack of success I’d had in my first meeting with the mystery man—when I’d tried to chase him down on horseback. He’d been quite the talented rider. If I bolted after Jake now, he would hear me galloping from behind, take off, then I’d never see him again.
I trotted Bob slowly behind. Jake was about a hundred fifty yards in front of us. He hadn’t noticed us. Yet. He was still shaking his head, talking to himself. He cleared the top of the rise and disappeared.
I risked a little more noise and sped up to a trot. In a few moments, Bob and I had cleared the top of the rise as well.
I didn’t immediately see where he’d gone. There were throngs of people to the left and right. Then I spotted him, hopping out of the saddle in front of a livery owned by Sam Bristol.
I walked Bob down toward the livery, keeping my hat low over my face and riding behind a big buggy for cover.
Jake took his horse by the reins and entered the building. I noticed now that the horse had dark brown coat, different than the pinto I’d seen with the mystery man.
I pulled Bob around the buggy and hurriedly weaved through the traffic and hopped out of the saddle on the opposite side of the road of the livery. There were no hitching posts.
“Bob, stay.”
I crossed the road. There was a small line of guys waiting to talk to Sam. I got on my toes, looked out over their heads. I didn’t see Jake, but I did see his horse in a stable. There was an open entrance at the other end of the building. I darted toward it.
… and an arm reached out and yanked me back.
“Hey, where do you think— Oh. Howdy, Barn.” It was Sam. A short fella with a sweaty head and round paunch.
“Sam. The man who owns that horse,” I said, pointing at Jake’s brown horse. “Where’d he go?”
“You’re lookin’ at him. That’s Bertha. She’s for hire.”
“The guy who just dropped her
off, does he ever hire out a spotted horse? A pinto?”
“I can’t talk about my customers, you know that,” he said. “But let’s just say it wouldn’t surprise me if a buddy of his had.” He winked.
Kurt Leonard.
“Thanks, Sam.” I darted off again toward the other end of the livery.
“Hey!” Sam called behind me.
I ran out the back end of the building and looked about. There were a few people milling around, some guys attending to a wagon. But no Jake Adamson.
But since he had dropped off the horse, that meant he was staying in town. And if I’d learned anything about this murderous geek in the last few days, it was that he was that nothing if not reliable. Heck, I knew exactly where to find the guy. The bank. In about forty-five minutes when it would open.
I walked around the livery. Bob wasn’t where I’d left him. He was well down the road, drinking from a trough. Apparently he was still a little rusty on the stay command.
We’d been working on that one.
I walked down to Bob, saddled up, and headed into town.
Jake Adamson was mixed up in this kettle business. I was floored. Sure he was a stuffed shirt, but he had a good spirit. When a guy has a decent soul, you can feel it on him; it sort of comes off of him like a heat or a smell. Meeting Jake in his office, hearing him talk about his service to help the black man, I could feel his decency. He’d seemed like a quality person. He really had.
In that way also, he truly reminded me of Dodson.
Chapter Eighteen
I checked my watch. Eight forty-one. Nineteen minutes to go. And two minutes since I last checked.
When nine o’clock came around, I’d be at the bank, waiting to grab Jake Adamson and put an end to this wretched case. In the meantime, I was killing the wait by strolling the streets with Fannie on my arm.
I’d run into her as she was heading toward the Funhouse to open the doors for the day. I told her that I had a suspect in Jake Adamson, that I knew where he worked, and that I had only to wait for him to show up at his office to snag him. Often times I would spill my guts to Fannie about my current case. She was a surprisingly good listener, and I had to talk things out with someone other than Bob from time to time.
Fannie was in a good mood this morning. She felt nice on my arm, and I was proud to be seen with her. Fannie always liked to keep her defenses up with me, to act like she wasn’t crazy about ol’ Barnaby, but every now and then she’d throw me a bone. I’d been mighty disappointed when I last saw her and she plum rejected my advances, but now look at the progress. She was on my arm, squeezing me every now and then. She even put her head on my chest at one point.
This is how it was with Fannie. Ebbs and flows. If I were to keep at it, if I didn’t get discouraged by the incremental progress, I could get through to her. But, seeing as how I was just about to apprehend Jake Adamson, it was looking like I wasn’t going to achieve my goal of sharing some special time with her by the time the case wrapped.
I stole a glance at her, down there at my side. The tops of her ample breasts were out for the world to see. They fluttered slightly as she walked. I had an inkling to make a move. But I’d better not. Patience, Barnaby. Patience.
The townsfolk were stirring. Desecho was awakening. It was like watching a flower open. An odorous, dimwitted, hung-over flower. All around us debauchery was coming to life. A man was tossed out of a saloon into the street. A fistfight caught fire in an alley. Prostitutes from one of Fannie’s competitors waved at me from a balcony. All in all, it was a pleasant Desecho morning.
A bottle fell to the ground and shattered. I whipped around and pulled out my gun. The drunk across the road who’d dropped the bottle put his hands in the air. “E-easy, partner,” he said. His eyes flicked to my gun.
My heart thumped in my chest. I nodded to the man and continued on. I put the Colt away.
Fannie gaped at me. “Barney, for goodness sake.”
I suppose I was a little jumpy. I was still paranoid about the mystery man … er, Jake Adamson, that is. He was no longer a mystery at all.
“Okay, okay,” Fannie said. “So you’ve got it narrowed down to Jacob Adamson. What do you do from here?”
“I’m gonna get a confession out of him and take him in. It’s that simple.”
“Get a confession? How you gonna do that?”
“Stop by his office when the bank opens up, scare the shit out of him.”
“Oh, intriguing. Teach me more about the subtle intricacies of detective work.”
I grinned at her.
She pointed up. “Pretty sky.”
The sky was indeed beautiful. It was bright blue with large fluffy clouds, the horizon still clinging to some magentas from what had been a striking sunrise.
“Yup,” I said.
“You figure the sky looks like this over New York City right now?” Fannie said. “You’re from out east. You ever been to the city?”
“Nope. Not a once.” Thank God.
“I’d love to see it.”
“Why?”
Her eyes lit up. “Why not?” she said. “I want to see so much more than this. I got an itch.”
“It’s called chlamydia.”
“I need to get away from here,” she said. “We’re more than this, Barney. You and me, we’re not the type of people who’ll die here.”
I looked around us. A man lay passed out on a bench. A woman chased a fella out of a store with a broom. “Nah, I think we fit in just fine here,” I said.
We continued to walk. Fannie still had that starry look in her eyes. She glanced this way and that with a big grin on her face. But she wasn’t there with me. Right then she was any place but Desecho. She got like that sometimes. She had dreams and thoughts and plans. You had to admire her for it.
As for me, I learned long ago to not put too much stock in such things. If you spend all your time thinking of the future, you miss the now. What’s the future but another now that hasn’t happened yet? No, I was perfectly content to simply mosey down the road with Fannie.
We came upon a street preacher standing on a wooden box giving a fiery lecture to unreceptive passersby. “… and His fury will strike down upon the evildoers,” he was saying. “The sinners and the demons. And when it does—” He stopped suddenly and pointed at Fannie and me. “Them. These two.”
We slowed down. Neither of us were the type to back down from a fight.
“This is the evil I speak of,” the preacher said. “Incarnate.” He then spoke to us directly. “You must cease your sinful ways, repent, and beg forgiveness.”
“Hold on a sec, chief,” Fannie said. “Who are you to judge us?”
“You see?” the preacher said, addressing the passersby again. “You see their utter contempt, their sheer denial of their sinful deeds? A whore and a drunk!”
“You know nothing about us, pal,” Fannie said.
The preacher turned to me. “You must act. How dare you stand by idly allowing this woman to continue down her path of treachery?”
“Well,” I said, “and correct me if I’m wrong here, but isn’t she supposed to be one of my ribs? That’s it, right? A rib? You try telling one of your ribs what to do and see how well it responds.”
I made to leave, but Fannie didn’t move. I gave her a little tug. “Come on.”
“Ah, can you believe that?” she said as we walked away, turning back to scowl at the man. “Who’s he to judge? People like that make me really hate this town sometimes. Jackass.”
“He had you pegged as a hooker, though, didn’t he?”
She playfully smacked my chest and smiled, then took my arm again as we continued our walk. She put her head on my shoulder, making me feel more satisfied than I had in weeks.
I spotted Sheriff Simmons walking towards us on the sidewalk. And he spotted me too. He smiled and opened his mouth to speak—to bug me about becoming a full-time deputy, no doubt—but I cut him off.
“You gonna do s
omethin’ about that idiot back there, Sheriff?” I pointed toward the street preacher. I took a piece of licorice from my cigarette holder.
“Only so much I can do,” Simmons said as he stepped up to us. “Freedom of speech and all that. Morning, Miss Fannie.”
“Sheriff.”
“You know, Barn,” Simmons said. “Maybe if you’d flashed that badge of yours he wouldn’t have given you such a hard time. And a full-timer has even more clout around this town.”
“Maybe so, Sherriff,” I said. “But I wouldn’t want to get too big for my britches, now would I? I’m revered enough as it is.” I picked some jerky from my teeth with my piece of licorice.
“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll go have a chat with the fella, see if I can’t talk him down a bit.”
“Appreciate it.”
Simmons left.
I took out my watch again. It was about ten ’til nine. Time to go to work.
Fannie looked down at my watch too. “You leavin’ me?”
“Yeah, babe. Gotta nab me a banker.”
“All right,” she said and let my arm go, her fingers delicately yet purposefully sliding along the length of my bicep. “Don’t say I don’t give you any chances.”
Oh, Fannie was trying to work her magic. She’d put up a good front, but I knew that I hadn’t had any chance with her that morning. She’d known the whole time that I was going to leave at nine when the bank opened. She wanted to be able to act like she’d given me a chance without actually giving me one. Well planned but not entirely clever.
I gave her the smuggest look I could muster. “You’re the one who’s missin’ out, toots.” Acting disinterested in Fannie, I’ve found, is the surest way to get a rise out of her.
The coy twinkle she’d been wearing vanished, and she scowled at me. “We’ll see who comes to whom first, Barnaby Wilcox!” She turned on her heel and stomped off.
I chuckled as I watched her leave. Her steps were short and brisk, each one pounding the ground with vengeance. Her butt jiggled gently. She was sexy when mad. She turned back and saw me watching her. I could hear her growl, even halfway across the road. Her little hands curled into small, quavering fists as she climbed onto the sidewalk and disappeared into one of the stores.